Call Me Ishmael

by Charles Olson

First published in 1947, this acknowledged classic of American literary criticism explores the influences -- especially Shakespearean ones -- on Melville's writing of Moby-Dick. One of the first Melvilleans to advance what has since become known as the "theory of the two Moby-Dicks," Olson argues that there were two versions of Moby-Dick, and that Melville's reading King Lear for the first time in between the first and second versions of the book had a profound impact on his conception of the "the first book did not contain Ahab," writes Olson, and "it may not, except incidentally, have contained Moby-Dick." If literary critics and reviewers at the time responded with varying degrees of skepticism to the "theory of the two Moby-Dicks," it was the experimental style and organization of the book that generated the most controversy.

Genres: Nonfiction, Literary Criticism, Poetry, Criticism, Essays, Literature, American

166 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1947

About the author

Charles Olson was a second generation American modernist poet who was a link between earlier figures such as Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams and the New American poets, which includes the New York School, the Black Mountain School, the Beat poets, and the San Francisco Renaissance. Consequently, many postmodern groups, such as the poets of the Language School, include Olson as a primary and precedent figure. He described himself not so much as a poet or writer but as "an archeologist of morning."

Olson's first book was Call Me Ishmael (1947), a study of Herman Melville's novel Moby Dick which was a continuation of his M.A. thesis from Wesleyan University.[5] In Projective Verse (1950), Olson called for a poetic meter based on the breath of the poet and an open construction based on sound and the linking of perceptions rather than syntax and logic. The poem "The Kingfishers", first published in 1949 and collected in his first book of poetry, In Cold Hell, in Thicket (1953), is an application of the manifesto.

His second collection, The Distances, was published in 1960. Olson served as rector of the Black Mountain College from 1951 to 1956. During this period, the college supported work by John Cage, Robert Creeley, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Duncan, Fielding Dawson, Cy Twombly, Jonathan Williams, Ed Dorn, Stan Brakhage and many other members of the 1950s American avant garde. Olson is listed as an influence on artists including Carolee Schneemann and James Tenney.[6]

Olson's reputation rests in the main on his complex, sometimes difficult poems such as "The Kingfishers", "In Cold Hell, in Thicket", and The Maximus Poems, work that tends to explore social, historical, and political concerns. His shorter verse, poems such as "Only The Red Fox, Only The Crow", "Other Than", "An Ode on Nativity", "Love", and "The Ring Of", manifest a sincere, original, accessible, emotionally powerful voice. "Letter 27 [withheld]" from The Maximus Poems weds Olson's lyric, historic, and aesthetic concerns. Olson coined the term postmodern in a letter of August 1951 to his friend and fellow poet, Robert Creeley.

In 1950, inspired by the example of Pound's Cantos (though Olson denied any direct relation between the two epics), Olson began writing The Maximus Poems, a project that was to remain unfinished at the time of his death. An exploration of American history in the broadest sense, Maximus is also an epic of place, Massachusetts and specifically the city of Gloucester where Olson had settled. Dogtown, the wild, rock-strewn centre of Cape Ann, next to Gloucester, is an important place in The Maximus Poems. (Olson used to write outside on a tree stump in Dogtown.) The whole work is also mediated through the voice of Maximus, based partly on Maximus of Tyre, an itinerant Greek philosopher, and partly on Olson himself. The final, unfinished volume imagines an ideal Gloucester in which communal values have replaced commercial ones.

Reviews

[Jonfaith · Rating 4 out of 5]

That is the Ahab-world, and it is wicked.

Oh sweet Rosebud of Marion Davies*, by all that is holy, why couldn't this book have been 600 pages? This is pastiche in a queerly American fashion, as epicene as overalls. My copy is a freshly printed facsimile, one that is rife with underlining and marginalia. I normally have issues with Amazon print to order but somehow it felt very appropriate here.

Throughout this nontraditional analysis there are ripples of a sidelong Melville--one from journals and letters: The infernal nature has a valor often denied to innocence. Olson looks to the inspiration for Moby Dick, the whale attack on the Essex. Cannibalism. The irony is the survivors of that disaster avoided Tahiti for fear of being eaten and traveled a thousand mile away looking for safety only to succumb to necessity.

