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Comment by legerdemain | Hacker News Reader

Moby Dick more or less ruined Melville, who was until that point a relatively popular author of exotic adventure stories. It made no money and fell into obscurity for 70 years before being rediscovered by a new generation of critics whose goal was to identify and champion "the great American novel."

Keep this in mind when you make your novel more like Moby Dick.

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If your goal is financial success, there's a million and one easier paths to take than becoming an author of novels.

Moby Dick will probably still be read in a thousand years, and that's the kind of success most authors dream of. Even if cash-flow is king, it's not the primary motivation for most artists.

BTW I looked it up, and it seems like Melville was never very financially successful from writing during his lifetime. Moby Dick might have been the nail on the coffin - it didn't become popular until after his death - but it can't be entirely blamed for his financial troubles, and pooh-poohing the idea of writing weird and interesting novels because one author 150 years ago wasn't financial successful is a really dislikable form of gatekeeping.

How did one failed novel become ruin?

Nothing he wrote after it experienced more than modest success, while much of his output was rejected or criticized. His health and finances declined. He was forced to abandon writing as the main source of his income. His family worried for his sanity. He was little read at the time of his death.

But was that because of Moby Dick?

No. It was followed by the highly experimental flop Pierre. Maybe the closest he came later to getting back to his marketable sea-adventure formula was Benito Cereno.

Aside: There's a grossly unjust moral presumption in Cereno, one that can perhaps most charitably be accounted for by a desperation for book sales on Melville's part, and his assumption of benighted social attitudes among the intended readership.

Sounds like a fairly common case of late stage authorship.

Actually a pretty good point in an era when marketability is more important than ever.

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