Thursday, October 18, 2007

White Void, Black Words


Melville’s Moby-Dick was published 156 years ago today. I’ve always felt that the first edition title page was beautifully ominous. Stark as a gravestone in a Nantucket churchyard, or scrimshaw scratched into whalebone. Stare at it and hear the air whistling on the whitecaps, the waves thundering along the bow.