Herman Melville — A Profile of the Author of Moby Dick

Melville had to fight, fight against the existing world, against his own very self.” D.H. Lawrence

Melville. Image: Library of America

I’ve recently read Jay Parini’s excellent novel The Passages of Herman Melville, which sent me scurrying back to Van Wyck Brooks’ The Times of Melville & Whitman, an almost revolutionary volume first…