Editing Moby-Dick (section)

==Legacy and adaptations==
{{further|Adaptations of Moby-Dick}}
Within a year after Melville's death in 1891, ''Moby-Dick'', along with ''Typee'', ''Omoo'', and ''Mardi'', was reprinted by [[Harper and Row|Harper & Brothers]], giving it a chance to be rediscovered. However, only New York's literary underground showed interest, just enough to keep Melville's name circulating for the next 25 years in the capital of American publishing. During this time, a few critics were willing to devote time, space, and a modicum of praise to Melville and his works, or at least those that could still be easily obtained or remembered. Other works, especially the poetry, went largely forgotten.<ref name="bartleby1">{{cite web|url=http://www.bartleby.com/187/5.html |title=Chapter 3. Romances of Adventure. Section 2. Herman Melville. Van Doren, Carl. 1921. The American Novel |publisher=Bartleby.com |access-date=October 19, 2008}}</ref>

In 1917, [[American literature|American author]] [[Carl Van Doren]] became the first of this period to proselytize about Melville's value in his 1921 study, ''The American Novel'', calling ''Moby-Dick'' a pinnacle of American Romanticism.<ref name="bartleby1"/>

In his 1923 ''[[Studies in Classic American Literature]]'', novelist, poet, and short story writer [[D. H. Lawrence]] celebrated the originality and value of American authors, among them Melville. Lawrence saw ''Moby-Dick'' as a work of the first order despite his using the expurgated original English edition, which lacked the epilogue.<ref name="bartleby1"/>

The [[Modern Library]] brought out ''Moby-Dick'' in 1926, and the [[Lakeside Press]] in Chicago commissioned [[Rockwell Kent#Biography|Rockwell Kent]] to design and illustrate a striking three-volume edition, which appeared in 1930. [[Random House]] then issued a one-volume trade version of Kent's edition, which in 1943 they reprinted as a less expensive Modern Library Giant.<ref>{{cite book |last=Benton |first=Megan |title=Beauty and the Book: Fine Editions and Cultural Distinction in America |url=https://archive.org/details/beautybookfineed00bent |publisher=Yale University Press |year=2000 |isbn=978-0-300-08213-5 |ref=none}}, pp. [https://books.google.com/books?id=WbpOcowMfCIC&dq=Rockwell+Kent+Moby-dick+lakeside&pg=PA131 107, 132, 200]</ref>

The novel has been adapted or represented in art, film, books, cartoons, television, and more than a dozen versions in comic-book format. The first adaptation was the 1926 [[silent movie]] ''[[The Sea Beast (1926 film)|The Sea Beast]]'', starring [[John Barrymore]],<ref>{{cite web |title=The Sea Beast |url=https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0017354/ |date=January 15, 1926 |via=IMDb}}</ref> in which Ahab returns to marry his fiancée after killing the whale.<ref name="Springer 2007">Bryant and Springer (2007), xxiii–xxv.</ref> The most famous adaptation was the [[John Huston]] [[Moby Dick (1956 film)|1956 film]] produced from a screenplay by author [[Ray Bradbury]].<ref>{{Rotten Tomatoes|qid=Q1423235|title=Moby Dick (1956)}}</ref> The long list of adaptations, as Bryant and Springer put it, demonstrates that "the iconic image of an angry embittered American slaying a mythic beast seemed to capture the popular imagination." They conclude that "different readers in different periods of popular culture have rewritten ''Moby-Dick''" to make it a "true cultural icon".<ref name="Springer 2007"/> American artist [[David Klamen]] has cited the novel as an important influence on his dark, slow-to-disclose paintings, noting a passage in the book in which a mysterious, undecipherable painting in a bar is gradually revealed to depict a whale.<ref name="Schultz">Schultz, Elizabeth. Unpainted to the Last: ''Moby-Dick and Twentieth Century American Art'', University Press of Kansas, 1995, p.329-330.</ref>

