TABLE OF CONTENTS
I . A Note to Readers
II. Etymology
III. Extracts
IV. Moby-Dick
V. Acknowledgements
VI. Notes
George Cotkin is Professor of History at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.
"[An] entertaining companion to Moby-Dick." --Publishers Weekly,
selected as a "Pick of the Week"
"Delving beneath the huge cultural shadows cast by Melville's work,
Cotkin reveals how many great writers, including Faulkner, Auden,
and Masefield, have found inspiration in Melville's novel. Cotkin
also scrutinizes cinematic and television adaptions of Melville's
book, from the John Barrymore film, The Sea Beast, in 1926 to the
Star Trek fantasy, The Wrath of Khan, in 1982. Even the playful
treatment given Moby-Dick themes
in Peanuts cartoons receives scrutiny! The 135 chapters may drift
about as chaotically as the flotsam left when the Great Whale
smashes the Pequod, but this flotsam has been pried from the
depths, and it will thrill Melvilleans."
--Booklist
"The book works so well because it is both serious and seriously
entertaining...this new companion is as affable as it is smart."
--The Boston Globe
"This is one grand intellectual adventure--an adventure in reading
that parallels Ishmael's own astonishing journey. Moby-Dick is, of
course, the masterpiece at the center of American Literature. It's
a gigantic whale of a novel, and George Cotkin has done a marvelous
job of bringing its many glittering aspects before us. I can't
imagine a more timely, entertaining, or--indeed--illuminating
book." --Jay Parini, author of The Passages of H.M.: A
Novel of Herman Melville
"Dive Deeper is a pleasure to read and the truest portrait of
Moby-Dick in American life and letters yet produced." --David
Dowling, author of Chasing the White Whale: The Moby-Dick Marathon;
or What Melville Means Today
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