Call Me Ishmael / Edition 1

by Charles Olson, Merton M. Sealts Jr.

Overview

One of the most stimulating essays ever written on Moby Dick, and for that matter on any piece of literature, and the forces behind it."--San Francisco Chronicle

First published in 1947, this acknowledged classic of American literary criticism explores the influences--especially Shakespearean ones--on Melville's writing of Moby-Dick. One of the first Melvilleans to advance what has since become known as the "theory of the two Moby-Dicks," Olson argues that there were two versions of Moby-Dick, and that Melville's reading King Lear for the first time in between the first and second versions of the book had a profound impact on his conception of the saga: "the first book did not contain Ahab," writes Olson, and "it may not, except incidentally, have contained Moby-Dick." If literary critics and reviewers at the time responded with varying degrees of skepticism to the "theory of the two Moby-Dicks," it was the experimental style and organization of the book that generated the most controversy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801857317
Publisher:	Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date:	11/28/1997
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	164
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.39(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Charles Olson (1910-1970), an avant garde poet, literary critic, and literary theorist, is the author of The Maximus Poems, The Distances, The Human Universe and Other Essays, and In Cold Hell, in Thicket.

Table of Contents

Fact 1	Prologue	3
Part I	Fact
	Call me Ishmael	11
	What Lies Under	16
	Usufruct	26
Part II	Source: Shakespeare
	The Discovery of Moby-Dick	35
	American Shiloh	41
	Man, to Man	44
	King Lear	47
	A Moby-Dick Manuscript	52
	Captain Ahab and His Fool	59
	The Act	64
Fact 2	Dromenon	77
Part III	The Book of the Law of the Blood	81
Part IV	Loss: Christ	89
	A Last Fact	109
Part V	The Conclusion: Pacific Man	113
	Afterword: On Olson and Melville	121

Editorial Reviews

Not only important, but apocalyptic.
--New York Herald Tribune

One of the most stimulating essays ever written on Moby Dick, and for that matter on any piece of literature, and the forces behind it.
--San Francisco Chronicle

Olson has been a tireless student of Melville and every Melville lover owes him a debt for his Scotland Yard pertinacity in getting on the trail of Melville's dispersed library.
--Lewis Mumford, New York Times

From the Publisher

Not only important, but apocalyptic.

New York Herald Tribune

One of the most stimulating essays ever written on Moby Dick, and for that matter on any piece of literature, and the forces behind it.

San Francisco Chronicle

Olson has been a tireless student of Melville and every Melville lover owes him a debt for his Scotland Yard pertinacity in getting on the trail of Melville's dispersed library.

New York Times - Lewis Mumford

"One of the most stimulating essays ever written on Moby Dick, and for that matter on any piece of literature, and the forces behind it."

San Francisco Chronicle

Olson has been a tireless student of Melville and every Melville lover owes him a debt for his Scotland Yard pertinacity in getting on the trail of Melville's dispersed library.

— Lewis Mumford

New York Times

The most important contribution to Melville criticism since Raymond Weaver's pioneering contribution in 1921. -- New Republic

George Mayberry