Critical Response

From the comfort of my rolly chair in the 21st century I can say Melville was a writer well ahead of his time. It's not that the critics of the 1850s were dumb, but they were dumbstruck by Moby-Dick, which was widely rejected until the 1920s. To examine how creative writers approach the book, I looked into critical essays on the subject.

From the year of its publication, an anonymous reviewer had this to say: "This is an ill-compounded mixture of romance and matter-of-fact. The idea of a connected and collected story has obviously visited and abandoned its writer again and again in the course of composition." The line in bold could serve as a definition of post-modern fiction, had the term existed yet. Americans love labels, and without a word for this kind of disconnected-yet-all-encompasing novel readers couldn't find their footing.

In his 1899 essay, "The Best Sea Story Ever Written," Archibald MacMechan attempts to revive Moby-Dick from obscurity and discusses its (and Melville's) presumed failure. MacMechan "has seen only one copy of the book exposed for sale, and met only one person (and that not an American) who had read it." He goes on to say that Melville had the option of writing a ribald adventure novel on the high seas, instantly sellable, as pleasurable as any action movie (he did this in his novel Typee, which was very successful), but "from all these advantages Melville not only cuts himself off, but seems to heap all sorts of obstacles in his self appointed path." Certainly the chapter "Cetology," and other moments of minutely detailed technical writing are among those "obstacles" as seen from a creative writer's point of view. MacMechan proposes that Melville overcomes all his self created obstacles (for example, the absence of a love interest...there aren't any female characters at all): "The book is not a record of fact; but of fact idealized, which supplies the frame for a terrible duel to the death between a mad whaling-captain and a miraculous white sperm whale. It is not a love-story but a story of undying hate."

A great fiction writer with an opinion is William Faulkner who, in his post-revival 1927 letter, "I Wish I Had Written That," explains the thrill of Ahab's mission of destruction: "the symbol of their doom: a White Whale. There's a death for a man, now; none of your patient pasturage for little grazing beasts...There's magic in the very word. A White Whale. White is a grand word, like a crash of massed trumpets; and leviathan himself has a kind of placid blundering majesty in his name. And then put them together!!!" Faulkner mixes his respect with hilarity, but the eye of the creative writer becomes clear through this quote: the visceral reactions, romantic tendencies, and manic wordplay of a creative personality. And three exclamation points!!!

My source for reviews: http://books.wwnorton.com/books/detail.aspx?id=11008