The White Whale

Today is the 154th anniversary of the American publication of Moby-Dick, the greatest American novel. It didn't go over so well:

The American version of the novel, published by Harper & Brothers, although fixing the narrative error of the British version through the inclusion of the epilogue, was poorly received by critics and readers who expected a romantic high seas adventure akin to Melville's first successes. The reputation of the novel floundered for many years, and it was only after Melville's death that it became considered one of the major novels in American literature. (more)

When the book appeared in 1851, Melville had achieved great success, chiefly as the author of the South Sea adventure novels Typee and Omoo. But Moby-Dick was both a critical and financial failure. Reviewers, with a few exceptions, were baffled by what seemed an incongruous mixture of Shakespearean drama, metaphysical speculation, matter-of-fact essays on the history and nature of whaling, and the highly poetical narrative of a monomaniacal captain in pursuit of a malevolent white whale. Indeed, the publication of Moby-Dick marked not the high point of Melville's career but the beginning of its decline... Indeed, by 1856 it was clear to Melville that his career as a novelist was finished. Unable to support his family through writing magazine stories and farming, Melville moved his family back to New York and became a customs inspector, a position he held for twenty years. During the last decades of his life, ignored by both the public and the literary elite, he devoted himself to poetry, producing five self-published volumes. When he died in 1891 at the age of 72, he was virtually unknown, and it was not until Billy Budd was found among his papers and published in 1924 that Melville's reputation underwent a major revival and Moby-Dick was elevated from obscurity to its current status as one of America's greatest novels. (more)

We should all fail so well and durably!