Moby-Dick discussion

Here's the thread for discussion of chapters 35-45.

35: The Mast-Head
36: The Quarter-Deck
37: Sunset
38: Dusk
39: First Night-Watch
40: Midnight, Forecastle
41: Moby Dick
42: The Whiteness of the Whale
43: Hark!
44: The Chart
45: The Affadavit

What a weird collection of chapters this was! I especially enjoyed 42, the chapter exploring whiteness. And it was interesting how Melville tried to slip a short play in there, as well as the chapters from different perspectives.

I continue to find this book, for all its old-fashioned language, very modern.

I only wish for some more interesting chapter titles....

Chapter 42 fascinated me as well. I'll be back with some nuggets from it, but the dissertation on the color white's polar opposite "meanings" is something I had never before considered.

I have a colleague at work who's now reading Moby Dick, too, after I talked about it so much. He's way ahead of me now (skimming "the boring parts," he says)*, but we also talked about that chapter this morning.


*not to imply there aren't boring parts. smile.

I must be the odd man out here because I've yet to find a boring Chapter! I enjoy studying how a great piece of literature is put together, how it works, its intricacies and allusions. Joyce once said of his Ulysses - (Someone else had brought Joyce up in another thread so I feel justified in piling on) - that if you took one word out of it the whole novel would collapse. This is hyperbole of course but it makes an important point. A great writer should have to justify every word in his novel. Since it appears that Melville was a scrupulous writer, I feel that every word is important and that there are so many cross references that in trying to take this all in, you don't have the opportunity to become bored! Melville was also a poet which further emphasis that he would be careful about his word choices.(I think boredom is most often tied to irrelevance.)

Although, Ulysses is a great novel, impeccably crafted, it is a book, that for all intents and purposes was written with the critic and scholar in mind, the general reader was not even invited to the table. Ezra Pound's poetry is another case in point.
I predict that Melville will become more popular in the 21st century than he was in the 19th or 20th and that Joyce's popularity will be diminished. In the future, Ulysses will take on the stature of Spencer's "Faerie Queen;" every scholar will need to read it but the general reader wouldn't be caught dead with it!

I was also not bored by any chapter in the novel, Donald. Not a one.

Didn't mean that either! I think this batch was a good one.

And Melville gave us an added anti-boredom feature - very short chapters. So,if you WERE bored, you could see the end of your boredom clearly in sight!

I think it can come across as "boring" if you are out of focus. From experience with this reading, I've learned I cannot read in bed when I am very tired. The sentence structures and thought patterns and digressions all have high expectations of me, the gentle (yeah, right) reader. Other books I can get away with it. This one? Nyetski.

I have found myself skimming a couple of chapters too, but that was because of guilty thoughts about school reports waiting.......

I notice, Debs, that Ch. 35 references the whaling industry of New Zealand. Also, in the chapter I was reading last night, Moby's partner at whale rallies was mentioned. "New Zealand Tom," of all things (and, as a title, New Zealand Tom doesn't quite have the same ring to it, y'know?).

Anyway, for those bawdy trackers in our studio audience -- the ones who think anything-but-staid Herman loaded the gunwales with thinly-veiled dirty jokes -- there's more fodder in "The Mast-Head," where Melville describes "the business of standing mast-heads" (those afraid of heights need not apply).

First he gives a history of standing watch from these great perches, even alluding to statues on towers such as Napoleon atop the Vendome and Admiral Nelson in Trafalgar Square. Then he comes to modern (to him, anyway) times. Here is his description of what it is like:

"In the serene weather of the tropics it is exceedingly pleasant -- the mast-head; nay, to a dreamy meditative man it is delightful. There you stand, a hundred feet above the silent decks, striding along the deep, as if the masts were gigantic stilts, while beneath you and between your legs, as it were, swim the hugest monsters of the sea, evean as ships once sailed between the boots of the famous Colossus at old Rhodes."

I wonder if Freud, as it were, ever read Moby Dick?

It's all in the title :-/
Whalers were the first white people to 'settle' New Zealand. In fact, they were established here and intermarrying happily with Maori well before missionaries decided they needed sorting out in the 18-teens and twenties. 'Proper' settlement via the Wakefield scheme did not begin until 1839 or so. Relics from NZ's whaling past can still be found on South Island beaches.
I am having trouble re-reading. My kindle edition (free) has no table of contents for ease of flipping back and forth. I have had to make notes as I read and trying to navigate those is somewhat timeconsuming as they refer to page nos and not chapters! I only got 13 reports written this weekend so am pulling up the drawbridge until I have finished them (hopefully by the end of next weekend)!

Good luck with that. Reality has a way of gate-crashing your whaling activities....

Debbie that was the main reason I switched to paper and ink, plus I wanted to hold the whale in my hand and feel it.

Too bad you are not closer. I could one-finger type them up for you. Heehee!

NE wrote, "I think it can come across as "boring" if you are out of focus."

I think books require reading at different rates and with different levels of energy. I think this is a very slow read at a high energy, close to what's required of lyric poetry. I'm always torn between reading it as slowly as it requires (deserves doesn't come into it) and wanting to finish the book before I've been dead for a very long time.

