Reading O.W. Rigels, “The Anatomy of Melville’s Fame”, at the end of our reading of Moby Dick was perfect because it gave us more information as to why Moby Dick did not do very well. A part of the article that really stood out to me was Rigels point on “The extent of the interest in Melville among the reading public can never be determined accurately, because the opinions of readers do not find their way into print…”(197) The “ordinary readers” are readers like us students, whose opinions do not reach to the extent of publication. Of course there is a chance that most of the ordinary readers could have actually enjoyed the book and understood what Melville was trying to say but we wouldn’t know of that today. Rigel follows this with a list of Melvilles admirers, his small following, which were of course important to his writing career and popularity. They were the voice of the praise or lack of praise towards Melvilles work so it must have been so important for them to think well of him because he depended on the support of them.