To the Sea!

Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off- then, I account it high time to read Moby Dick as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the book. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards The Whale with me.

I have nothing yet to say on The Whale, but thought we might as well have a place to gather the gear and prepare for the voyage. Let us hope to have the vessel ship-shape and ready for the deep, with all its passengers aboard, whether by ones, by twos, or by the legion, as the new year arrives.

Just to start decorating around here, I thought I'd put up Albert Pinkham Ryder's "Jonah and the Whale", which is at the Smithsonian:

>2 A_musing: that's the cover of the edition I read when I was a kid!

I will be on board in January, great picture

I worked at a suicide hotline straight out of college, and it never occurred to me to venture away from the trusty, well rehearsed script into some ad lib Moby Dick intervention. I wonder how many precious lives were lost because of The Whales absence in the multitude of crisis conversations?

I'll be reading from an Easton Press ed. that I shared earlier this year here in Lola's Hellfire.

I hope somebody's still available at the suicide hotline once I begin reading. Just in case.

> 1 LOL

Reporting for duty, Cap'n! Let's catch those trade winds to China!

If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards The Whale with me.

At first I read "The Whale within me". Shall we meet the enemy and will the enemy be us?!

I don't know if I will try again to read Moby Dick (two aborted tries so far), but it might be that something is pushing me to it. In the December issue of Yachting Magazine is a very short excerpt from the book Why Read Moby-Dick? that made the whale story sound appealing. Maybe I should read Philbrick's book first!

I tried to find a link to the article on the magazine web site, but could not--sorry.

I am going to try, Sam. We shall see.

I'm still on the Magic Mountain, and this sudden descent from the snowy heights to sea level in this salon is disconcerting.

I don't have any gear, except a free Kindle edition, and haven't made any preparations. Still, I will try to make the trip.

Well, in preparation for this, I made a little trip out to Melville's home in Western Massachusetts, Arrowhead, and did some research, and, lo and behold, I discovered the identity of the lowly sub-sub of a librarian who compiled the quotes that begin Moby Dick, and I further learned that the sub sub's grandson still lives nearby. I wandered over to the residence, only to learn of the poor sub-sub grand-son's recent death from his widow, who, however, had some papers of his left she was about to throw out but which I managed to save from the trash collector. It turns out the sub-sub's son's son was also a librarian, and had done some work not on Whales, but on Moby Dick itself! I am going to set forth below a few of the quotes assembled by the sub sub's son's son on Moby Dick, thinking they may be helpful for us in navigating these waters:

"The appalling facelessness of the whale as his forehead bears down directly on you with annihilating intent, a wall shoved ever nearer, makes visible a God who in no way condescends to the human condition... This is a God whose face has been doubly denied: the New Testament face of Christ, the image of the unseen God, has been stripped away..." Sacred and Secular Scriptures: a Catholic Approach to Literature, Bayle, N.

"GV: May we now consider Herman Melville? Does the mighty Moby-Dick stir your literary gonads?

ARL: Who better understood the play of reality and mask in figurations of the Native than Melville in the person of Queequeg in Moby-Dick, Scottish-kilted, cosmically tatooed, 'George Washington cannibalistically developed," bearer of war and peace tomahawk pipe, and from 'Kokoroko ... a place not drawn on any map' -- is not that the perfect trompe l'oeil of 'The Indian'?" Native Authenticity: transnational perspectives on Native American literary studies, Madson, D. (ed.)

"The entire text is an analepsis, its opening occuring just after the narrative's ending... The text itself is the coffin that contains the bodies of the crew, who are dead before the novel begins. That coffin, like the one he clings to in the final chapter, is what keeps Ishmael alive... Ahab and the others have to die for Ishmael to be born, yet he is born to tell of their death." Listening on All Sides: Toward an Emersonian Ethics of Reading, Deming, R.

"If you could change any single aspect of the style or the plot of Moby Dick, what would it be? How would you change it?" Moby Dick (Cliff Notes), Baldwin, S.

"After more than sixty years of re-reading Moby-Dick, I have not swerved from my reading experience as a nine-year old; Ahab, to me, is primarily a hero..." Harold Bloom, on himself and Moby Dick

"Then and only then an actual nothing is manifest as 'being', a being which Hegel could know as 'being-in-itself', and which Milton especially embodied as Satan, a Satan whom Blake could epically enact as the Creator, and whom Melville could epically enact as Moby Dick." The Genesis of God, Altizer, T.

"The symbolism of Moby Dick is based on the antithesis of the sea and the land: the land represents the known, the mastered, in human experience; the sea, the half-known, the obscure region of instinct, uncritical feeling, danger and terror... The ocean is the home of demons and symbols of evil too numerous to mention. It is the home especially of Moby Dick, the white whale, the chief symbol and spirit of evil..." Maule's Curse: Seven Studies in the History of American Obscurantism", Winters, Y.

"Melville's obvious ridicule of the Vishnu myth should be sufficient to discourage identification of Moby Dick with Vishnu. Indeed, Melville makes it clear that Vishnu is not be taken as any fish at all....The third word of Moby-Dick suggests the origin of its central myth. For Ishmael's namesake married an Egyptian (Genesis 21:21) and became a patriarch of Egypt. ... The whale is 'physiognomically a Sphinx'; Starbuck is 'like a revivified Egyptian'; 'the earliest standers of mast-heads were the old Egyptians'; 'Ahab seemed a pyramid'; in short 'whaling may well be regarded as that Egyptian mother, who bore offspring themselves pregnant from her womb.'" The Wake of the Gods: Melville's mythology, Franklin, B.

I do not know if the sub-sub's son's son's scribblings are really of any use, but having made the journey I thought it best to preserve the artifacts and share them with you. There are many big words there I don't really understand, but I am sure they shed great insights on the book. Take them for what you may.

"Will we meet the enemy and the enemy be us?"

This is a great question to revisit all through the book. We're certainly going searching for Ahab's enemy, whether or not that is ours, well, I think that's a topic some of those quoted above would disagree on.

