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Category: Literature

Posted on February 10, 2020December 29, 2020

Sizing Up Walt Whitman & Friends

It’s about this time that I’m usually wrapping up my teaching of American Romanticism. We’ve made it through Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and we’re just about done with my favorite, Henry David Thoreau. Over the years, I’ve made deletions and additions to the scope and sequence, hoping …

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Posted on January 19, 2020December 29, 2020

Another Bartleby Surprise

Last year around this time, I launched The White Whale with a post not about Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, but rather his short story, “Bartleby, the Scrivener.” It’s such a curious story, and when I had written about it before, I had been obsessing about John Jacob Astor, a name mentioned by the narrator at the …

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Posted on November 17, 2019December 29, 2020

Reflections on Moby-Dick and The White Whale

Last week, a friend sent along a message about November 14, noting that this day marked the publication of Moby-Dick by Herman Melville. That would have been back in 1851, making the book 168 years old. He also said that makes November 14, White Whale Day, too, so I thought I’d take some time to …

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Posted on September 30, 2019December 29, 2020

Making Lists & Favorite Books for Teenage Boys

I think I’ve always been a list maker. My wife often discovers scraps of paper with some of my lists. I make them in notebooks and on yellow legal pads, too. I’ve tried writing them on my phone using the notepad app, but there’s something sterile about it. It’s just not as satisfying as pencil …

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Posted on July 26, 2019December 29, 2020

The Curious Case of Thoreau’s Bean Field

Gardening is a strange pleasure. In Walden, Henry David Thoreau describes his experience in the bean field as a “small Herculean labor” and a long battle, the Trojans taking the form of worms, weeds, and woodchucks. For a weapon, he recounts leveling his enemy with his long-handled hoe, turning dirt and dust over the weeds …

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About This Blog

Although I consider myself a teacher and a writer, I am, first and foremost, a student.  My blog, therefore, is about looking deeper than the surface level, which I always challenge my high school students to do.  We’re always after Ahab’s White Whale, whether it be interpretation, research, or simply the white page before the writer.

—Aaron Sinkovich, The White Whale

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