Moby Dick

Story Stream

Moby-Dick Is a Novel That Is Mostly About Whales February 26, 2025

According to my records, I read Moby-Dick for the first time in April of 2010. My journey into the book started off quite well. Like most readers, I was surprised by the overt, barely-subtextual homoeroticism—I loved the relationship between Queequeg...

After Melville November 28, 2023

Writing in 2005, Andrew Delbanco observed, in his critical biography Melville: His World and Work, that the author of Moby-Dick “seems to renew himself for each new generation.” Since the mid-twentieth century, Delbanco notes, “there has been a stead...

All Classics Are Funny November 13, 2023

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 an...