I find this rate too quick, really, because I don't have to reread and then reread again.

I agree with Donald that I haven't come across boring chapters -- although I have been impatient at some points for just a little relief from descriptions of the whale which go on for a very long time around the center of the book.

But the more I read it, the more I'm inclined to think that the "boring stuff" is the actual heart of the book, that it's every bit as interesting and important as any other part, and that the book is impossible to understand without attending to it.

I'd argue that the book is as much a meditation on Western civilization and mankind, as much as it is ANYTHING else, including the story of a whaling voyage.

I am also finding it difficult to limit myself to just the chapters under consideration. I find it easier to talk about the book as a whole. I don't care about spoilers. I know how it ends.

Do you think you could start a general discussion thread where we could discuss the book as a whole without worrying about spoilers -- and then those people who don't care about spoilers or have finished can simply not go to that thread?

Debbie,

It seems like taking on Moby-Dick while in the middle of a school year seems dedication beyond the call of duty. FYI, I am reading a Kindle edition which does have a linked Table of Contents.

Bill wrote: "Debbie,

It seems like taking on Moby-Dick while in the middle of a school year seems dedication beyond the call of duty. FYI, I am reading a Kindle edition which does have a linked Table of Contents."

You must not have the free version.

NE -- about whitenss:

In the film, The Namesake, a New Yorker shows up at the funeral of a Bengali family (in NYC).

She's dressed in black, as she would normally be, but discovers everyone else in white, because white is the color of mourning there, as it is in many (all?) parts of Asia. (It's meant to show how far from the culture she is.)

You could just know this -- but in the film because it's visual it is particularly striking.

Yes, the free versions I find are too frustrating, either insufficiently proof-read (or proof-read not at all -- just scanned and left alone.) Also, there are issues. like TOC or TOCs that don't link.

But I find literature in the public domain is usually not very expensive. I think I paid $3.99 for mine, less on my Nook version. You do have to pay for current translations but one very attractive feature about Melville is that he wrote in English.

I agree with 2 of Bill's points in his recent post. Having a discussion thread about the entire novel would be an excellent idea. (I would like to see a thread about critical books, or other books relating to Moby Dick or Melville also but I guess there wouldn't be much interest in that.) Bill's other comment I wanted to respond to was: "I'd argue that the book is as much a meditation on Western civilization and mankind, as much as it is ANYTHING else, including the story of a whaling voyage." I think I would go deeper than this. I think MB is about the nature of reality. (Ahab's comment about Striking Through the Pasteboard Mask is integral to the novel.) Civilization and culture is a way of putting blinders on a person as a defense against the real terrors of nature. Melville's unique experience in the South Seas allowed him to partake of another culture's blinders or relative lack thereof. Melville gives us encyclopedic information about whaling and the Whale, and still we don't truly know its essence.

I too particularly liked "the Whiteness of the Whale" chapter. I've never really thought of white as being a scary/negative color, but the discussion of white being the absence of color was interesting. Thinking about negative, empty space is kinda creepy in a way.
I found it very interesting that the narrator, in his discussion of Moby Dick in this chapter and the chapter proceeding this, spoke more fondly of the whale than he did of Ahab. Although he told a bunch of tales about vicious whales killing people, this chapters read as if he had more admiration for the whale and that the whale was the more natural, even angelic being.

Donald,

I don't reject your comment about the nature of reality -- but I don't actually understand what you mean.

The "real terrors of nature" are partially human nature which is also animal nature -- and therefore "realities" more than Reality. But show me what I'm missing.

But that's really for a thread where don't have to limit the discussion to chapters read.

I've been reading the Lawrence essay -- not in love with it, not finished -- and I'm thinking of buying the Olson book because the Shakespearean diction is one of the most attractive things about the book.

Donald wrote: And Melville gave us an added anti-boredom feature - very short chapters. So,if you WERE bored, you could see the end of your boredom clearly in sight!

I do agree!!!

Bill, let me address two of your comments, the later one first. The Olson book is a worthwhile read. I read it a few weeks back. It's a slim volume that you can finish in one long sustained session. A lot about the Melville\Shakespeare link. I own a book similar in scope but more specific than Olson's called " Melville and the politics of Identity:From King Lear to Moby Dick by Julian Markels. (I bought it several years ago but never read it. It's on the short list now.)

What I was getting at in the Reality/Nature comment was more of a reflection on Ahab's own reflection about what might be behind the mask of the Whale in specific and Nature in general. If behind MD's 'mask' was some virulent, malignant and random acting God, instead of the "good" God of the Abraham spawned religions, there would be great cause for anxiety, especially to those whose sense of reality is based on that tradition.Ishmael hints in the "Mast-Head" chapter during his meditation from the Crow's nest that there were untold monsters in the sea below him.In the 1850's man's dominion ended at the sea's surface - "below is all the fiend's" to quote from KL!- the thought that another species could be the favorite of God, turned accepted knowledge its head. More anxiety, I guess than terror. The famous "Twilight Zone" episode, "The Eye of the Beholder" gives the flavor of the anxiety I am trying to express - when one's world view is stood on its head!

