Moby Dick was first published in 1851 in London under the title "The Whale." One month later it would be published in New York by Harpers with much clumsier name "Moby-Dick; Or, The Whale." How did that happen? This film attempts to answer this question, imagining the fictitious argument between Herman Melville and publisher James Harper over the American edition of the famous epic, and the apparent impass that might explain its unusually awkward, and ridiculously over punctuated, full title.