"The symbolism of Moby Dick is based on the antithesis of the sea and the land: the land represents the known, the mastered, in human experience; the sea, the half-known, the obscure region of instinct, uncritical feeling, danger and terror... The ocean is the home of demons and symbols of evil too numerous to mention. It is the home especially of Moby Dick, the white whale, the chief symbol and spirit of evil..." Maule's Curse: Seven Studies in the History of American Obscurantism", Winters, Y.

This is utter tripe, or the trip need not be made. It's much more complicated than this, see Chapter 23.

Those are wonderful. I'm just wowed at the efforts you went through to find them.

Also, I just assumed the intro quotes were collected by Melville...do we know why these begin the book? (maybe this is all in wikipedia...I'll check there...)

David, I have my theory, and I'll try not to be as bombastic as some of his commentators (and, Rick, I agree with you completely and promise you that the rest of Winter's chapter on Moby Dick is pretty much in the same vein, though I think Winter is is a really interesting if somewhat lunatic and usually wrong critic ).

I think Melville was greatly interested in just what the hell fiction was and how it differed from non-fiction; he's blurring the two together, and it's all part of the ongoing theme you see him playing with when he starts (well, not really, because the definitions came before) the book with "Call me Ishmael". In Confidence Man, there are a couple of chapters just ruminating on what games the author might be playing, and in his story Benito Cereno he concludes the book with a selection purportedly drawn from the actual legal documents from the inquest following the happenings he is reciting (except we have those actual documents, as he did, and which were published and available at the time, and can see all the changes Melville made).

I think Melville lives in a world where he can't draw bright lines between what is fact and what is fiction: he sees truth in many fictions and fictions in many facts. It's not that he sees no distinctions - they're just blurry and imperfect. So, he gives us a first look at whales that is meant to summarize how others have looked at them; he's going to look at whales from many angles, trying to figure them out, but he starts there. I'll bet there are two or three other explanations that work as well, though.

I get a good chuckle out of several of the quotes, and find others rather tedious.

Was Melville atheist? Mystic? Other?

Melville was a sailor, so he was everything at the same time.

And I would also say that regardless of whichever ones he was at any given time, he always took great comfort in violating a few of their tenets.

That rounds it off neatly

A little music and boating pics.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Hyu2HozUZo&feature=related

Re: Melville and atheism. I am near certain he would have said yes. That's not opinion, rather sketchy recolection.

But in the interests of polyphony as a literary good: Was Ahab atheist? I say he could not have been for he was driven by rage at a malignant deity.

Thanks for the music, Lisa.

If someone wants to ponder Melville's faith, one of the best places I can think of is to look at the famous "wicked book" letter to Hawthorne right after the publication of Moby Dick, where Melville says he has written a wicked book and feels spotless as a lamb. http://www.melville.org/letter7.htm

Here's a not-bad but too-conclusory article advocating an atheistic/agnostic faith for Melville at the time of Moby Dick: http://www.eclectica.org/v6n1/sloan.html Others would argue the opposite.

As to Ahab, ah, now that's an interesting question. I want to think about that while reading.

http://www.whalingmuseum.org/prog/moby.html

First weekend in January is the traditional Moby Dick reading marathon in New Bedford, Mass.

#23 That's a touching letter, and the website... I'll keep that bookmarked.

It is a pity that Hawthorne's letters were lost

Yesterday evening I went early to bed and read a few chapters of My Folio Society edition of Moby - pure blis - That book is so good ! It even smells good...

http://www.macumbeira.com/2010/09/2011-folio-society-membership.html

http://www.macumbeira.com/2010/10/moby-dick.html

I have trouble imagining Clarel coming from anybody who was a confirmed atheist, or at least anyone who was serene in their status as such.

Also, I can't believe I only gave it 2 1/2 stars. I think that was exhaustion talking, as it often is with Melville.

Mac, we're Moby twins!! Yeah, that smell is grand. And it feels so good to hold it may affect one's critical faculties.

Please don't leap too far ahead! I want to finish A Place of Greater Safety before I jump into Moby Dick, and it's not a book I'll be finished with by Thursday.

Can you believe that the first Moby Dick that comes up under the touchstones is not Melville's? Heresy!

I will open the discussion thread on Moby Dick, Etymology, on Jan. 1. Until then, we'll keep this thread for chatting, nuggets, Melvilliana, curiosities, cetology, and the random tossing of harpoons.

Martin, Clarel is one of those books that defies rating. It is simultaneously a 1 and a 5. But it really does stick with you.

I've looked at that folio society page several times, but, boy, it looks like a pricey commitment. I envy you all your smells.

#32

I did it in ten installments. Come credit card bill, I hardly noticed it.

> So did I. It was the only special Folio I bought.
I have to confess that my hands are itching to buy Voltair"s candide with illustrations by Quentin Blake but the text is in English not in French and that is such a pity...

#34

It's sold out, if that helps.

hardly

Went out for smokes tonight, so ended up at a bar where I met Edi the sharp instrument collector, he went on and on about a whale bone knife he got over the internet for 22 dollars ('it's worth a thousand'), even the scabbard is whalebone. but no scrimshaw.

Well, rick, he has some work to do decorating it, then, right? Time for a sail?

In preparation for this book, I was thinking about what makes Moby Dick hard for many people, and I come up with three big reading barriers to the book, none of which is difficult to overcome.

One is Melville's tone. He's the guy who you can't quite figure out and treat a bit warily - is he joking or is he serious? Is he trying to make a fool of me? Does he really think what he's saying, or is he pulling our leg? Having read a lot of this guy, I've decided the answer is almost always both - yes, he's laughing at the world, at himself, and the reader, and he's being pretentious and overblown, and he's spinning the wild yarn ever bigger, but he's still deadly serious about it all even as he laughs at it. That combined cynical and ernest tone is a big part of Melville - he's both the jaded curmudgeon who has seen it all and the wide-eyed pre-teen excited by the world's adventures. But sometimes that tone just really confuses people.

