Herman Melville at the Chelsea (or Close, Anyway)

Around the corner from the Chelsea on Seventh Avenue, a homeless man, apparently drunk, was mediating a dispute between two of his similarly situated buddies: “Nah, you know the story of Moby Dick, don’t you? They didn’t call him that because he bit his dick off! He bit his leg off! That’s why he walked with a peg leg.”

Well, that clears things up. No need to use a peg leg just because you got your dick bit off. I noticed, however, that the man seemed possibly to be confusing Ahab with the white whale. More importantly, if the name “Moby Dick”—as applied to either man or whale—doesn’t refer to a bitten-off dick, then to what on earth does it refer? I guess I should have stopped and told the men that I, too, was interested in literary criticism. Perhaps together we could have solved this riddle.