As it should Hawthorn is the mentor here, much as Pushkin to Gogol, as Roger Stone to our present le Infer. This could've been a free range exposition for Olson -- Manifest Destiny for a Fallen Angel. A Morningstar for the HUAC -- or is that redundant? I think not. Melville sought pilgrimage less for his Art than for his Soul. He went to the Pacific; he went to the alleged Holy Lands. He dodged the straitjacket but instead ultimately found the oppression of oblivion. Given Olson's treatment of Gloucester in King Lear, wasn't Melville's fate a welcome transcendence?

As the strongest literary force Shakespeare caused Melville to approach tragedy in terms of drama. As the strongest social force America caused him to approach tragedy in terms of democracy.

The Bard features large here, but again more should have been explored than Timon and the Fool. Call Me Whetted.

* An Orson Welles reference appears necessary.

[George · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating, well-researched, and written with more poetry in its prose than most of the novels I've attempted to read lately. Required reading for fans of Moby-Dick. It allowed me to appreciate that whale of a tale more than I already did.

[John Pistelli · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this alongside my first reading of Moby-Dick when I was a teenager, and read it again for old times' sake as I re-read the novel recently. Though Olson's pioneering account of what Melville took from Shakespeare remains instructive, I found his book as a whole less remarkable the second time around. Olson writes of Moby-Dick as a kind of unmediated black-magic myth, missing the novel's crucial dimension of Romantic irony and parody; Olson is too in the shadow of Pound and Lawrence, writing in that showily telegraphic modernist style that now seems to me more dated than Victorian fustian. Call Me Ishmael is worth reading, however, for a marker of how a certain aesthetic critique of American society generally held by reactionaries in the early twentieth century (the aforementioned Pound and Lawrence, as well as Eliot, Heidegger, etc.) crossed with Marxism in the midcentury to become political common sense among radicals by the 1960s. Also, the excerpts Olson provides from Melville's Shakespeare marginalia and his journal of his travels in the Middle East are wonderful, though the footnotes in the Norton Critical Moby-Dick leads me to believe that Olson's scholarship, though groundbreaking, has been superseded. In general, I judge this more a historical curio than a living work of criticism.

[Peter Landau · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yes, I read MOBY-DICK and, no, I didn’t fully understand it. I enjoyed the book, though. Reading Herman Melville is like hanging out after class with that freaky teacher who is a well of information and smells a little bad. Everyone makes fun of him, but years later, after all the other meaningless lessons of classrooms past have faded, his oddball instruction resonate. That’s the wonder of fiction. Like poetry, you don’t have to understand it to get it. That doesn’t mean there isn’t value in interpretation. But criticism is a different type of art form, one that is rarely practiced, but a lodestar to follow for those who wish to criticize is CALL ME ISHMAEL by Charles Olson. Yes, I don’t fully understand it either, but he makes some beautiful connections between Melville’s masterpiece and Shakespeare, the Bible and the United States, which he does in a fragmentary and lyrical style that stands as its own thing of beauty, not separate but unique.

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thus begins the Year of Melville.

[Pete · Rating 4 out of 5]

Famous for its groundbreaking insights into the influence of Shakespeare--especially "King Lear"--on "Moby Dick," "Call Me Ishmael" is a fine piece of 20th century literary criticism because it is so poetic. It was published in 1951, when one could include lines like "PLUS a harshness we still perpetuate, a sun like a tomahawk, small earthquakes but big tornadoes and hurrikans, a river north and south in the middle of the land running out the blood" and still have a piece of literary criticism be treated as respectable academic work. And when you think about it for half-a-second, why shouldn't literary critics be allowed to write poetically?

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like a lot of what I've read and seen of Olson, his riff on Melville is half genius and half wackadoodle.

[Griffin Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

Americans still fancy themselves such democrats. But their triumphs are of the machine. It is the only master of space the average person ever knows, oxwheel to piston, muscle to jet. It gives trajectory.

To Melville it was not the will to be free but the will to overwhelm nature that lies at the bottom of us as individuals and a people. Ahab is no democrat. Moby-Dick, antagonist, is only king of natural force, resource.

[...]

Whitman appears, because of his notation of the features of American life and his conscious identification of himself with the people, to be the more poet. But Melville had the will. He was homeless in his land, his society, his self.

