For this extra credit assignment, I elected to read Nathaniel Philbrick’s Why Read Moby-Dick?, a short collection of essays that act as a tour through the information imperative to readers of Herman Melville’s novel. Much like the introductory slides from this course, or even the introduction to Moby-Dick itself, this book contextualizes Moby-Dick in ways that are simply important for our understanding of it. Sprinkled throughout are these little nuggets of love that Philbrick clearly has for the novel, bits of information that show a kind of sincerity that dry, academic essays lack such as the fact that Chapter 85, The Fountain, begins with a precise look at when Melville was writing this particular chapter of the novel – fifteen and a quarter minutes past one o’clock P.M. of this sixteenth day of December, A.D. 1850. It was only after publication that the date was changed to 1851 in the novel.

Something that struck with me was in the second chapter, Landlessness, when Philbrick explains the circumstances of how Melville first learned of the Essex. While on a whaling voyage, they met up with another whaleship, the Lima, which had Owen Chase’s son aboard. This son lent Melville his copy of Owen Chase’s account of the Essex – which he read – near the latitude that the Essex sank at. He was there – on a whaleship of his own – in the place that it happened while he read about the tragedy. I can completely understand why this would have “a surprising effect” on him (12), as I’ve had an adjacent experience.

For the holidays in 2019, I was gifted a book called Mass Effect Andromeda: Annihilation. The story follows the journey of the quarian-led ark ship, Keelah Si’yah, which is carrying colonists from various Milky Way species which were not part of the other four ark ships seen in Andromeda. While enroute to its destination, a disease outbreak is discovered among some of the colonists placed in cryo-sleep. This disease is able to infect all species aboard the ark, it is an airborne pathogen, and it is highly deadly. I read this novel in January 2020, working at a restaurant chain that sells soups while my coworkers were all getting sick from some mysterious virus that was putting us all out of commission. It was not until March 2020 that we learned exactly what this mysterious virus was, but that novel truly terrified me. I have not reread it since.

Taking my own experience into consideration, the writing of Moby-Dick feels inevitable for someone like Herman Melville. How could he not be moved to do something with his experience? This book provides ample other insight into the life of Melville, into the inner workings of his mind that lead to the creation of this great American classic. If anyone is at all interested in re-reading the novel, I would recommend reading this book first. It’s a scant 127 pages long, broken up into 28 chapters, well worth the time and fully available for free at the San Diego Public Library.