Episode 34: Moby-Dick, Part 1

Continuing our Melville spectacular, we bring you the first of two episodes on Moby-Dick (1851). Yes, this is Melville’s famous, uh, novel? romance? manifesto? -- let’s say “book” and leave it at that -- about a megalomaniacal sea captain’s obsession with a really big whale. But did you know that whales are in fact fish? Honest, it’s in the book, people. Moby-Dick is about everything -- ontology, nature, society, the nation, race, ethnicity, queerness, and so much more. And we’re going to do our damnedest to get to all of it in these two shows. We love this bonkers text.

We read the Norton Critical Edition edited by Hershell Parker and Harrison Hayford. If you want to read some very smart things about this whale of a tale, check out Herman Melville: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Myra Jehlen. To get your Moby-Dick fix, start with "Incomparable America" by Leo Bersani and "When Is a Painting Most Like a Whale?: Ishmael, Moby Dick, and the Sublime" by Bryan Wolf.

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