The Melville Effect

A Literary Afterlife Across the Arts
Charting how a vast variety of writers, filmmakers, and artists channel Herman Melville, Joseph Allen Boone offers new insights into the author, his works, and his many legacies.
Traces of Herman Melville are everywhere. Works directly or loosely inspired by the nineteenth-century writer abound, from adaptations and artistic experiments to parodies and cheeky references. They are as distinct as Sena Jeter Naslunds novel Ahabs Wife, Laurie Andersons mixed-media spectacle Songs and Stories from Moby-Dick, Maurice Sendaks queer illustrations of Pierre, and the collaborative Emoji Dick. Melville turns up in opera, concrete poetry, auteur cinema, monumental murals, and sperm whalesized sculptures. Why are so many artists drawn to Melville? What does his continuing presence say about contemporary culture?

Charting how a vast variety of writers, filmmakers, and artists ch