Reading Moby-Dick

a Moby-Dick reading log

[readingmoby-dick-blog]

http://www.powermobydick.com

 it’s fantastic

[readingmoby-dick-blog]

i need a set of highlighters

[readingmoby-dick-blog]

Ishmael

depressed, maybe even suicidal

“whenever it is a damp drizzly November in my soul...I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball.” (ch 1)

wanderlust

“I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas and land on barbarous coasts.” (ch 1)

Appearance

monkey jacket (ch 3) also here. I’d never heard of a monkey jacket

coat (ch 3)

boots (ch 3)

pantaloons (ch 3)

Accessories

carpet bag (ch 2)

[readingmoby-dick-blog]

Chapter 3 The Spouter - Inn

turning flukes: whaling speak for a whale to go under, to dive, and used here by peter coffin in particular to mean to go to bed, to turn in for the night.

was Moby Dick and in particular Peter Coffin and the Spouter - Inn the origin for the stereotypical seaman characters we see in cartoons and games like Monkey Island?

ishmael goes upstairs to his the room he’s sharing with this harpooneer and tries on the harpooner’s door-mat like garb? strange behavior by ishmael to be sure

“a man can be honest in any sort of skin”

grego: a short hooded coat of thick coarse fabric

“better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken christian”

[readingmoby-dick-blog]

Chapter 3 - The Spouter-Inn

Hyperborean

the bar of The Spouter - Inn is a the bones of a whales head with Jonah tending bar

skrimshander - one who makes scrimshaws

Bulkington, one of the Grampus crew, ‘they seemed an eruption of bears from Labrador’

farrago - a confused mixture

Mt Hecla = Mt Hekla, a fascinating volcano in Iceland I’d never heard of. How did Melville keep track of all this? How did he work?

[johnlaw]

the Whale

[mythologyofblue]

Nantucket*

[*As drawn by the town’s sheriff, as found in Hector St. John de Crevecoeur’s Letters from an American Farmer, 1782. The somewhat fanciful shape of Nantucket’s main harbor suggests that Nantucketers’ preoccupation with the sperm whale influenced their image of their own island. -Nathaniel Philbrick, In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex]

[theparisreview]

“Hemingway is an author that everybody beats up on now, but, man, he takes profound experience and makes it accessible, and yet you may not fully grasp it when you first read it. You can read the page and not be intimidated. You don’t need to intimidate people.”

An interview with Nathaniel Philbrick on his writing process, Herman Melville, and the TV show The Voice.

[readingmoby-dick-blog]

i’m back from a taking-care-of-life hiatus, and to celebrate, how about an eye-con for the tumblr to replace the generic tumblr icon

[readingmoby-dick-blog]

Chapter 3 - The Spouter-Inn

“On one side hung a very large oilpainting so thoroughly besmoked, and every way defaced, that in the unequal crosslights by which you viewed it, it was only by diligent study and a series of systematic visits to it, and careful inquiry of the neighbors, that you could any way arrive at an understanding of its purpose.”

it’s like the moby-dick of paintings

[readingmoby-dick-blog]

Chapter 2 - The Carpet-Bag

I have no idea what all is going on with Lazarus and Euroclydon...

[readingmoby-dick-blog]

Chapter 2 - The Carpet-Bag

Is Moby-Dick the origin of the maritime themed restaurant clichés?

 The Crossed Harpoons

    “but it looked too expensive and jolly there”

 Sword-Fish Inn

Red windows

 The Spouter-Inn

    Peter Coffin

    “As the light looked so dim, and the place, for the time, looked quiet enough, and the dilapidated little wooden house itself looked as if it might have been carted here from the ruins of some burnt district, and the swinging sign had a poverty-stricken sort of creak to it, I thought here was the very spot for cheap lodgings, and the best of pea coffee.

[readingmoby-dick-blog]

Chapter 2 - The Carpet Bag

“I stuffed a shirt or two into my old carpet-bag, tucked it under my arm, and started for Cape Horn and the Pacific. Quitting the good city of old Manhatto, I duly arrived in New Bedford.”

Why does he call Manhattan Manhatto?

[readingmoby-dick-blog]

Chapter 1 - Loomings

“Chief among these motives was the overwhelming idea of the great whale himself. Such a portentous and mysterious monster roused all my curiousity. Then the wild and distant seas where he rolled his island bulk; the undeliverable, nameless perils of the whale; these, with all the attending marvels of a thousand Patagoian sights and sounds, helped sway me to my wish. With other men, perhaps, such things would not have been inducements; but as for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.”

 Words seem to flow effortlessly for Melville/Ishmael. Did everyone write like this Mid-Nineteenth Century?

[readingmoby-dick-blog]

Chapter 1 - Loomings

When I attempted reading this book for the first time in 2001 or so, I couldn’t believe the headlines Melville chose and how perfectly they could have fit the newspapers 150 years later:

“Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States”

“Bloody Battle in Afghanistan”

Also worth noting that my edition spells it, “Affghanistan”

[drums-of-autumn]

Call me Ishmael.

Moby-Dick by Herman Melville (via a-books-opening-lines)

[beautyofsorrow]

Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off – then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball.

Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (via beautyofsorrow)