The New Yorker:

By Mary Norris

Finishing School is a column in which Mary Norris, The New Yorker’s Comma Queen, asks the eternal questions—What’s that you’re shredding? Can a person be cool and old-fashioned at the same time? Is it O.K. to have a “Moby-Dick” T-shirt for every day of the week?—and does her best to behave under increasingly alarming circumstances.

I don’t know how it came to this, but I have an extensive wardrobe of Melville T-shirts. Most of them are mementos of marathon readings of “Moby-Dick” in Sag Harbor; one was a gift from a friend in the Hudson Valley—“You should have this,” she said, handing it over. The ur-shirt is an XXL “Call Me Ishmael” number from Arrowhead, the house in the Berkshires where Melville wrote “Moby-Dick.” That’s the one I was wearing the day I met Bernard on the boardwalk in Rockaway.

It was early September, and I was approaching the boardwalk along a ramp I hardly ever use, when a guy in front of me turned to adjust one leg of his shorts, which was twisted and riding up. He gave me a radiant smile. “I like your shirt,” he said.

“Thanks,” I said. I had forgotten I was wearing it. “I’m a big Melville fan.”

“So am I,” he said. We stopped on the boardwalk to parley—two strangers who happened to be prowling the peninsula on a Thursday afternoon. He said that he owned a bookstore in Greenpoint and hosted meetings of the Moby-Dick Club. The store was having its first anniversary party on Halloween, and I was invited.

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