You're talking about Ahab's musings -- not Ishmaels? Where? And if Ishamel's where?

I think of Ishamael as torn between a God and no God more than a fundamental evil force -- so I'm curious about where we are. (I've only gotten to around chapter 90.)

Ahab's musing occurred during his conversation with Starbuck in front of the assembled crew. Ishmael's musing occurred during his time on the crow's nest.It was not Ishmael, but Ahab who mused about an evil God.
I think the prospect of an evil God is more frightening than that of no God!

Yes. It's interesting that Melville put that in the madman's mouth, not in Ishmael's, who is I think often Melville's stand in.

Of course, an evil God is more frightening.

Where IS everyone? Gone fishin'?

Yep out catching whales.

No, correcting papers and calculating grades for term end. But I promise you'll see me here this weekend, both in THIS discussion and a bit in the next one. I had to send the dinghy out for Sarah, is all.

O dear, I hope she wasn't castaway.

Finishing report-writing.......gimme another few days.....

NE, Sarah, Anyone --

How does one post a pic here -- I found a great one. It seems as though one must link to a website. But the one I want to post will be scanned and on my computer.

My guess would be choose Photos from the Group Home page an choose "Add More Pics."

Nah it has something to do with Some html is ok. I have never been able to figure it out. I can add photos from photobucket though by copy and paste.

Hi Bill,
I am an HTML amateur, but I'm checking on how to post a picture. Would be cool if we could do that. Otherwise adding photos in the commands section would also work. I'll check that that is set to "anyone" rather than just moderators.
cheers

In Chapter 42, which I call 'the drama chapter,' does anyone with notes in their book know the significance of "Amsterdam butter?" The Dutch sailer says "thy throat ain't spoiled with eating Amsterdam butter."

My book has pretty good notes in the back, I'll check tonight if no one else has responded. Unfortunately my book's not with me now!

Donald wrote: "Although, Ulysses is a great novel, impeccably crafted, it is a book, that for all intents and purposes was written with the critic and scholar in mind, the general reader was not even invited to the table. Ezra Pound's poetry is another case in point."

I really like this phrase "invited to the table" -- it captures a certain distinction without using disparaging or class-loaded terms. I don't happen to agree about Ulysses, but that's immaterial. +1 for my critical vocabulary

Bill wrote: "NE wrote, "I think it can come across as "boring" if you are out of focus."

I think books require reading at different rates and with different levels of energy. I think this is a very slow read a..."

I strongly agree with the plausibility of this "boring" = "slow" distinction. It might be argued that all great literature is (potentially) slow, or permits going as slow as you like. It might be interesting (in another thread) to ask why people want their books "fast" -- I mean not just beach reads. Dickens was both fast and slow, one of the sources of his wide popularity. (I suppose I ought not use this term "beach reads" -- there are no beaches here, just the desert in the summertime. I don't think any read is fast enough for that.)

Donald wrote: ". (I would like to see a thread about critical books, or other books relating to Moby Dick or Melville also but I guess there wouldn't be much interest in that.)"

At the risk of starting something more appropriate, as Donald says, to a whole book discussion,I do have one suggestion which might be immediately helpful: Dickens and Melville In Their Time (Pearl Solomon. Columbia 1975)

Charles - Thanks for your interesting comments. I think it was Bill who suggested the Whole Book discussion; I suggested we have a thread for critical books about Moby Dick.

Yup, c'est moi. Why is a "whole book" discussion inappropriate?

What frustrates specifically is the necessity to worry about "spoilers" which in fact don't spoil the book for me.

Because some people care strongly about spoilers, I just wanted a place to think about the book without worrying exactly far others had read.

Howdy - I will be happy to set up a thread for critical books on Moby Dick.

On the "whole book" discussion, I have nothing against it, but in this group we're reading on a schedule and I wouldn't want to thwart that purpose by sending half the folks to another room. I will oil it up and give it some further think...

Thanks, Sarah, because, honestly I think Moby-Dick difficult to think of except as a whole -- and I haven't even finished it yet. (Chapter 90 something. :-) )

S, I can't find mention of "Amsterdam butter" either in the Notes or the TEXT. Sure it's Chapter 42?

It's in Chapter 40, Midnight, Forecastle.

It's not noted in my Norton Critical edition which is highly annotated.

Note, Sarah, that it's spoken by the Dutch sailor -- in which case he may just be thinking of the food back home as being a lot better than the food aboard ship.

It is in chapter 40 (Dutch sailor)

Bill, Thanks for the clarification. Not a word about the Dutch sailor in my edition. You're probably right
that it's thoughts of home,HOWEVER, in that Whale book I just read and mentioned on another thread, it's mentioned that there are some margarine products made from Whale Oil!

....and when I googled it, it brought up another startling hypothesis. It seems that it has been thought that the Dutch sailor was speaking to another sailor who was.....ahem....giving him head.

Hmmm...the sailor was very chatty under that circumstance. :-)