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Okla-homey
11/14/2007, 07:12 AM
Nov. 14, 1851: Herman Melville's Moby-Dick published.

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Herman Melville.

156 years ago, on this day in 1851, Moby-Dick, a novel by Herman Melville about the voyage of the whaling ship Pequod, is published by Harper & Brothers in New York. Moby-Dick is now considered a great classic of American literature and contains one of the most famous opening lines in fiction: "Call me Ishmael." Initially, though, the book about Captain Ahab and his quest for a giant white whale was a flop.

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Some health department guy's attempt at a Melville-inspired health message. For pasting inside restroom stalls

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Herman Melville was born in New York City in 1819 and as a young man spent time in the merchant marine, the U.S. Navy and on a whaling ship in the South Seas. In 1846, he published his first novel, Typee, a romantic adventure based on his experiences with scantily-clad wahinis in Polynesia.

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The book was a success and a sequel, Omoo, was published in 1847.

Three more novels followed, with mixed critical and commercial results. Melville's sixth book, Moby-Dick, was first published in October 1951 in London, in three volumes titled The Whale, and then in the U.S. a month later.

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Melville had promised his publisher an adventure story similar to his popular earlier works, but instead, Moby-Dick was a tragic epic, influenced in part by Melville's friend and Pittsfield, Massachusetts, neighbor, Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose novels include The Scarlet Letter.

After Moby-Dick's disappointing reception, Melville continued to produce novels, short stories (Bartleby) and poetry, but writing wasn't paying the bills so in 1865 he returned to New York to work as a customs inspector, a job he held for 20 years.

Melville died in 1891, largely forgotten by the literary world. By the 1920s, scholars had rediscovered his work, particularly Moby-Dick, which would eventually become a staple of high school reading lists across the United States. Billy Budd, Melville's final novel, was published in 1924, 33years after Melville's death.

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Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx, Bronx County, New York

Postscript:

If we win out, we'll get to hunt our own White Whale in San Antonio.

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Fugue
11/14/2007, 09:45 AM
Mangino just doesn't care. I kind of admire that. :D

Don't we have a resident Captain A-hat on the SO or am I an idiot?

SoonerStormchaser
11/14/2007, 09:59 AM
I just hope our whale doesn't sink our ship!

IB4OU2
11/14/2007, 10:04 AM
Gregory Peck made a great Captain Ahab in the 1956 film but I didn't like the little cabin boy getting killed by the falling mast.

sooneron
11/14/2007, 10:13 AM
The Patrick Stewart version was really good, too. Ted Levine did a nice job as Starbuck. Very well shot.

SoonerStormchaser
11/14/2007, 11:10 AM
^^^What he said^^^