Logic and classification had led civilization toward man, away from space. Melville went to space to probe and find man. Early men did the same: poetry, language and the care of myth, as Fenollosa says, grew up together. Among the Egyptians Horus was the god of writing and the god of the moon, one figure for both, a WHITE MONKEY.

In place of Zeus, Odysseus, Olympus we have had Caesar, Faust, the City. The shift was from man as a group to individual man. Now, in spite of the corruption of myth by fascism, the swing is out and back. Melville is one who began it.

He had a pull to the origin of things, the first day, the first man, the unknown sea, Betelgeuse, the buried continent. From passive places his imagination sprung a harpoon.

He sought prime. He had the coldness we have, but he warmed himself by the first fires after Flood. It gave him the power to find the lost part of America, the unfound present, and make a myth, Moby-Dick, for a people of Ishmaels.

The thing got away from him. It does, from us. We make AHAB, the WHITE WHALE, and lose them. We let John Henry go, Negro, Worker, hammering man:

He lied down his hammer an' he died.

Whitman we have called our greatest voice because he gave us hope. Melville is the truer man. He lived intensely his people's wrong, their guilt. But he remembered the first dream. The White Whale is more accurate than Leaves of Grass. Because it is America, all of her space, the malice, the root.

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

"As the strongest literary force Shakespeare caused Melville to approach tragedy in terms of drama. As the strongest social force America caused him to approach tragedy in terms of democracy.

It was not difficult for Melville to reconcile the two. Because of his perception of America: Ahab.

It has to do with size and how you value it. You can approach BIG America and spread yourself like a pancake, sing her stretch as Whitman did, be puffed up as we are over PRODUCTION. It’s easy. THE AMERICAN WAY. Soft. Turns out paper cups, lies flat on the brush. N.G.

Or recognize that our power is simply QUANTITY. Without considering purpose. Easy too. That is so long as we continue to be INGENIOUS about machines, and have the resources.

Or you can take an attitude, the creative vantage. See her as OBJECT in MOTION, something to be shaped for use. It involves a first act of physics. You can observe POTENTIAL and VELOCITY separately, have to, to measure THE THING. You get approximate results. They are useable enough if you include the Uncertainty Principal, Heisenberg’s law that you learn the speed at the cost of exact knowledge of the energy and the energy at the loss of exact knowledge of the speed.

Melville did his job. He calculated, and cast Ahab. BIG, first of all. ENERGY, next. PURPOSE: lordship over nature. SPEED: of the brain. DIRECTION: vengeance. COST: the people, the crew.

Ahab is the FACT, the Crew the IDEA. The Crew is where what America stands for got into Moby-Dick. They’re Melville’s addition to tragedy as he took it from Shakespeare."

[Pete · Rating 3 out of 5]

so yeah this is a better poem than it is literary criticism, but it's got some pretty great parts as a poem.

i learned the word "skald" from this book, which i appreciate

Olson got a hold of Melville's personal reading copies of Shakespeare and a few other things; basically floats the valid idea that there was a version of MOBY-DICK that was just anodyne seafaring and then Melville read KING LEAR and deeply lost his shit in a productive way and the result is the book we know and love

but the extant book CALL ME ISHMAEL by Charles Olson is not as coherent as the preceding makes it sound. It has a lot of forceful MODERNIST things like ALL CAPS EMPHASIS and wild swipes toward a structure.

"I take SPACE to be the central fact to man born in America, from Folsom cave to now. I spell it large because it comes large here. Large, and without mercy" OK that's a great first line (it's not the first line of the whole thing, but the first line of a section)

"the corruption of myth by fascism" tell me more, i am interested

"I am interested in a Melville who was long-eyed enough to understand the Pacific as part of our geography, another West, prefigured in the Plains, antithetical"

"For magic has one purpose: compel men or non-human forces to do one's will. Like Ahab, American, one aim: lordship over nature."

"[Melville] made a mess of things. He got all balled up with Christ. "

"[Melville] had to go fast, like an American, or he was all torpor. Half horse half alligator."

