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iUEiRd ggMZaT cXqSTL eErqIx byle__name-lk button" href="/ntributors/philip-hoare">Philip Hoare</a></span></span></p></div><time data-ttid="ContentHearPublishDate" dateTime="2011-11-03T07:04:48-04:00" class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ ContentHearPublishDate-eIBicG iUEiRd kYZrFA kEBrdf">November 3, 2011</time></div></div></div></div></div></hear></div><div data-attribute-verso-pattern="article-body" class="ArticlePageContentBackGround-cNiFNN iEWtkN article-body__ntent"><div class="ActnBarWrapperContent-lasBkU cAHp"><div class="ActnBarWrapperComponent-cjwxLS bEeSLb"><div data-attr-viewport-monor="" class="ActnBarWrapper-dhxmQh kNjTbQ viewport-monor-anchor"><button id="bookmark" aria-label="Save this story" class="ActnBarButton-dyFOZU hQrwCF bookmark large-screen"><span class="ActnBarSendaryButtonPrimaryIn-isbvyN cAwccV bookmark-button-in"><svg class="in in-bookmark" width="24" height="24" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" xmlns="><tle>Save this story</tle><path 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3H20V0H19V3H16V4H19V7H20V4H23V3Z"></path></svg></span><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ ActnBarButtonText-bYXYuh iUEiRd bkefvo gkccfO">Save this story</span></button></div></div></div><div class="LightboxWrapper-dxsWBV hhylRt"><div class="ArticlePageChunksContent-etcMtP bwyLBj"><div data-ttid="ArticlePageChunks" class="ArticlePageChunks-fLyCVG gBDqlf"><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK kHBDeH grid grid-margs grid-ems-2 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bjczjj grid-layout--adrail narrow wi-adrail"><div class="GridItem-buujkM stRKV grid--em grid-layout__ntent"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa EOneK body body__ntaer article__body" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="body__ner-ntaer"><div class="GenericCalloutWrapper-tojWn iHBnEl llout--has-top-borr set-embedd-le" data-ttid="GenericCallout"><figure class="AssetEmbedWrapper-eVDQiB byBkf asset-embed"><div class="AssetEmbedAssetContaer-eJxoAx dBHGoQ asset-embed__asset-ntaer"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW kGxnNB rponsive-asset AssetEmbedRponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embed__rponsive-asset"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO KhjZz AssetEmbedRponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embed__rponsive-asset rponsive-image rponsive-image--expandable"><noscript><img alt="What “MobyDick” Means to Me" class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-image__image" src=" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w, 640w, 960w, 1280w, 1600w, 1920w, 2240w" siz="100vw"/></noscript></picture></span></div></figure></div><p><em>The thor the Azor, among iends.</em></p><p class="paywall">For years, “Moby-Dick” feated me. I thk I was put off the book when, as a child, I watched the 1956 John Hton film on our ty black-and-whe televisn, at home suburban Southampton, England. Seeg on the ghostly tho-ray tube, which was hoed a veneered bet, was more like viewg some Victorian apparat for ntactg the parted spirs, forever imprisoned behd s glass.</p><p class="paywall">Hton’s film promised so much—the rearg whe whale, a monster of my ept imaggs—but livered a wordy worths, que remote om what I wanted om the story. Later, I’d look at the book self and fail to fd any way to s prose, as impermeable as that TV screen. I didn’t know then what I do now: that “Moby-Dick” n be whatever you want to be. It took me thirty years to disver what the book was—or what was not.</p><div><div class="ConsumerMarketgUnThemedWrapper-iUTMTf jssHut nsumer-marketg-un nsumer-marketg-un--article-mid-ntent" role="prentatn" aria-hidn="te"><div class="nsumer-marketg-un__slot nsumer-marketg-un__slot--article-mid-ntent nsumer-marketg-un__slot---ntent"></div><div class="journey-un"></div></div></div><p class="paywall"><a href=">[#image: /photos/590953d66552fa0be682c84d]</a>Now along Nathaniel Philbrick’s brilliant and provotive new work, “<a data-offer-url=" class="external-lk" data-event-click="{"element":"ExternalLk","outgogURL":"" href=" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Why Read Moby-Dick</a>“—a llectn of elegant says, an eclecticism that shar wh s subject. Philbrick seeks to make look aga at the paradox of what he, like many others before him, acclaims as “the greatt Amerin novel ever wrten.”</p><p class="paywall">But “Moby-Dick” is not a novel. It’s barely a book at all. It’s more an act of transference, of ias and evotns hung around the vast and unknowable shape of the whale, an extend mg on the strange meetg of human history and natural history. It is, above all, a sui-generis creatn, one that me to the world as an unnatural, immaculate nceptn.</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-1 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">To my md, there are only two other works wh which bears parison: Mary Shelley’s “Frankenste” (1818), and Ey Brontë’s “Wutherg Heights” (1847). The former, s own wns to one man’s obssive terference wh nature, was a direct fluence on Melville, who acquired a py on a vis to London 1849, even as the whalish shas were begng to swirl about his imagatn.