All Astir

Abstract

All Astir Mary K. Bercaw Edwards Click for larger view View full resolution Melville visited the Musée de Cluny, then called the Hôtel de Cluny, in 1849; conference participants followed in his footsteps on June 29, 2022, during the Thirteenth International Melville conference. Photo credit Mary K. Bercaw Edwards. The Thirteenth International Melville Society Conference, “Melville’s Energies: Aesthetics, Politics, Ecologies,” held in Paris, France, on June 27–30, 2022, was a resounding success. The conference was hosted at Sorbonne Université and Université Sorbonne Nouvelle situated in the Quartier Latin, which Melville explored during his 1849 trip to Paris, on days 1 and 4, and at Université de Paris on days 2 and 3. The organizing committee—Thomas Constantinesco (Sorbonne Université), Hélène Cottet (Université de Lille), Michael Jonik (University of Sussex), Ronan Ludot-Vlasak (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle), Édouard Marsoin (Université de Paris), and [End Page 51] Cécile Roudeau (Université de Paris)—did an outstanding job of planning, organizing, and running the conference. Participants felt much gratitude to all involved for such a rich and rewarding four days. In this issue of Leviathan, we are honored to include the plenary addresses of Jennifer Greiman and Jeffrey Insko. We also present four conference reports and a photo gallery. (More photos are available at .) We wish to thank the plenary speakers for their engaging talks; Alex Benson, Tony McGowan, Christopher Rice, and Maki Sadahiro for their conference reports; and Alan Van Brackel for his wonderful photography. William Reese’s extensive Melville collection went up for auction in September at Christie’s. Barbara Schneider attended the last day of the auction and sent the following short piece and images. Thoughts on viewing the Herman Melville Collection of William S. Reese by Barbara Schneider, a serial participant in the Moby-Dick Marathon in New Bedford. “One of the pleasures of collecting Melville has been getting to know the scholarly community who study, a pleasantly obsessed group of people. I am fortunate in having sufficient material of interest that they want to come see me—running a very small private research library is one of the most enjoyable aspects of book collecting.” So said the late William Reese in a 1993 essay in the Gazette of the Grolier Club, detailing how he assembled his impressive collection of Melville material (William S. Reese, “Collecting Herman Melville,” The Gazette of the Grolier Club, 1993 ). That collection was auctioned online last September [2022], with sales from the auction totaling $2,783,214. Now that the books have been disbursed to dealers, collectors, and institutions, the print catalogue and the online description of the lots on Christie’s website () are the only things that remain of the collection. “The ghost is spouted up, and away we sail to fight some other world, and go through young life’s old routine again” (Chapter 98, “Stowing Down and Clearing Up,” Moby-Dick). Melville’s August 1 birthday did not go unnoticed in 2022. Amanda Lehr did a riotous piece in McSweeney’s, “If Starbucks Had Been Named After Other Characters from Moby-Dick,” imagining the work environment if the coffee company were named Ahabs, Queequegs, Ishmaels, Pips, Tashtegos, Daggoos, Stubbs, Flasks, Father Mapples, Fedallahs, or Moby Dicks. Jessie Li’s daily newsletter in The New Yorker ended, “John Updike reflects on the critical failure of the novel at the time of its publication, and the ‘subsequent withdrawal into wounded silence’ of Melville, who was born on this day in 1819,” with a link to Updike’s May 2, 1982, reflection, “Herman Melville’s Soft Withdrawal.” Just [End Page 52] Click for larger view View full resolution William Reese’s Herman Melville on display at Christie’s. Photo credit Barbara Schneider. Click for larger view View full resolution Illustration from Lot 693 Rockwell Kent (1882–1971). Original set of proofs of the illustrations and decorations for the Lakeside Press edition of Melville’s Moby Dick, or The Whale (Chicago: R.E. Donnelly & Sons Co...