Ishmael, Queequeg, New Bedford, Nantucket, Preparations for Sailing

Time to begin! Happy New Year!

Here is the schedule, slightly revised as noted before:

Jan. 1 - 7: to Chapter 21, "Going Aboard"
Jan 8 - 14: to Chapter 42, "The Whiteness of the Whale"
Jan 15 - 21: to Chapter 65: "The Whale as a Dish"
Jan. 22 - 28: to Chapter 93: "The Castaway"
Jan 29 - Feb. 4: to Chapter 119: "The Candles"
Feb. 4 - Feb 11: The Blubbery Lay Sinks, Fini!

If you have quotes or references, I recommend using the Princeton searchable electronic database of the book: http://www.princeton.edu/~batke/moby/ The above map is from the Boston Public Library, the Norman Rosenthal Map Collection. There is one on my blog as well, that you'll find opens up to a larger size. Thanks, Norm!

My blog address, for reference: http://thetreadleoftheloom.blogspot.com/ I will post my over-long comments there, but let's keep discussion here.

Now, who is in? And what say you?

I'm in, with a great deal more enthusiasm than I thought I'd have for this read. Melville has a quiet sense of humor, that pops out unexpectedly, before he continues along.

Our first crew member! Perhaps we should smuggle you below - have you your harpoon?

I adore Melville's sense of humor. Let's add funny quotes to the threads whenever we can.

I am in like Flynn

me voici!

Ahoy!

Quite a crew forming. I, at least, begin the book mostly with puzzlement. I still haven't figured out what the Etymology and Extracts are there for other than to make us quizzical and moderately amused - not necessarily a bad frame of mind for reading. My thoughts on the frontmatter in more detail, focusing on the way he's edited down Webster's etymology: http://thetreadleoftheloom.blogspot.com/2012/01/random-thought-or-two-on-etymolo...

How do others read that frontsmatter?

I read Moby-Dick (and loved it) a couple of years ago; so I'm not sure I'm up for a complete re-read quite yet. But there's no way that I'd miss out on being a part of the crew, so I'll be around in some form or another. Right now, I'm reading In the Heart of the Sea, which I've long meant to read.

Already half through the first assignment.

Present and correct sir. I will keep to the schedule.

I have begun the book with puzzlement as well and I haven't read any Melville yet.

I am reading the Penguin English Library Edition with an introduction by Harold Beaver, which almost put me off reading any further. What are these guys on when they write their introductions.
Reading Porius last year I was not impressed with Morine Krissdotir's introduction and I was even less impressed by A S Byatt's introduction to The Magic Mountain. Harold Beaver though takes the cake, some of his writing is just impenetrable. Are these famous authors who get to write the introductions just showing off. They certainly do not provide any encouragement to the would be reader who picks up the book for the first time.

However the Biographical Note was good and the notes on the text might be useful.

Suggestion: avoid introductions. They have precious little to do with the book. Krissdotter did Powys very little good with her bumblings, including the biography. ASB is usually reliable, but those autodidacts don't know when to leave something be, do they?

theaelizabet: I've been curious about The Essex ever since reading MD, too. I saw you were reading that on goodreads and added it to my "to be read" shelf.

I ignore introductions, myself. Sometimes, I'll read them after I've finished a book.

OK, these first chapters of MD were the ones I enjoyed the most. It confused me greatly when the rest of the book didn't go like the first chapters. I'm trying to avoid spoilers, here, so I'll not elaborate.

I'm along. Tried to get a jump start and read through chapter 54.

Sam - two thoughts on the opening:

re: "Fegee" and "Erromangoan" pronunciations. Throughout Oceania the languages are remarkably consistent, but the different islands do have a habit of flipping consonants around. So, if nothing else, Melville highlights this (although, how accurate is this?)

re "How do others read that frontsmatter?" - I see Melville doing a lot of stomping around the topic at hand. This seems like an introduction to the book structure. He's wandering around the book, covering different points-of-view and histories that are relevant in filling in the background of the picture.

Ship's cat is here. I've been busy ratting in the bilge.

I've read the 'To the sea' thread, and I"m catching up on your blog posts, Sam. Incredible stuff. Your erudition is awesome. Seriously.

I have a Mishima to finish up, and then I'm in. Meanwhile, back to the rats.

I'm particularly interested in the idea that some of the points of view might be reflected later in the book. We'll have to watch for that. Stomping around is a good way to express it.

Katie, these are really very enjoyable chapters. Think he's trying to suck us in before raising the bar on us?

Thanks, TCM; and I'd propose a different approach than Porius to introductions: laugh at them. If they are good, that laughter will be what they intended, if they are bad, well, it will be deserved. Melville has a way of inspiring blowhards, and the best commentators are the ones who do it tongue in cheek and keep it in perspective.

My posting today, on the first chapter of the narrative is right in line with Katy's observations about enjoying the first chapters: http://thetreadleoftheloom.blogspot.com/2012/01/loomings-opening-narrative.html

I love these chapters; he is feeding my adolescent sense of adventure here, and I hang on every word of the yarn.

I'm starting to get some thoughts together on Queequeg and Ishmael and come up with one really fundamental question about their relationship:

Just how gay is it, and how gay would it have been to its readers? Thoughts?!

I've a related background question: how widespread would the practice of sodomy be among such a crew? It was pretty much institutionalised in long-term situations such as in the navy, but among seasonals?

This was going to be a three year voyage, though the first bedding of these two occurs in the Inn in New Bedford.

Like Lola, I'm very interested in actual knowledge about how widespread sodomy would be on the crew; while I can't but suspect it was common, I can't think of anyplace I've seen a knowledgable discussion.

"Extracts" great fun especially Melville's introduction to them. We know we are dealing with an author with a wicked sense of humour and you will never know when the irony stops.

What struck me about the etymology and extracts is their provenance. One each from:

a late consumptive usher to a grammar school
a sub sub librarian

and then a commentator: Ishmael? 'Melville'? Someone else?

Both providers are people who work with text, scholars, not doers, 'a hopeless sallow tribe'. What to make of the statement that their friends are clearing out the heavens and making refugees of three of the four archangels. A revolution in heaven. A reference to milton?

In the extracts, what we get is essentially a chronological view of literature from Genesis to contemporary newspapers. It's in these extracts that Moby Dick first makes his appearance, in the extract from Took: a specific huge whale, and in the anonymous A Voyage to Greenland, a specific huge white whale.

Melville is signalling that his book is a compendium of lore about whales, situating his book in a discourse field, making lofty claims for his work, by placing it next to Milton, Hobbes and Burke: ironically, of course. Is Melville's work going to cause a revolution in literary heaven, are the three archangels of Milton, Burke and Hobbes going to be replaced by Melville? The work of those who only know about the whale through hearsay and text replaced by the work of those with actual real experience: Melville/Ishmael?

That's about where I am at.

regarding the gayness, I haven't got there yet, but here is a link which might be useful:

http://books.google.com.tw/books?id=0ZqdgtKC80IC&dq=inauthor:%22Barry+Richar...

Barry Richard Burg has done a lot of research into sodomy in the 19th century Royal Navy, and American navies. I think we can assume that differences between seasonals and permanent sailors were negligible. It seems to have been an open secret that such things went on on ship, much as they did in prisons.

I'll keep an eye out for this aspect of the book as I read.

I note our people who work with words, though, are not major scholars, but rather distinctly minor ones: an usher (e.g., assistant teacher at a lower school) and a sub-sub librarian - I'm not sure Melville is too concerned with besting them, though the assembled quotes are different, and I think you're right there about relation to later parts and introduction of the whale. I'm on the fence as to whether Melville is making claims here for his work, but think I agree with all the other points. Though there are a couple writers (not many) in the extracts section who may qualify as "doers" - Scoresby, for one, who is discussed later in the book in more detail; a fellow reporting on dissecting the whale is another.

I'm also thinking on these as a lead-in to Ishmael; we know Ishmael is well-read from his discussions; is he himself a minor scholar like the usher and sub-sub? Is he furthering his education from their humble beginnings?

Thanks for the links on Burg. Another interesting thing to point out on the reception of the book: Melville was attacked for his nasty characterization of missionaries in Typee and for writing about incest in Pierre but I remember him catching much flack specifically on the Ishmael/Queequeg relationship from when I perused the reviews. I may need to look back at some of the reviews more closely (most of which are up on the Melville society page).

Permission to come aboard, cap'n? Have made it to "Nantucket", which is quite a bit farther than before, and I am thinking I might be able to complete the voyage this time.

Good to have you aboard. If you're in Nantucket, you may be just about ready for my chowder recipe. I disagree vehemently with Ishmael on the fundamentals of chowder, in a way that might have brought us to blows had we met in a Nantucket Inn after a few two many grogs one night.

My best answer to the question of "how gay is it", and why it matters: http://thetreadleoftheloom.blogspot.com/2012/01/massachusetts-first-gay-marriage...