"Melville took an awful licking. He was bound to."

short version, this book makes me want to read more charles olson

[Clint · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant discussion of the greatest American novel! Though more to do with Olson than Melville! It reminds me some of D.H. Lawrence's Studies in Classical American Literature, which was, in fact, an influence. I especially like Olson's discussion of the connection between Lear and Moby Dick. Also his controversial assessment of the two Moby Dicks, the second version a rewrite following Melville's discovery of Shakespeare. Also, his suggestion that the Pacific was Melville's "source of power," which was lost after the writing of MD when he turned instead toward the search for religious certainty. Melville, writes Olson, "denied himself in Christianity. It is space and its feeding on man, that is the essence of his vision, bred in him here in America, and it is time which is at the heart of Christianity. What the Pacific had confirmed for him he allowed Christ to undo."

[Charlotte · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wish all literary criticism was like this--a poetical response to a great book. Read Moby Dick first.

[Christopher]

Maybe it’s just me, but this work of criticism seems alien. The prose itself is interesting. It doesn’t seem systematic at all, working from thesis and building its structure for support. It is confident, swaggy, angular.

Of course, it comes down to us from 1947, and therefore from a particular orientation of literary criticism. The author’s life and other works matter equally in bearing out what Olson wants to say about Moby Dick. There’s not much close reading, and the claims are often stated as fact. He has Confidence Man.

I found this stimulating and opening rather than dusty and exhaustive. May have to reread this after I finish my Melville project…which consists of:

1) Moby Dick ✅
2) “Call me Ishmael”- Charles Olson ✅
3) Ahab Sequels- Pierre Senges
4) Genoa- Paul Metcalf
5) Melvill- Rodrigo Fresan
6) Melville- Jean Giono
7) Lucchesi and the Whale- Frank Lentricchia

[Miriam · Rating 2 out of 5]

That's it. That's the last one on my reading list that started with the Modern Library's Top 100 Books of the Twentieth Century. This book is not actually on there. The original list led to several other combined lists, to compensate for the extreme white-dude-ness of the first list. So I did it. Yay.

I read (listened to) Moby Dick in preparation for this, as it is an analysis of that work and Melville's oeuvre in general. It's a little like fan-fic poetry: lovingly describe the author and his work, using sweeping language and vivid imagery.

The points that it made that I could understand and accept, based on my own reading of Moby Dick:

Writing Moby Dick broke Melville. A trip to the Holy Land to rest and recuperate finished the job. He could never reconcile his faith in humankind (really MANkind) with Christianity.

Moby Dick relies heavily on the epic scope and structure of Shakespeare and drama more generally. Ahab is one of a handful of original characters in literature, although he owes a debt to Lear and various fools. Ahab's resignation to his damnation separates him from Lear--that's the original part (this is what Olson says: Shakespeare scholars, if you're reading this, don't shoot the messenger). Olson points out that after the fire that burns the masts (spoiler alert, I guess), Ahab is quieter and less manic (the Ahab who finds comfort in hanging out with Pip) than the Ahab who shouts to the crew and baptizes them in the name of the devil. I did notice this. And his speech to himself/Starbuck toward the end when he ruminates on how the ocean and whaling have shaped his life touched me.

Melville saw the Pacific as the natural next step to the U.S., not necessarily in terms of the empire that became, but in terms of the vast space and the desire to look upon space, to travel it, to know it, to own it. Melville read the history of the U.S. as the history of space.

I did it.

[Joe]

Want to reread in conversation with Craig Santos Perez' work. Americas, aircraft destroyers, the Pacific.

“I take SPACE to be the central fact to man born in America, from Folsom cave to now. I spell it large because it comes large here. Large and without mercy” (11).

“As I see it Poe dug in and Melville mounted. They are the alternatives” (12).


“I said 3000 years went overboard in the Pacific”

[Oziel Bispo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quem influenciou , ou o que influenciou Hermam Melville a escrever Moby Dick?
De acordo com Charles olson, além do desastre acontecido com navio Essex, que foi atacado e afundado por uma baleia em 1820, onde os sobreviventes ficaram à deriva no oceano por mais de 90 dias e foram forçados a recorrer ao canibalismo para sobreviver, Shakespeare também influenciou a escrita de Moby Dick por Melville ; Olson argumenta que as obras de Shakespeare, especialmente Othello e Hamlet, foram uma fonte de inspiração para Melville em sua criação do personagem Ahab e sua busca obsessiva pela baleia branca. Por exemplo, o personagem principal de Moby Dick, Capitão Ahab, é frequentemente comparado ao personagem de Shakespeare, Rei Lear. Ambos são líderes obstinados que se recusam a ouvir os conselhos de seus conselheiros e acabam levando suas vidas à ruína. Além disso, há várias passagens em Moby Dick que fazem referência direta às peças de Shakespeare, como Hamlet e Macbeth.

