Herman Melville was born in New York to a respectable family, which fell on hard times and forced the young boy to work, but to escape impoverishment he went to sea culminating in a voyage to the South Seas, where he jumped ship in the Marquesas Islands. This escapade formed the basis of his highly popular TYPEE about two sailors who seek refuge with cannibals and how one falls in love with a woman named Faraway.
Once more with money he married and wrote more novels. Most notably MOBY DICK. A literary failure. Melville retired from writing and worked as a customs inspector in downtown Manhattan. I always thought thzt the US Customs Building was where, but it had been erect in 1907. Decades after Melville's death. Inside the Beaux Arts building is a large oval desk overlooked by maritime murals by Reginald Marsh underneath an oval rotunda. I imagined Melville at this desk. Not so.
Melville faded into a comfortable obscurity.
Somehow thanks to a Melville revival in the early 20th Century MOBY DICK was declared a masterpice and assigned to school reading lists. "Call me Ismael." I remember the first line well.
"And I only am escaped alone to tell thee."
I don't remember a single word in between unlike the Oxford Dictionary aardvak and zyzzyva, a tropical weevil or beetle. I have a copy of TYPEE someplace. Years ago I stumbled on a bust of Melville on the outside of 6 Pearl Street. It is no longer there. Such is fame. Fleeting and eternal in the mnds of the unreading public of the modern age. I wodner where the bust when.
to read more go to read Herman's Head by Adam Mellion
https://allvisibleobjects.substack.com/p/hermans-head
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