Call Me Ishmael

Charles Olson (1910-1970), an avant garde poet, literary critic, and literary theorist, is the author of The Maximus Poems, The Distances, The Human Universe and Other Essays, and In Cold Hell, in Thicket.

Not only important, but apocalyptic. New York Herald Tribune One of the most stimulating essays ever written on Moby Dick, and for that matter on any piece of literature, and the forces behind it. San Francisco Chronicle Olson has been a tireless student of Melville and every Melville lover owes him a debt for his Scotland Yard pertinacity in getting on the trail of Melville's dispersed library. -- Lewis Mumford New York Times