One impression I took from the opening where that it's freezing cold. One thing that stuck in my wind was Ishmael stumbling into a black church.

As for the gayness, Sam, I think you captured it with your last line. It is romantic.

>24 A_musing: Agreed. More thoughts on the Extracts: the chronology of these extracts actually mirrors the development of the plot - such as it is - of the novel. We hear about whales and whaling generally, kind of out of focus, then they are brought sharper into focus. Then the great white whale is glimpsed, then the shoal, then a disquisition on the commercial properties of whales and spermacetti, hunting scenes follow, the whale attacks the boat, mutiny erupts on the ship, and finally, the novel/extract ends with the whale king of the boundless sea, undefeated. Together these extracts act as a precis of the novel, extracts from other texts, and extracts of incidents from the main text of the novel.

I finished chapter 2 last night. One of the greatest opening chapters in American lit. I'd forgotten how good Melville's prose is. ...when it is a damp drizzly November in my soul...in this first chapter Ishmael (his real name? we are to call him Ishmael, but is he really Ishmael?) sets up the sea as a symbol of the ungraspable phantom of life, and then drives the point home with : this is the key to it all.

My edition is very old and has no notes. Is there any indication who the old writer is, of whose works Ishmael owns the only copy? Is this spurious?

Loving it so far. the description and mood reminds me of Atkinson Grimshaw:

If there is, I haven't caught it. Stray Don Quixote reference? You have me reaching for the extracts to re-read them. Beautiful - exactly right.

>26 A_musing:: Not gloomy, but cold, so let's have at it with the chowder.

Murr, wonderful painting. As always, looking at the broad scheme of things, your analysis seems right on. Melville's prose is mesmerizing--I wonder why I did not understand this before.

'Murr, that picture is just... well, I'm off to look at for more Grimshaw.

yeah, my favourite Victorian artist. A magnificent painter. Look at his skies.

Sodom on the sea: The topic was best dealt with (as far as I could find) in a book I can't find right now about Spanish seafarers in the 16th century and what I recall was that it was tacitly accepted at that time, in large part because of time aboard ship and likeliness of any particular trip being one's last. By the time of the Napoleanic Wars the British had institutionalized punishment for such hijinks and I remain puzzled as to why for it is a safe assumption that at all times during the age of sail homosexual sexuals were common. The number of shanties that take it lightly strikes me as the best evidence that it was never a serious taboo until well into the 19th century.

Martin can sing you The Good Ship Venus, which mentions a captain's daughter, but she wouldn't actually have been there. At any rate the ship was sunk by spunk.

As far as Ishmael and Queequeg are concerned, I think their time in bed together is best understood as an effective means of getting across the nature of life on board in general, wherein landlaws no longer have any meaning, etc.

#29 Great Picture.

Do we need to read this now that you have given the plot away.

an old writer..... the only copy extant The 'wight Death' ironically prompting this fictitious 'old black letter', or Gothic text. (this is the note from my Penguin English library edition)

The notes in this penguin edition take up 300 pages, impressive or what?

I agree about the opening couple of chapters, absolutely brilliant, as is chapter 3 inside the Spouter-Inn.

Spouter-Inn is this whale hunting terminology or yet another homosexual reference?

Do we need to read this now that you have given the plot away.

ooooooops. Sorry everyone. But we all knew what happens anyways, no?

TC, i have read the novel three times and i had no idea whatsoever that a whale attacked the boat. I thought it was pirates in a squidmarine.

TC--please, I knew a whale attacked the boat, but I didn't know who won!

I prefer to think of them as just really good friends. Of course, if they're in love, then it makes sense that they would want to be on the same ship.

I think Spouter-Inn is more a whaling reference to a spouting whale, though I hesitate to downplay anything as a potential phallic/homosexual reference - I remember way back in high school on first reading this book, my passionate teacher turning red in the face asking us all how we didn't see some of the phallic imagery - "what could that harpoon be - come on, you can see, can't you?!".

The opening is brilliant, but, no worries, I think the last chapters, labelled "The Chase", are even more so and in a very similar vein, even if you know what's going to happen!

RG, my read is he's happy to have them read as good friends, as it keeps him from being the target of sunday sermons, but, as Rick points out, wants to start giving the idea that the usual rules won't apply here - excellent way of phrasing it - and to go a step further, neither the rules of man nor those of God, and having the two of them "marry" is a good way to disregard rules of both man and God.

I am going to jump in here and be stupid. What difference does it make to reading/understanding the book whether it is a relationship of good friends or a homosexual relationship? From a personal point of view I don't care. I only care if it matters to understanding going forward. This is the kind of stuff that just goes right over my head or under my keel.

I'd read it more about freedom and non-conformity than sex: in going to sea, Ishmael is more himself. I don't think any physical sexual part is actually critical; what's important is that in Manhattan the idea of jumping into bed with a savage and laying bare your soul, and gaining a deep relationship, indeed, marriage, with a pagan, starts crossing some of the landed civilization's boundaries.

He's doing it all subtlely, in beautiful prose, because, first of all, it's a story.

Just as importantly, my chowder recipe: http://thetreadleoftheloom.blogspot.com/2012/01/try-pots-food-fit-for-beast.html

Chowder is something we argue over around here (kind of like the pronounciation of pecan for some?).

Let it be known: I have no dog in the chowder fight.

Where do us red-chowders sit? (I like the creamy stuff too, but my preference is the red stuff, and I have no idea how it's made)

44- at The Crab Shack on Huntington Beach, CA. I'm not a fan of the clam, but I could live on that stuff.

41 Lisa, it's not stupid. And in a sense you are right: it doesn't matter at all, as we are all slowly plunging into the sun anyway.

However, for a gay reader, it's a sense of recognition that a major work deals with this theme, it's a sense of recognition of identity. There are also the thematic concerns Sam mentions in 42. Also, from a literary point of view, there's the fascination of seeing how Melville presents the theme, and also hides it at the same time. For obvious reasons, he can't literally say: "and Ishmael thereupon had carnal knowledge of Queequeg", for obvious reasons, so then it becomes a matter of encoding. And it's this encoding, linguistic and literary, that fascinates me. In the same way, for example Dostoevsky encoded homosexual relationships in his prison book, in order to evade the censor. an alert reader can find them, a dull reader doesn't. this is an aspect of the craft of the writer.

the simultaneous evasion and presentation of homosexuality in 19th century literature is a fascinating topic (for me) because it gets down to the nitty gritty of language use in literature, the way writers exploit ambiguity inherent in language and manipulate different readers' reception.

I am on chapter 4. I will attempt a close queer reading of the 'marriage' episode when I am a bit further in. Meanwhile, I am madly busy buffing my harpoon. Oooooer missis!

In that segment, Ish and Quee come across as young, fun loving guys, don't they? Asked what kind of chowder they want, they joyously shout "Both!"

dchaikin, I'm with you on the red. Creamy chowder should be reserved for corn.

I find this all curious. There is, of course, no such thing as red chowder.

Murr, there's a funny way in which what may matter here is that it doesn't matter - the presentation of the relationship is kind of "how odd that anyone would object?!" rather than making an issue out of it. But part of why I asked how gay everyone finds it is that I don't think you have to find it so, though I do, and I find that very interesting, dramatically.

RG, that fun-loving guys thing is part of the real charm, isn't it?

Chowder recipe making me hungry and it is not lunch time yet! But Sam, what kind of potatoes? Some are starchy than others. Some are very waxy. Since you are in New England I am guessing you have fresh clams. At the risk of a sacrilegious utterance: Ever used canned?

Murr, have not gotten to the Dostoevsky, so don't know if I would be one of the dull readers. Probably I would be unless there was something about the disguised homosexuality that I thought had a point in the development of the characters or the story or was somehow intertwined with what happened to a character. I don't have the depth of appreciation that you have for the use of language, and I know I am not as careful a reader.

Considering Sam's comment at 42, I think the freedom and non-conformity aspect of it makes a lot sense in the broad scheme of the novel (as I so far understand it, anyway). it is a wonderful chapter, no matter how or whether we interpret any undertones.

And Murr, be careful if you try to shave with that thing!

I don't think we should miss the racial and religious tension, either, in the Ish/Queq relationship: Ish is not sharing a bed with just any boy, but with a dark-skinned heathen! And all tatooed to boot!

It's a "Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore" moment. Lisa, more will come in the chapters after Father Mapple's sermon, chapters 10-13, if you aren't there yet.

On spuds, it's the ugly, starchy ones I use - Maine produces plenty of them. I lived in Chicago for a year back in the 80s and used canned clams then - the clams are not as good, but the juice in the can is actually quite delicious for the broth.

Chowder this weekend, then!

I know you are not going to believe this, but I am up to Ch. 24--The Lee Shore. I agree on the racial/religious tension. I have forgotten which chapter mentions the stares as Ish and Queq are walking together-- I think on the way to the packet to Nantucket. Also was struck by the Quaker ship owners' reaction to "the cannibal" and how quickly the aversion of at least one was overcome when Queq showed what he could do with his harpoon.

