SALEM — “Moby-Dick” has the most famous opening sentence in American literature: “Call me Ishmael.” That’s it, but what a lot gets packed into those three words.

When “Moby-Dick” was published in 1851 to bad reviews and terrible sales, the financial setback left Melville dependent on his wife’s family.

After “Moby-Dick,” whenever Melville tried again, the literary sharks came for blood; after his novel, “Pierre, or the Ambiguities,” the headline of one journal called him insane.

"Moby-Dick" was published in 1851 on the brink of the Civil War. The ship represents a microcosm of a diverse and divided country. Melville grappled with the whale’s symbolic, ...

Members of the cast of the A.R.T.'s "Moby-Dick." (Courtesy Maria Baranova) In Herman Melville’s iconic 1851 novel “Moby-Dick,” the crew of the Pequod stalks the titular whale for three years.

Finally, an action-packed “Moby Dick” for the rest of us, starring William Hurt as Ahab, Ethan Hawke as Starbuck and one very crafty CGI sea monster.

Moby-Dick at the Metropolitan Opera through March 29, metopera.org. Advertisement. About Our Ads; Solve the daily Crossword. 31,136 people played the daily Crossword recently.

Moby Dick stayed open seven days a week, with Daryoush working nearly every day, closing only on Thanksgiving and Christmas. Pita bread baking in a tandoor oven at Moby Dick. Photo by Rey Lopez for ...

“Moby Dick was the most difficult picture I ever made,” Huston wrote in 1980. “I lost so many battles during it that I even began to suspect that my assistant director was plotting against me.

"Moby-Dick" is clearly an existentialist text, though it was published almost a century before the term was coined. One of the founders of modern existentialism, ...

Until a few years ago, the American artist Wu Tsang never had much interest in “Moby-Dick,” Herman Melville’s classic 1851 novel. Its subject — an obsessed mariner’s quest for a mythical ...