A Melville bio might be sobering. Melville's Moby Dick was so widely ignored (at best) that he quit writing prose for decades before starting Billy Budd a few

A Melville bio might be sobering. Melville's Moby Dick was so widely ignored (at best) that he quit writing prose for decades before starting Billy Budd a few years before his death. By that time, Moby was out-of-print ... it wasn't a 'work of genius' or a 'great American classic' for decades longer.