Loved Father Mapple and it was an interesting juxtaposition with "Ramadan".

There once was a man from Nantucket
Whose dick was so long he could suck it.
And he said with a grin
As he wiped off his chin,
"If my ear were a cunt, I would fuck it."

Now we're sailin'!

If mac promises to post a dirty limerick every day, he will have talked me into joining this read.

Pass the rum!

mac, we need you!

Lisa, I'll have a Father Mapple posting later.

Um, the correct, Canadian way to pronounce "chowder" is "shaodair."

Sounds French to me.

Great recipe

Linc (laugh I nearly cried) #53 Lisa and how quickly the aversion of at least one was overcome when Queq. showed what he could do with his harpoon

One thing on that recipe - it should simmer for a while - at least an hour. Even better and thicker the second day.

I've just released my post on Father Mapple: http://thetreadleoftheloom.blogspot.com/2012/01/sermonizing-literature-and-curre... I come at this chapter a bit round-a-bout, and it's one of those chapters you tend to keep coming back to.

Am I moving too fast on these? I'm thinking we should let everyone get up into the teen-numbered chapters at least before moving on more.

I've got to say, maybe it's just the general atmosphere of the Salon, but reading Father Mapple makes me think about similarities and differences with the role of religion in Dostoevsky. I've got to think on that more, but in both it's religion that helps make both Moby and Brothers K almost come apart at the seams, unlike the much more tidy books written by writers in England or France, for example.

>61 baswood: Barry, I had no idea your mind was so entrenched in the gutter!

great limerick Mac! wooohooooo

and to really lower the tone, courtesy of the sex pistons, I mean pistols:

It was on the good ship Venus
By Christ, you should've seen us
The figurehead was a whore in bed
And the mast was a mammoth penis

The captain of this lugger
He was a dirty bugger
He wasn't fit to shovel shit
From one place to another

Chorus:
Friggin' in the riggin'
Friggin' in the riggin'
Friggin' in the riggin'
There was fuck all else to do

The captain's name was Morgan
By Christ, he was a gorgon
Ten times a day sweet tunes he'd play
On his fucking organ

The first mate's name was Cooper
By Christ he was a trooper.
He jerked and jerked until he worked
Himself into a stupor

Chorus

The second mate was Andy
By Christ, he had a dandy
Till they crushed his cock with a jagged rock
For cumming in the brandy

The cabin boy was Flipper
He was a fucking nipper
He stuffed his ass with broken glass
And circumcised the skipper

Chorus

The Captain's wife was Mabel
To fuck she was not able
So the dirty shits, they nailed her tits
Across the barroom table

The Captain had a daughter
Who fell in deep sea water
Delighted squeals revealed that eels
Had found 'er sexual quarters

ok. enough already.

Sam, this pace is good for me. I'm just entering the sermon chapter. Oh god, you see, once the double entendres start, there's no stopping them!

(even the touchstones are getting excited!)

LOL

Brillant postings A-musing, keep them coming !

In me and Rick's version, "the figurehead was a whore in bed / sucking a dead man's penis."

(my favourite is Andy.)

ne, twas a mast of a phallic genus in my version, but my vote goes to the dead man's penis

Sam - Brilliant post on Father Mapple. His chapter was the most striking for me so far.

Mac, we're going to need a limerick today!

I'm working on a little write-up of the Ramadan chapter that Lisa alluded to before, but probably won't post it until evening today. That and some of the surrounding chapters really get into some of the racial/religious juxtapositions that Melville sets up and knocks down.

But how 'bout a Melville poem?

Crossing the Tropics, From "The Saya-y-Manto."

While now the Pole Star sinks from sight
The Southern Cross it climbs the sky;
But losing thee, my love, my light,
O bride but for one bridal night,
The loss no rising joys supply.

Love, love, the Trade Winds urge abaft,
And thee, from thee, they steadfast waft.

By day the blue and silver sea
And chime of waters blandly fanned--
Nor these, nor Gama's stars to me
May yield delight since still for thee
I long as Gama longed for land.

I yearn, I yearn, reverting turn,
My heart it streams in wake astern
When, cut by slanting sleet, we swoop
Where raves the world's inverted year,
If roses all your porch shall loop,
Not less your heart for me will droop
Doubling the world's last outpost drear.

O love, O love, these oceans vast:
Love, love, it is as death were past!

Thanks, Daniel.

The more I think about, the more that chapter just seeps through the work - Lisa mentioned The Ramadan chapter as a comparison, and there are a couple chapters focusing on Jonah (e.g, Jonah Historically Regarded, which could be a spoof of that post Mac linked to), and then there is the one I highlighted there where the sermon is given to the sharks, but I think if we look, there will be more. It's really a brilliant way of introducing Jonah, and you can't write a whale book without all kinds of Jonah stuff, right?

#66 - eek! freaky website.

Don't look at the site, read the article !

A huge - organed female from Dallas named Alice
who yearned for a phallus
was virgo intacto
because ipso facto
no phallus in Dallas fit Alice

Article was quite interesting. Unsourced, so I wonder how accurate. Setting aside the question of whether Jonah could have been swallowed by a whale, Father Mapple's message is what is important, isn't it?

A huge - organed female from Dallas
named Alice she yearned for a phallus
was virgo intacto
because ipso facto
no phallus in Dallas fit Alice

sorry mac, but...

This should be the temporary halt to the limmies:

The Farter From Sparta

There was a young fellow from Sparta,
A really magnificent farter,
On the strength of one bean
He'd fart God Save the Queen,
And Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata.

He could vary, with proper persuasion,
His fart to suit any occasion.
He could fart like a flute,
Like a lark, like a lute,
This highly fartistic Caucasian.

This sparkling young farter from Sparta,
His fart for no money would barter.
He could roar from his rear
Any scene from Shakespeare,
Or Gilbert and Sullivan's Mikado.

He'd fart a gavotte for a starter,
And fizzle a fine serenata.
He could play on his anus
The Coriolanus:
Oof, boom, er-tum, tootle, yum tah-dah!

He was great in the Christmas Cantata,
He could double-stop fart the Toccata,
He'd boom from his ass
Bach's B-minor Mass,
And in counterpoint, La Traviata.

Spurred on by a very high wager
With an envious German named Bager,
He proceeded to fart
The complete oboe part
Of a Haydn Octet in B-major.

His repertoire ranged from classics to jazz,
He achieved new effects with bubbles of gas.
With a good dose of salts
He could whistle a waltz
Or swing it in razzamatazz.

Hi basso profundo with timbre so rare
He rendered quite often, with power to spare.
But his great work of art,
His fortissimo fart,
He saved for the Marche Militaire.

One day he was dared to perform,
The William Tell Overture Storm,
But naught could dishearten
Our spirited Spartan,
For his fart was in wonderful form.

It went off in capital style,
And he farted it through with a smile,
Then, feeling quite jolly,
He tried the finale,
Blowing double-stopped farts all the while.

The selection was tough, I admit.
But it did not dismay him one bit,
Then, with ass thrown aloft
He suddenly coughed...
And collapsed in a shower of shit.

His bunghole was blown back to Sparta,
Where they buried the rest of our farter,
With a gravestone of turds
Inscribed with the words:
"To the Fine Art of Farting, A Martyr."

I think the message and the delivery and the church; that post from Mac is actually closer to a later chapter - Melville actually runs through the arguments why Jonah might not be true, and jokingly refutes them all.

Here's my recast:

A huge organed damsel named Alice
Sought sex partners all over Dallas
But she's still intacto
Because, ipso facto,
No phallus in Dallas fits Alice

Anna, how far have you gotten?

Augh! I did not think anyone would take me seriously. Off to find the book tonight - Chris says he has a copy at home.

Ah, Anna, we can't let go the idea of either pulling you in or getting a limerick a day! I've just put up my post on the Ramadan chapter, providing a Hindu interpretation of Ramadan (I couldn't resist): http://thetreadleoftheloom.blogspot.com/2012/01/ramadan-hindu-interpretation.htm...

Now, where's Muse? I'd promised her we'd get some readings of Hindu influences in Moby Dick, and here we are! There will be more before we're done.

Yes, where is Muse?

Sam, seems unlikely that anyone without your familiarity with the eastern stories would recognize what you have! In reading "Ramadan" I certainly considered the contrast between the expression of religion between Ishmael and Queequeg (as individuals and as representatives of their cultures), but not much more.

Your questions about what a reader brings to the book apply to all or our reading, of course. Broader experience, reading, education, can make the reading of any book better. Or we might find ourselves "reading into" the story things the author never intended. Either way--so what? If the reading of the book is important to the reader in some way, isn't that what matters?

Bravo on the limericks!

