Of a Dreamy Sabbath Afternoon

Editorial Desk: A sailboat "in irons"; Hamlet, aloof; Isolatoes federated along one keel; Queequeg and Ishmael in love; Arendt's solidarity; Plato's chariot; Melville's starry archipelagoes.

Illustration for Chapter 110, “Queequeg in His Coffin,” by Rockwell Kent, 1930. Plattsburgh State Art Museum, Rockwell Kent Collection.

Consider the history of islands, yes, but also the “mythos of islands.” These were the instructions Lewis Lapham gave me when he handed over the editorial helm of the Islands issue of Lapham’s Quarterly. Those four words, “the mythos of islands,” were the bearing I steered toward during the four months that the Quarterly’s editors and I spent collecting and editing the readings for the Islands issue, which for two years now has been shimmering on the horizon like some Fata Morgana. We were just finishing it up when, in the fall of 2023, the magazine found itself becalmed or maybe in irons.

I apologize for my excessive fondness for nautical metaphors. I find them irresistible. I have found them irresistible ever since I first learned the phrase in irons at the age of twelve. Dreaming of a career in marine biology that might allow me to travel the Pacifi…