Outra possível influência de Shakespeare em Moby Dick é a ênfase na tragédia e no destino. Assim como as peças de Shakespeare, Moby Dick é uma história sobre a luta humana contra forças maiores do destino. Ahab está determinado a caçar a baleia branca, mesmo que isso signifique sua própria morte, porque ele sente que é seu destino fazê-lo.

A bíblia também influenciou Hermam Melville. Um exemplo da influência bíblica em Moby Dick é a figura de Ahab, baseado no diabólico rei Bíblico Acabe, que é frequentemente comparado a Satã. Ahab também usa linguagem bíblica em seus discursos e monólogos. Além disso, o próprio título do romance é uma referência à história de Jonas e a baleia.Já os livros de Jonas e de Jó são citados explicitamente no romance. No livro de Jó, Javé apregoa o poder do Leviatã sobre a humanidade – e Moby Dick é o Leviatã.

Este livro é considerado um dos melhores ensaios já publicados referente a Moby Dick. Foi publicado em 1947 e foi considerado um dos melhores livros daquele ano.

[Ivan Stoner · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best and most rewarding literary analysis I've ever read (not that I've read much). Poetical criticism? Critical poetry?

Olson's thoughts about Moby-Dick are very interesting--in particular he links the evolution of the novel to Melville's first full read of Shakespeare and particularly King Lear after completing his first draft.

And what's really great is that it's put together in a way that is succinct, expansive and poetic. And I say "poetic" not just in the sense that the prose is lyrical, but in the literal sense that much of Call Me Ishmael is written as modernist poetry. It's the opposite of run-of-the-mill academic writing (dry, belabored, jargon-filled). If you enjoyed Moby-Dick at all this is short and 100% worth a read.

[Salvatore · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not since DH Lawrence's Studies in Classic American Literature have I felt such ENTHUSIASM in literary criticism!

[Athena · Rating 4 out of 5]

Incredible insight into Melville and Moby Dick. It even reads like Melville. The scope, the disjointed thoughts, and leaps of energetic philosophy are spot on.

[Christo · Rating 5 out of 5]

The next Norton Critical Edition of Moby-Dick should just add this as the introduction.

[James Bailey]

This is how critical analysis should be done! Powerful, original research that supports a strong thesis. Outstanding example for aspiring critics. (Doesn't hurt that I love the book Olson is reviewing either.)

[Michael Crofford · Rating 5 out of 5]

The structure is interesting. The book has a certain quality resembling a mathematical or scientific proof where assertions are made and then examples and explanation are given. At the same time there's a literary aspect in the synthesis of prior works and influences on MD.

I like it, but I actually didn't necessarily find it overly compelling. Many of the reviews mention the connection to Shakespeare and in particular King Lear. But that's only part of it. I found the last part about the idea of space and in particular the Pacific Ocean and its influence on Melville more interesting.

Olson writes that to Melville the Pacific was:
1. an experience of Space
2. a comprehension of Past
3. a confirmation of Future.

In particular on the last point Olson writes that "The Pacific is the end of the UNKNOWN which Homer's and Dante's Ulysses opened men's eyes to. End of individual responsible only to himself. Ahab is full stop." I like this because some of this was explored in Pynchon's M&D. The rational world has closed the door on so many of our historical myths, archetypes, impressions, and understandings. We now live in a world dominated by rationalism and scientific understanding.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

Olson the uncovering critic before Olson the poet. The influence of Pound is palpable, in the spirit of The spirit of romance. I mean those soaringly prepossessing dilatory emphases, that chattering swirling elliptical quality of genius. The madness of the coin whose obverse is right reason, which isn’t the one without the other, massed with tensions sometimes contradictory, sometimes redundant. Olson’s largest contribution: the getting from some of M’s descendants his hands on those choicest volumes of Melville’s personal library, namely the Shakespeare, and shining torchlight upon the creeping worm of the marginalia therein: scribbling of Lear, of Macbeth: the pile, the pull of it, limbs of Osiris, fit for the casting-mold, slag terror of folding conflagrations the happy accident of Corinthian alloys, rudiments of capt. Ahab.