I am just at the Ramadan chapter now. Last night I read the Nantucket chapter: what fabulous writing. I read it twice to savour the language. Melville's ear for the rhythms of english is unerring.

some snippets that caught my eye:

Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope.
VII

All men tragically great are made so through s a certain morbidness. Be sure of this, O young ambition, all mortal greatness is but disease.
XVI

I loved the retelling of Jonah tale, and the preacher drawing up the ladder into the pulpit behind him, and the description of the Pequod: all highly symbolic. Melville is not really interested in realism, I find.

Sam, your piece on Father Mapple was very interesting and helpful. I wanted to leave a comment on your blog but for some reason my browser won't let me. :(

Lisa, I can tell you I read the book and thought about it for 30 years before recognizing that story - but, the really interesting thing is, how, once recognized, it seems somehow both clear and important to the themes - the story itself comes from the broader story of the snake sacrifice, which is really a foundational hindu myth about how people and animals and gods part ways, become different, and stop talking to each other (in many ways equivalent to the Christian garden of eden). And much of what we have here is a battle between people and nature and between people, nature and the divine.

Once, I had a discussion about Moby Dick with someone deep into music theory, who found all sorts of things in the book relating to music. All the substance of it is forgotten to me now, but they had a different connection with the book that I couldn't quite get. I find that very interesting, frustrating at first, but then really fascinating and different than a lot of books I've read, where I feel the author is trying to communicate one thing generally, that is, have everyone reading "get" what they are doing, rather than having a sort of disjointed multi-party conversation knowing people are going to take away different things.

The question of when we're reading in and when we're recognizing is really interesting to me, but not at all answerable, so it's just one of those brain worms Moby Dick seems to induce that may even distract from the story. I'm still thinking on Melville's ruminations on writing and reading that come later in the book, and that post was really kind of a marker for a discussion that is going to come.

All of this, though, really is secondary to the great prose, the story that carries us on, and the central themes - however much there are all these sorts of little issues and things to think about, on the whole each of them reinforces what Melville gives you pretty much point blank in the drama.

I don't know if much of that is clear or useful, and hope I'm not starting to muck some of it up!

A little retrospective: We're nearing the end of the first week of reading, and so coming to the close of the section of the book prior to setting sail. I know some have read further, some are not yet here, but I thought I'd do my own quick little summary of what I think has been done so far.

What have we got:

(1) We've gotten to know two main characters;
(2) We've got some gorgeous prose, generally very clear and narrative with some wonderful poetic asides;
(3) There are "loomings": we've got all kinds of foreshadowing: (a) in this story of Jonah and the whale, revolving around a mass of themes that include obediance to god, suspicious commerce (in the overpayments), and battles involving men, animals and God; (b) in Queequeg's Ramadan (both the overt ones, with Ishmael warning Queequeg of the dangers of overzealousness, and my more obscure ones); (c) in the warnings of Elijah (not discussed yet); and (d) in some of the lead-ins to Ahab, as well as I'm sure other places.
(4) I think this leaves us both with a sense of excitement and adventure and a bit of niggling fear. That's right where Melville wants us.

In addition, I think there are some hints of naughtiness here, of Melville warning us that he's ready to be a bit subversive about things, and a bit of brewing rebelliousness well seasoned with a sense of pending liberation.

If anyone wants to have this read to you instead of reading it, the annual Moby Dick Marathon at the New Bedford Whaling Museum is going to be livestreamed starting at 12:00 Eastern Time tomorrow: http://ahab-beckons.blogspot.com/2012/01/live-streaming-of-mdm16.html

Anyone wanting to just hang out on line for about 24 hours straight can get through the whole book.

>84 A_musing:: (4) I think this leaves us both with a sense of excitement and adventure and a bit of niggling fear.

Absolutely! Having gotten a bit ahead (which is good since I will likely fall behind at some point) I think the excitement and fear continue to build in our next section of reading.

>83 A_musing: Sam, I don't think you are mucking it up. I will look forward to the discussion coming later about writing and reading with the hope that I will gain a better understanding of how many of these themes Melville intended.

I'll have to pass on the marathon. Very interesting post on Ramadan.

I love the Elijah figure !!!

Elijah denounced Ahab as a murderer. Elijah told Ahab that dogs would lick his blood outside of the city, just as they had licked the blood of Naboth. He also told Ahab that none of his male heirs would survive (1 Kings 21:17-24).

How thrilling to know that a ghost crew boards the Pequod before the actual crew does.

Yes, we need more biblical stories before we're done: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elijah

Any chance we can set biblical verses in limerick form?

No problem , something like this ?

As God made His point, the rain stopped,
And onto Mount Ar-a-rat dropped
The ark. All within it
Cried, ‘Praise God! We’ve done it!’
And onto dry land out they popped!

Yes - here's ahab, but we have to dirty it up somehow:

There was a King from Samaria
Saw Jez and had to marry her
He couldn't obey
And so he would pay
'Cause Ahab was cursed by Elijah

There was a young lady from Ealing
who had a preposterous feeling
she lay on her back
and opened her crack
and pissed all over the ceiling.

not really relevant, but.....

Mac dies laughing

I'll maritime it for you

A lady decided to go eeling...

Sam, thanks for your post on Ramadan: made perfect sense to me, a misreading of Queequeg's piety. as Ishmael says, somewhere, he never could make out what Q's religion was. it seems to be a fusion of all kinds of Eastern religions, including islam, ancestor worship and animism.

regarding Ishamael's comment on the apple dumplings, I am reminded here of the ivan's conversation with the devil in Brothers Karamazov, where the devil puts the idea into Ivan's head that he is not real, just the result of indigestion, a typical Western, rationalist response to a mystical experience.

Yes, I think Queequeg's religion, like his home island, is "not down on any map; true places and religions, I'd add never are."

By the way, note how much of a deal is made of Queequeg being non-Christian, but then it turns out none of the harpooners are?

Rick, when you say eeling, I think you're referring to something else.

One thing to note as we get through the first bunch of chapters is Melville's style. Each of our chapters is quite short, almost a little tableau or setting or poems. The chapters tend to fall into clumps of three or four chapters that work together. So one of those clumps is the "going aboard" This pattern will continue throughout the book - almost like notes and measures.

We haven't talked about some of the most notable chapters up until now, like the counterpane, where dream and reality are contrasted as Ishmael has a flashback to his childhood while wakng next to Queequeg, or the Ship, where we get those incredible descriptions of what this Ship looks like, outfitted in whalebone and seaivory.

TCM, you noted that you didn't think he was terribly interested in realism, but the images invoked by him when writing, as when he goes over the appearance of the boat, are realer than real. There is a wonderful chapter in The Confidence-Man where he talks about how reality is just too odd to be believed in a book, and that sometimes the writer must tone it down to be believeable, and how reality is often inconsistent, and the writer must tidy it up to satisfy most critics. Is he not interested in realism, or does he just see a strange world?

See 'Aboard the Good Ship Venus' for one variety of eeling

Melville is as Modernist as they come.

Realism is, I think, a meaningless term for the most part in a conversation about great literature. For instance, in Latin American fiction, so daftly referred to as one thing, all 'magical realists' I've read produce varieties of realism that are 'realer than real'. I think maybe of all novelists Joyce was most interested in what may be considered Realism, while others conceive a Realism that is actually some sort of realisticism, and writers like Melville are interested in the human in the universe and have already left considerations of the possibility of a Real behind. So I generalize like those I criticize, but as I agree with myself as far as I can comprehend, so be it.

Yet, Melville did say that, as to the whaling industry, he would Lwrite it real", something I think he tried to do, realism be damned.

I have been going back to the extracts from the beginning while reading, and "placing" myself in the story as Murr suggested. Not only does the timeline work, but it reveals a whole nother level of humorous self-commentary.

Just made chowder! Great recipe, Sam--best I have ever had even though I made it myself. I grated the potatoes at the beginning. Easier than mincing them. Since I used a small can of whole clams I had to add some water to the juice from the can, and I had to add salt. The butter gives it a very rich taste. That is a "serve to company" recipe for sure.

Guess I should go back to reading now.

I am glad you liked it. If Muse reappears, I will share a Barramundi recipe, and if we can make it through the Epilogue - sweet and sour fish, a recipe taught me by a fellow who learned it from Chou En Lai

That creep.

Interesting stuff on realism, everybody. Rick, I agree, even Zola, who was as realistic as they come, is highly symbolic. I guess the only real realist writers of the 19th century were Eliot, and perhaps Trollope. oh, and Gissing.

I guess what I am picking up in the description of the Pequod is some kind of gothic, or at least a kind of fairy tale magic. The Pequod is actually some kind of whale, and all the mariners are jonahs riding in her. I sense a mood of enchantment around her.

gothic was also a strong influence on the Ishmael- Queequeg chapters. I was especially reminded of the bluebeard myth, and other virgin-bride-in-bed-waiting-for-the-monster narratives, like Desdemona and Othello, with Ishmael playing the part of the virgin bride, and Queequeg the monster. It's interesting of course that MD is dedicated to Hawthorne, who created his own fusion of realism and gothic in The House with Seven Gables...

