474 Herman Melville
The History of Literature
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The Importance of Moby Dick
Melville said the whole book was in his brain. He just had to scrape it out. Hawthorne, who read the pages in manuscript and did much to advise Melville during the writing of Moby Dick, had a lot to do with that. The style is maniacal, mad as a march hare. And yet it's an endlessly fascinating book Moby Dick is. You can project a lot onto it, find a lot there. It doesn't hand you everything. Yes, let it all unfurl. Let that literary freak flag fly.
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