Preface

Summary

One late December evening I exited my hotel in midtown Manhattan with an eye toward Greenwich Village. I was planning to visit Café Melville, a bar and grill where Penguin Books was hosting a gala reception to celebrate the release of its new edition of Moby-Dick. I had been hoping to catch a cab from the hotel, but as soon as I stepped outside, I noticed a long line of college professors snaking around the corner cabstand. I knew they were professors mainly because my hotel was crawling with them. They had come to New York for the same reason I had. Having recently completed my doctorate and taken a position at a small teacher's college in rural Oklahoma, I was one of several thousand English professors in town to attend the annual meeting of the Modern Language Association (MLA).

As I stood outside the hotel wondering whether to add myself to the tail of the taxi queue, Bill, a grizzled professor from a small liberal arts college in rural New Hampshire, spun out of the revolving doors and ended up standing right next to me. Since we had met at Leo Lemay's annual MLA party two nights earlier, Bill recognized me and said hello. He asked if I was going to Greenwich Village for the Melville celebration. When I said yes, he suggested we walk a block or two from the hotel and catch a cab on the adjoining avenue. Yielding to his suggestion, I joined him, and together we left the shelter of our hotel awning and ventured into the rain, a cold misty rain that could not quite make up its mind whether it should turn to snow.

When the nearest traffic light changed, a flotilla of cabs approached. I put my hand up like a crossing guard and Bill flailed his arms windmillfashion, but we had difficulty getting a cab to stop. Eventually a courteous taxi driver turned toward us, no doubt pitying the out-of-town professors who had no idea how to hail a cab. We slid into its springy back seat, and Bill directed the driver to Café Melville, located on the corner of Barrow and Washington.