Sorry to be derailing the realism discussion, just surfacing to say that reading under such robust guidance and such good company, suddenly I see this book's radiant face, where before I just felt I was being snubbed by it. Melville's multivocality is a marvel. And his humour so companionable.

Some few odds and ends -
- The cod-shod slip-shod cow who gives fishy milk
- a herd of walruses and whales rushing under one's pillow
- the country dandy mowing his two acres in buckskin gloves
- the small (useless) comforts bestowed by Aunt Charity

And questions - does whale spout smell? Does that come later? - And when Captain Peleg says about Ahab: "been used to deeper wonder than the waves, fixed his fiery lance in mightier, stranger fish than the whale" - the way Melville has set up the sea, and whales, WHAT could be deeper, stranger, mightier?

1 a spout smells like hell

2 mighter than THE whale is kraken

Muse is back - be-mused would perhaps be more fitting.

I had fresh-caught barramundi on the wharf in Darwin once, it was a moment to remember. It was sunset, and everything turned to gold.

Sam, I am keeping the book near the toilet and will read it from time to time, hoping to get interested enough to read more. That is all I can promise so far. It's an appropriately watery location, at least.

welcome back choco! we have all missed you? come on, join us for this read, pleeeeeeeeeez.

(don't read on the loo: HEMORRHOID WARNING)

>106 captainsflat: Suddenly I see this books radient face.

Great post, captainsflat and thanks for surfacing.

I love those details you picked out.

isn't there something about spout smell in the Cetelogy chapter?

Cap'n, welcome aboard and welcome to the Salon. Good to have you. I see you're also from Australia, so I'm hoping the Barramundi receipe meets approval. And, Muse, that's plenty. Of course, we'll do our best to suck you in, and it's not hard!

So, before getting back to business, some Barramundi. If you haven't had this fish, I have a relative who has been trying to introduce to US markets, and it can now be found at Costco and Trader Joes in the US, as funny a combination as you'll find.

This is for barbequed barramundi, and requires a barbeque like a Weber grill, with a top you can put on to smoke. This is what we do with the big ones.

First, you cut a pineapple sideways, to create a sort of plank from the core. No need to skin it first.

Then, get a piece of fish that roughly will fit on your pineapple plank. Marinade it briefly in some lemon and lime and a bit of seasame oil.

Separately, pulp a few citrus fruits. The more variety the better, and mix in a bunch of cilantro and sale and pepper.

Now, sear the fish briefly on the barby - not even a couple minutes on each side. Leave the pineapple plank on the barby next to it. Flip the fish on the plank after searing, and cover with the pulp mixture. Put the top on the barbeque and let the smoke build - depending on the size of the fish, it should take only 10 to 15 minutes to cook.

Then you deliver it on the plank to the table. It's pretty and its fish that won't fall apart on a barbeque.

Chou En Lai was, of course, a bastard and a half. However, it's a good fish recipe - apparently he liked to cook. Back in the 80s, I was involved in the anti-apartheid movement, and got to know fairly well a guy who has been one of the leaders of the revolution against the British in Zanzibar, and he and Chou En Lai were apparently the folks you wanted to eat with if you were at a international communist meeting in the 60s, and he gave me the recipe. So, when we're done, sweet and sour fish, a very strage recipe.

Now, on to the the book. There is a discussion of the whale spout later on - in the chapter called "The Fountain", and I think a bit elsewhere, too.

The "mightier" question I think is a huge quote! I think it is meant to make us wonder - the obvious answer is the divine, but it may be either God or the Devil as we look at different parts of the book.

Note the names in this chapter. Bildad's name comes from the Bible - Bildad was one of Job's interrogators whose questions about what had caused Job's mishaps did not meet with God's approval; in the Bible, Bildad acts pious, behaves as piously as possible, but does not have the wisdom or insight or faith that Job has. Peleg comes from Genesis, and was a long lived patriarch during whose time "the earth was divided", presumably among different tribes. The whole set up of the voyage by these two, one who oversees division, one who befrieds the unfortunate with false piety, is part of the set up of the grand themes of the book.

Is Moby Dick more than a whale? Or has Ahab been thinking about more than Moby Dick, perhaps at some earlier point in his life? I think dramatically Melville was us to set up questions here, not answer them, and he leaves them open, but I think this question will stay open all through the book. It's one of the very powerful elements of foreshadowing about Ahab. Mac's answer on the Kraken is great, too, and we'll see one other animal during the whole book who has an argument for being greater, though Ahab will have little interest. The kraken only makes a glancing mention in the book, and Melville kept talking in his letters about wanting to write "the Kracken" after the Whale. A likely mythologoical sea monster. Not sure that's what is referenced here, but it is something mightier.

That fiery lance part of the reference may refer to Ahab's harpoon and the scene later in the book, which I pulled out on my blog in the discussion of Ahab, where Ahab has his harpoon tempered with fire and then cooled with pagan blood.

I'll plan on opening a thread for the next round of chapters this evening; but no need for discussion here to end, and we'll probably move into those somewhat slowly from my perspective because I'm going to be a touch busy over the next 48 hours.

nice posts, I agree, escpecially where TC agrees with me...

I can't read for long without underlining something.

As for the rrhoids caused by potty reading, it must be a matterrh of technique: I am a safe anus toilet reader.

112, i was indeed referring to THE correspondance between melville and hawthorne

Hey A_, in a bosom friend, Herman quotes 'broken his digester.' Any idea who he is quoting if not Rabelais?

Daniel Defoe ?
This whole chapter is a spoof on Robinson Crusoe

defoe would never use 'digester' though

No idea - the reference is to "like the dyseptic old lady, he might have broken his digester", so we might as well also ask who the dyseptic old lady is. I agree that digester doesn't sound like defoe, nor can I think of who the old lady would be in R.C.

I am going to open a new thread for the coming chapters, though I have nothing much to add to it yet other than a few words of introduction and encouragement, and we should continue to talk here about anything up to the "Going Aboard" chapter.

Hi, guys! I'm finally here! I'm a bit behind...a lot behind, but I will be trying like mad to catch up. Ishmael...an interesting character. I've got to say I really relate to his comments on the spiritual power of water.

I am just finished with A Bosom Friend. And I have no plans for hurrying.

Excellent. We will keep this thread going for a while.

Sometimes when I read these posts I realize I have missed a great deal and have to go back and reread. Thank heaven the chapters are short!

Would you all please stop talking about other books here? 1) I realize how many things I have not read and 2) I already have a propensity to wander off and do not need any encouragement. And 3) I have already blown the book budget for the next several months.

For those who like links, the next thread is here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/130645

Thank you! I knew I was forgetting something.

The thing, Lisa, is that the chapters are bottomless pits. It's great to get many perspectives, because things that are obvious to any person will be missed by 80% or more of the reading audience. But it all is kept together by the story and drama.

CG, there are a bunch of chapters on those spiritual powers - you'll get to the Masthead, and then to the Grand Armada, and Candles - but then there is the poor Castaway, and the spiritual power of the sea takes an incredible turn!

Can anyone explain the Lazarus references at the end of Chapter 2 I think it is?

Here is the passage, describing The Spouter Inn, run by Peter Coffin, and talking of a poor man in the street before it:

It was a queer sort of place - a gable-ended old house, one side palsied as it were, and leaning over sadly. It stood on a sharp bleak corner, where that tempestuous wind Euroclydon kept up a worse howling than ever it did about poor Paul's tossed craft. Euroclydon, nevertheless, is a mighty pleasant zephyr to any one in-doors, with his feet on the hob quietly toasting for bed. "In judging of that tempestuous wind called Euroclydon," says an old writer - of whose works I possess the only copy extant - "it maketh a marvellous difference, whether thou lookest out at it from a glass window where the frost is all on the outside, or whether thou observest it from that sashless window, where the frost is on both sides, and of which the wight Death is the only glazier." True enough, thought I, as this passage occurred to my mind - old black-letter, thou reasonest well. Yes, these eyes are windows, and this body of mine is the house. What a pity they didn't stop up the chinks and the crannies though, and thrust in a little lint here and there. But it's too late to make any improvements now. The universe is finished; the copestone is on, and the chips were carted off a million years ago. Poor Lazarus there, chattering his teeth against the curbstone for his pillow, and shaking off his tatters with his shiverings, he might plug up both ears with rags, and put a corn-cob into his mouth, and yet that would not keep out the tempestuous Euroclydon. Euroclydon! says old Dives, in his red silken wrapper - (he had a redder one afterwards) pooh, pooh! What a fine frosty night; how Orion glitters; what northern lights! Let them talk of their oriental summer climes of everlasting conservatories; give me the privilege of making my own summer with my own coals.

