The Literature Network - Book review: Melville:The whale that sank a career

Book review: Melville:The whale that sank a career

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From: Scotland on Sunday
Date: 20051030
Author:Andrew Crumey

Melville

Andrew Delbanco

Picador, GBP 25

IN TEHRAN, apparently, there is a popular kebab place called Moby Dick. In Ghent there is a Moby Dick Fun Pub, and according to Andrew Delbanco it is a brothel. Exactly how Professor Delbanco knows this is not made clear, but his biography of Herman Melville includes a photograph of the establishment, which certainly looks neither like a pub, nor much fun. Throughout this account of one of the saddest lives in literary history, though, sex is very much on Delbanco's mind.

There are no double entendres here concerning Moby's name, but there is no ...

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