Talking Big

Melville invites us to turn the tables on him by starting with Etymology. We are miles from Call me Ishmael here. So, turn the tables. An usher is an assistant teacher, a job he once had. But the etymology of usher comes from Old French and Latin for a doorman. He’s got a doorkeeper at the opening portal of his wonderbook, his book about a ship of death.

Why is Usher capitalized here? The pale Usher. A trip back in time through Poe’s famous story “The Fall of the House of Usher” leads one to Hezekiah Usher (1615-1676), the first known bookseller in America. “He loved to dust his old grammars; it somehow mildly reminded him of his mortality.”