Monday, December 26, 2005

Did Melville Borrow the Idea for 'Moby Dick'?

paul collins finds story browsing old books on eBay

Weekend Edition - Saturday, December 24, 2005 Literary historian Paul Collins found an odd ad in a rare first edition of Moby Dick author Herman Melville's 1849 novel Redburn. The ad was for another novel -- The Whale and His Captors -- by Rev. Henry Cheever. Collins and Scott Simon discuss the once-common practice of 'improving upon' another author's work.

yes, i only read books with some stealing. if none is done, i'm not going to believe it.

dennis hopper is dead

ccadden writes in to the mindvox list--

Say three HAIL's to Dennis Hopper, who has passed away. Hail! Hail! Hail! Thanks for the ripping memories, and the unique character that you were, and still are.

i hadn't heard anything about it. right away josh comes back with an eminently sensible reply that leaves you wondering just what kind of drugs ccadden is doing. (or if he is reading the some of the new york post's cracker-jack headlines) josh throws a nice twain line about exaggeration and makes you think about information flows of 1820 and of 2005.

What are you talking about? To borrow a phrase from Twain, the reports
of Dennis Hopper's death have been greatly exaggerated. He's currently
working on a film called "The Night We Called It A Day" about Frank
Sinatra. There's nothing about him dying in the news.

http://news.google.com/news?q=dennis+hopper


but offering a link to google as final proof is just a bit too ironic for me to hold back some laughs. will a giant news aggregator report agreement or generate 10,000 generally agreeable webpages?