A second is his patience. He opens the book with all those quotes and that definition. Really? He wants us to wade through those? Kind of tedious. He has a habit of getting in the middle of action and going off on an asside for three or four chapters and then coming back. He is in no hurry to tell the story. This is probably the toughest problem for readers, and it's akin to the Faerie Queene, one of our recent reads and one of Melville's favorites. Don't fear skipping ahead if what's going on bores you at any point and don't feel like you shouldn't be bored because it's "great" literature - you can always come back, and the boring stuff is often rich and humorous after you've gotten through it. (Note: the chapter labeled "Cetology" is traditional problem child - have a drink and put some music on before reading it).

The third is the symbolism. Everyone knows it is a book full of symbols, and most commentators want to build it into a full blown allegory, where all the symbols are replaced by what they symbolize and there's a second level of meaning that the story operates on. Yet you'll find a lot of debate over such basics as what divine being Moby Dick might represent, a pretty entry-level symbol if we're going to build this into an allegory. When you read the book, though, you'll find Melville really doesn't hide the ball - throughout the book, Ishmael, as a narrator, is a quizzical spectator who can't always figure these things out, who doubts the meanings he gives things and half-suspects or speculates on many things. He can't figure it all out and neither can we. Don't sweat the symbolism, and just listen to what Melville and Ishamel tell you; he'll often be quite explicity about what the Whale represents, but it's complicated and not just a simple symbolic equivalence. Most of the people who try to make everything into something else are just trying to snag their PhD or secure their tenure. Sometimes, a white whale is just a white whale. Still, it can be fun to play with the symbol stuff.

Cynical and earnest! Confusing tone! Seriously laughing! Why, he sounds like family.

Uncle Hermie.

Lisa - Vanity Fair has an excerpt from Philbrick as well: http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2011/11/moby-dick-201111#gotopage1

I don't know if it is the same, but it is at least available electronically.

Great post, #38, really looking forward to this read, A_musing.

Thanks! This should be fun.

More Grog for All!

I disagree with >38 A_musing:. It's probably all true to some degree, but I think readers are narrative bound, narrative junkies, narrative happy, less likely than ever to take delight in extraordinary language, and extraordinary language that builds to great thoughts. so when melville writes a whale hunting chapter readers weaken precisely when they should become most alert. Those chapters DO move the book along, but more importantly the thoughts. Such a point risks sounding sanctimonious, but I do agree with myself. I was in a sense raised to view War and Peace as a major difficult book, and in fact it's only long.

Here's a bit from Cetology:

'The grounds upon which Linnaus would fain have banished the whale from the waters, he states as follows: "On account of their warm bilocular heart, their lungs, their moveble eyelids, their hollow ears, penem intrantem feminam mammis lactantem," and finally, "ex lege naturae jure meritoque." I submitted all this to my friends Simeon Macey and Charley Coffin, of Nantuckett, both messmates of mine in a certain voyage, and they united in the opinion that the reasons set forth were altogether insufficient. Charley profanely hinted they were humbug.'

I actually love Cetology, which I think is an enormous send-up of the Cetologists (not just the ones who study whales, but all those everywhere who seek to know through classification), and is chock-full of all sorts of other nuggets. I'll have stuff to say about Cetology when we get there. But Cetology is a chapter you must go to, not out of duty, but out of curiosity and interest, which may not be on the first pass. You won't miss the core stuff if you skip the chapter, though, just some of the ornament on the novel (which, granted, is a wild baroque structure whose ornamentation is really the thing).

FOOD FIGHT! We're throwing the first blubber at each other! Game is on!

By "Cetology" you mean a chapter, not the study of Cetaceans...got it now.

Yes, Cetology is a famously tedious but actually hillarious chapter (chapter 32) that is probably the one place where more readers stop reading Moby Dick than any other. Here, you can peek: http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=Mel2Mob.sgm&images=images/mo...

Illustrated versions seem to make a special effort to break up this chapter with pictures.

>47 A_musing: the trick to chapters like that is always to read them aloud in your Ishmael voice, breathing only at full stops.

>41 A_musing: A much better article in Vanity Fair, and more interesting issues. Of course, one must consider the audience for Yachting Magazine. One does not subscribe to it; I think it is sent to anyone they think owns a boat.

As we go through this, I've also started a Melville blog: http://thetreadleoftheloom.blogspot.com/ I'll keep most of my posts here, but may stick there some odd thoughts outside the conversation I want to keep track of, and will also try to develop some lists of resources and the like over there. I've copied some of my past reviews and longer posts over there as well.

If you skipped Cetology you would miss some fine writing:

BOOK III (Duodecimo), Chapter I (Huzza Porpoise). -- This is the common porpoise found almost all over the globe. The name is of my own bestowal; for there are more than one sort of porpoises, and something must be done to distinguish them. I call them thus, because he always swims in hilarious shoals, which upon the broad sea keep tossing themselves to heaven like caps in a Fourth-of- July crowd. Their appearance is generally hailed with delight by the mariner. Full of fine spirits, they invariably come from the breezy billows to windward. They are the lads that always live before the wind. They are accounted a lucky omen. If you yourself can withstand three cheers at beholding these vivacious fish, then heaven help ye; the spirit of godly gamesomeness is not in ye. A well-fed, plump Huzza Porpoise will yield you one good gallon of good oil. But the fine and delicate fluid extracted from his jaws is exceedingly valuable. It is in request among jewellers and watchmakers. Sailors put it on their hones. Porpoise meat is good eating, you know. It may never have occurred to you that a porpoise spouts. Indeed, his spout is so small that it is not very readily discernible. But the next time you have a chance, watch him; and you will then see the great Sperm Whale himself in miniature.

BOOK III (Duodecimo), Chapter II (Algerine Porpoise). -- A pirate. Very savage. He is only found, I think, in the Pacific. He is somewhat larger than the Huzza Porpoise, but much of the same general make. Provoke him, and he will buckle to a shark. I have lowered for him many times, but never yet saw him captured.

