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Kill them in their flush of bloom
From On the Slain Collegians: Selections from the poems of Herman Melville. Edited, and with woodcuts by Antonio Frasconi. Noonday Press, 1971. Tagged: Antonio Frasconi, Herman Melville, Poetry,...
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“First—listen. Listen to Joyce, to Woolf, to Faulkner, to Melville”| On...
Moby-Dick, Rockwell KentI am a huge fan of audiobooks. I’ve pretty much always got one going—for commutes, jogs, workaday chores, etc. The usual. I love to listen to audiobooks of books I’ve already...
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Jonah — Albert Pinkham Ryder
And here is “The Sermon,” Ch. IX of Herman Melville’s great novel Moby-Dick, in which Father Mapple gives us the tale of Jonah— Father Mapple rose, and in a mild voice of unassuming authority ordered...
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What book have you started the most times without ever finishing?
What book have you started the most times without ever finishing? I asked this question on Twitter a few days ago (and then asked it a few more times, probably annoying some of the nice people who...
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“Bartleby” is the first great epic of modern Sloth (Thomas Pynchon)
By the time of “Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street” (1853), acedia had lost the last of its religious reverberations and was now an offense against the economy. Right in the heart of...
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“Herman Melville”— Jorge Luis Borges
“Herman Melville” by Jorge Luis Borges He was always surrounded by the sea of his elders, The Saxons, who named the ocean The Whale-Road, thereby uniting The two immense things, the whale And the...
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Happy Thanksgiving! Here’s a bunch of literary recipes and a painting
Merry Family, Jan Steen, 1688 F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Turkey Twelve Ways Gordon Lish’s Chicken Soup Zora Neale Hurston’s Mulatto Rice Roberto Bolaño’s Brussels Sprouts with Lemon Ian McEwan’s Fish Stew...
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Sunday Comics
A page (and some details) from Bill Sienkiewicz’s adaptation of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. The Classics Illustrated edition (February 1990) is one of my favorite Moby-Dicks. Tagged: Ahab, Art, Bill...
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Perseus, whaleman (Melville/Sienkiewicz)
From Bill Sienkiewicz’s adaptation of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. The Classics Illustrated edition (February 1990) is one of my favorite Moby-Dicks. Tagged: Art, Bill Sienkiewicz, Comics, Comix,...
View ArticleHerman Melville’s Whale Steaks
In Chapter LXIV of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, Stubb, second mate of the Pequod, demands whale steaks for dinner. He’s not happy with how the cook has prepared the steaks though, complaining they are...
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(Another) Moby-Dick (Book acquired, 26 March 2018)
While I wasn’t thrilled to return to work after a pleasant Spring Break, I was very happy to find a copy of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick in the campus mail today. A Norton book rep visited our campus...
View ArticleSelections 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 compelled...
View Article“Bartleby” is the first great epic of modern Sloth (Thomas Pynchon)
By the time of “Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street” (1853), acedia had lost the last of its religious reverberations and was now an offense against the economy. Right in the heart of...
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Seven (Long) Books I’ll Read Again
Life is too short not to reread. Chosen somewhat randomly but also sincerely, seven books I’d love to read again sometime soon: Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon I read Mason & Dixon a few years...
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On Herman Melville’s novella Benito Cereno
Near the middle of Herman Melville’s 1855 novella Benito Cereno, our erstwhile protagonist Captain Amasa Delano encounters an old sailor tying a strange knot: For intricacy, such a knot he had never...
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Captain Ahab — Rockwell Kent
Captain Ahab, 1930 by Rockwell Kent (1882-1971) What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it; what cozening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor commands me; that...
View ArticleA piebald parliament (From Melville’s The Confidence-Man)
As among Chaucer’s Canterbury pilgrims, or those oriental ones crossing the Red Sea towards Mecca in the festival month, there was no lack of variety. Natives of all sorts, and foreigners; men of...
View ArticleNo writer has produced such inconsistent characters as nature herself has...
…it may be urged that there is nothing a writer of fiction should more carefully see to, as there is nothing a sensible reader will more carefully look for, than that, in the depiction of any...
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Some sentences on some books I’ve read or have been reading
I finished Gerald Murnane’s 1982 novel The Plains last week. The Plains is quite short—it’s a novella really—and is divided into three parts. I read Part I in two sittings, gulping down the...
View ArticleDisparage the press? (From Herman Melville’s novel The Confidence-Man)
“Anything in praise of the press I shall be happy to hear,” rejoined the cosmopolitan, “the more so,” he gravely proceeded, “as of late I have observed in some quarters a disposition to disparage the...
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