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From Stephen Elliott
Ever thought, “I know Herman Melville was talking about a whale but how much, really, did he talk about a whale?”
This cool page will answer your question with its graphical representation of word distribution throughout Moby Dick. The creator Adam Pearce was inspired by an infographic of frequently used words on the show The Wire and styled his project after Stanford’s Bibly, which does the same and more for the King James Version of the Bible.
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Here’s a hypothesis: one of the reasons Moby-Dick has survived so long in English classes is that the number of Moby-Dick-related essay topics is almost limitless.
Moby-Dick is so vast and contains so much stuff—there’s no better word for it than “stuff”—that you could come up with new angles on it for a whole English degree’s worth of classes.
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Historian Nathaniel Philbrick lays out a convincing, if scholarly, case for why Moby-Dick is relevant to modern audiences.
Through playful and evocative illustrations, Matt Kish’s Moby Dick in Pictures transforms on one of the greatest American novels and makes it relevant again.Remember when R. Crumb blew our minds and our concept of dedication with his thorough illustration of the Bible?
That project sounded physically and emotionally exhausting. Still, he must have started a trend because artist, Matt Kish, is creating an image for every page of the epic novel, Moby Dick.
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‘Tis the season, so we’re taking a day or two off. Here are a few wonderful things from around the web to keep you busy (don’t worry, we’ll be back):
Earlier today Chris blogged about a guy who’s translating Moby-Dick into emoji. Which reminded me of something.
Recently one of our favorite writers, Damion Searls, was pondering a 2007 abridgment of Moby-Dick called Moby-Dick in Half the Time.
...more“And I only am escaped alone to tell thee”
If he were alive, today, August 1st 2009, would be Herman Melville’s 190th birthday and on this occasion I’d like to take the opportunity to pay a small, humble tribute to an author who has single-handedly taught me so much about writing and literature, patience and perseverance, and the staggering potential of language and prose.
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