Daniel Poppick is a poet and novelist. His debut novel is The Copywriter (2026). He is also the author of the poetry collections Fear of Description (2019), selected for the National Poetry Series, and The Police (2017). His work appears in The New Yorker, The Paris Review Daily, The Drift, Harper's, BOMB, The New Republic, Chicago Review, and other journals.
At Lit Hub Poppick tagged seven books about work. One title on the author's list:
Herman Melville, Moby-DickRead about another book on the list.
Unlike Bartleby, Ishmael would not prefer not to: a hard worker who keeps his head down, he holds a second job as a recording angel for the reader. At one point our narrator overhears Stubb telling Flask that he dreamed that Ahab, their doomed CEO, was a pyramid. In some sense the mystery of Moby-Dick lies not in the whiteness of the whale but in how Ishmael manages to overhear so much on the Pequod, that paradigmatic floating office of American literature. Who is surveilling whom? Stubb’s dream is a little on the nose, but Ahab does serve as a monument to the rapacious pursuit of profit on this intimate vessel as it sails across the watery void.
Moby-Dick appears among GQ's green flag books, Eiren Caffall's ten titles on maritime disasters and ecological collapse, Emily Temple's ten notorious literary slogs that are worth the effort, Aidan Cottrell-Boyce's top ten novels & stories about prophets, James Stavridis's five best books to know the sea, Robert McCrum's top ten Shakespearean books, Bridget Collins's top ten Quakers in fiction, John Boyne's six best books, Kate Christensen's best food scenes in fiction, Emily Temple's ten literary classics we're supposed to like...but don't, Sara Flannery Murphy ten top stories of obsession, Harold Bloom's six favorite books that helped shape "the American Sublime," Charlotte Seager's five well-known literary monomaniacs who take things too far, Ann Leary's top ten books set in New England, Martin Seay's ten best long books, Ian McGuire's ten best adventure novels, Jeff Somers's five top books that will expand your vocabulary and entertain, Four books that changed Mary Norris, Tim Dee's ten best nature books, the Telegraph's fifteen best North American novels of all time, Nicole Hill's top ten best names in literature to give your dog, Horatio Clare's five favorite maritime novels, the Telegraph's ten great meals in literature, Brenda Wineapple's six favorite books, Scott Greenstone's top seven allegorical novels, Paul Wilson's top ten books about disability, Lynn Shepherd's ten top fictional drownings, Peter Murphy's top ten literary preachers, Penn Jillette's six favorite books, Peter F. Stevens's top ten nautical books, Katharine Quarmby's top ten disability stories, Jonathan Evison's six favorite books, Bella Bathurst's top 10 books on the sea, John Mullan's lists of ten of the best nightmares in literature and ten of the best tattoos in literature, Susan Cheever's five best books about obsession, Christopher Buckley's best books, Jane Yolen's five most important books, Chris Dodd's best books, Augusten Burroughs' five most important books, Norman Mailer's top ten works of literature, David Wroblewski's five most important books, Russell Banks' five most important books, and Philip Hoare's top ten books about whales.
--Marshal Zeringue
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