Moby-Dick in Pictures: One Drawing for Every Page

by Matt Kish

A collection of illustrations inspired by lines from every single page of the 552-page Signet Classics paperback edition of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick Inspired by one of the world’s greatest novels, Ohio artist Matt Kish set out on an epic voyage of his own one day in August 2009. More than one hundred and fifty years following the original publication of Moby-Dick, Kish began illustrating Herman Melville’s classic, creating images based on text selected from every page of the 552-page Signet Classics paperback edition. Completely self-taught, Kish refused to set any boundaries for the artwork and employed a deliberately low-tech approach in response to the increasing popularity of born-digital art and literature. He used found pages torn from old, discarded books, as well as a variety of mediums, including ballpoint pen, marker, paint, crayon, ink, and watercolor. By layering images on top of existing words and images, Kish has crafted a visual masterpiece that echoes the layers of meaning in Melville’s narrative. In retrospect, Kish says he feels as foolhardy as Ishmael, the novel’s narrator, and as obsessed as Captain Ahab in his quest for the great white whale. “I see now that the project was an attempt to fully understand this magnificent novel, to walk through every sun-drenched word, to lift up all the hatches and open all the barrels, to smell, taste, hear, and see every seabird, every shark, every sailor, every harpooner, and every whale,” he says. “It was a hard thing, a very painful thing, but the novel now lives inside me in a away it never could have before.” Kish spent nearly every day for eighteen months toiling away in a small closet he converted into an art studio. In order to share the work with family and friends, he started the blog “One Drawing for Every page of Moby-Dick,” where he posted art and brief description about his process on a daily basis.

Genres: Art, Fiction, Graphic Novels, Classics, Comics, Novels, Picture Books

600 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2011

Reviews

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 5 out of 5]

So I was initially just going to skim this book--once again, I am not going to read Moby Dick right now, anyway, I just wanted to see what this crazy guy did and let you know about it--but then I slowly got obsessed with Matt Kish's obsession about a fictional ship captain named Ahab who was obsessed about the revenge killing of a white whale. Moby Dick you already know is a big book, even if you haven't read it, Melville's obsessive treatment--including encyclopedia entries on various whales--of a mad voyage.

Kish was obsessed with Moby Dick and had read it several times, but one day he read Zak Smith's (equally obsessive) book about Ulysses, Smith creating an illustration for each page of that brick of a book, and thought: I'm going to take a couple years of my life and jeopardize my career and every relationship I am in by creating this 552 page book that features an illustration for every page of my beloved Moby Dick. His essay that opens the book is amazing; he uses a pretty low tech, non-digital approach to each illustration, making them on found pages torn from old books, and using a variety of media.

Here's some of it from his website:

http://www.matt-kish.com/moby-dick/20...

Here is my review of a comics adaptation of Moby Dick by Christophe Chabouté:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Esteban del Mal · Rating 5 out of 5]

How great is Goodreads?

This great.

I found out about this here book somehow or other because my antennae are always up when it comes to anything about Moby-Dick. I add it to my 'to-read' list. Resident nice guy, tim, notices this and, as you'll see in the comments below, let's me know that Powell's has ORIGINAL PRINTS from the artist on for sale in their gallery.

I call Powell's. Am treated as a curiosity because I don't live in Portland and can't get down there to claim one. I am abandoned to voicemail oblivion.

But behold! I am become Ahab.

I get ahold of my little Portland buddy, Fedallah Eh?/! She huffs it down to the gallery and gets somebody there to text me images of available prints. I pick one. Eh?/! buys it -- BUYS IT -- for me and doesn't want the money until after I actually have it in my hot little fingers.

Which won't be until next month because all of the artwork is still on display. I will soon have something in my house that was displayed in a gallery. And is based on Moby-Dick.

Goodreads win.

[Paul Bryant · Rating 4 out of 5]

Now I have a reason to enter the Euromillions lottery and win a cool 100 million smackers. Because I now want to commission a book just like this wild, obsessive compulsive disorder of a book only for James Joyce's Ulysses. What I will do (when I win) is hire 782 artists, one for every page of Ulysses, and their contract will stipulate that they all sit down on Bloomsday (16th June) and made a lovely picture inspired by a specific given page of JJ's insane novel. So, copying Matt Kish's idea, but doing it slightly differently. It woould be magnificent. It would win prizes. I would establish a prize myself, and award it to it.

As for Moby Dick in Pictures, well, Moby is one of my four favourite dicks, the others being Phillip K, Nixon, and Philip Marlowe, who was a private one, and if ever a book deserved some lunatic to sit down EVERY DAY for a year and a half and NO TIME OFF and do a picture based on a random quote for each and every page, then it's bold Moby.