BOOK III (Duodecimo), Chapter III (Mealy- mouthed Porpoise). The largest kind of Porpoise; and only found in the Pacific, so far as it is known. The only English name, by which he has hitherto been designated, is that of the fishers -- Right-Whale Porpoise, from the circumstance that he is chiefly found in the vicinity of that Folio. In shape, he differs in some degree from the Huzza Porpoise, being of a less rotund and jolly girth; indeed, he is of quite a neat and gentleman-like figure. He has no fins on his back (most other porpoises have), he has a lovely tail, and sentimental Indian eyes of a hazel hue. But his mealy-mouth spoils all. Though his entire back down to his side fins is of a deep sable, yet a boundary line, distinct as the mark in a ship's hull, called the 'bright waist', that line streaks him from stem to stern, with two separate colors, black above and white below. The white comprises part of his head, and the whole of his mouth, which makes him look as if he had just escaped from a felonious visit to a meal-bag. A most mean and mealy aspect! His oil is much like that of the common porpoise.

50: An ambitious project well on its way!

slick, if the rest of Cetology is like that I will have to read it even if I don't read the rest of the book!

It pretty much is- I think its the sheer mass that does people in. They read it in the spirit of dull encyclopedia entries (I like encyclopedia entries!) when it is full of wit, nicely observed descriptions and otherwise colorful writing.

Only the Salon would launch into Moby Dick with homages to Cetology!

I believe I have lost my food fight - Rick, the whole crew is with you. I love this place.

A hypothesis: Howse about a person, no one person in particular, mind you, read MD and skip Cetology. I propose that, perhaps, just maybe, said no person in particular would enjoy MD just as much, maybe even more than if she forced herself to chew on putatively nutrient-rich but verifably tasteless literary whale blubber?

Now, remember, this is not about any one Salonista in particular. I mean, there are probably several Salonistas who stopped reading MD b/c of Cetology, and some who, though they will never admit it, read MD minus Cetology.

*dodges harpoons*

See, this is what I was sayin', but I got meself a face full o' blubber for it.

There's a theme in Cetology, as Melville turns over and looks at different ways of gaining knowledge about whales, all the while making the beasties seem more and more inscrutable, and each way seems to say more about the person trying to figure it out than the whale. And all those ways in which we reflect ourselves in the whale make it harder to understand the whale for itself (we sure care what it tastes like, right, and how much oil comes out of the porpoises' head and what you can use it for). But it's quite possible to get that point long before Cetology, and he pretty much lays it out point blank in several places.

Cetology adds some great color; it's obviously almost a secret handshake among the initiated to talk of the great stuff in Cetology, and how much you enjoyed getting hazed by it, but, if it's going to stop you from reading on, because, yes, it's an encyclopedia, if a tongue-in-cheek kind of amusing one, well, I don't think it's necessary to linger there. Get hooked, then come back, once you've acquired the taste for blubber.

(Thank you CG!).

Cetology was probably my favourite chapter when I read some of MD before. It was later that I got bogged.

>Citygirl may not really be a city girl, so my fear of him or her is a childish thing, or a thing from childhood, so when she calls any part of Moby Dick litblub, I start searching for my ire.
The food fight is indeed still on!

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Hey, given that I'm advocating for a random abridgement of a book, I'm ready to throw blubber at myself.

But, somehow, as I age, I no longer focus on the beginning and end as I read books, particularly this one.

I've posted a long thing on my blog this morning thinking a bit about the criticism on Moby Dick over the last few decades and laying out my biases on some of the major critics. But the big thing I mention in there, that is probably more important than any critic, is that I think this book has both a theology, that is, an analyzable meaning for the key characters and situations, and an epistemology, an approach to figuring out how and whether we understand the characters and situations, and that the two work very much in tandem. It's a "meta" book. This gets back to why those little blurbs of quotes and defintions are there in front: he's polking fun at folks who think they know something. (The stuff on critics is over here -- http://thetreadleoftheloom.blogspot.com/)

And if you really focus on that epistemology, the question is how would we ever know what or who City Girl is, perhaps she is who we want or need her to be.

Muse, what got in the way of your finishing?

I admit that I have not finished most readings of MD that I've started.

All i wand citygirl to be is without weapons

Never gonna happen. A defenseless citygirl is no citygirl at all.

Epistemologize that.

And, Sam, thank you. I do not know if I will re-attempt Cetology this time, but now I feel better if I decide not to. Of course, the point of doing this as a group, for me anyway, is to use the support to get over the humps, pun intended.

LTer "busywine" has a blog, Books and Vines, and posted a piece on the Folio Edition of Moby Dick that's got to be the next best thing to owning the book: http://booksandvines.com/2011/08/26/moby-dick-by-herman-melville-folio-society-l...

bravo_Etta, and thanks for the link

That's quite the spectacular blog isn't it?! We should invite busywine over here for the read.

Are we tough enough?

Hell yes we are, Rick!

I was just over perusing The Book Frog's just-opened webstore, their literary criticism section in particular, and was reminded of Nathaniel Philbrick's, Why Read Moby-Dick? Is anyone familiar with this book? Is it a helpful resource in your opinion?

I dunno about that one but the first book of Philbrick is certainly worth reading.

>69 absurdeist:: See #9 and #41 above.

Thanks, Lisa! I knew that book sounded too familiar.

My offering this morning has more on the critics: http://thetreadleoftheloom.blogspot.com/2011/12/of-useful-false-dichotomies.html I have also added the beginnings of a bibliography on a separate page.

I see the critics as falling into two major camps, tragedians, who focus on Ahab, see the Whale as a foil, and emphasize the heavy Shakespearian influences in Moby Dick, and mythologists, for whom Ahab and the Whale are demi-gods locked in a mythic struggle, and who see Milton, Spenser, and many, many (many) myths from all over the world as defining influences in Moby Dick. I think both are quite useful, even if my urge to classify them may belong to the Cetology of Moby Dick.