[Esteban del Mal · Rating 5 out of 5]

From the concluding chapter, page 119:

Porphyry wrote that the generation of images in the mind is from water.

The three great creations of Melville and Moby-Dick are Ahab, The Pacific, and the White Whale.

The son of the father of Ocean was a prophet Proteus, of the changing shape, who, to evade philistine Aristaeus worried about bees, became first a fire, then a flood, and last a wild sea beast.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Criticism with an actually interesting writing style.

[Kevin Fitzpatrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I am interested in a Melville who was long-eyed enough to understand the Pacific as part of our geography, another West, prefigured in the Plains, antithetical....He had the tradition in him, deep, in his brain, his words, the salt beat of his blood. He had the sea of himself in a vigorous, stricken way, as Poe the street. It enabled him to draw up from Shakespeare. It made Noah, and Moses, contemporary to him. History was ritual and repetition when Melville's imagination was at tis own proper beat. It was an older sense than the European man's, more to do with magic than culture. magic which, in contrast to worship, is all black. For magic has one purpose: compel men or non-human forces to do one's will. Like Ahab, American, one aim: lordship over nature." (Olson, pg. 12-13).

The above selection characterizes the approach (and prose style) that is found throughout this brief yet essential tome that the poet Charles Olson wrote in 1947 concerning the influences present in Herman Melville's classic American epic novel, "Moby-Dick, or the Whale." Consisting of five parts (the five Acts of classic tragedy?), entitled "Is Fact," "Is Source: Shakespeare", "Is Dromenon", "Is the Book of the Law of the Blood", "Is Loss: Christ," and "Is The Conclusion: Pacific Man," this book poetically, and in an comprehensive manner, explores the nature of, the allusions found in, and the influences on, that "Great American Novel," "Moby-Dick." Written when Olson was a younger man, this book seems to be based on Olson's own studies in his American Studies major curriculum as well as his access to Melville's copy of the collected works of William Shakespeare. It it this last item that forms the bulk of the book, with Olson making the thesis (a valid one, in this reader's eyes) that two novels were written by Melville, one without Ahab and one with Ahab. And that it was after reading Shakespeare, specially "King Lear," "Macbeth," and "Anthony and Cleopatra," that Ahab, and the characterization found in the novel, was created. Olson posits that this is the keystone to an understanding of the book as a whole, and he sets about to prove this in the course of the book. But along with this main thesis, Olson also includes 'facts' concerning whaling as an American 'industry,' 'facts' concerning sailing vessels destroyed by whales and whose survivors had to resort to cannibalism in order to survive, and meditations on the myths, both Christian and Near Eastern (Osiris, Isis, et al), that inform the book as a whole. We also gain access to ruminations concerning the role of the Pacific in the history of the world, with Melville playing a part in the expansion of American culture (and power) into this vast expanse of Ocean. This book, given that it entails so much detail and exposition, really wonderfully engages the reader in the author's enterprise of explaining all matters related to the book in question, and this, in turn, leaves the reader with a grand appreciation of Melville's accomplishment in the aforementioned book, as well as Olson's own considerable accomplishment. For Olson's style here is really masterful (and appropriate for the subject matter), for he employs the diction and syntax (and typology) of poetry in his exposition of the background and nature of the book. This allows the reader to link the method of communication to the mythopoetic nature of the book being described, making for an almost perfect concatenation of style and substance. And, in addition to this stylistic plus, and perhaps because of this selfsame quality, the book is a joy to read, despite its seemingly obscure subject matter. This is a fine book, in my eyes, one deserving of being read repeatedly! It's that good!

[David Partikian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh, if only all literary criticism was this satisfying to read! In addition to being an extremely talented writer poet and astute critic, Olson had a lot good fortune: The good fortune to write in an earlier era that was unencumbered with literary jargon. The good fortune to be writing about a subject who was then enjoying a renaissance; the Random House edition of Moby-Dick, or the Whale had only been back in print for 17 years. Finally, he had the extreme good fortune to be granted access to Melville’s copy of Shakespeare’s works—specifically his tragedies—by Melville’s granddaughter, Mrs. Francis Osborne. Melville’s Shakespeare editions were heavily annotated with notes and observations which were relevant to the book he was in the process of writing, Moby-Dick. This is the sort of windfall that—to say the least—few literature PhD candidates will ever experience.

