I’d never pretend to compete with him-talk about anxiety of influence-but I did try to learn from him, and in a way converse with him. Of the many guides who accompanied me on my journey Melville was perhaps the most important. It’s one of those books that can cast a spell, and under its spell, you can read it many times and each time feel as if you’re reading it anew.

The book deal also helped.īeyond the obvious comparisons, how did Herman Melville’s “Moby-Dick” inform your story? As for quitting the job, well, there’s witchcraft in a map and a chase once begun is difficult to abandon. Then, too, shortly after I set out I became a father. The Yellowness of the Duck turns out to be both more meaningful and mysterious than you’d think, especially in contrast to the ocean, that sublime wilderness of water that was to Melville divine. It began as a kind of joke, but I soon began to take the joke seriously. Once I chose the title, I was almost obliged to go swimming in libraries as well as go sailing on oceans-obliged to contemplate the Yellowness of the Duck. But those meditations also reflect the influence of Melville’s Ishmael. I can’t help playing meditative variations on themes. I’m an essayist first, a journalist second. When did you realize that the story went beyond the chase? And what about the story was compelling enough for you to quit your job, bid a temporary farewell to your family, and sail tempestuous seas? While the title suggests a frenzied hunt for these bath toys lost at sea, your narrative probes deeper, reflecting on themes such as childhood, adventure, and wilderness. He gave a brief synopsis of the story of the bath toys lost at sea, a synopsis that I would only later learn mixed both fancy and fact. In 2003, predictions that the toys would soon make landfall on the coast of New England after eleven years adrift had provoked a flurry of news items, one of which a student of mine had stumbled on. I learned of them late one night in February 2005 while grading papers by students in a twelfth-grade literary journalism course I was teaching. When did you first learn of the strange case of the missing bath toys, and why did you want to go in search of them? An edited version of our conversation appears below: Earlier this week, Hohn and I exchanged e-mails.

Moby-Duck by Donovan Hohn