How many times have you read Moabidic?

Fifty is probably reasonable.

I'm 50 years old.

I read Moabidic for the first time at the age of 17.

What was your impression on your first reading at 17 years old?

Well that was the launch event of really my whole life.

Your life, not just your academic career, your life.

It's pretty central to my life.

I mean I have a tattoo of a historic harpoon on my arm.

It's pretty, it's been pretty formative.

Part of that was out of the kind of perversity of the kid who wanted to love the book that

all of my classmates were groaning about having to read.

I could not believe the book.

If it were not for Moabidic, Wailing would be one of a series of interests, but because

Moabidic has loomed so large.

You went all in on Wailing then, huh?

It's yeah, it's impossible to escape.

Mr. Blum is a professor of English at the Pennsylvania State University.

Her specialty is oceanic and polar literature, including the writings of Arctic explorers.

But she reserves her fiercest attention for Herman Melville.

Melville was descended from relatively well off and well-named families on both sides,

but his father failed in business when Herman was young.

...