Herman Melville

He was famous for jumping ship. Then he wrote the book that emptied the room. Typee and Omoo sold because readers wanted cannibals and surf. Moby-Dick did not. After that: a clerk who would prefer not to, a slave ship that will not stay a legal problem, a confidence man on a riverboat, a customs inspector’s badge for nineteen years, poetry nobody asked for, and Billy Budd left in a drawer. The revival came decades after the funeral. The whale is the monument. The silence after it is the life.