 | Merton M. Sealts, Professor Merton M Sealts, Jr. - 1982 - 446 pages
...indifferent" feeling with that of Melville himself upon the completion of Moby-Dick. To Hawthorne he declared, "I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb. ... It is a strange feeling—no hopefulness is in it, no despair. Content—that is it; and irresponsibility;... | |
 | Michael Rogin - 1985 - 374 pages
...survived. Those who killed the red man and enslaved the black met their manifest destiny in Moby-Dick. "I have written a wicked book and feel spotless as the lamb." 90 If the end of Moby-Dick imagines the end of slavery, then the price is the destruction of the ship... | |
 | Emory Elliott - 1988 - 1312 pages
...philosophical allegiance to Ishmael. The ending of Moby-Dick was a temporary catharsis for Melville — "I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb," he told Hawthorne — but what would happen when Melville awoke from the dream of an exhilarating god-defiance... | |
 | Ronald E. Martin - 1991 - 428 pages
...the roadside, is the flawless triumph of art" (13). 3 Herman Melville and the Failure of Higher Truth I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb. — Letter to Hawthorne about Moby-Dick It was Herman Melville and Emily Dickinson who took the destruction... | |
 | Philip Roth - 1992 - 316 pages
...completing Moby Dick. I pinned it up along with the other inspirational matter on my bulletin board. "I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb." Now I knew that no matter how hard I tried I could never really hope to be wicked; but perhaps, if... | |
 | John Bryant - 1993 - 331 pages
...there is no creating the creative without humor. On completing Moby-Dick, Melville told Hawthorne: "I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb. Ineffable socialities are in me. ... It is a strange feeling—no hopefulness is in it, no despair. Content—that is it; and irresponsibility;... | |
 | Branimir M. Rieger - 1994 - 248 pages
...Caught in this dilemma he could on one hand exclaim "Dollars damn me" and on the other proudly confess: "I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb" (Letters 127, 128, 142). Ahab's "mad" blasphemous words during his unholy baptism of the harpoons,... | |
 | Victor H. Strandberg - 1994 - 236 pages
...American tradition, as for example in Melville's "Christian writer oxymoron" after finishing Moby-Dick: "I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb." 41 Janet Handler Burstein put it well in "Cynthia Ozick and the Transgressions of Art": In asking whether... | |
 | Leslie A. Fiedler - 1997 - 524 pages
...endings are revealed as final macabre ironies, blasphemous jokes at the expense of the unwary reader. "I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb," Melville writes, giving away the secret; but he does not speak it aloud, only confides it in the ear... | |
 | Paul Seydor - 1999 - 442 pages
...Hawthorne's could be or ironic in quite the way Melville might have had in mind when he said of Moby-Dick, "I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb." It no longer embodies what Frederick Crews has described as that method of compromise, euphemism, and... | |
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A sense of unspeakable security is in me this moment, on account of your having understood the book. I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb. 
