Brain Fuel

Herman Melville’s classic Moby Dick is perhaps the greatest of all American novels, though Melville was virtually unknown in his day. He was a tormented genius who after a lifetime of wandering and adventure finally sat down to write his masterpiece. Yet upon publication Moby Dick was denounced, and worse, ignored by the critics, and Melville died unknown at the end of the 19th century — so obscure that newspaper obituary writers were surprised to learn that he wasn’t already dead. Professor Andrew Delbanco, author of the acclaimed biography Melville: His World and Work (finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, winner of the Lionel Trilling Award at Columbia University) will discuss why Melville was unrecognized in his own time, and why his genius, recognized over the course of the 20th century, speaks to us so powerfully today.