But what thinks Lazarus? Can he warm his blue hands by holding them up to the grand northern lights? Would not Lazarus rather be in Sumatra than here? Would he not far rather lay him down lengthwise along the line of the equator; yea, ye gods! go down to the fiery pit itself, in order to keep out this frost?

Now, that Lazarus should lie stranded there on the curbstone before the door of Dives, this is more wonderful than that an iceberg should be moored to one of the Moluccas. Yet Dives himself, he too lives like a Czar in an ice palace made of frozen sighs, and being a president of a temperance society, he only drinks the tepid tears of orphans.

****

Ah, we're wandering into Melville's use of mythology! A great area I've been thinking about. I'll give you a few thoughts on this a bit later, as I'm just tied up this morning with some work.

In the meantime, here is a link to the story of Lazarus and Dives: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_man_and_Lazarus

Here is the passage in Acts where the term Euroclydon is most famously used (line 14):
http://kingjbible.com/acts/27.htm

OK, here's my run through on this little bit. Melville pulls out a whole range of mythic images and concepts and mushes them together, almost creating a mythological language. Here are some of the key players I see:

Euroclydon: the tempest that wrecked St. Paul's ship as he sailed from Greece to Italy (though all survived) spreading The Word; generally this is a Mediterranean (e.g., warmer) storm

Lazarus: a poor person from the Bible who lives a holy but difficult live, always sore-ridden and hungry, and desiring to be fed from the same table as the rich man;

Dives: latin for "rich man", used in the same bible verse for the rich man who does not feed Lazarus and, after death, is denied heaven but sees Lazarus there, and who begs for some of the cool water from the finger of Lazarus to ease his suffering in hellfire, a request that is denied by Abraham;

Orion: a hunter born of Poisedon and Euryale, a daughter of the King of Crete; he was a lover of the Goddess of Dawn and could walk on water;

Aurora Borealis: Among the Norse, produced when the Valkyries ride out for battle; among the latins, an image of the Goddes of Dawn.

Old writer of whose books I have the only copy extent: I blank on this - anyone?

So as I read this, Ishmael is contemplating the image of a poor person on the street before the Spouter Inn; I think the identity of his Dives is indefinite: could it be the people of the Inn, or is it more an abstract thought?

He is thinking through the image of a Lazarus and a Dives, and wondering about whether it is better to look through a window with frost on one side at the wind - that is, to experience the wind and cold but remain alive. The unidentified writer takes the view it is, a view contrary to the Biblical story.

Ishmael knows what the rich man would think - forget death, he's happy in his warmth, and can make his own summer, and we invoke the beautiful images of both Orion and the Aurora, images also associated with battles and hunting (importantly, a sea-hunter). He profits from the hunt. Likewise, he "drinks the tears of orphans". Ishmael is obviously not so fond of rich guys.

Ishmael wonders what the poor man would want - would he trade his cold, windswept spot even with hell for its warmth? Or for Sumatra and the equator, where Ishmael may be heading? He can't warm his hands against the northern lights (e.g., he won't profit from the hunt).

I love the final images - the place made of "frozen sighs" and the iceberg tied to the Moluccas. I think we've moved from physical warmth and cold to spiritual warmth and cold. And there is more than a little identification between Ishmael and Lazarus here. I also love the red silken wrapper on Dives and the comment that it will be redder "afterwards" - I reference I take it to the flames of hell.

Do people see more in here? Am I off base on any of this? I think this writing style is very open and ambiguous, and leaves a lot for us to just kind of contemplate and piece together. I think you get the gist of it without knowing much about the myths involved, but as you pick them apart his language gains some added color and depth.

Thank you, Sam, for that thoughtful exegesis. One could think that Melville is setting up something along the lines of grand themes, but from what I have read, I don't remember much evil rich guy v. holy poor guy stuff, so I'm tempted to think he's just musing. I don't know Ishmael very well at this point but he's quite the philosopher, isn't he?

Well, the Eurocyldon stuff is obviously foreshadowing.

And everything's a Bible allegory to Ishmael, apparently.

There will actually be quite a lot on unholy commerce, but I think it gets set to the side since it doesn't fit in on first blush with the grand faustian concepts about infinites, unknowables and madness. Remember, Ishmael is thinking early on about how much better it is to be paid to sail than to pay; in the chapter on Father Mapple, you'll see the good father introduce some issues about what Jonah pays for his voyage that are not in the Biblical story of Jonah; keep an eye out on commerce, and you'll find some interesting tid-bits.

But, yeah, this book foreshadows the foreshadowing; it is all foreshadowing here if you look hard enough. And lots of Bible - mostly old testament, this is somewhat special in being two new testament references together.

Well, part of my excitement about your question CG, is that this passage is going to relate to today's blog post on the myth of Osiris. Osiris is particularly identified with Orion; the constellations of Orion and Canis Major in Greek astrology are seen as the constellations of Orisis and Isis by the Egyptians. A bit of bird-seed left by Melville. Here is today's post, on Bruce Franklin's profoundly strange and interesting reading of Moby-Dick: http://thetreadleoftheloom.blogspot.com/2012/01/primordial-divinity.html

good stuff on Dives and Lazarus. There is a subtle thread of democracy vs tyranny running through the text as well, is it part of that thread?

Thanks for the osiris stuff. very interesting.

Wait for the fast-fish and loose-fish chapters for some really great stuff on tyranny, democracy, and social classes. Yes, some of the stuff on democracy and on rich and poor tie together, though I think some also run separately.

I like the foreshadowing here: From that hour I clove to Queequeg like a barnacle; yea, till poor Queequeg took his last long dive.

I also love this because of those who are intimidated by the mighty Mel: ....we could not possibly do better than try pot-luck at the Try-Pots.

"Knights and Squires" ends with a great foreshadowing, too: "An Anacharis Clootz deputation from all the isles of the sea, and all the ends of the earth, accompanying Old Ahab in the Pequod to lay the worlds grievences before that bar from which not very many of them ever come back. Black Little Pip -- he never did! Poor Alabama boy! On the grim Pequod's forecastle, ye shall ere long see him, beating his tambourine; prelusive of the eternal time, when sent for, to the great quarter-deck on high, he was bid strike with angels, and beat his tambourine in glory..."

(FYI: Clootz was a figure in the French Revolution who sought to break down national barriers and have a family of nations and who viewed himself as "an enemy of Jesus Christ"; the reference would have been fresher in minds at the time - one issue on Mel is that some of his references to recent history and current events are now a bit distant for us).

Brilliant thread A_Musing and everybody else that is contributing.

I am stuck at the moment I am finding it all too organic: just when I think I might have my foot on it, it squirms away in another direction. It is bold, hard and so vital, but it's not fitting with my other reading at the moment - its too American. I am going to take a break from it for a few days, but I will put my mind to it later and catch you all up in week three.

Bas--just to assure you, baseball is never mentioned

Sam, I very much enjoyed your comments on Osiris and Egypt. I look forward to recognizing the references going forth, saying "Aha!," and feeling very smart.

My god! I had forgotten what a comic episode Ishmael's bedding down with Queequeg is.

Do you think it is possible that Melville didn't know that he was a homosexual?

No, no..CG, put the pillow down a sec. See Melville WROTE the book...there IS no Queequeg...he's just a character in a book...the hearpoon isn't re¤˝´

Oh, so now you're just inserting symbols in place of letters in addition to willful misspelling? Really, Rick, I am going to smother you with the pillow.

Melville also wrote Billy Budd, and this whole Queequeq/Ishmael thing is pretty clear to me, but it is written in such a way that you're supposed to think Ishmael is really uncomfortable with the idea of intimacy with another dude. It's like: "This chapter is totally queer. Psych!"

Hence, my question.

Rick, I am sharpening my harpoon as we speak. Do with that what you will.

I think Melville answers the question for Ishmael, and perhaps himself, later in the book, in the "Squeeze of the Hand", but others may read it differently:

"Would that I could keep squeezing that sperm for ever! For now, since by many prolonged, repeated experiences, I have perceived that in all cases man must eventually lower, or at least shift, his conceit of attainable felicity; not placing it anywhere in the intellect or the fancy; but in the wife, the heart, the bed, the table, the saddle, the fire-side, the country; now that I have perceived all this, I am ready to squeeze case eternally. In thoughts of the visions of the night, I saw long rows of angels in paradise, each with his hands in a jar of spermaceti. "

One thing I promise you, whenever things get a bit thick in the book - there is a comic chapter around the corner; he cannot go long without them.

Bas, I think now is a good time to let loose a post giving some historical context to the book, which may help you with some of the Americanism of the book. Here it is: http://thetreadleoftheloom.blogspot.com/2012/01/wide-world.html

I always wonder how this book reads to the broader world, and at some point it may be interesting to talk about its "americanness". While I think Melville had, and expressed in his letters, a desire to write something distinctly American and democratic, I think he always wanted it to be very universal in other ways, especially in its metaphysics.

