Why Read Moby-Dick?

from auntmarge64

Well, he's convinced me. Philbrick, who wrote "In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex", seems a natural to comment on the story and meaning of Melville's masterpiece. Melville was inspired to write "Moby Dick" by the events surrounding Essex's destruction, and Philbrick, a sa...

from hardlyhardy

There's nothing rhetorical about the question Nathaniel Philbrick asks in the title of "Why Read Moby-Dick?," for his 2011 book, brief as it is, answers it in full. Herman Melville's American classic, he says, has just about whatever one might want in a book: history (he calls it "nothing less th...

from BookWallah

A wonderful short homage to obsession. Not so much Ahab's towards The Whale, but rather Melville's towards Hawthorne, the struggle to write Moby-Dick, and his struggle with mortality. Perhaps a case could be made for the author Philbrick's obsession with Melville as well. A short read in which th...

from lycomayflower

A personal exploration of Philbrick's love of Moby Dick with a nice dose of insight into the novel. While it doesn't quite ring of preaching to the choir, it does strike me that the book will mean more to those who have already read the novel (or, perhaps, to those who have given it a good-faith ...

from jonfaith

A few summers back, under the name of samizdat, my friends and I read Moby Dick. Joel and i raved for weeks about it. Roger did not. He hated the book. He owns a microbrewery and is accustomed to people heeding his opinion. I did not. Nathaniel Philbrick's book won't change Roger's mind. the imp ...