Moby-Dick

The failure of Moby-Dick to become popular when published in 1851, and its subsequent resurrection in the 1920s, is an abiding mystery.  One school of literary criticism argues that the slaughters of World War I profoundly altered human consciousness and produce intellectual and artistic "modernity".  The timing works to explain the rediscovery of Moby-Dick, but the putative explanation begs the question why the Civil War, being comparably ghastly, more proximate in time and more immediate to the American reading public, did not produce anything similar.  Another problem with the "modernity" school of literary criticism is that some of the key emblems of emerging modernity – notably the premiere of Igor Stravinsky's "Rites of Spring" and the Armory Show of modern art in New York City – occurred before World War I.  The war was a cultural influence, but it was not a precipitating cause of "modernity".  Changes in the constituents of material culture suggests a more prosaic explanation of the mystery of Moby-Dick.  Whale oil, sperm oil and spermaceti candles were important sources of light when Moby-Dick was published, and because of the quality of the illumination they provided they commanded premium prices.  Accordingly, they were purchased principally by the middle and upper classes, the portion of the reading public that was likely to purchase an artistic novel like Moby-Dick.  The public purchased illuminating oils and candles and thus were removed from the brutal and dangerous business of harvesting and butchering whales and rendering their flesh into oil.  This aspect of whaling was not unknown – two books about whaling had been published, and Mr. Melville relied upon these in writing Moby-Dick, and other sources also spoke about this important industry.  Nonetheless, the benign products acquired in the market had a potentially disturbing history, and members of the reading public may well have decided that they did not to be reminded of this history each time they struck a match.  The production of illuminating oil from petroleum beginning in 1859 put the whaling industry on the road to extinction.  By the 1920s urban places had electric lights, rural places had kerosene, and whale oil, sperm oil and spermaceti candles were relics of the past.