Ahab said to Starbuck
When that whale is caught and canned
Would you make me a double-tall-decaf-skinny
In your little old latte stand

Moby Dick was a great white whale
And a low down dirty rat
You ate up all my shipmates
And my John B. Stetson hat

(non-traditional folk song)

[Mariℓina · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have yet to decide if this book is a masterpiece or a complete nonsense..
Its grandiose style and the very well formed relationship between the book itself and the drawings are two contradictory elements that make it unique yet at points very disturbing..


Right from the start you know this book is not what it comes to mind when someone hears Moby-Dick!
That is both good and bad..
Yes it's from a totally new perspective but the disadvantage is caused by the actual fact that maybe it's too much!


The greatest characteristic this book carries for me it's how the artist moved by a certain quote from every page acts impulsively and recreates his imagination inside the book! That was downright amazing..


Edgy, raw, magnetizing, it will catch your eye from the beggining to the end.. You will turn the pages anxiously for what you'll find next..
Shocking in an alternative way and appealing to people with different aesthetics.. Very pleasing yet pompous..
An incredible coffee table book!



THOUGHTS ABOUT THE BOOK
- Very well thought..
- Preferable on paperback because the kindley doesn't do justice to the art..
- The colors and techniques are variable and all nicely done and prominent..
- One of a kind book..

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I learned of this book shortly before I began Moby Dick and was intrigued, but figured such a huge book would cost me a heap of postage. Thank you amazon.de for making this purchase possible and less painful than expected.

This is a beautiful companion to Moby Dick, full of inpired drawings and graphic work, one based on every page of the book. It's the kind of thing only someone who really loved the book could do, and that's what makes it all the more beautiful, the ekphrastic homage! It was touching in that way, where you see how Moby Dick really lives within this artist.

When I was younger and had not yet begun writing poetry, I used to copy out poems I loved by hand as a way of internalizing them and, honestly, showing my devotion to them in the only way that seemed possible. How I felt doing that is similar to the vibe I got going through this book - the artist making Moby Dick part of himself, wanting in a way to interact wíth it.

Very impressed. I totally recommend this to anyone who likes Moby Dick, or any art lover afraid to embark on the reading alone.

[tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

It must have taken some Ahab-grade obsession to see this ambitious project all the way through to completion. Fortunately, like Ishmael, Matt Kish narrowly escapes annihilation to bring back his labor of love intact. Every drawing accompanies a quote pulled from each page of Moby Dick, visually re-imagining it. At 552 drawings completed roughly one a day without a break, one might expect to encounter waning inspiration if not sheer exhaustion at some point. Amazingly, a high-level of creativity is sustained throughout. The majority of drawings are put down over an assortment of found paper, adding and revealing layers of depth. However, the most striking pieces to me are the black and white line drawings done on top of watercolor paper or Bristol board. Though, there’s not a stinker in the bunch as Matt Kish's passion shines through on every page. Not only is this a wonderful tribute to Herman Melville’s masterpiece, it is a worthy supplement to the original that any fan will not want to miss.

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

A marvelous achievement -- like Zak Smith's "Pictures Showing What Happens on Each Page of Gravity's Rainbow," but better, I think, for its collage of textual inserts page by page: images and captions for a capsized book.

(Read in an e-Book version on my laptop.)

[Nancy]

Whoa! I clicked on this goodreads-giveaway book in the spirit of I-wonder-what-that-would-be-like. I won a copy! Now, I'm not sure what to make of it. I'm not sure if it is right to say I "read" Moby-Dick in Pictures since I still can't decide how many stars it is worth. It is not like any book I seen. It only has bits of the text of Moby-Dick so is not really a graphic-novel. The style(s) of the art work is not at all what I would have guessed. What would Melville have thought of this? You could spend a very long time with each page, figuring out the layers and the connection to the page it represents. Is it a masterpiece worth the time or not? I can't tell yet.

[Ray Nessly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Moby-Dick In Pictures by Matt Kish is one of the the best books I read this year, and one that I refer to often for inspiration. 552 remarkable, beautiful, ingenious illustrations, one for every page of the classic novel, Moby Dick. It's a great bargain too. $28 ... that's, like, two cents a pound. (It's a BIG book.)