Both [[Mystic Seaport]] and the [[New Bedford Whaling Museum]] hold annual marathon live readings of Melville's novel in which volunteers read chapters aloud. The Mystic Seaport Marathon Reading is usually held July 31st to August 1st aboard the whaling vessel ''[[Charles W. Morgan (ship)|Charles W. Morgan]]'' with an actor portraying Herman Melville reading the first and final chapters, culminating in a celebration of Melville's birthday.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://mysticseaport.org/press-release/mystic-seaport-to-hold-moby-dick-marathon-july-31-august-1/ |title=Mystic Seaport to hold "Moby-Dick" Marathon July 31–August 1 |website=mysticseaport.org |access-date=14 May 2025}}</ref> {{asof|2025}}, the most recent New Bedford Whaling Museum Marathon was held January 3–5, 2025.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.whalingmuseum.org/program/moby-dick-marathon-2025/ |title=New Bedford Whaling Museum: Moby-Dick Marathon 2025 |website=whalingmuseum.org |access-date=14 May 2025}}</ref>

American author [[Ralph Ellison]] wrote a tribute to the book in the prologue of his 1952 novel ''[[Invisible Man]]''. The narrator remembers a moment of truth under the influence of marijuana and evokes a church service: "Brothers and sisters, my text this morning is the 'Blackness of Blackness.' And the congregation answers: 'That blackness is most black, brother, most black&nbsp;... '" This scene, Ellison biographer [[Arnold Rampersad]] observes, "reprises a moment in the second chapter of ''Moby-Dick''", where Ishmael wanders around New Bedford looking for a place to spend the night, and momentarily joins a congregation: "It was a negro church; and the preacher's text was about the blackness of darkness, and the weeping and wailing and teeth-gnashing there." According to Rampersad, it was Melville who "empowered Ellison to insist on a place in the American literary tradition" by his example of "representing the complexity of race and racism so acutely and generously in his text".<ref>Rampersad (1997), 172–173</ref> Rampersad also believes Ellison's choice of a first-person narrator was inspired above all by ''Moby-Dick'', and the novel even has a similar opening sentence with the narrator introducing himself ("I am an invisible man").<ref>Rampersad (2007), 197</ref> The oration by Ellison's blind preacher Barbee resembles Father Mapple's sermon in that both prepare the reader for what is to come.<ref>Rampersad (2007), 228</ref>

In 1961, a Japanese author, [[Kōichirō Uno]], won the [[Akutagawa Prize]] with his novel ''[[The Whale God]]'', which was later made into a [[tokusatsu]] film by [[Daiei Film]] next year. Uno's ''The Whale God'' was presumably inspired by ''Moby-Dick'' as the former also focuses on vengeful whalers who seek after an unusually large and powerful whale.<ref>[https://natalie.mu/eiga/film/140350 鯨神] on [[Natalie (website)|Natalie]]</ref><ref name=Ofuna>[https://ofuna-cinema.com/kujiragami/ 鯨神（昭和37年）]</ref><ref>[https://www.scifijapan.com/dvd-blu-ray-digital/the-whale-god-limited-edition-blu-ray-now-up-for-preorder-from-srs-cinema THE WHALE GOD Limited Edition Blu-ray Now Up For Preorder From SRS Cinema] on SciFi Japan</ref>

{{external media| float = right| video1 = [https://www.c-span.org/video/?508920-4/artist-rockwell-kents-illustrated-moby-dick&event=508920&playEvent Nantucket Historical Association Conference on Herman Melville, August 14, 2019], [[C-SPAN]]}}
According to critic [[Camille Paglia]] in ''[[Sexual Personae]]'', a book with the whiteness or blankness of nonmeaning as its main symbol should logically propose a depersonalized view of nature, but in this respect the novel is "amazingly inconsistent", as Melville "elevates the masculine principle above the feminine."<ref>Paglia (2001), 697</ref> To be perfectly consistent, in her view the whale should be "sexually neuter," and its whiteness "an obliteration of person, gender, and meaning."<ref>Paglia (2001), 701</ref>

British explorer [[Tim Severin]] wrote in his 1999 book ''In Search of Moby Dick: Quest for the White Whale'' about traveling throughout the Pacific, inquiring among indigenous fishermen and watermen about white whales, in personal experience or local folklore.

American songwriter [[Bob Dylan]]'s Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech of 2017 cited ''Moby-Dick'' as one of the three books that influenced him most. Dylan's description ends with an acknowledgment: "That theme, and all that it implies, would work its way into more than a few of my songs."<ref>Bob Dylan, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TlcPRlau2Q 2016 Nobel Lecture in Literature]. Discussion of ''Moby-Dick'' at 6:30–12:30, quotation at 12:22–12:29.</ref>