Herman Melville

Close and Not-So-Close Encounters With Famous Authors

Dave Astor | Posted 05.23.2012

Literature fans love "encounters" with living or dead authors. These might involve seeing novelists at book signings, listening to them give a talk, or visiting homes/museums connected with famous authors of the past.

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Novelists Who Were More Enlightened Than Their Era

Dave Astor | Posted 04.19.2012

Read More: Harriet Beecher Stowe, Women, Stereotypes, John Steinbeck, Wilkie Collins, Novels, Asian Americans, Racism, Alexandre Dumas, Anti-Racism, Biracial, Herman Melville, Mark Twain, African Americans, Books News

The 1800s were of course a time of blatant racism, and many authors reflected that by depicting fictional characters of color in horribly stereotyped ways. Or they omitted those characters entirely, as if the world was populated by whites only.

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'Second Bananas' Who Were First-Rate Authors

Dave Astor | Posted 04.12.2012

Read More: Wilkie Collins, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Herman Melville, Classic Novels, Emily Bronte, Charlotte Bronte, Underrated Novels, Underrated Authors, Mark Twain, Books News

Why do some 19th-century novelists resemble the pre-2004 Boston Red Sox or some current singers other than Adele? This post will explain!

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Many Famous Authors Started With 'Novel 101'

Dave Astor | Posted 05.20.2012

Read More: J.K. Rowling, Paul Bowles, Junot Diaz, Jhumpa Lahiri, Margaret Drabble, Charles Dickens, Margaret Atwood, Herman Melville, Carson McCullers, Novels, Emile Zola, J.R.R. Tolkien, Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, Debut Novels, Cormac McCarthy, Books News

Creating a novel is tough. Until you get the hang of it, it can be hard to do the Proustian thing.

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Serious Novelists Are Sometimes Surprisingly Funny

Dave Astor | Posted 03.06.2012

Read More: John Steinbeck, Jane Austen, Terry McMillan, Humor in Novels, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Charles Dickens, Emile Zola, Herman Melville, Mark Twain, Philip Roth, Books News

Herman Melville's Moby-Dick is an epic tragedy that leaves readers shocked and awed. But, along the way, there are some delightfully funny interludes -- most notably the pre-voyage scene in which Ishmael and Queequeg end up in the same bedroom.

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Blaze Your Own Trail!

Irene Tanner | Posted 02.25.2012

Read More: Katherine Hepurn, Herman Melville, Tolkien, Seuss, Selfreliance, Friedrich Nietzche, Michael Chrichton, Buddha, Quentin Crisp, Individualism, The Lost World, Famous Quotes, Emerson, Shakespeare, Mark Twain, Romans 12:2, Culture News

Picture this: I am 16 years old attending my first English 101 class at Women's College, University of North Carolina. Our professor is Elizabeth Bowe...

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Wall Street: Brush Up Your Melville

Carla Seaquist | Posted 01.23.2012

Read More: Moby Dick, Jon Corzine, Jon Corzine Mf Global, Wall Street Crisis, Wall Street, Melville Moby Dick, Main Street and Wall Street, Occupy Wall Street, Wall Street Reform, Main Street, Herman Melville, Business News

The "monomaniac" pursuit of profit, taken to "demoniac" extremes (two words Melville uses repeatedly) is a killing pursuit that can take every last thing -- even the ship itself (read: the nation) -- down.

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A Dearth of Mirth at the End of Many Great Novels

Dave Astor | Posted 12.11.2011

Read More: Kate Chopin, Edith Wharton, Unhappy Endings, Wilkie Collins, Classic Novels, The House of Mirth, George Orwell, Novels, Nathaniel Hawthorne, J.R.R. Tolkien, Aldous Huxley, Herman Melville, Charlotte Bronte, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Books News

After just finishing The House of Mirth, I'm reminded once again that many great novels don't have happy endings.

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PHOTOS A Classic Reinterpreted: Illustrated 'Moby-Dick'

Matt Kish | Posted 11.30.2011

Read More: Moby Dick, Slideadbigshot, Herman Melville, Melville, Moby-Dick, Reinterpreted Classics, Classic Books, Books News

I was as obsessed and monomaniacal as Captain Ahab, I suppose, but I really just wanted to create the version of Moby Dick that I had imagined and always wanted to see. Historical accuracy and realism bore me. They always have.

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Bartleby the Scrivener Convinced Me to Pursue Journalism

Krystie Yandoli | Posted 11.27.2011

Read More: Liberal Arts, ?Bartleby the Scrivener?, Herman Melville, Syracuse University, Krystie Lee Yandoli, College News

Upon my return to campus, I was faced with the inevitable question and ultimate paradox for all students: should I follow my true passion, or take the job that pays? That's where Bartleby comes in.

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The Pleasures of Rereading

Dave Astor | Posted 11.19.2011

Reading a beloved book twice, thrice, or more is a craving that can't be denied. It's pleasurable, comforting, and relaxing -- partly because you don't have to figure out what the author is doing from scratch.

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The Most Novels You've Read By an Author

Dave Astor | Posted 11.14.2011

My list includes the authors' names, the number of novels I've read by each of them, and my three favorite novels (in rank order) by each of them. If you have different favorites by those authors, I'd like to hear about that.

