NONFICTION - Nov. 19, 1995

UNPAINTED TO THE LAST: Moby-Dick and Twentieth Century American Art by Elizabeth A. Schultz (University Press of Kansas, 382 pp., $39.). Though a powerful contender in the Great American Novel competition, Herman Melville’s tale of whales and men did not immediately attract a flock of illustrators. In fact, it was not until 1896, five years after Melville’s death and 45 years after its initial publication, that the first illustrated edition appeared. Since then things have speeded up considerably, and about 70 versions with pictures have been printed in English alone, making the book “the most continuously, frequently, and diversely depicted of American literary works.” Elizabeth A. Schultz, a professor of English at the land-locked University of Kansas, divides this scholarly tome into two sections--one for book illustrations (comics definitely count) and the other for painting, sculpture and even architecture that the novel has inspired. Special attention is paid to Rockwell Kent, whose 280 Moby engravings so inspired William Faulkner that he asked the artist for a picture of Ahab, one that would never leave his library. Filled with beautifully reproduced illustrations that speak to the difficulty of being simultaneously true to the book and to one’s own visions, this carefully reasoned study also shows why Maurice Sendak felt “you can’t illustrate Melville. The levels of ambiguity and the levels of subtext preclude pictures.” So the author might have thought: The book’s provocative title is a quote from the novel.