I confess: I have never read the big whale big book. Sorry, Herman. I’ve just picked up the usual tid-bits, like everyone else, the “Call me Ishmael” snippets, as it were (and, whether I might have wished it or not, “Starbuck”). I have, though, read Melville’s massively shorter Bartleby the Scrivener, and I invite you with this Fillip to do the same.

Never fear. It’s not a gateway drug leading inexorably to your being caught up in the Moby tale. It’s just a short story of stubbornly puzzling import. Oh, and it’s told by a lawyer about a man . . . [more]

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