My Favorite Chapter of Moby-Dick

Since Why Read Moby-Dick?  came out in October, many readers have asked me which of the 135 chapters of Melville's masterpiece is my favorite. Even before I moved to my current island home 25 years ago, it was Chapter 14, simply titled "Nantucket." It's a five-paragraph prose poem that transforms a fifty square mile sandbank into a mythic launching pad of American global ambition. As a historian, I'm in absolute awe of how Melville adapted a host of diverse sources—Wampanoag oral tradition, a history of Nantucket by Obed Macy, Edmund Burke's famous speech "Conciliation with the Colonies," and much more—into a lyrical paean to the Nantucket's epic whaling heritage. Last week I had a great evening recording Chapter 14 at Nick and Victor Ferrantella's Garden Rock Studios here on Nantucket. On Saturday January 21, 2011, the Nantucket Atheneum will be hosting the island's first Moby-Dick Marathon Reading. Beginning in the Atheneum's Great Hall at noon, it's projected to last about 25 hours, with Nantucketers of all varieties volunteering to read from the novel. It's set to end around 1 pm on Sunday the 22nd, and suitably enough, quahog chowder will be served. As you might have guessed, I'll be reading Chapter 14.

Click here to listen to my reading of Chapter 14:  Moby Dick CH. 14mp3