Just curious, of those reading, how many have read Moby Dick, in full or in substantial part, before, and how many are approaching it fresh?

never read it. My interest comes partially from curiosity about whaling itself in that time. I read a few things about Hawaii recently, where Melville jumped ship (the second time). (from wikipedia: "While in Honolulu, he became a controversial figure for his vehement opposition to the activities of Christian missionaries seeking to convert the native population." - which I think is interesting regarding #17-23 above.)

I am on my fourth full reading. In fact, of all three previous readings, I started and continued til finished.

I have no idea how many times I've read it. My first reading was full and thorough, though at age 16 I think I only glimpsed the sun; since then it's always been on a shelf near at hand, for readings of chapters or larger attempts.

>75 dchaikin: - Daniel, someday you'll want to read Typee, which is much lighter but full of digs at the Missionaries and generally has a theme of savages being more Christian than the Christians. It's the book that first made his reputation, and is a lot of fun.

I have read it once before, probably 15 years ago and remember being surprised by it seeming to be much more than a whale chase. I guess I got that part right.

I am like Bas, read it full and thorough, but many years ago

What stopped me before, I think, was the feeling that I should have been getting way more out of it than i was. And because I *gulp, sorry* wasn't really caring what happened to anyone in it. It was basically unrewarding and made me feel stupid.

80> that's why I quit Ulysses.

I read only what I had to read of it in college to pass whatever tests I had to pass on it, which means I read roughly 200 pages of it -- a chunk here a chunk there. Without that dreaded sense of "I have to read it," I'm really looking forward to it this time around.

In the prologue of the Easton Press ed., there's mention that 297 of the original 2000 printed copies of Moby Dick burned up in Dec. 1853 at a publishing house, leaving only 60 copies untouched. Not that anybody cared necessarily, as the book had sold only 1,300 or so in the two years since its first publication.

I rather like Queequeg, Pip, and Ishmael, and Starbucks is not a bad chap though perhaps not a boon dinner companion; otherwise, though, I'm all for the Whale.

But as to getting a bunch out of it, I think that's what the Salon is for. I don't think it is a great book to read by yourself, especially the first time, because there's all kinds of stuff you see when you start talking about it, that you won't see if you're just reading.

I'm looking forward to it, Sam, really. A group read with you leading is going to be awesome.

I remember I liked Queequeg too, but I seem to remember that he faded right out of the story as soon as they got on the ship.

though i agree that this book, or any book for that matter, is fit for a group read, i believe all great books are just as fit, in fact intended to fit, a lone read. i believe the problem is in part the surfeit of great books now pressing us to read them...my first read of Moby Dick was in the perfect circumstances, I was a security guard at a power plant on an island in the mississippi. i had all night to read, no need to hurry, i tried to replace cigarettes with a pipe...it was a great experience. propably what the group does is replace the slow lingering that makes for a rewarding read.

I get the gulp that goes with the criticism of not giving a shit for any of the characters, but the last couple nights as i slowly began reading MD again what was especially rewarding were the sentences and paragraphs that I couldn't possibly have remembered, brilliant lines over and over again...

Does anyone (other than Harold Bloom, see >12 A_musing: above) have any empathy for Ahab? Choco's hit on something interesting here.

I have only empathy for Big Bad Moby !

80: The writer that made me feel stupid more than any other was definitely Lawrence Durrell.

Argh, the Salon is a corrupting influence. I had no intention of reading Moby Dick with y'all and already committed to Gormenghast but Chris is trying to talk me into it. We shall see. :)

>85 A_musing: How can you not have empathy for Ahab? He's magnificent. He's like the Terminator, except you don't have to forgive him for overthrowing humanity.

He hurts whales.... THAT MONSTER !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

More mood music:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEXayWgy5_g

and yet more cross-dressing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGrsSeXRdG4

Dawg--great pics on the first one but I could not understand a word they sang!

Glad to see you got out of Alabama alive.

Love those.

Got to say, I have a lot of adjectives for Ahab, but "empatheic" isn't one of them. I may be fascinated, entertained, flabbergasted, befuddled, angered, and a few other things.... but no empathy here. I'm for the whale.

I've posted some set pieces over on my blog about Melville's world. Nothing too exciting, just background.

You can't be partisan yet empathetic? But you raise an interesting point; I'm not sure I know which side I'm on, when it comes right down to. Figuratively, of course; taken literally, Ahab should clearly have his captain's license revoked at the very least.

I've got a posting on my blog today on the way Melville melds the "real" and the "fanciful", though I'll confess most of it is ruminating on a ditty by one of the local poets and on how Melville might have written up my wedding in a sea-faring place: http://thetreadleoftheloom.blogspot.com/2011/12/fanciful-reality_09.html

I've never read past the first fifty pages and that was some time ago. I'm ready to go. January will be the month I read only two books, since I'm also reading Gormenghast.

We shall look to get you out of port and into the open sea.

Sam, so you know, I'm really enjoying your blog posts.

Many thanks! I'm trying for an entry a day, but most will be just random thoughts of an obsessive-compulsive. I also want to see if the dawg can keep the music come through the whole read. At some point don't we need this one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzSWGPmjwjA

Jack-a-roo's made it into the rotation a fair bit of late.

I was leafing through Clive James' Cultural amnesia yesterday, and what do you know, he did not warm up to the Whale; says Melville's is an "ocean of tar". (Anyone wants the whole paragraph?)

I don't think I can wait until January. I took my precious out of its box and read "Etymology". People recommend handling leather books frequently to keep them in good shape, soft and lustrous. Still, even I feel just caressing a book without actually reading it is, euh, a bit sexually-deviant.

100: I argued a lot with that book!

Ha, yes? I read a couple entries at random; looks like mere journalism, drinkable like lemonade (and for the same reason possibly enjoyable). But I wish somebody had proofread the not-English phrases, four-five errors in Spanish in two pages is too much.

He's very anti-leftist, overall. His chapters on fellow critics were the best, in my opinion. He also tends to approvingly quote people like Hitchens and O. Falacci (not sure about her name, but she's a well known anti-Islam personality in Italy) who are, essentially, bigots. But there you go.

