THE MOST FAMOUS OPENING LINE in American literature is also one of the silliest. “Call me Ishmael,” says a New England deckhand. That is a joke. Imagine Good Will Hunting opening with an establishing shot of Matt Damon’s character hammering a nail and saying to the viewer, “Call me Socrates.” There might be some symbolic meaning behind “Socrates,” an egghead who famously knows more than others because he understands he knows nothing. But the Boston accent would still boil “Sah-craw-tees” to a delightful pulp. The dissonance in Melville’s opener is the same, and it’s not a one-off. The great American novel, Moby-Dick embodies several narrative forms, but the one it begins with is comedy.
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