Melville’s annotated Shakespeare allowed Olson to make several claims. The most irrefutable is that Melville largely wrote Moby-Dick twice. The first version is more of an adventure story and exposé of the whaling industry. Melville conceived his final draft—however—after being bit by the Shakespearean bug; up until the time he was drafting his novel, he had never properly appreciated Shakespeare, possibly because the editions he had been exposed to had lousy font. With his “discovery” of Shakespeare, Melville went on to rewrite Moby-Dick, saturating it in Old Testament allusions and creating characters, most specifically Ahab, who embodies evil and gives it a voice. Olson argues that the language of Pip and the omniscient narrator, Ishmael, are also peppered with Shakespearian influence and language, particularly as they pertain to Melville’s ample margin notes to King Lear, Hamlet, MacBeth and Othello. These Melville annotations represent the Holy Grail of literary scholarship. Anyone who appreciates Moby-Dick should give the Olson’s essay a look.

As with any criticism that is almost 75 years old, many of the observations have been supplanted with more detailed sources and criticism, specifically Olson’s recap of the sinking of the whaleship Essex and the aftermath. Nathaniel Philbrick’s In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex is now the standard text on this subject.

In other instances, Olson extrapolates but with knowledge that we all have, e.g. that Melville was largely out of ideas by the time his family sent him a trip to the Levant. Olson gets away with his theorizing because he is such a good writer and because his theorizing never hijacks his overarching theme on Shakespeare.

Olson is also thorough or would like us to believe that he was. I have a hard time believing that anyone has gotten through Clarel. In any case, Olson’s poetic sensibilities and his breaking up of “chapters” into concise sections that seemingly imitate poetic Cantos make his critical essays a delight to read, especially compared to the plethora of Melville secondary literature that clutters university library shelves.

As the title makes clear, Call Me Ishmael is a study of Moby-Dick and not Melville’s other writings. Although there are some digressions into Clarel there is nary a mention of Melville’s other maritime novels. Nor is there any significant mention of two of the great novellas of world literature, Bartleby, the Scrivener and Benito Cereno. The same can be said of Billy Budd which was still in the process of being rediscovered and properly edited.

[Lou · Rating 3 out of 5]

Call Me Ishmael is a gloss on Melville's Moby Dick, written reminiscent of D.H. Lawrence's Studies in American Literature. I call it a gloss, because Olsen just doesn't analyze Moby Dick but also considers Melville's symbolism, life and earlier and later writings. Olsen's theories were controversial for the time, in that he proposed that there was an earlier draft of Moby Dick which (among other things) did not include a whale. However, this was Charles Olsen's first book and is written like a long prose poem on Melville, religion, the Pacific Ocean and is worth reading if one has read Melville's novel. This is the second time I've read it, and while it was occasionally a good read, it made me want to reread Moby Dick again. In that respect I assume Olsen achieved his purpose.

[Ron · Rating 4 out of 5]

For what it is, an interesting if idiosyncratic reading of Moby Dick. Olson shows his poetic bona fides through his perceptive readings, often a bit enigmatically phrased. I was especially pleased to find that Olson gives early consideration to the fact that the Pequod is a factory, that the whole whaling industry was an extractive enterprise that was dangerous for the whaling crews, and disastrous for the whales. Few others I have read so far make the point that the novel depicts in detail the workaday world of finding, killing and reducing a magnificent animal to barrels of oil for candles and lubricating machinery.

[Clara Martin]

I came to this via Susan Howe - I think it must have been her essay "Where Should The Commander Be" from the collection The Quarry. And like Susan Howe, Charles Olson writes criticism-poetry-documentary. His criticism is arranged with the precision of a montage, it is cut with facts, and, as Howe says, the facts are caesuras. This book introduced me to Melville's wonderful essay on Hawthorne and his (love) letters to Hawthorne, and it definitely makes me want to read Moby-Dick again. There is so much I do not understand in here, and yet for some reason that's exactly the kind of writing I love. It is veiled criticism - "mobled" - Moby.