Orianna Falacci?!?!?! Ewwwwww. Comparing Hitchens to her is, I can't believe I'm saying this, an insult to Hitchens.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oriana_Fallaci

Also, what's with her spelling her name with one n and two l's, contrary to how any reasonable person would do it, geez.

real name was Originala Fellatio

Lola, no reason to wait, but probably best not to get into the discussion until we have critical mass of readers. Rick, Martin, whatever Anna says, I say Hitchens can join us if he wants, though I doubt Originala will be up for a read of "Ramadan", besides her other problem of being dead.

My thought is that there are 135 chapters plus the front matter and epilogue. Chapters range from short to middling, but none terribly long. If we plan on getting it read in six weeks, that is somehwere just over twenty chapters per week. Here would be my goal:

Week 1: Get to "Going Aboard"; basically discuss all the pre-sailing chapters
Week 2: Close the week on "The Whiteness of the Whale", one of the most discussed chapters around
Week 3: Close the week with "The Funeral" - more than half-way!
Week 4: Close the week with "The Doubloon" - to the chase!
Week 5: Close on "The Candles" - a wonderful mystic moment before the inevitable
Week 6: fini, cue the blubbery lady for the whale song!

That would have us finish around February 11 - about right for a tome?!

What say you?

An aside: on my Moby Blog today I confess to having been lured Philbrick's way - you all are to blame! http://thetreadleoftheloom.blogspot.com/2011/12/book-to-be-read-not-decoded.html

let me be the first to say, fine with me A_M

Thanks for a schedule, very helpful.

Intimidation and build-up have driven me to get started, albeit at a slow, lazy pace. I was hoping to make enough of a dent by Jan 1 to let me keep up (along with my other reading), but I think I may have started a little too early. I'm about 75 pages in.

Philbrick's book is going on my wishlist.

Let me, with lamentations and hair-tearing, say I'm not gonna be reading with yall--the Salon has a long, strong history of reading books I've read/reread in the last couple of years and am not ready for again--but I will be popping in.

You can always just read the juicy bits.

http://calitreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/mobydick3.jpg
Be careful what you wish for.

if martin's out I'm out

all right, i'll stay

Rick, I hope the arm twisting did not hurt too much.

The following list is far, far from complete, but as we have yet to board the whaler, I offer the end of my maritime history for the fun of it:

This leads to the natural question: Which ships would be included in a study of the various types of ship? And so by way of suggesting further study, a time-honored way of concluding a book, I list the following that are worth looking into:

The galleon, galley, galleass, and galliot; the galere, gallivant, gaulo, and goelette; the gondola and saettia; the lorcha, of course, as well as the turtle, packet, shallop and nave; any that start with the letter b, like the buza, the brig, brigantine, bergantina, barquentine, barcalonga, barque, barge, bateau, badan, batil, baghla, battele, bomb-ketch, bumboat, boom, bean-cod, baurua, boyer, baidak, baidarka, bawarij, baud odi, birlinn, bokkura, bireme, bratsera, bilander, bilitung, balener, budgerow, ballinger, and the blackwall frigate. Yet perhaps a random approach could do without alphabetical dictates, so that the aphract galley, and other ancient ships like the trireme, canoe, kattumaram, pentecontor, coracle, quadrireme, quinquereme, tesserakonter, and their multiple offshoots could precede the preceding, and no barrier would be raised for the procession to the humber keel, the caique, kayukki, trekschuit, tarai bune, umiak, uru, walap, waka, nemi, hoggie, fly-boat, argosy, shikara, outrigger canoe, faering, makoro, narrowboat, tallship, parisal, trow, tipnol, korkor, howker, ironclad, iceboat, dghaisa, felucca, dhow, prahu, nao, frigate, collier, cog, dugout, xebec, pinnace, polacre, pinco, caravel, fluyt, raft, longboat, lighter, sloop, dinghy, whaler, trabaccolo, East Indiaman, ship-of-the-line, man-of-war, sllop-of-war, ketch-rigged smack, jackass-barque, Norfolk keel wherry, trimaran, sixareen, hjortspring, Galway hooker, cat-ketch, koch, Mersey flat, scow, punt, skiff, hoy, hulk, knar, runner, lembus, liburnica, pram, fifie, gaff-rig, martigo, tartane, fusta, tserniki, masula, oruwa, yatradoni, kulladoni, jaght, perama, trehandir, carrack, schooner, ketch, Chinese treasure ship, Chinese dragon ship, Viking dragon ship (drekkar?), dromon, Durham boat, sharpie, cromster, corvette, ndrua, pahi, kalia, kofschip, ghe be, hekboot, Friendship sloop, jolly-boat, yawl, razee, ark, catboat, polacre-settee, luzzu, pinisi, pink (pinco?), herring-bus, hermaphrodite brig, snow, lakatoi, dory, launch, pirogue, cutter, curragh, dredger, salui, abra, leti-leti, kora kora, lepa lepa, tafa’anga, tongiaki, te puke, yoal, smack, chalupa, coble, corbita, quffa, sampan, jong, machura (masura?) qurqura (kora kora?), dahabeah, houario, verlanger, qarib, ghurab, jalbut, huri, machua (machura, masura?), toni, pansi, phatemari, shewe, sambak, padagu, ganja, kotia, zaruk, jehaz, suval, shalandi, shiri, tarrida, rua pet, rua chelom, suval, padar, kondalam, dunj, lambo, kayak, lugger, tjalk, quffa, slaver, naves, kettuvallam, kurenkahn, and, naturally, the unireme.

and yes, Martin, the bumboat is my favorite as well, even though I do love the occasional Galway Hooker

Heck, we need to read the book leading up to the conclusion!

I hope there is a chapter on toy boats. And I must insist on some detai on the jackass-barque.

