One thing I’ve noticed about my years working in the policy arena here in Washington, D.C., is that I mainly read nonfiction. I think that’s unfortunate, because a great novel allows one to peer into an alternate universe in a way where only the structure of the prose constrains the world of the book. For each reader of a novel, that created universe is unique. Probably the same is true for each reread of a great story, even by the same reader.
Moby-Dick takes place in the Whaling World of the 19th century, which was centered in New England, specifically Nantucket, a small island off the coast of Massachusetts. The novel is deeply symbolic, as we might recall from our school days past, but the main characters are a malevolent sperm whale and a crazed, one-legged whaler captain obsessed with revenge for his lost limb. The action takes place on the vast oceans and is witnessed by a narrator, Ishmael, who might be every American, at least of the De Tocqueville era in which the book was written.
I once lived on Nantucket and, for many years after, spent time in Woods Hole, 25 ocean miles away on the mainland, where I cut my teeth as a working scientist. So the world of Moby Dick is one I can relate to.
But more interestingly, to me, the stuff of the fictional universe, with its catastrophic battle between man and leviathan, leavened by rich human-to-human relationships, is what is much richer the second time around, after four decades.
Discoverers and Discoveries 