Great blog Sam. I have just finished reading North and South, Elizabeth Gaskell which was published in 1855 and so you can see why I am not tuned into Melville at the moment.

Melville himself would not have been likely to recommend “Redburn” as a gift. In “Melville: His World and Work,” Andrew Delbanco tells us that the author reacted to positive reviews of the novel by writing in his journal: “I, the author, know it to be trash, & wrote it to buy some tobacco with.”

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/04/the-perilous-art-of-giving-books/

CG, sorry, i actually GOT harpooned, which explains the end of that post. am feeling better. thanks.

When I was first in India my future brother in law had lots of friends of college age or thereabouts and so i had upon going there an instant dozens of friends. they were mostly quite physically familiar, often walking with their arms around me, or talking to me with a hand on my leg. One time i was laying on a bed and a guy laid directly on top of me, in affection. each time something like this happened i of course noticed it, but apperceptually, there was nothing uncomfortable about any of it, nor sexual as far as i know. i think of this when i read about ishmael and queequeg. a so-called queer reading is fine with me, but i have always read it as part of melville-s general world-loving heresy. i too love being awake in bed with others. my kids still sleep in our bed and while my wife wants them out as a matter of basic comfort, i rue the day when they take flight to the bunk beds we bought 3 and a half years ago. and i love it even more when our two dogs join us...

mmmm.animal husbandry?

and wifery

How did Ishmael get from Manhatto to New Bedford?

I've nothing major to add to the Ish-Quee ep from the point of view of queerology, but, circumstantially, isn't it odd there's no mention of sailors' sluts, drabs, trollops etc.? Wouldn't they be a feature of that scene? I mean, here this guy goes on and on about another guy undressing, and hugging him in bed, all very comically, and then in the morning prancing about nekkid etc.--but nowhere is there a single mention of the girls?

Or is New Bedford too puritanical for hetero trade? Or am I still early?

I'm up to Chowder. Loving the lingo. Ish would be a good road partner, and I do not make such judgements lightly.

Of course, I'd have to remember to keep the cutlery out of the bed, should we need to share one.

151> fourth read and I never thought of that...and from what I recall none of the trollopery is coming, either

Cherchez les femmes!

New Bedford may be many things, but puritanical is not one of them. Lola, I think that is exactly right.
Melville has few major womne character period, with the enormous exception of Pierre, where 3 of the 4 major characters are women.

CG, no idea how he got there. No easy train at that point - it would have been round about.

No cutlerly? But he is very skilled with it.

Rosy Probert...Let me shipwreck in her thighs. But really, where were the women? And I think it is Queequeg who is skilled with cutlery.
Rick, I am more likely to wax lyrical about the rare night I have ALONE in bed, no kids, no husband hogging 3/4 of the bed, no cats stalking my toes. But in many countries the blokes are all much more physical with each other. I like it, and think of these poor australians living in a desert of affection. The most they can hope for is a pat on the back or the bum.

I have just read my favourite chapter so far. The Whiteness of The Whale. It was intoxicating. I think I could read a whole book on the colour white. And then collect the set. I might read Gass's On Blue now for a diversion.

And I was with Bas, with thinking it was too American for me the last times I attempted to read it. And it still has all the "America is great, America is best, O America" a bit, but I find I can ignore it this time. Maybe reading more about Melville helped. Made it ... regional. But I think I will never get The Great Gatsby.

Yes, Q with the cutlery.

Ishmael does like his night at the mast-head alone.

It's interesting, I think the American part of it is sometimes hard for Americans to see clearly; we are so accustomed to the over-blown self-image, almost assume it. Melville did know the broader world better than most of his time, and, I think, might have preferred more time in the South Seas to more time in the Berkshire Hills of Masschusetts.

no cats stalking my toes.

lol, and I love your Dylan Thomas reference. come on up, boys. (I revere DT)

I'm not getting the American bit at all, and I usually have a fine nose for 'America, land of the free' bullshit. To me, the few references to America are rather in the vein of Whitman's: America as a state of mind: wild frontiers, camarado etc.

I had a quick dive back in to see what it is - I agree it's not the "bullshit" references. But unfortunately, I sometimes conflate the two, and need help de-tangling them. In Knights and Squires (1) - there is "that democratic dignity which, on all hands, radiates without end from God; Himself! The great God absolute! The centre and circumference of all democracy! His omnipresence, our divine equality!" Now, nowhere is America mentioned, but this to me feels so American. This time through, I can see around it, and it may just be my sloppy habits that conflate America and Democracy and God, and inserts one of them wherever two of the three are mentioned.

I do love how Melville feels so in the round, so many references and mockings and earnestness and so encompassing. Is he claiming that encompassing for an America as state of mind?

I see it as wider than merely American, I see it as Protestant, Puritan, Quaker.

capnflat,

probably because I easily surrender 4/5ths of the bed (though hold that ground)--what would I do with all the space? that howling infinite? the whiteness of the sheets so like sullen, sulking sails?

Rosy Probert...Let me shipwreck in her thighs

Ha! I saw recently the movie production with Peter O'Toole, Richard Burton, Liz Taylor etc.--can't recommend it highly enough.

ETA: Under Milk Wood, children!

Goddam touchstone. While I'm here, let me add it's all the Welsh scenery, actors and sounds that are so terrific. Especially the bit with the young girl and the sheep (or goats, I couldn't spare a glance for them).

I think the American feel comes from the lack of restraint to social mores. Melville is not going to be confined by anything, he is going into his own territory, where he is free to do as he damn well pleases. And who is going to challenge him? Who else has written a novel on this period of American-dominated whaling.

It's American in the same sense that pioneers went west, took "virgin" land far from and free of civilized authority, claimed it as there own sovereign ground, and didn't look back for guidance or approval.

I haven't seen the movie - love the radio play version.

This is more a dark American, too; a lot of E.A. Poe, a lot of stuff about leveling democracy, but mixed with an odd-ball egomaniacal obsessive, who strikes me as himself a very American character, if not the prettiest of us.

Also a lot of peoples of all nations mixing. How much is that American, how much is that just internationalism of some sort?

Nous sommes tous Américains?

LOL!!!

#465

When Herman goes on about the Nantucketeers taking three fourths of the globe or whatever I don't read it as a US expansionist turn, rather simply a whalemen's phenomenon. It's fair enough to take it otherwise, but as I love Melville, I don't.

I was just tossing the idea out there, shred away. For the record, I wasn't thinking about expansion so much as distance and the related freedom from conventional behavior.

But in the US freedom from conventional behavior is a movie ideal, rather than an actual quotidian phenomenon.

>171 RickHarsch:: How true. I sometimes wonder if there is a place on earth that is more tied to a requirement of conventional behavior whilst claiming "free to be me".

#171/2 - goodness, that is painfully accurate.

172,173--Long my favorite illustration of this has been the phenomenon of testosterone driven packs of men going together to watch films like Rambo that celebrate the heroics of the individual.

174: When I was in France in '88-'89 Rambo 1st Blood Part Two came out and people were lined up around the block to see it. The french/American film about diving "Le Grand Bleu" came out around the same time and there was no problem getting into that one.

oh I love that movie!

Yes I love Rambo too TC ! LOL

Damn! Wiki has blacked out..

Only in English.

Only for today to protest the internet blacklist bill. I think a few other sites were going to go on blackout too.

Started reading again and arrived on board the Pequod. I have got an American hat on now that I have finished reading Elizabeth Gaskell's classic Victorian novel.

An example and there are many that I take to show the Americaness in this prose comes from "The Ramadan"

I say, we good Presbyterian Christians should be charitable in these things, and not fancy ourselves so vastly superior to other mortals, pagans and what not, because of their half crazy conceits on these subjects. There was Queequeg now, now, certainly entertaining the most absurd notions about Yojo and his Ramadan; - but what of that? Queequeg thought he knew what he was about, I suppose; he seemed to be content; and there let him rest. All our arguing with him would not avail; let him be, I say: and Heaven have mercy on us all - Presbyterians and Pagans alike - for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending.

This is Ishmael thinking aloud and so it could be Melville talking to us. The melting pot of early American life and a plea for acceptance. I love that last sentence "for we are all somehow cracked about the head, and sadly need mending.

The wigwam on the Pequod

The description of Captain Bildad "had the reputation of being an incorrigible old hunks...."

The whiff of the frontier, a new land, a rumbustious mixture of everything from the Bible to Shakespeare is all to be found in the whirl of Melville's prose.

good stuff bas

>181 baswood:, B, It is interesting to hear this perspective, since those thoughts did not occur to me (American that I am). I wonder--do you have an idea how a British author might have approached such a scene, or would a British author never have written about it?

Bas, I read it differently, far from typically 'American' (don't want to insult Canadiens and Mexicans and Peruvians and...). Melville is sly, beginning the paragraph with a typically condescending bent and ending with what he really thinks, that it's all harmless nonsense in the face of enormous and constantly pressing mystery.