</p><p class="paywall">We don’t know if Melville read Brontë’s ral, gothic creatn, but s unntaed spir— which the wild Yorkshire moors themselv bee the monster—would seem to me to be an apt fellow-traveller for the thor who lnched the Pequod to the mid-neteenth century. All three books are ught between the primeval old and the impossibly new, between an abidg sense of certu and the dissemblg future.</p><p class="paywall">In an age of uncerta fah, then as now, “Moby-Dick” rembl a relig tract, an alternative ttament. Ltle wonr that one of s early set-piec is Father Mapple’s fire-and-brimstone sermon om the prow-shaped pulp the Seamen’s Bethel, New Bedford, or that Philbrick tak the tle for his own first chapter, “The Gospels This Century,” om Melville’s wry and rather Wilan remark on the unsalabily of his work: “Though I wrote the Gospels this century, I should die the gutter.” As he told Nathaniel Hawthorne, “I have wrten a wicked book, and I feel as spotls as the lamb.”</p><p class="paywall">When I fally began readg “Moby-Dick” (had I wasted my time before then?), I found I uldn’t put down. I’d rry about wh me a ty, Oxford World Classics edn, anonymoly bound blue cloth, to be studied chapter by chapter, like the Bible or the Koran, as I sat on the Tube or on an airplane, or the early hours of the morng. As Philbrick exhorts his rears, ” ‘Moby-Dick’ is a long book, and time is short. Even a sentence, a mere phrase will do.”</p><p class="paywall">Much of the impact of Melville’s book on any fierce new nvert is implic that sense of time travel. Sometim I read and I feel like I’m gog backward, fast. It reads like somethg that was wrten before books were vented, yet is utterly morn—pre-postmorn, perhaps. It is part of s own predictn, as if and s characters had been there all along, and had only been wag to be wrten. Jt as the real New Bedford’s Bethel a pulp-prow had to be built, the neteen-sixti, bee so many visors expected to fd one there; and, jt as Melville wrote vividly of Nantucket, an island that he had yet to vis, much of “Moby-Dick” is njured out of the air and the sea.</p><p class="paywall">That’s why the book appeals so much to morn artists, like Frank Stella and Matthew Barney. Its oceanic reach and perverse digrsn provi endls sourc of spiratn and terpretatn. In chapters such as the famoly sublime “The Whens of the Whale”—almost hallucatory s associative spensn of normaly and subtle obsceny—Melville tak up his theme, then tak apart, teasg out to impossibly filigreed tendrils, until you wonr how you, or he, got there the first place.</p><div class="Contaer-bkChBi byNLHx"></div><p class="paywall">While readg “Moby-Dick” is a b like beg stoned, also evok an Asperger’s air. Ishmael will tell you everythg you wanted to know about the whale, and much that he has ma up. (Few books are so filled wh neologisms; ’s as if Melville were trated by language self, and strove to burst out of s nf.) At the same time, “Moby-Dick” stands both as a historil reference for the great age of Yankee whalg and as a work of imagatn which whal bee avatars as much as they are real animals. Melville would never have fished his book today—he’d be nstantly Googlg “whale.” “God keep me om ever pletg anythg,” his existential alter ego plas. “This whole book is but a drght—nay, but the drght of a drght. Oh, Time, Strength, Cash, and Patience!”</p></div></div></div><div class="GridItem-buujkM fVLMby grid--em grid-layout__asi"><asi class="PersistentAsiWrapper-VGrR daRVRt persistent-asi" style="posn:absolute;top:to;height:to" data-ttid="PersistentAsiWrapper"><div class="StickyBoxWrapper-jfYB jxBcTH sticky-box"><div class="StickyBoxPrimary-dzWDWL cdhYoN sticky-box__primary"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--rail"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--rail" data-no-id="wk7hzc"></div></div><div class="ConsumerMarketgUnThemedWrapper-iUTMTf jssHut nsumer-marketg-un nsumer-marketg-un--display-rail" role="prentatn" aria-hidn="te"><div class="nsumer-marketg-un__slot nsumer-marketg-un__slot--display-rail"></div><div class="journey-un"></div></div></div><div class="StickyBoxPlaceholr-grPmrg dxAvXx"></div></div></asi></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan full-bleed-ad row-mid-ntent-ad"><div class="StickyMidContentAdWrapper-fSBzwl drzyIa ad-stickymidntent"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--mid-ntent should-hold-space"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--mid-ntent" data-no-id="m2xa83"></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK kHBDeH grid grid-margs grid-ems-2 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bjczjj grid-layout--adrail narrow wi-adrail"><div class="GridItem-buujkM stRKV grid--em grid-layout__ntent"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa EOneK body body__ntaer article__body" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="body__ner-ntaer"><p class="paywall">It always astonish me that, jt as my schoolmat and I were ma to wa through Shakpeare and Dickens at an appropriate age, Amerin high-school stunts are subjected to Melville’s madns, wh s subversn and, to morn ey, overtly homoerotic passag. Ined, part of the power of “Moby-Dick” li s latency, s layed, time-bomb qualy. It was virtually ignored the thor’s lifetime—s first edn never sold out, and the remag pi went up flam a fire the publisher’s downtown Manhattan warehoe 1853.