What’s the story behind the man who bored so many high school students?
Photo by Eir Health on Unsplash
I, like so many people my age, read literary classics while in high school. And by classics, I mean long, boring books with stilted dialogue and very little action. ‘The Scarlet Letter” and “Great Expectations” come to mind, but at this time I’m going to consider “Moby Dick” and the guy behind the whale, Herman Melville. What kind of guy has the tenacity to write a story that long and boring and yet have the staying power to bore young people for generations?
Not only that, but you would think guys hunting a “great white whale” with an apparent agenda would have the potential to be interesting. But somehow, Melville takes a potentially interesting plot and guts it of all appeal. So, here we go.
1: Melville’s greatest work, at least in my opinion, is “The Love I Lost.”
Hold on, being told that was a song by Harold Melvin. I thought that was a little too easy to follow to be Herman’s work.
2: Herman’s mother changed the spelling of the family’s last name after the death of her husband.
There is some thought that she did that to avoid bill collectors, but that’s not considered a certainty. If that was the case, bill collectors back then were pretty easy to fake out.
3: After trying a variety of jobs, Melville started hiring on with whaling ships.
He eventually jumped ship and spent a month with Pacific Islanders. He used his experiences to write his first two novels, “Typee” and “Omoo.” Thankfully, I wasn’t forced to read them in high school.
4: Melville learned of a whaling ship named Essex that had been attacked by a sperm whale and used the story as the basis for “Moby Dick.”
Melville even talked to the captain of the ship and thought he was the most impressive man he had ever met. I’m not sure how many legs the guy had.
5: Initially, Moby Dick was a flop.
Critics initially panned it, setting the pattern for high school students to this day.
6: The Berkshire Athenaeum in Pittsfield holds the largest collection of Melville memorabilia in the world.
Included in the collection is Melville’s collection of knick-knacks. Wow, Melville manuscripts and knick-knacks. Sign me up!
7: Melville had a famous neighbor.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, author of ‘The Scarlet Letter” was Melville’s neighbor. I believe that neighborhood was voted, “Most Boring Neighborhood in American.”
8: Later Melville mostly quit writing short stories and novels and went to writing poetry almost exclusively.
His “Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land,” is the longest poem in American literature. Maybe that work was designed to make “Moby Dick” look entertaining.
9: A bout of scarlet fever left Melville with poor eyesight.
As mentioned early, Melville eventually went to work on whaling ships and became a harpooner. Possibly because a target that large accommodated his poor eyesight.
10: Brendan Fraser starred in the latest remake of Melville’s “Moby Dick.” It’s told the Moby’s prospective and is called “The Whale.”
Hold on. Being told that’s not at all what “The Whale” is about. Never mind.