////"Moby Dick," for example. Admirable, but virtually unread till the 1920s. And what's been its impact on America anyway? (A 1999 educational TV show asked the question, "A battle between Good and Evil, or a cry to save the whales?")////

It's a creation epic--one that would replace the Bible in the Western world if I had my way. Melville himself left clues to this. Referring to Moby Dick, he once wrote, "Though I wrote of gospels of the 19th century, I should die in the gutter." Right on both counts.