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In Praise of the Novella

Dave Astor | Posted 11.01.2011

Read More: The Odyssey, Edith Wharton, John Steinbeck, Novellas, The Time Machine, A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens, Margaret Atwood, Billy Budd, Herman Melville, h.g. Wells, The Penelopiad, Carson McCullers, Ethan Frome, Books News

A novella can be read in only a few hours, yet the best ones pack almost the same punch as much longer works of fiction.

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The Best Two Half-Decades in Literary History

Dave Astor | Posted 10.08.2011

They were unplanned "Five-Year Plans" for the ages: the amazing proliferation of classic novels published from 1846 to 1851 and from 1922 to 1927. And, believe it or not, one author had a book in both those periods!

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How Much Money Did Herman Melville Make During His Lifetime?

biblioklept | Posted 09.18.2011

Read More: Authors, Lifetime Earnings, Books News, Herman Melville, Books News

Note: This chart does not represent Melville’s entire literary production. It does not list earnings for the magazine articles or for Israel Potter,...

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'Moby Dick' Gets A Makeover. On Every Single Page.

HuffingtonPost.com | Lucas Kavner | Posted 09.11.2011

Read More: Literature, Moby Dick, Illustrators, Illustrated Books, Artists and Illustrators, Matt Kish, Matt Kish Blog, Herman Melville, Whales, One Drawing for Every Page, Classic Books, Blog, Illustrations, American Literature, Librarians, Culture News

While other high school freshmen were playing video games or going to baseball practice, Matt Kish was reading the unabridged edition of "Moby Dick" i...

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PHOTOS: 8 Things You Probably Don't Know About Famous Authors

Dave Astor | Posted 08.30.2011

Read More: Alexandre Dumas, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Herman Melville, Famous Authors, Slidepollajax, John Steinbeck, Famous Author Facts, Mark Twain, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Louisa May Alcott, Video, Books News

Curiosity about great novelists has inspired me to read dozens of author biographies. In those books (and on the Web), one can discover many "wow"-inducing facts about renowned writers

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Which Other Authors Should Have Literary Towns Built In Their Honor?

newyorker.com | Posted by Ian Crouch | Posted 08.29.2011

Read More: Ivo Andric, Herman Melville, Philip Roth, Andricgrad, F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, Literary Towns, Books News

Over the years, several of the countries that made up the former Yugoslavia—and the ethnic groups within them, including Serbs and Croats—have cla...

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Less Famous Literary Masterpieces

Dave Astor | Posted 08.10.2011

There are plenty of cases where an author's masterpiece deserves the top billing it gets in the author's canon. But then there are the cases where a writer's most famous book is not the writer's best book.

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The Onion: Cover Author Working On Word-For-Word Remake Of 'Moby-Dick'

America's Finest News Source | Posted 05.25.2011

Read More: Moby Dick, The Onion, Herman Melville, Moby Dick Remake, Moby-Dick, Satire, Books News

LOS ANGELES—Cover author Gerald Putty told reporters Monday that he is about six months away from finishing a word-for-word rewrite of Herman Melvil...

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The Problem With Gender-Neutral Book Revisions (PHOTOS)

flavorwire.com | Posted 05.25.2011

Read More: James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, John Steinbeck, Jane Austen, Book Revisions, Robert Penn Warren, Herman Melville, Bible Gender Neutral, D.H. Lawrence, Gender Neutral Book Revisions, Books News

It just so happens that a little birdie (the Internet) told us that the 2011 International Translation of the Bible is now gender-neutral! According t...

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Fictional Feasts: Mouth-Watering Moments Of Literary Gastronomy

flavorwire.com | Nina MacLaughlin | Posted 05.25.2011

Read More: Ray Bradbury, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse, Herman Melville, Ulysses, Moby Dick, Food in Literature, c.s. Lewis, Charles Dickens, Roald Dahl, Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections, Books News

Watch Man Vs. Food before bed and you go to sleep craving French dipped sandwiches and face-sized burgers with cheese injected into the middle of the ...

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Melville Dickinson Mashup

The Huffington Post | Posted 05.25.2011

Read More: Emily Dickinson, Mit Poetry, Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Melville Dickinson Mit Poetry, Melville Dickinson Sea and Spar, Melville, Sea and Spar, Moby-Dick, Mit, Books News

An MIT faculty member partnered with a poet to publish a so-called poetry generator, which uses language from the work of Emily Dickinson and Melville...

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Herman Melville's Homoerotic Side Highlighted In New Book

AP | ROB MERRILL | Posted 05.25.2011

Read More: The Passages of Hm, Melville Moby Dick, Melville, Herman Melville, Jay Parini, Moby-Dick, Moby Dick, Books News

"The Passages of H.M.: A Novel of Herman Melville" (Doubleday, $26.95), by Jay Parini: Before you embark on this particular literary voyage, flip to t...

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Under The Influence

The Huffington Post | Gabe Habash | Posted 05.25.2011

Read More: Nabokov, Mocha Dick, Hemingway, Herman Melville, Lolita Nabokov, Moby Dick, All the King's Men, The Fountainhead, Dostoyevsky, Ernest Hemingway, Vladimir Nabokov, Huey Long, Ayn Rand, Gogol, Atlas Shrugged, Alexandre Dumas, Dumas, Edgar Allan Poe, Virginia Clemm, Melville Moby Dick, Robinson Crusoe, F Scott Fitzgerald, Daniel Defoe, Slidepollajax, Poe, Tolstoy, Lolita, Constance Garnett, Books News

Writing a book is usually a long, hair-pulling affair for the author. But in the end, only one name appears on the front of the book: their own. What...

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