Christopher’s Comments (group member since Mar 05, 2009)

Christopher’s comments from the fiction files redux group.

I've been thinking about Dan's post above where he talks about the number of tangents that take us away from the main story. This is a primary complaint among readers of MD. But then I started wondering what the main story is, at least in the first twenty or thirty chapters.

Initially, it's about Ishmael and his desire to go whaling. We follow him along, eavesdropping on his and Queequeg's "bridegroom clasp" (I too found that uplifting and amusing, Kerry), and learn a bit about ships and South Sea cannibals and Ishmael's thoughts on everything from bed-sharing to chowder to the almost mystical significance of water. He's an odd bird, and most readers seem to like his oddness. I'm happy to follow Ishmael.

But as soon as the Pequod sets sails, the story changes, moving towards the dark Ahab and his revenge plot. And herein lies a problem for Melville. We are well over a hundred pages into the novel, having followed a whimsical first-person narrator and his growing friendship with Queequeg, but now the story takes on a grimmer aspect with Ahab's mad desire to destroy Moby Dick. How does/should/can the ironical Ishmael narrate this story?

Melville sidesteps this in two ways. First, Ishmael fades away, to be replaced by another narrator much like him, but more omniscient and less inclined to whimsy. It's not Melville himself, exactly, but a narrator somewhere between Melville and Ishmael, who can narrate a broader range of events (including, apparently, Ahab's own private thoughts in his cabin in Chapter XXXVII, "Sunset").

Second, Melville is up against his own plot. We learn of Moby Dick's dismemberment of Ahab, who swears revenge. Ahab's machinations are complex and rely on his cunning and his charismatic authority. Eventually, he finds the whale, and I'll leave those of you who have not yet read the book to discover what happens. (Hint: Ahab does not join Greenpeace.) But a narrative with such a lethal trajectory could either threaten to grow tedious if confined to just the details of the quest itself ("Log entry #437--still seeking the White Whale") OR it would be a swift, action-oriented tale, something like the "Death Wish" movies from the 1970s. And even in those films, Charles Bronson got to shoot down lots of criminals. Ahab just wants one particular sperm whale.

What Melville does is supplement the core narrative with a variety of strands (and here I'm paraphrasing Carl F. Hovde's intro to the B&N edition): visits with other ships; extended similes that connect the ocean action back to life on land (a lot like Homer uses epic similes that jar with the events of war they describe); allusions that connect shipboard life to "general culture"; and cetology.

Think about "Hamlet." The core plot is pretty simple: a ghost appears to Hamlet, claiming to be the spirit of his father, and tells Hamlet his father was murdered by his uncle, his father's brother, who has since become king himself and married Hamlet's mother. "Revenge his most foul and unnatural murder," the Ghost commands Hamlet. Hamlet swears to do so at the end of Act 1. I imagine Shakespeare at some point was thinking, "Now what?" He can't have Hamlet kill Claudius in Act 2--the play would be over. Shakespeare had a long tradition of revenge tragedies to draw from, though, and those tragedies all prescribed delaying the revenge to ratchet up the suspense.

What makes "Hamlet" such a masterpiece (among other reasons) is that Shakespeare does delay the revenge, but he makes that delay a central point of the play. WHY can't Hamlet act? Well, for starters, he's got Polonius sniffing around, and a suspicious Claudius to befuddle. His girlfriend breaks up with him. And then, of course, there's the mommy problem and the self-loathing, and the Prince's myriad thoughts on life and human beings and society in general and suicide in particular.

Melville isn't writing a play, though (except in Chapter XL, "Forecastle," which is awkward but fascinating), and he isn't copying "Hamlet," but Ishmael does have his own peculiar trains of thought, which run deep and run far. And Melville uses all the stuff above to not just fill up the time between the start of the novel and the epic close, anymore than Shakespeare was just filling time before Hamlet finally kills Claudius.

So if you've made it this far in what's become a longer post than I intended, let me ask you this: what do these tangents add in and of themselves? Why do we need the cetology stuff, for example? I mean, if I ever got sucked into a space-time continuum and found myself in 1850 Massachusetts, I'd want my copy of MD with me, because I'd have an idea of how to make a living on a ship, but Melville wasn't writing a training manual. He was writing a novel, but one unlike anything his fellow American novelists were writing, as far as I know. And this is often held up as THE American Novel, alongside "Huck Finn" and "Gatsby" (the trifecta of the dead white males).

So I'll leave you with that: why all these other things? Do they add something new, like Hamlet's wandering thoughts and psychological pressures add to his revenge story? If so, what? If not, what DO they do?

Here's a qualification of the "Moby-Dick has no humor" point, from Clifton Fadiman's introductory essay on the novel:

"A pessimism as profound as Melville’s, if it is not pathological--and his is not--can exist only in a man who, whatever his gifts, does not possess that of humor. There is much pessimism in Shakespeare but with it goes a certain sweetness, a kind of radiance. His bad men--Macbeth, Iago--may be irretrievable, but the world itself is not irretrievable. This sense of balance comes from the fact that Shakespeare has humor, even in the plays of his later period. Melville had none. For proof, reread Chapter 100, a labored, shrill, and inept attempt at laughter. Perhaps I should qualify these strictures, for there is a kind of vast, grinning, unjolly, sardonic humor in him at times--Ishmael’s first encounter with Queequeg is an example. But this humor is bilious, not sanguine, and has no power to uplift the heart."

I think Fadiman's comment about the world not being irretrievable in Shakespeare is an excellent point, but I'm not sure I agree with him about Melville.

Les--we're indeed on. Sorry about the delay--spring break and all that.

What I'd like to do is respond to people's points and questions, add some of my own thoughts, and then let others jump in with their own questions and answers and comments.