[Feliks · Rating 4 out of 5]

Made an impulse buy, based on what excerpts I encountered on-line. It's a superb picture-book for my coffee-table (if I had a coffee-table). Also purchased one for a friend in the hospital. Anyway, great for flipping through--the thing is THICK! And handsomely printed, large-dimension. Supple 'matte'-finished pages for the fingertips. Graphic-art delight. And anyway, since this tome has no actual reading to be done (just quotations on each page) and since one simply browses it at random, I am simply going to mark it as 'read' and increase my book-tally for the year. Yes, I can do that.

[Deirdre · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an outstanding book and that is an understatement! It is a must have for any English or Art Teacher! Process and commitment is an endeavor and this book brings joy, energy and excitement to the undertaking. I love the concept and the work. BRAVO!

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.”

“Better it is to perish in that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee.”

“To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.”

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is more of what I would call a Coffee Table Book of artwork. Each page of Moby Dick is represented in art. The artist is completely self taught and used a variety of mediums for the art including some unconventional sounding things:
According to the blurb on Amazon he "used found pages torn from old, discarded books, as well as a variety of mediums, including ballpoint pen, marker, paint, crayon, ink, and watercolor. By layering images on top of existing words and images, Kish has crafted a visual masterpiece that echoes the layers of meaning in Melville’s narrative."
He avoided the more technical types of art such as digital and computerized graphics.
I purchased this because Moby Dick is my favorite novel and I was very curious to reconnect with the novel without taking a month to reread it in it's entirety (I've read it three times and will do so again though and expect to find more that I missed the first three times).
Perusing this book (rather slowly as it has art for every page of the 552 page Signet edition of Moby Dick) was a way to reconnect with the story of Moby Dick in a more compressed way as it has a quote from the same page with each work of art.
As you can imagine it is fairly thick and heavy oversized trade paperback. Not something to carry to Starbucks to read while enjoying a Grande Latte. As mentioned it's more the type of book I would have on my desk or coffee table to flip through and read a few pages at a time.
I honestly did not like all of the art as I would have preferred some more conventional paintings to be represented as well but overall it was a pleasing book and a nice addition to my library. I would love to see the original art on a wall of a gallery.
Matt Kish, the author, also has given the same treatment to Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" another favorite of mine.

[Chris Blocker · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a wonderful tribute to a great novel.

When I received Moby-Dick in Pictures I decided it was imperative I view the book simultaneously with Moby-Dick . With a full reading list and an uncertainty about Melville's classic work, it took a little too long to get around to it. Thumbing through these artistic interpretations, I appreciated the work, but viewing these as I believe the artist intended them to be viewed, alongside Moby Dick, made them immensely richer.

There is so much that makes Moby-Dick in Pictures amazing: the sheer scope, the variety of styles and media, the progression of the artist. Kish worked on this project for over a year, making one picture on average for every day. Looking at these pictures, you get a sense of the day the artist was having, his relationship with the words on the page, his interpret ion of Melville. You see the growth of the art from a hobby to a passion. And knowing that Kish is not a trained artist makes his art all the more meaningful; here is an artist putting a face to his love of literature with no idea what he'll find; what I believe Kish may have found in the end was a reflection of himself in the waters of Herman Melville.

Reading the introduction is a requirement to better understanding and appreciating this book. Even without this understanding, I believe the work is strong. I am eager to see what other works of art Kish produces in the future.

*Received from Goodreads' First Reads program*

[Jared Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

An affinity for Moby Dick can be hard to explain. The book runs long, droning at times, yet still stands as a quintessentially American classic. The endless attempts to transform the book into other modalities -- textual, visual, theatrical, cinematic -- may too be an American cultural tradition.

Kish has done a fine job for our generation. I'm impressed by the very feat of producing an original artwork, once per day, for every page of a nearly six-hundred page book. But Kish has done more than simply illustrate Moby Dick; he's made Melville accessible by a nation that feeds on mere impressions of narrative. Pictures really do speak thousands of words in Kish's art.

[Alfonso · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was INCREDIBLE!!!!! I wasn't to sure what to expect when I entered the giveaway....but was pleasantly surprised when I received my copy in the mail. I had a graphic novel in mind. I am not really an artsy kind of person but this might have changed my outlook a bit. I read Moby Dick when I was very young and did not remember as well as I would have liked, so I went to the library and picked it up. Matt Kish does an excellent job portraying the story through his art. I was very impressed with this book and spent quite a bit of time with it. 5 stars well earned. I won it through goodreads firstreads.

[Edward Rathke · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is going to be an unpopular opinion, but I didn't really care for this book.

I love most of Kish's artwork that I've come across. I love Moby Dick. This seemed like it was made for people like me, yeah?

