- Within a year after Melville's death, Moby-Dick, along with Typee, Omoo, and Mardi, was reprinted by Harper & Brothers, giving it a chance to be rediscovered. However, only New York's literary underground seemed to take much interest, just enough to keep Melville's name circulating for the next 25 years in the capital of American publishing. During this time, a few critics were willing to devote time, space, and a modicum of praise to Melville and his works, or at least those that could still be fairly easily obtained or remembered. Other works, especially the poetry, went largely forgotten.
The book took over 50 years to become a cultural force.
I am a big Melville fan. Moby Dick was my first read aside from Bartleby, the Scrivener, but I've also read Typee, Omoo, and White Jacket. I read MD when I was in China for three months, and had a lot of down time. That was a pretty ideal setting to do so. The book is a treatise on passion and action, and having few people to talk to, I spent a good time thinking on it. Melville wrote of the laboring life that he lived, and I have a fondness for authors that could turn a screwdriver, like he and Hemingway. The Confidence Man was one of the few books that I couldn't finish. I think that was more for Melville than it was for his audience. I've often wondered about The Confidence Man and Ulysses. It feels like Joyce was influenced by it, and not only because they both happen on one day.
What appealed to you about it? I listened to it, and mostly liked it, but I doubt I would have finished it if I were reading it instead of listening. I liked his enthusiasm - how Ishmael wants change and decided to go to sea, and so he dives headfirst into whaling, how he classifies whales as fish and then details the whole classification with publishing jargon instead of anything biological, and how anything worth mentioning is worth a whole chapter of details, even if it is unrelated to the narrative. I like how he dives in to everything, but it is also off-putting since the narrative is only a tiny fraction of the book. I've heard so many people who hate it from high school literature classes, and I'm on the fence myself, so I'm curious what appealed to you since you like it.
I like how it is a deep-dive into experience and action. As you mention, Melville classifies a whale as a fish with a horizontal tail, pretty much because its business is being a massive fish. He tells you about something, laying it out, and then, in the midst of the description, dives into the reasoning behind the way that things are playing out, and previous thoughts that he has had upon those matters. Here's an example that was easy to whip up: When the last echo of his sultan’s step has died away, and Starbuck, the first Emir, has every reason to suppose that he is seated, then Starbuck rouses from his quietude, takes a few turns along the planks, and, after a grave peep into the binnacle, says, with some touch of pleasantness, “Dinner, Mr. Stubb,” and descends the scuttle. The second Emir lounges about the rigging awhile, and then slightly shaking the main brace, to see whether it will be all right with that important rope, he likewise takes up the old burden, and with a rapid “Dinner, Mr. Flask,” follows after his predecessors. But the third Emir, now seeing himself all alone on the quarter-deck, seems to feel relieved from some curious restraint; for, tipping all sorts of knowing winks in all sorts of directions, and kicking off his shoes, he strikes into a sharp but noiseless squall of a hornpipe right over the Grand Turk’s head; and then, by a dexterous sleight, pitching his cap up into the mizentop for a shelf, he goes down rollicking so far at least as he remains visible from the deck, reversing all other processions, by bringing up the rear with music. But ere stepping into the cabin doorway below, he pauses, ships a new face altogether, and, then, independent, hilarious little Flask enters King Ahab’s presence, in the character of Abjectus, or the Slave. It is not the least among the strange things bred by the intense artificialness of sea-usages, that while in the open air of the deck some officers will, upon provocation, bear themselves boldly and defyingly enough towards their commander; yet, ten to one, let those very officers the next moment go down to their customary dinner in that same commander’s cabin, and straightway their inoffensive, not to say deprecatory and humble air towards him, as he sits at the head of the table; this is marvellous, sometimes most comical. Wherefore this difference? A problem? Perhaps not. To have been Belshazzar, King of Babylon; and to have been Belshazzar, not haughtily but courteously, therein certainly must have been some touch of mundane grandeur. But he who in the rightly regal and intelligent spirit presides over his own private dinner-table of invited guests, that man’s unchallenged power and dominion of individual influence for the time; that man’s royalty of state transcends Belshazzar’s, for Belshazzar was not the greatest. Who has but once dined his friends, has tasted what it is to be Caesar. It is a witchery of social czarship which there is no withstanding. Now, if to this consideration you super-add the official supremacy of a ship-master, then, by inference, you will derive the cause of that peculiarity of sea-life just mentioned. The plot is there, but so much of what happens is opportunity to reflect and discuss.It is noon; and Dough-Boy, the steward, thrusting his pale loaf-of-bread face from the cabin-scuttle, announces dinner to his lord and master who, sitting in the lee quarter-boat, has just been taking an observation of the sun; and is now mutely reckoning the latitude on the smooth, medallion-shaped tablet, reserved for that daily purpose on the upper part of his ivory leg. From his complete inattention to the tidings, you would think that moody Ahab had not heard his menial. But presently, catching hold of the mizen shrouds, he swings himself to the deck, and in an even, unexhilarated voice, saying, “Dinner, Mr. Starbuck,” disappears into the cabin.
This is my favorite part of reading Melville. A confluence of vocabulary and topical knowledge combine to make the experience of reading his books unique. It takes a different mindset to enjoy Melville, a different set of expectations, and an atypical approach. He wouldn't get published today, which is proof enough that the editing industry is not an unequivocally positive force.how anything worth mentioning is worth a whole chapter of details