I’m reading the Penguin English Library edition of Moby Dick. It basically has a one paragraph outline of his life. I’ll transcribe it below. Because, although I knew of a number of his books, some of the details, even in this brief introduction to the man, were rather surprising to me. “Herman Melville (1819-1891) became in his late twenties a highly successful author of exotic novels based on his experiences as a sailor - writing in quick succession Typee, Omoo, Redburn and White-Jacket. However, his masterpiece Moby Dick was met with incomprehension, and the other later works which are not the basis of his reputation, such as Bartley the Scrivener and The Confidence Man , were failures. Melville stopped writing fiction and the rest of his long life was spent first as a lecturer and then, for nineteen years, as a customs official in New York City. He was also the author of the immensely long poem Clarel , which was similarly dismissed...
Certainly not the drowning man.
ReplyDeleteOr being denied chowder, I know. But do all of us seek watery shores? I’m the son of farmers on both ends of the stick, for example, firmly placed in the middle of things, with no water in sight. Yes, we had water, in lakes and streams in spades. And we DID seek them out. Part of me, as a landsman from the olden days :) (my grandfather died on his tractor, out on his field, happily, painlessly I hope, but doing what he loved). Do all humans seek water and shores? Or is this just a statement of geographical ignorance, of this is where I live, so of course, all must love it? I tend to think this statement is rather profound and correct, btw. But my farmer Midwest roots wants to wrestle with it.
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