Jackass Bark. 1. A three-masted vessel, square-rigged on the foremast, setting square topsails and topgallant sails over a gaff-mainsail, and fore-and-aft rigged on the mizzen (thus ends the part written by Lewis Carrol). Also called jigger bark, hermaphrodite bark.

that's the best part.

under Jackass Rig it becomes a bit more clear: Generic term applied to any rig which differs in some point from the main type to which it belongs.

from International Maritime Dictionary by Rene de Kerchove (an amazing work)

The toy boats i edited out because of Chevy Chase

Me and my dad built a bumboat one halcyon summer, but it warn't seaworthy, so he destroyed it in a rage-fit that packed the traumatic kick of multiple beatings.

How that man's hammer did fly.

We all have our hats off to John Henry Martini

Halcyon summer..was the halcyon too late?

Rick, is there really a boat called a pram, or did you just shove that in to see if we were reading closely?

We used to scull the pram when we used it as a tender.

(Note: what maritime knowledge I have I've picked up while serving as ballast for my wife).

choc, ' A term of Slavonic origin used in the ports of the Baltic and North seas to denote different types of crafts.' etc. Also Pram Dinghy...

i love that: don't we all serve as ballast for our wives?

Waving to Muse! Our sailing school uses "prams", but I always thought it was their term for the teeny-tiny boats they use to teach the little kids to sail.

Cool. Maybe when I come to see you Lisa, I won't come in a tanker, I'll come in a pram.

I think that might take a bit longer than if you come in a tanker . . .

Remember the old shanty? 'Hitch yer tanker to yer pram, hitch yer tanker to yer pram YES YOU CAN...

hmmmm, I am having trouble remembering that one. Maybe in the spirit of this thread we should suggest hitching the pram to the whale?

Muse, I'd recommend something less clunky and faster than either a tanker or a pram for your journey. Lisa, I'm not going to ask Rick for details on that one - I'm afraid of what might be coming.

Today's blog post talks about what was happening in American literature at the time of the Melville Revival: http://thetreadleoftheloom.blogspot.com/2011/12/americans-before-great-revival_1... My next post will be on the revival itself to give some historical background before the read starts. How much does Melville's american-ness matter to the book?

#134 - Very interesting. Curious where Emerson, Thoreau fit in. Not that I know much about these authors, just noticing they weren't listed...of course they didn't write novels. It's just that I've had this impression that 19th-century American core literature hovers around Emerson, Hawthorne, Thoreau, Melville & Poe and the somewhat related 1840's transcendentalism. Admittedly, it's not a well-informed impression.

I think they're very important; when we get to the long philosophical sections of Moby Dick, or even early on when we have a chapter that is simply a sermon in a church by a crazy old whaler preacher, you may want to think about Emerson or Thoreau or a name you didn't mention - Henry Ward Beecher. There are a lot of reasons Moby Dick may not look like the model of a novel, and I think you've put your finger on a key one.

Came across this one today - one of the best scenes from the old movie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mog0W6Jwj0Q&feature=related

Today I blog a brief history of the Melville Revival, together with a rather "colorful" quote from D.H. Lawrence: http://thetreadleoftheloom.blogspot.com/2011/12/revival_4310.html

Wonderful piece, Sam. I didn't know D.H. had that in him! And I enjoyed that rather backhanded compliment of his literary criticism on Melville. I'm sure bas won't notice it.

D.H. Lawrence as white-power inspired proto-beat poet: who would have guessed?! It really is completely un-lawrencesque, or I have missed some Lawrence somewhere, and he goes on like that for quite a while. Thank you!

Um, bombast it sure is, but I see no beauty in it.

I can't help it, every encounter with Lawrence just confirms my impression of what a thickheaded fool he was.

Dooom doom doom doom doom doom doom dee-doom doom dee DUMB! doom doom boom boom bomb booby doom doom dooby bombity dooom dooooom dooooooom

oh lily

oh white

oh edel the weiss

dooooooooooooooomed

OK, I concede there's no beauty it in. But it's still the best thing he ever wrote, right?

Doom doom doom doom de-ay!

I don't know, I've read little by him, and I must say I think there's no doubt he had a MAJOR poetic gift (I mean, that's evident even if you read as little as I did), but all that beauty of vision and phrase is saddled with rank intellectual baseness and stupidity. I'd rather not say more without giving examples (which means reading him!); maybe another day.

I understand - not a big Lawrence fan myself obviously. The essay on Moby Dick, while cryptic and odd and as full of stupidity, as you point out, as insight, still has got something interesting to it, and it is online if one wants: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/LAWRENCE/dhlch11.htm I think some of what you're getting at is demonstrated there - but, still, something to it all.

Oh so typical of D H Lawrence, just feel the passion, great stuff.

A posting today on the religon of the different crew members: http://thetreadleoftheloom.blogspot.com/2011/12/comical-obligations.html

I love the quote I've inserted there from the Ramadan chapter, on the comical obligations of religions.

"I cherish the greatest respect towards everybody's religious obligations, never mind how comical..."

There's a wonderful contradiction in intent here.

or those other creatures in certain parts of our earth, who with a degree of footmanism quite unprecedented in other planets, bow down before the torso of a deceased landed proprietor merely on account of the inordinate possessions yet owned and rented in his name.

Ha, sweet dig, Ish.

tragi-comic

A bit more of the method of my madness: I am doing little vignettes of each character over on the blog, with the idea that I'll have the major ones done prior to starting the big read on Jan. 1.

I start with the second toughest of them, Ahab:

http://thetreadleoftheloom.blogspot.com/2011/12/enter-ahab.html

Has Paul Metcalf's Genoa: A Telling of Wonders come up? I have not gotten around to reading it yet but I understand it has something to do with Melville, and maybe Dick too (other than Metcalf's familial relation to Herman).

Freeque has a long review; he and I have discussed Metcalf before, but it hasn't come up in this read. Let's get Freeque to wax on about it - Freeque?

151 Nice work A musing; appreciated

I read this book with Norm Macdonald's book club. Believe it or not, that there was humour in the book never came up. That Norm Macdonald is insane did.

The comedian? I did not know he had a book club.

Oh, yes. On Twitter. Sometimes it's a lot of fun.

