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Tag Archives: Herman Melville
“I could readily see in Emerson”
I could readily see in Emerson … the insinuation that had he lived in those days when the world was made, he might have offered some valuable suggestions. — Herman Melville
National Poetry Month: Herman Melville
All his life, Melville “wrestled with the angel – Art”. Many of his novels did not go over well during his lifetime. He had what we would call, in the modern age, a “nervous breakdown” after a number of failures. … Continue reading
Ten Books I Couldn’t Live Without
1. Possession – by A.S. Byatt. Like Heather I have read this book probably 4 or 5 times – I just finished it yet again, and every time I come to it – I see different things, I relate to … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged A.S. Byatt, Canada, Catch-22, Dubliners, Emily Climbs, England, Herman Melville, Hopeful Monsters, Ireland, Joseph Heller, L.M. Montgomery, Lives of the Saints, Madeleine L'Engle, Mating, Moby Dick, Nancy Lemann, Nicholas Mosley, Norman Rush, Paul Zindel, Possession, Ring of Endless Light, The Pigman
16 Comments
1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die
Jessa Crispin has an interesting interview with Peter Boxall, editor of 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. I loved what Boxall said at the end: Having benefited from an extraordinary number of emails and letters as well as … Continue reading
Posted in Books, James Joyce
Tagged 1984, A Prayer for Owen Meany, A Tale of Two Cities, A.S. Byatt, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Alice in Wonderland, Amongst Women, Animal Farm, Annie Proulx, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, At Swim-Two-Birds, Atonement, Cat's Eye, Catch-22, Charles Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, D.H. Lawrence, Don DeLillo, E.M. Forster, Edgar Allan Poe, Edna O'Brien, Emily Bronte, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Finnegans Wake, Flann O'Brien, Flannery O'Connor, Frankenstein, Franny and Zooey, George Eliot, George Orwell, Great Expectations, Gulliver's Travels, Handmaid's Tale, Herman Melville, House of Leaves, Hunter S. Thompson, Ian McEwan, In Cold Blood, J.D. Salinger, J.R.R. Tolkien, James Ellroy, Jane Austen, Jane Eyre, Jeanette Winterson, John Irving, John McGahern, John Steinbeck, Jonathan Swift, Joseph Heller, Kazuo Ishiguro, Leo Tolstoy, Lewis Carroll, Lord of the Rings, Margaret Atwood, Mark Danielewski, Mary Shelley, Master and Margarita, Middlemarch, Mikhail Bulgakov, Moby Dick, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Notes From the Underground, Possession, Pride and Prejudice, Primo Levi, Sexing the Cherry, Stephen King, The Catcher In the Rye, The Country Girls, The Great Gatsby, The Hobbit, The Passion, The Shipping News, The Things They Carried, Thomas Mann, Tim O'Brien, Tom Wolfe, Truman Capote, Ulysses, Underworld, Vladimir Nabokov, Wuthering Heights
9 Comments
Melville’s Tomb
My sister Jean turned me on to Hart Crane – who is absolutely phenomenal. Here’s a poem from him in honor of National Poetry Month. At Melville’s Tomb by Hart Crane Often beneath the wave, wide from this ledge The … Continue reading
Moby Dick: The Happy Ending
This is FASCINATING. One of the problems with reconstructing Melville’s creative process and earlier drafts: The paucity of primary sources derives in large part from the downward trajectory of Melville’s career. When Typee came out in 1846, he was only … Continue reading
“Call me Ishmael.”
A wonderful book review of a new biography of Herman Melville. I like this: Readers will note that I have said nothing very much about Moby-Dick . But what can anyone say? Its quietly portentous first sentence is as famous … Continue reading
EM Forster on Dostoevsky and Moby Dick
More from EM Forster’s ASPECTS OF THE NOVEL. (I introduce what this book is about here.) Moby Dick is one of the grandest most exciting reading experiences I’ve ever had. It wasn’t like a book at all. It was an … Continue reading
Posted in writers
Tagged E.M. Forster, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Herman Melville, Moby Dick, The Brothers Karamazov
4 Comments
Commonplace
“I am like one of those seeds taken out of the Egyptian pyramids, which, after being three thousand years a seed, and nothing but a seed, being planted in English soil it developed itself, grew to greenness, and then fell … Continue reading
Wrestling With the Angel
But form to lend, pulsed life create, What unlike things must meet and mate: A flame to melt — a wind to freeze; Sad patience — joyous energies; Humility — yet pride and scorn; Instinct and study; love and hate; … Continue reading