</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-2 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">Like a protean seed awag germatn, the book need a new element to brg to life. As a rult, when burst to the new century, me vted wh a terrific momentum of s own—as if the world had jt ught up wh s fiery power. In the neteen-twenti, this lost book was redisvered by the Lost Generatn. And, jt as was stoked up by the dark streets of London on that 1849 vis, “Moby-Dick” owed more than a ltle of s rebirth to a foreign land and the Brish wrers who led the way s reappraisal.</p><p class="paywall">In 1923, D. H. Lawrence published his idsyncratic, if not fatly crazy, “Studi Classic Amerin Lerature.” Lawrence proclaimed Melville to be “a futurist long before futurism found pat,” the thor of “one of the strangt and most wonrful books the world.” Lawrence’s paean was only the public eptn of a reputatn already revival. The year before, 1922, T. E. Lawrence, of Arabia fame, reported that “Moby-Dick” took prime posn on his “shelf of ‘Tanic’ books (those distguished by greatns of spir),” and two years after that, 1924, noted, “Someone is workg a Melville boom, & I’ve sold all my early edns profably.”</p><p class="paywall">In the summer of 1936, the aristocratic athete the Honourable Stephen Tennant was entertag his iend Man Forster, at tea a genteel hotel the English Home Counti, talkg avidly of Queequeg. Could Melville have ever imaged that his book would travel so far, and fd such unlikely rears?</p><p class="paywall">In the alchemil procs of cril and cultural assiatn, Melville’s monstro creatn—like Shelley’s Creature, like Brontë’s Heathcliff and Cathy—took on, pecially through s sceptible adaptatns to other media, a morn typology of Manichean and cematic proportns. A century and a half after first played out, Ahab’s wanton chase was evoked the “war on terror,” and the attempts to pursue an apparently untchable foe, even as sourced an epic signed to reflect Ameri’s first imperial venture—the gettg of the oil that l and lubrited the Wtern world.</p><p class="paywall">Yet has an even timelier msage, one that, like so many of Melville’s lerary grenas, seems to have been lyg wa for . “Do the Whale’s Magnu Dimish?—Will He Perish?” the book asks. Although, havg posed this qutn, Melville, a perennial ntrarian, to a ntrary ncln, his summary is certaly predictive. Three hundred and sixty thoand blue whal died the cetacean Armageddon of the twentieth century, rcg the world’s largt animal to a populatn of jt a few thoand.</p><p class="paywall">Yet, the wake of the moratorium on the huntg of great whal implemented by the Internatnal Whalg Commissn, 1986, whal appear to have revered. Earlier this year, the waters of the Indian Ocean off the tip of Sri Lanka, I saw dozens of blue whal, their thirty-foot blows as tall as ho. That vast bmass was an Enic sight, a glimpse of the world before “Moby-Dick.” Blue whal now swim up the Irish Sea, and last month Capta Mark Dalomba was astonished to see one om the wheelhoe of his Dolph Fleet whale-watch boat off Provcetown, on Cape Cod.</p><p class="paywall">This summer, the ep waters of the Azor, I swam wh sperm whal. In the silence of their world, listeng to the rhythm of their sonar clicks, feelg the sle of their social hn, I was more aware than ever before of the history that has passed between . Now, as I pick up “Moby-Dick” aga, prompted by Philbrick’s provotive book, I’m remd of a salutary notn: that the whal that spired Melville were around long before , and may, wh luck, outlive , too.</p><p class="paywall">“Wherefore … we acunt the whale immortal his speci, however perishable dividualy… . In Noah’s flood he spised Noah’s ark; and if ever the world is to be flood aga, like the Netherlands, to kill off s rats, then the eternal whale will still survive, and rearg upon the topmost crt of the equatorial flood, spout his othed fiance to the ski.”</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-3 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall"><em>Philip Hoare is the thor of “<a data-offer-url=" class="external-lk" data-event-click="{"element":"ExternalLk","outgogURL":"" href=" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">The Whale</a>.” He is currently Artist--Rince at the Mare Instute, Plymouth Universy, U.K., and is workg on an d edn of “Moby-Dick,” read by Tilda Swton, John Waters, Stephen Fry, Simon Callow, and others.</em></p><p class="paywall"><em>Photograph: Andrew Sutton.</em></p></div></div></div><div class="GridItem-buujkM fVLMby grid--em grid-layout__asi"><div class="StickyBoxWrapper-jfYB jxBcTH sticky-box"><div 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