I can still see it sitting there, four shelves up, two in from the door. The cover was apple red and the words were in a slanted script. They were also, appropriately, white. Moby Dick.
I must have been in fourth grade the first time I saw it up there, higher than I could reach, and I remember being shocked. I couldn't get over the fact that it was in an elementary school library. Wasn't that supposed to be a grown up book? What would happen if I asked to check it out? Would the librarian laugh at me? Tell me it was too hard? For two years I tried and failed to find the courage to even pick it from the shelf. I still don't know what it was doing there, whether it was abridged or not (it must have been, right? In an elementary school?). Nevertheless, it says something to me now that even in fourth grade I held Herman Melville's Moby Dick in awe. Now, of course, the question is what will actually reading the book do to that feeling.
There is no doubt that the man is a good storyteller. I mean, is there any better opening line in all of literature? "Call me Ishmael." Um, okay, sure. Whatever you say... Ishmael. Seriously, how else can you respond to a line like that? What's so fantastic about that line, I think, is that it is deceptively concise and devilishly complex. It is a declarative three words, nearly as short as you can make a sentence, and yet it firmly establishes Ishmael's dominance in the narrator-reader relationship. This is going to be his story and, if you are reading it, you have to take his word for it. Ah, but there's the rub. We are taking him at his word because we have no other choice. How do we even know his name really is Ishmael? I, for one, don't buy it. He didn't say "My name is Ishmael." We, as readers, are told to call him that, almost as though he snatched the name from thin air. There's more meaning in the name than that, however. In the Bible, Ishmael is the disinherited son of Abraham, cast out and called a "wild man" with "every man's hand against him." In Puritan New England, what better way to paint yourself as an outcast right from the get-go? The sentence lends him an air of wanderlust even before the story's begun.
Article comments
1 - Gordon Hauptfleisch
Another worthy entry in a great series, Chris. Looking forward to more -thanks!
2 - duane
That probably is the best opening line in a novel. I haven't been able to get through Moby Dick yet. It sits on my shelf, taunting me and my lack of patience. Good writeup. Looking forward to the next installment.