He's quite a bookworm, that Norm Macdonald.

http://www.adultswim.com/blog/interviews/celeb-nerdy-norm-macdonald.html

They'll be discussing The Good Earth in a couple of days, but I have nothing to say about that book, other than it was entertaining enough. At some point in early February, the discussion will be Anna Karenina, which ought to be good because Norm loves him some Tolstoy.

(To actually follow the book club discussions on Twitter, one has to do a search on "normsbookclub" in one window and then watch his timeline in another. Otherwise, it doesn't make a lot of sense.)

No discussion of humor? Very sad.

In regards to Moby Dick? Not really, no. But, the discussion got cut short because Norm got it in his head that he had to stop the discussion so that he could go re-read the book IMMEDIATELY, and then there was some webcast with a professor instead of more discussion. I think Norm was on some sort of mania trip or something.

'Passed one once in Capedown...'

Paul Metcalf was the great-grandson of Melville. He wrote Genoa: A Telling of Wonders partly, he said, to help get the "Melville monkey" off his back. If you skip, if I can remember, about the first three or four paragraphs of the piece below, you'll get to whatever meat there is pertinent to Genoa & Melville. There's lots of obscure Melville info in the book that I'm sure a die hard Melvillian would find interesting enough to make obtaining the book worth it. Melville's work is quoted liberally throughout Genoa as well, as were the journals & letters of Christopher Columbus.

http://enriquefreequesreads.blogspot.com/2010/07/genoa-by-paul-metcalf.html

Queequeg today: http://thetreadleoftheloom.blogspot.com/2011/12/notable-savage.html

Something I didn't note there worthy of note: Queequeg's also a character for the groundlings; that harpoon of his is more than once a strikingly obvious phallus, and Melville's not above a bit of rawer sexual humor.

Hence to title (and name of that particular type of animal)?

Moby-Dick in Pictures: One Drawing for Every Page

I nearly bit on this book today, but the price and the uncertainty of Matt Kish's talents (the book was cello-wrapped) stopped me from biting. Apparently, Matt Kish got a copy of the Signet Classic ed. (552 pages) and spent eighteen months creating one illustration per day for every page of the book. Sounded interesting. If I get a gift card for Christmas I just might go back and grab it.

I checked some of the pics through google. Matt Kish looks interesting indeed.

He has a website with a lot of them: http://everypageofmobydick.blogspot.com/

Very cool

It was Christmas Day when the little Pequod left harbor in Nantucket on a voyage that would take them, before the final page, through Joycean Stream of consciousness, a play within a novel, Wallacean footnotes, Shakesperian soliliquies, tongue in cheek encyclopeias, a bollywood rendition of its a small world, and many other terrors. May you all have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

After watching that, and looking at the sample illustrations, I'm going to have to get a copy. Also exciting is that it comes wrapped in a cello. We have a piano in our house, and a bass, but no cello.

get thee behind me wallacean footnotes.

Thoughts on Ish: http://thetreadleoftheloom.blogspot.com/2011/12/cadet.html

Kish's illustration of page 1:

An uncommon and extraordinary moment of brilliance, indeed, and a wonderful first line.

Pretty much, I think I've got to get Kish's book. He has nifty little commentary on each page and how he illustrates it.

I also picked up and read Why Read Moby Dick, and will get up a review, but enjoyed it. It's not a particularly long or heavy book, but personal, insightful, and always well-informed, sort of like an MM review, though not quite as deftly phrased.

:):):):):):)

Harpooners: http://thetreadleoftheloom.blogspot.com/2011/12/harpooners.html

This was a hard one to write, as the characters wielding harpoons, other than Queequeeg, tend to be lightly sketched but to touch on some major themes of the book, and these cannot be dealt with well in such brief format. Suffice it to say, these are mightily important minor characters in this book. While many of the religous themes and the humanity versus nature themes play out in the conflict between Moby Dick and Ahab, the harpooners are essential in building up many of Melville's thoughts on social issues, including such major capitalized words as Democracy, Civilization, and America.

Nice work A_Musing, appreciated really !

Thanks!

We are told quite explicitly that the whale is not an allegory: http://thetreadleoftheloom.blogspot.com/2011/12/whale-and-what-it-is-not_30.html

Why don't people listen?

I have put up the schedule on my blog, slightly revised as I realized I'd made week three a killer, and I spread some pages into the next two weeks. We can adjust as necessary depending on how people are doing.

Come Jan 1, this Sunday, I will open a thread on the book, with its first post being the schedule.

Sam, wouldn't mind a link posted here.

I shall do. We'll also call the roll and see who is in.

Today, not just a post about The Whale, and why I think Moby Dick is the greatest character of the 19th century (bar none), but a pretty picture, too: http://thetreadleoftheloom.blogspot.com/2011/12/whale-and-how-to-know-it.html

If anyone has some free time and really doesn't want to get a jump on the book, may I suggest a quick reading of Job prior to the start? I just reread it, and it really does have enormous bearing on the book. You can skim in the middle, it's really the final quarter of Job that is most important.

Reading this one, i'm wondering about Melville's drafts. Do we know much about what amount of writing and re-writing it took to complete this book, anything about the initial drafts? (was it normal, at this time, to have all those crazy drafts and notes and whatnot that we see with Dostoyevsky?)

There is some pretty good evidence that he had one version of the book nearly finished but then rethought it after some discussion with Hawthorne and rewrote the book (this is the "two book theory"), pretty thoroughly pushing around and redrafting earlier work. There are also some notes that show up in the margins of his Shakespeare volume that have him conceiving and crafting Ahab only after the work has been advertised to his publisher as almost done. But I don't think we have any of the drafts themselves.

Allegories are boring, but allegoricals are not necessarily...MD is certainly allegorical, but much much more

The link to the discussion: http://www.librarything.com/topic/129793

Let's argue about allegory over there. I think he uses lots of allegorical tools, and that individual images and settings are alleghorical, but not that the whole thing is. Worth thinking about as we read.