Synopsis "Moby Dick"

""A work tantalizingly subversive, and yet somehow if not affirming at least forgiving of the blind destructiveness of human nature and of nature itself."" -Elizabeth Hardwick "Moby-Dick" is one of the great epics of all literature. Captain Ahab's hunt for the white whale drives the narrative at a relentless pace, while Ishmael's mediations on whales and whaling, on the sublime indifference of nature, and on the grimy details of the extraction of oil provide a reflective counterpoint to the headlong idolatrous quest. Sometimes read as a terrifying study of monomania or a critical inquiry into the sinister effects of reducing life to symbols, "Moby-Dick" also offers colorful and often comic glimpses of sea-faring life. For almost thirty years, The Library of America has presented America's best and most significant writing in acclaimed hardcover editions. Now, a new series, Library of America Paperback Classics, offers attractive and affordable books that bring The Library of America's authoritative texts within easy reach of every reader. Each book features an introductory essay by one of a leading writer, as well as a detailed chronology of the author's life and career, an essay on the choice and history of the text, and notes. The contents of this Paperback Classic are drawn from "Herman Melville: Redburn, White-Jacket, Moby-Dick," volume number 9 in the Library of America series. It is joined in the series by two companion volumes, and together they present Melville's complete fiction.

Herman Melville

(Author)

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Herman Melville (New York, August 1, 1819-New York, September 28, 1891)1 was an American writer, novelist, poet, and essayist from the American Renaissance period. Among his most famous novels are Typee (1846), based on his experiences in Polynesia, and the novel Moby Dick (1851),1 considered his masterpiece and a classic of world literature

Between 1853 and 1855, he published a series of stories in Putnam Magazine, most of which were collected in The Piazza Tales, including two of Melville's most important narratives: the story Bartleby, the Scrivener and the novella Benito Cereno. Also featured is the story The Encantadas, consisting of ten sketches about the Galapagos Islands linked by a single narrator. In 1857, The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade, also known as The Confidence-Man, was the last prose fiction work he published. Seeking financial stability, he abandoned writing, accepting a position as a customs inspector

In his later years, in which he also had to endure the death of two of his brothers as well as the death of two of his sons, Clarence, from tuberculosis, and Malcolm from a possible suicide, as well as the death of another of his sons at thirty-five years old, Stanwix Melville, he dedicated himself to writing poetry. Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War, from 1866, is a poetic reflection on the Civil War and Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land, a fictional epic poem, published in 1876. The novel Billy Budd, which he left unfinished and was posthumously published in London in 1924, is considered one of the most significant works of American literature.

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