Dear Friend of Bristol BookFest,
A best-selling historian, a whale expert, four Melville scholars, one of whom combines her scholarly expertise with some daring sailing adventures of her own – that’s what’s in store for you early in 2024 as BookFest moves into its fourth year with a close look at Moby-Dick.
As a special kick-off, we’re joining forces with the Herreshoff Marine Museum to bring Nathaniel Philbrick from his Nantucket home to Bristol, to help us answer that perennial question: “Why read Moby-Dick?” The author of the National Book Award-winning In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex (2000), Philbrick will speak at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, March 5 at a ticketed event at the Museum ($60, including reception). Ticket are on sale now at herreshoff.org/events.
You can register starting January 1 for our weekend BookFest event – which takes place Friday, April 5, and Saturday, April 6, in historic downtown Bristol. (Details at bristolbookfest.com).
Our keynoter is Declan Kiely, Director of Special Collections and Exhibitions at the New York Public Library – and a “star” from our Mary Shelley program in 2022. Drawing on the NYPL’s extensive Melville collections, he will trace the rise and fall – and 20th-century leap into fame – of this enigmatic writer.
The Saturday program brings to Bristol four diverse scholars: Richard Brodhead, who recently retired as president of Duke University after many years of teaching at Yale, and who will examine the influence of Hawthorne on Melville; Mary K. Bercaw Edwards, of the University of Connecticut and Mystic Seaport, who will reveal what it was like to crew on a 19th-century whaler; Robert Rocha, the “science guy” at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, and Cyrus Patell, of New York University and NYU Abu Dhabi, who will explore Shakespeare’s impact on Melville.
It's going to be quite a “Nantucket sleighride” of whaling lore and Melville close study, with ample opportunities for discussion – so please put BookFest on your 2024 calendars right now!
But you don’t have to wait until April 2024 to leap into Moby-Dick:
BookFest is not just a weekend event, but now includes a series of supporting events, most of them taking place at the Rogers Free Library. For example, I’ll be facilitating a guided reading of the novel over eight Thursday evenings in January and February. You can take part in as many or as few sessions as fit your schedule. The emphasis is on informal group discussion of the text – 100 pages a week – no previous knowledge needed. (More details coming soon at bristolbookfest.com).
Looking for a special holiday gift for the avid reader on your list?
How about a copy of Moby-Dick, probably the greatest American novel of all time? There are many editions, at a full range of prices – our partners at Inkfish Books in Warren can help you there. Or how about as a stocking-stuffer Nathaniel Philbrick’s Why Read Moby-Dick? (a $16 paperback) – the best short intro to the novel?
Happy reading!
Charles Calhoun