Rick, the joy of reading, what we bring or don't bring to the text.

Lisa, the whale was first published in 1851 and so on the other side of the pond it was Dickens, Gaskell, Trollope, Thakeray - the heyday of the Victorian novel, so different from what Melville was doing and I can't think the British writers would have written anything like the paragraph I quoted. In many ways it seems to me Melville's writing was so new, perhaps so much in advance of much else.

Well, back from my blackout day. No internet for me on Kill Sopa Day.

Bas, good stuff. You know, this is a more outward-looking kind of American than I think we see in today's AmLit. There are also a lot of references to the European sprinkled throughout.

He's still writing at a point in time when American literature is really in its infancy and tethered fairly tightly to the European, and there is a way he's trying to cut that tether a bit - and perhaps pulling in some broader global roots with references to non-Western mythologies. A sort of rebellious adolescent?

And welcome to the read!

Lisa, Melville's first real biographer, Weaver, speculated that Melville gave up prose in part because the country was just too conformist for him. Through most of the 19th century, he was read much more in England than the US.

Nathaniel Philbrick calls MD "a repository not only of American history and culture but also of the essentials of Western literature". He also says, "As individuals trying to find our way through darkness, as citizens of a nation trying to live up to the ideals set forth in our constitution, we need, more than ever before, Moby Dick". I don't know how much this may resonate with those of you who've read a lot more of the book than I have, but I'm wondering if this might be one reason I struggle to 'get' MD - is it a not being American thing?

However I realise captainsflat is enjoying it, somewhere up north in a tropical wet season, so I can't use this idea as a cop-out.

I'm also tempted to say that I need it to be winter to enjoy reading this. I need dark short days and the glow of artificial light among the shadows, with a howling wind, a glowing fire, and chowder.

Try Sam's chowder. It is really good.

Not having read Philbrick's book, I don't know. That one sentence sounds like a stretch to me.

There's something in Melville's tone that reminds me of Whitman. A kind of ocean-wave grandiosity.

P.S. Plus more.

P.P.S. Perhaps substitute "grandeur" for "grandiosity", or, better yet, include. I mean the bigness of vision, sweep, register.

Manhattan clam chowder - sorry, I just remembered that that is what the red stuff is called. It's a tomato-based clam chowder.

>189 LisaCurcio: I thought it sounded like a stretch too, but haven't read enough MD this time around to comment.

ChocolateMuse, you sound like what I normally sound like about MD. I don't know, but for me it helped reading that review Melville wrote about Hawthorne's Moss that was posted. Something about it just enabled me to look around the corner a bit. I am seeing lots of other Western lit, like the next thread - Shakespeare, Cervantes, but also things to come. (I keep bumping into Heart of Darkness). And the mentions of folk tales and myths.
It could just be a truce, so I don't want to analyse too much why the noise is not drowning out the book this time until I get to the end, in case it dissipates. I don't mind reading this sans chowder and snow, as I am only sweltering around like a great blob anyway waiting for the rain to start. I am right there on the boat.

#163

Rick, that still makes me chuckle every time I read it. I long for the void and the icy wastes.

I'll try very hard not to riff on icy wastes...

A real question: So what, really, is the problem with the chapter Cetology? It's not long, it's funny, it turns things upsidedown, its both high and low humor, and even includes a little bit about whales?

It introduces, albeit tongue-in-cheek, a vocabulary and diction akin to that of an encyclopedia, which is not what one expects to read in a novel, and, plot-wise, it reads at first as an "interruption". I think each of those things make it odd and somewhat off-putting for many, or odd and really exciting for others.

I've been reading Alter's Pen of Iron and he's really fascinating on this book. He, better than anyone I've read on MB, really gets Melville's use of different dictions and tones and vocabularies - not surprising, as Alter has a translator's ear for He titles his chapter on Moby Dick "Popyphony", and is great at pointing out the different strands of diction that interweave to make up the disparate voices of the book and I think the Ceteology chapter, and similar chapters, represents a homophonic if not monophonic interlude in some ways.

Sam, for crying out loud, don't we have enough to read? ;-) I have to add that book to my list now. I am really enjoying Alter's Five Books of Moses so expect Pen of Iron will be a great addition.

One of Alter's answers to what makes the book so American (and he thinks it is): Melville regularly uses the cadences and diction of Biblical Hebrew, including parallelism and parataxis as well as other techniques. He does a close reading to find these all over the place, and makes the point that American prose, because Americans in general, in sermons and essays as well as fiction, were more old-testament-centric in their religion than other writers, reflects these elements more heavily.

Kind of interesting; he makes a good argument.

Alter is a fascinating guy; a lot of his stuff is going on my to be read lists.

196, 198 Very interesting, you can hear those biblical cadences all over the place. The other huge ghost is Shakespeare, whose cadences and methods are employed in all the monologue chapters.

Here is Ahab in chapter 37 slightly adjusted to blank verse (there are a few lines of iambic pentameter)

'Twas not so hard a task.
I thought to find one stubborn, at the least;
but my one cogged circle fits into all
their various wheels, and they revolve.
Or, if you will, like so many ant-hills of powder,
they all stand before me; and I their match.
Oh, hard! that to fire others, the match itself must needs be wasting!
What I've dared, I've willed; and what I've willed, I'll do!
They think me mad- Starbuck does;
but I'm demoniac, I am madness maddened!
That wild madness that's only calm to comprehend itself!

and here is Richard II

I have been studying how I may compare
This prison where I live unto the world:
And for because the world is populous
And here is not a creature but myself,
I cannot do it; yet I'll hammer it out.
My brain I'll prove the female to my soul,
My soul the father; and these two beget
A generation of still-breeding thoughts,
And these same thoughts people this little world,
In humours like the people of this world,
For no thought is contented.

One thing I've noticed in all the Ahab monologues is the construction of elaborate metaphors and similes: in the quote above, the simile of the cogged circle, and the ant hill. This is very shakesperian: in richard's speech where he uses the simile of the world as a prison. This kind of extended metaphor -a conceit, really- is a key shakespearian device - you see it in the sonnets as well- and every time Ahab has a monologue he indulges in this kind of extended conceit. It's very noticeable.

Oh that's brilliant TC: your transforming the thoughts of Ahab into blank verse.

Agreed: Brilliant stuff, Cat.

But madness maddened--think of this along with 'I'd strike the sun if it insulted me'...

EXCELLENT!!!

Besides the Biblical thread, Alter does note there is a Shakespearian, an American Colloquial and a sort of encyclopedic voice, and there are a few places he identifies and parses through Melville's biblical cadences in a not dissimilar fashion to what you just did (though he doesn't lay it out as nicely - he does it two or four lines at a time in the discussion). He doesn't make claims that his list is complete.

Shakespeare appears particularly where Ahab is about, right?

Actually, I think I was wrong on the Shakespearian being so heavily Ahabian; I am re-reading The Whiteness of the Whale as I finish up a posting and see some sections there that might be quickly converted to iambic p.

well, it's not the iambic that I was focussing on so much as the extended conceits, that's what caught my eye. Melville captures shakespeare's diction but not so much his rhythms. Iambic is mixed with 4 stressed feet and six in the extract above.

Now Dickens really did catch the iambic. I've done similar things with Dickens before, and it's very noticeable there.

I think there are iambs, too, though parsing through a bit more too irregular to be pentameter. This was the passage I had read quickly and of which I was thinking:

Nor, in quite other aspects, does Nature in her least palpable but not the less malicious agencies, fail to enlist among her forces this crowning attribute of the terrible. From its snowy aspect, the gauntleted ghost of the Southern Seas has been denominated the White Squall. Nor, in some historic instances, has the art of human malice omitted so potent an auxiliary. How wildly it heightens the effect of that passage in Froissart, when, masked in the snowy symbol of their faction, the desperate White Hoods of Ghent murder their bailiff in the market- place!

It is more irregular, less pentameter, than Shakespeare, by far, but there is a lot of iambic phrasing, starting with "in quite other aspects".

They've got a three-part post up over at Ahab Beckons, a web site by a couple of hard-core devotees of the marathon read at the Whaling Museum, focused on the question of Ahab's authority:

http://www.ahab-beckons.blogspot.com/2011/09/ishmaels-rights.html
http://www.ahab-beckons.blogspot.com/2011/09/ishmaels-rights-part-ii.html
http://ahab-beckons.blogspot.com/2012/01/ishmaels-rights-part-iii.html

As if I don't read enough law already . . . .

My apologies, Lisa, I know that feeling. I've spent the day on legal stuff myself. Still, at least it's OLD legal stuff.

Even worse, now, NFL overtime rules.

Murr - I'm going to be thinking of poetic rhythms and feet the rest of the time I read MD...

#206 - didn't real all of that, but what I read was helpful. I've been confused by the whaling captains lack of iron command, so now I understand this, and Ahab's style of manipulations, better.

And damn it, it looks like I need to hunt down a copy of Pen of Iron...