a. "Call me Ishmael" = The First Three Words b. Queequeg's Coffin = The Last Bit. c. there was a chapter called Cetology. d. Ambergris is (I think) Whale Sperm, e. At some point in the novel, I'm PRETTY sure someone puts on a whale penis and runs around. They're huge, whale penii, like 6 feet, easy.
That's about it, and I'm sure Herman Melville (I guess I remember that too) would be a little irked, but...
...if I had an idea, tomorrow, to write a book about an old guy chasing after a whale, I'd stop myself.
My point is, that one of the -other- benefits of having a breadth of knowledge, is that it helps prevent unintentional derivativeness and mimicry.
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Also, this author also assumes that the only worthwhile knowledge is that which can be recalled consciously at will.
Personally, I find that knowledge is a lot like any artist's artistic vocabulary. You consume and consume and consume, and then at some point you start creating, and what you end up making is the conscious and unconscious combination of all of the things you've seen/heard/read before.
The guitarist doesn't realize it's his love of The Beatles and Dr. Dre that's creating that work, but it is.
Those are just two things off of the top of my head. And by that, I mean these are two ideas that are undoubtedly the distillation of ideas I've heard/read elsewhere. Like maybe "On Writing" by Stephen King.
(The Above Idea about the distillation of ideas is likely the distillation of a speech from a great movie, which I'm sure I can find...)
"You come into a bar, you read some obscure passage, and then pretend you, you..pawn it off as your own..as your own idea just to impress some girls..?" - Good Will Hunting (1997)
And by "girls" he means "Hacker News."
(Try not to make that substitution too liberally however, or you'll be sorely disappointed when you walk into the "Live Hacker News! Hacker News Hacker News!" bar.)