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“The ‘Gees”— Herman Melville
“The ‘Gees” by Herman Melville In relating to my friends various passages of my sea-goings I have at times had occasion to allude to that singular people the ‘Gees, sometimes as casual acquaintances,...
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“Cannibals? who is not a cannibal?” (Moby-Dick)
It is not, perhaps, entirely because the whale is so excessively unctuous that landsmen seem to regard the eating of him with abhorrence; that appears to result, in some way, from the consideration...
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“Speak, thou vast and venerable head” (Moby-Dick)
It was a black and hooded head; and hanging there in the midst of so intense a calm, it seemed the Sphynx’s in the desert. “Speak, thou vast and venerable head,” muttered Ahab, “which, though...
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“The more I consider this mighty tail, the more do I deplore my inability to...
The more I consider this mighty tail, the more do I deplore my inability to express it. At times there are gestures in it, which, though they would well grace the hand of man, remain wholly...
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“I squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity came over me” (Moby-Dick)
Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity came over me; and I found myself...
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“And there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into...
Look not too long in the face of the fire, O man! Never dream with thy hand on the helm! Turn not thy back to the compass; accept the first hint of the hitching tiller; believe not the artificial fire,...
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“To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme” (Moby-Dick)
One often hears of writers that rise and swell with their subject, though it may seem but an ordinary one. How, then, with me, writing of this Leviathan? Unconsciously my chirography expands into...
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“…his body was a sentry-box and this soliloquizer on guard there…” (Moby-Dick)
Yet, as previously hinted, this omnitooled, open-and-shut carpenter, was, after all, no mere machine of an automaton. If he did not have a common soul in him, he had a subtle something that somehow...
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“I’ll order a complete man after a desirable pattern” (Moby-Dick)
I do deem it now a most meaning thing, that that old Greek, Prometheus, who made men, they say, should have been a blacksmith, and animated them with fire; for what’s made in fire must properly belong...
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“I want it of the true death-temper” (Moby-Dick)
“Look ye, blacksmith, these are the gathered nail-stubbs of the steel shoes of racing horses.” “Horse-shoe stubbs, sir? Why, Captain Ahab, thou hast here, then, the best and stubbornest stuff we...
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“Our souls are like those orphans whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them”...
Oh, grassy glades! oh, ever vernal endless landscapes in the soul; in ye,—though long parched by the dead drought of the earthy life,—in ye, men yet may roll, like young horses in new morning clover;...
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“…the step-mother world, so long cruel—forbidding—now threw affectionate arms...
It was a clear steel-blue day. The firmaments of air and sea were hardly separable in that all-pervading azure; only, the pensive air was transparently pure and soft, with a woman’s look, and the...
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“Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm?” (Moby-Dick)
“What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it; what cozening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor commands me; that against all natural lovings and longings, I so...
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“Ahab never thinks; he only feels, feels, feels” (Moby-Dick)
“D’ye see him?” cried Ahab; but the whale was not yet in sight. “In his infallible wake, though; but follow that wake, that’s all. Helm there; steady, as thou goest, and hast been going. What a lovely...
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“The drama’s done” (Moby-Dick)
The drama’s done. Why then here does any one step forth?—Because one did survive the wreck. It so chanced, that after the Parsee’s disappearance, I was he whom the Fates ordained to take the place of...
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Moby-Dick: A Short Riff on a Long Book
Green and White, Georgia O’Keeffe 1. Prompted by Call Me Ishmael, Charles Olson’s marvelous study of Moby-Dick, I took a fifth trip through Melville’s massive opus this past month. 2. Every time I read...
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Selections from One-Star Amazon Reviews of Melville’s Moby-Dick
[Ed. note: The following citations come from one-star Amazon reviews of Herman Melville's novel Moby-Dick. To be very clear, I think Moby-Dick is fantastic---but I also enjoy seeing what people...
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“The Lightning-Rod Man”— Herman Melville
What grand irregular thunder, thought I, standing on my hearth-stone among the Acroceraunian hills, as the scattered bolts boomed overhead, and crashed down among the valleys, every bolt followed by...
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Henry Miller/Georg Büchner (Books Acquired, 4.30.2013)
Needing another book the same way I need another hole in the head, I nevertheless dropped by my local used bookstore to browse—the place is huge, and a day of grading term papers made me feel zapped...
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“Hawthorne and His Mosses”— Herman Melville
“Hawthorne and His Mosses” by Herman Melville A papered chamber in a fine old farm-house–a mile from any other dwelling, and dipped to the eaves in foliage–surrounded by mountains, old woods, and...
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