“You Never Know” — More on “Moby Dick”
On Monday, I celebrated the opening of Moby Dick, which is generally regarded as a ‘Great American Novel’ and one of the literary classics.
Now, that is. Because it certainly wasn’t that way in the author, Herman Melville’s, lifetime.
Moby Dick was first published in 1851, and although it received some positive notice in the UK, American reviewers were generally hostile. At that time, it was a commercial failure and was out of print by the time of Melville’s death in 1891.
According to that organ of all wisdom otherwise known as Wikipedia, the turnaround in Moby Dick’s fortunes began in the early twentieth century, when literary luminaries such as William Faulkner and DH Lawrence praised the story.
And the rest, as the saying goes, is history — and goes to show that you do just never know.
