Ishmael signs aboard the whaler Pequod under Captain Ahab, whose monomaniacal hunt for the white whale that maimed him drags his crew toward destruction. A vast meditation on obsession, nature, and fate wrapped in a sea adventure.
Books mentioned in Moby-Dick (25)
Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes: “Leviathan maketh a path to shine after him; One would think the deep to be hoary."”
Some Yeares Travels into Africa and Asia by Thomas Herbert: “which nature has placed on their shoulders.” —_Sir T. Herbert’s Voyages into Asia and Africa. Harris Coll_.”
A Voyage to South America by Antonio de Ulloa: “and the breath of the whale is frequently attended with such an insupportable smell, as to bring on a disorder of the brain.” —_Ulloa’s South America_.”
Paradise Lost by John Milton: ““That sea beast Leviathan, which God of all his works Created hugest that swim the ocean stream.” —_Paradise Lost_.”
Twice-Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne: “by setting up a whale’s jaw bones.” —_Hawthorne’s Twice Told Tales_.”
Annus Mirabilis by John Dryden: “Which through their gaping jaws mistake the way.” —_Dryden’s Annus Mirabilis_.”
The Battle of the Summer Islands by Edmund Waller: “And on his back a grove of pikes appears.” —_Waller’s Battle of the Summer Islands_.”
A Dictionary of Commerce by J. R. McCulloch: “laid-open the haunts of the whale.” —_McCulloch’s Commercial Dictionary_.”
Etchings of a Whaling Cruise by J. Ross Browne: “Call all hands.” —_J. Ross Browne’s Etchings of a Whaling Cruize_. 1846.”
The History of Fife and Kinross by Robert Sibbald: “The jaws of it stand for a gate in the garden of Pitferren.” —_Sibbald’s Fife and Kinross_.”
The History of Nantucket by Obed Macy: “where our children’s grand-children will go for bread.” —_Obed Macy’s History of Nantucket_.”
The Holy State and the Profane State by Thomas Fuller: ““The mighty whales which swim in a sea of water, and have a sea of oil swimming in them.” —_Fuller’s Profane and Holy State_.”
The Triumph of the Whale by Charles Lamb: “Not a fatter fish than he, Flounders round the Polar Sea.” —_Charles Lamb’s Triumph of the Whale_.”
The Advancement of Learning by Francis Bacon: “In the title-page of the original edition of the "Advancement of Learning" you will find some curious whales.”
A History of the Earth and Animated Nature by Oliver Goldsmith: “Look at that popular work “Goldsmith’s Animated Nature.” In the abridged London edition of 1807, there are plates of an alleged “whale” and a “narwhale.””
A Voyage round Cape Horn into the South Seas by James Colnett: “Then again, there is an imposing quarto, written by one Captain Colnett, a Post Captain in the English navy, entitled "A Voyage round Cape Horn into the South Seas, for the purpose of extending the Spermaceti Whale Fisheries."”
Letters on Iceland by Uno von Troil: —_Uno Von Troil’s Letters on Banks’s and Solander’s Voyage to Iceland in_ 1772.
Sixth Circumnavigation by Willem Schouten: “for fear they should run their ship upon them.” —_Schouten’s Sixth Circumnavigation_.”
Ten Voyages to Spitzbergen by Thomas Edge: “but it will be aground in twelve or thirteen feet water.” —_Thomas Edge’s Ten Voyages to Spitzbergen, in Purchas_.”
On the Queen's Visit to London by William Cowper: “To express unwieldy joy.” —_Cowper, on the Queen’s Visit to London_.”
Flights by Olga Tokarczuk: “The other one is Melville's Moby Dick.”
The Rebel by Albert Camus: “How can we imagine anything to follow Moby Dick, The Trial, Zarathustra, The Possessed?”
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger: “In 1851, Herman Melville published Moby-Dick, or, The Whale, which was greeted with resounding indifference by the American public”
A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth: “I thought of what happened when Maan decided to play Holi with Moby-Dick.’”
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell: “I explained, yet again, that the gangster-chic market was saturated; and that even Moby-Dick bombed in Melville’s lifetime, though I did not deploy that particular verb.”
How to Read and Why by Harold Bloom: “Herman Melville's Moby-Dick is the indisputable ancestor of the six modern American novels I shall consider in this chapter”
What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell: “Herman Melville wrote a book a year through his late twenties, culminating, at age thirty-two, with Moby-Dick.”
It by Stephen King: “among the signed editions were Moby Dick and Whitman's Leaves of Grass; ... Ben Hanscom who had been so big he looked like a human version of Moby Dick”
The Princess Bride by William Goldman: “Just as the chapters on whaling in Moby Dick can be omitted by all but the most punishment-loving readers, so the packing scenes that Morgenstern details here are really best left alone.”
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver: “She had cherry-red hair with short, straight bangs, and a full sleeve tattoo representing the book of Moby-Dick.”
Books: A Memoir by Larry McMurtry: “I picked up a hefty book called The Whale, our old friend Moby-Dick under its English title”
God Help the Child by Toni Morrison: “He read Herman Melville, and let Pip break his heart, reminding him of Adam alone, abandoned, swallowed by waves of casual evil.”
On Literature by Umberto Eco: “discussed as an example of literary lessons resisting simplification”
Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose: “details of landscape and nature (the facts of marine and whale biology in Moby Dick) discussed among examples of authenticating detail.”
The Naive and the Sentimental Novelist by Orhan Pamuk: “from Don Quixote or even The Tale of Genji, to Robinson Crusoe, Moby-Dick, and the literature of today”
Coventry by Rachel Cusk: “Woolf and De Beauvoir agree that a woman could never have written Moby-Dick or War and Peace”
Whistler by Ann Patchett: “The AP girls read Anna Karenina and Moby-Dick last semester”