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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 October 2020
As her epigraph to manhattan beach, Jennifer Egan chooses one of ishmael's typically abstract musings in moby-dick: “Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever.” Yet more relevant is his observation in the opening paragraphs of Melville's novel:
[T]here now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs—commerce surrounds it with her surf. Right and left, the streets take you waterwards…. Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon…. What do you see?—Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries. (795)