While I like what he's doing in here and I like the idea behind the whole thing, his vision of Moby Dick is so vastly different than mine that I actually began to feel repelled by it. I don't know how to explain it better than that, but it kind of hurt me to look at these images at times, and not in a good way.

So, yeah--I recommend checking it out, because it is a cool book, but it just ended up not being for me.

[Molly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very handsome book.

[Stacie]

This was a gift from my friend Anne. It is BEAUTIFUL! I got a little teary when I opened it.

[Emmy · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a project this must have been! Matt Kish decided to do a piece of artwork for every page of Moby-Dick . And I guess this is just proof that every page of that book has some sort of beautiful or ponderous or powerful writing. For each picture he did, he also included the quote, so even though I haven't finished Moby-Dick, I was able to follow along with the story.

In his introduction, Kish says that he does not think of himself as an artist. I'm not sure how he came to that conclusion, since the artwork is simply stunning. Even though it wasn't always my cup of tea, I had to admit that the man has extreme talent, and for the most part, I really liked what I was seeing. Sometimes, I would find myself transfixed on one page or another, or even one part of the image or another, admiring his technique, his skill, and his interpretation of each line.

I also really liked how he interpreted the characters. From the staring red eye that became Ahab to Queequeg's spiraling green tattoos or even Tashego's bird head, it was interesting to see how each character, even when blended into the background or made into something abstract, was still easy to identify.

All in all, an excellent experience and one that has only increased my appreciation for the other "whale of a book" that inspired it.

[Gavin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was introduced to this book via The Graphic Canon, Vol. 2: From Kubla Khan to the Brontë Sisters to The Picture of Dorian Gray, which had a few pages excerpted, and then it sat on my shelf for 3-4 years until I felt like tackling Moby Dick.

This book isn't so much illustrations for each page as images inspired by a sentence or two from the page. Many of the pictures are pretty abstract, and none is a straightforward illustration. Kish develops an iconography over the course of the book, where Queequeg, say, is represented by an infinity symbol, Ahab has a sort of helmet with a lightning bolt (to represent his scar), and so on.

So the multiple symbols start to layer on each other, and it really is best read in sequence, and not just flipping through looking at random pictures.

As an accompaniment to my current journey through Moby Dick, I really enjoyed it, and I'm glad I picked up this oddball of a book.

One note, though -- I bought the hard-cover, and the binding is atrocious; it broke almost immediately, and I had to tape it up.

[Mycala · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the ninth grade, my English teacher confided in our class that Moby Dick was the most boring book she'd ever read. This made an impression on me. If someone who was a Literature major was bored by it, why should I bother to read it? Since then, this seems to be the consensus when I hear others mention the book, so it surprised me to learn about Matt's early obsession with it and I thought this would be a good way to ease into the story.

I did not find it boring.

Granted, this is not the whole book. Each page represents a page of the book, so there is a quote or an excerpt and a corresponding drawing, painting, or collage to go with it. It's a cool idea.

Will I read the original version any time soon? Most likely, no, but I won't rule it out at some point. For that, I thank Matt and his passion for the story and his creative idea. Mrs. B., if you're reading this, you may want to start here.

[I Watts · Rating 5 out of 5]

Moby Dick is one of my favorite books and Matt Kish has created something excellent by way of his own obsession with it. Not only the drawings and character interpretations lend a wild magic to the story but selecting choice excerpts from the text illuminates how great Melville's writing truly is. When immersed in 500+ pages of the same stuff, one becomes in a way snow blind in the brilliance of of his beautifully writ revelations.

[DaShannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think it was in 2011 at Cincinnati's Books By The Banks that I met Matt Kish and bought his book. Then somehow I talked several people into reading Moby Dick with me and using Kish's book as a guide. It was awesome. We had the best time and enjoyed discussing Moby Dick and gathering to look at Kish's pictures. Kish started this on a blog among friends and then it turned into the book. I'm so glad.

[Aaron the Pink Donut · Rating 3 out of 5]

some of the work is quiet inspired and worth checking out but a lot of filler to be found in this massive collection.

[Lindsay · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's wonderful to see this images while listening to Moby Dick by Melville. I love Kish's approach to illustrating one page of the entire novel.

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love an obsessive artist!

[Antonina Strazimiri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Creative and diligent perspective on Moby Dick. The author was pleasant to talk to, and I love how he signs with a whale drawing! 🐋

[Kati Stevens · Rating 3 out of 5]

The artist is talented, so three stars for admiration, but this is one gruesome art book. The monsters are many.

[Tamara Santos · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book didn’t make me want to ready Moby Dick, and the style of art was not of particular interest. But the epic scope of this project and the way it was executed was so impressive!