Several years ago I read an introduction to MD by Clifton Fadiman, who wrote that MD has no real humor in it. I think we must have been reading different books because of what Les brings up. Ishmael has a definitely ironic sense of humor, and his scenes with Queequeg are wonderful. But he has hidden depths. Consider the first sentence: "Call me Ishmael." That's not how people generally introduce themselves. And he definitely has a circuitous way of thinking--just look at his thoughts on water in the opening chapter. The Biblical allusion that Neil brings up above is also highly suggestive, though like much in this book there isn't a simple correlative. No other character in the novel, let alone Ishmael, brings up the Biblical significance of his name, although Ishmael does bring up the allusions in the names of both Ahab and Elijah. As Carl F. Hovde brings up in the intro to my Barnes and Noble edition, the Biblical Ishmael was an outsider and wanderer, although the Lord is eventually good to Ishmael later in Genesis. Our Ishmael is rather similar.

The switch Les brings up in Chapter III, "The Spouter-Inn," foreshadows all kinds of things that Melville does with narration later in the novel. Don't know how far other people have gotten so far, but at some point in the twenties (definitely by Chapter XXIX), Ishmael starts to fade into the background and the narration becomes more omniscient in point of view. Pretty postmodern kind of a thing, especially for 1851. Ishmael wanders back into the narrative--rather like the Biblical Ishmael is a wanderer and an outsider, at least earlier on in Genesis--but it's an odd way to tell a story.

What do you all notice about how the story is structured or narrated? What bothers you, intrigues you, challenges you?

Side note--the list of "performances" written by Fate that Ishmael imagines has struck me over the past decade:

"Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States."
"Whaling Voyage by One Ishmael."
"Bloody Battle in Afghanistan."

Rather a strange sort of synchronicity across 150 years, no?

(Forgive the cross-post from the Melville section, but I figured the novel needed its own file.)

Sorry to tease, but I'm off for spring break next week. However, upon my return (and who knows, maybe even during break) I'll start posting about Moby and Ahab and the lot.

For now, I'll open the floor to thoughts about Ishmael as the narrator. For such a large narrative work, Moby-Dick starts off with great brevity: "Call me Ishmael." What is your sense of this guy? Why does he open his story the way that he does? What IS his story?

Good point--I'll start a new thread.

MOBY-DICK discussion!

(Get your attention?)

Sorry to tease, but I'm off for spring break next week. However, upon my return (and who knows, maybe even during break) I'll start posting about Moby and Ahab and the lot.

For now, I'll open the floor to thoughts about Ishmael as the narrator. For such a large narrative work, Moby-Dick starts off with great brevity: "Call me Ishmael." What is your sense of this guy? Why does he open his story the way that he does? What IS his story?

Mo--just got the Tony Millionaire poster for my classroom. I know, I'm hot.

And we are so pwning Moby Dick.

Margaret wrote: "http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%..."

If you liked this story, In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick is a great book.

http://www.shoeboxblog.com/wp-content...

Moby will indeed kick our asses. And we'll be better off for it.

As for Madame Bovary, I know I risk charges of heresy, but I can't stand it. I admire Flaubert's writing ability--he's a truly great writer. But I just heartily dislike the story. I don't want literature to be a Transformers movie, or tie up neatly and happily with a pretty bow, and I'm aware of the dangers of sentimental romanticization, but I'll take a flawed work like Moby-Dick over a beautifully-written work like Flaubert's any day.

And now Martyn is fashioning a voodoo doll of me so he can ram a sword into it.

Very, very awesome--muchas gracias!

Maureen wrote: "it looks like i can get it here:
http://www.amazon.ca/Moby-Dick-Barnes...

i think i would like to be on a level playin..."

I so want that Tony Millionaire cover as a poster for my classroom. That and the sketch of Queequeg's tats.

Les wrote: "Hey everyone. This is my second post--just introduced myself a few minutes ago. MD has been on my must read list for years and was a major goal for this year. I am excited and definitely in. Thanks..."

Les--thanks, and welcome!

Mo--the B&N edition is nice and what my students read--good cheap paperback with nice notes.

Well, if anyone is up for MD, I'm teaching it in starting at the end of March/beginning of April, so I'll volunteer to help lead a discussion. That would give people a good amount of time to get started.

We live to tempt, Neil.

Might have said this before somewhere in the FF, but I read Moby Dick in high school--for summer reading, no less--and, while I disliked it then, I could still sense its strange power. Ten years later, I got a very nice leather-bound copy of the novel from one of those specialty book clubs--"buy one American classic and buy six more for only $19.99 each!" I got the novel, canceled my membership in the book club, and started reading, and couldn't stop. It's not an easy novel, but it's pretty amazing for what it does and especially considering when it was written. I teach it to my AP students in the spring, and I'd love to get insights from you all...plus it would be fun to geek out on Melville for a bit.

Long story short: I'm up for a Moby Dick discussion.

Moby-Dick rules. It's got Shakespearean undertones (well, okay, overtones in some parts), it's part postmodern novel about a hundred years before postmodernism, it's got epic and humor and doom, it's got philosophy and adventure and violence and cannibals. And it's got two great characters in Ishmael and Ahab.

Never seen Huston's film but understand it's very good. (Hey, Ray Bradbury co-wrote the screenplay with Huston--how could it be bad?)

Jonathan wrote: ". . . in addition to my book being on shelves, and more importantly, i think it's swanny's birthday . . .queue hero video form dorka '08 . . ."

Thanks for the b-day love, JE...I missed this in reading all the (very well-deserved) kudos for WOH. Which is an excellent novel, I must say.

Ran across this short blog entry by Michael Chabon about the n-word and reading Mark Twain aloud to his two young children. Great stuff:
http://www.theatlantic.com/culture/ar...