poor melville

i was nostalgic about reading Moby Dick today, mentioning it briefly in an essay i'm writing and was flipping through it. an outstanding canonical work that more people should read. more people should have read it during Melville's life, he sold less than 4000 copies of the book and it was publicly derided by critics and considered, generally, to be a failure by all until some time later. ahead of its time in many respects. i always return to the unknowable nature of the whale. the book just compiles and compiles data about the whale, attempting to understand it, as if Ishmael (if that is his name) is trying to focus on a single thing in order to understand just a single thing before his death. but, despite such close attention, he is unable to understand even this tremendous thing. Ishmael continually laments his inability to "see" the whale:

Dissect him how I may, then, I but go skin deep; I know him not, and never will. But if I know not even the tail of this whale, how understand his head? much more, how comprehend his face, when face he has none? Thou shalt see my back parts, my tail, he seems to say, but my face shall not be seen. But I cannot completely make out his back parts; and hint what he will about his face, I say again he has no face.