What We Can Know by Ian McEwan

I heard about What We Can Know by Ian McEwan on a recent episode of Sarah's Bookshelves. 

We have two timelines here. In 2014, poet Francis Blundy gifts his wife Vivien a poem for her birthday, a poem he read aloud at a dinner party. In 2119, we learn that most of the world has been submerged under water after a nuclear weapon occurrence (see my post on Nuclear War by Annie Jacobsen for more on that!). Museums and libraries that still exist are on high land, are hard to get to, and travel is difficult in the best of times. A scholar of Francis Blundy is attempting to learn more about that poem from 2014 because it seems as if no copies remain. 

It's sort of an academic detective mystery with a hint of dystopia in it. 

Things I liked: The dystopian future setting was very interesting. I wanted to know more about how people lived in the future. I also liked that academic setting - it's interesting to think about how higher education would evolve in a world like that.

Things I didn't like: The plot? Small spoilers, but this book was mostly about people cheating on one another in both time periods. I am not into that, to be honest. Also, the font was somewhat hard to read at times. 

Overall take: I don't know. I mostly wanted a different story in the future setting. 3/5 stars

Lines of note:

The humanities are always in crisis. I no longer believe this is an institutional matter - it's in the nature of intellectual life, or of thought itself. Thinking is always in crisis. (page 58)

Lolololz. *sob* *sigh* I am very concerned about AI. Out students have no critical thinking skills at all.

Most of our history and literature students care nothing for the past and are indifferent to the accretions of poetry and fiction that are our beautiful inheritance. They sign up to the humanities because they lack mathematical or technical talent. We are poor cousins and we don't get the smartest bunch. Our office are dilapidated. Many of them leak. (page 73)

This literally made me laugh because have we talked about how the building where I work has leaked from the roof for a decade. They actually redid the roof last year, BUT IT STILL LEAKS. Right into the political science department's offices. 

I felt, though I could never say, that I had made a sacrifice by marrying a man who had no taste for reading, who would rather fix the plumbing than talk about literature...(page 203)

I asked my husband if he wished he had married someone who read more than dragon books. He looked surprised and reminded me that I read Gone With the Wind and Moby-Dick this year. It's not just dragons. 

He seemed to disapprove of me on principle, but what that principle was, I never dared to ask. (page 279)

Doesn't everyone have someone like this in their life? 

Things I looked up:

Weil's disease (page 62) - Also known as Weil syndrome, a bacterial infection that is characterized by disfunction of the kidneys and liver. Most commonly caused by a bite from an infected animal, including rats, mice, cows, pigs, and dogs. (This seemed familiar to me, but it turns out that I looked it up when I read The Thorn Birds.) 

The Wanderer by Hans Thomas (page 78) - Hans Thoma (1839 – 1924) was a German painter. An alumnus and later professor of Karlsruhe Academy, he is known for his landscapes, portraits, and symbolic works rooted in German regional life and tradition.

secateurs (page 170) - a pair of pruning clippers for use with one hand

poitín (page 176) - rish moonshine, deeply rooted in the country's history and lore, is traditionally among the most potent alcoholic drinks on the planet

Hat mentions (why hats?): 

A gentleman with shoulder bag, straw hat and walking stick is strolling along...(page 78)

He removed his hat...(page 79)

I couldn't find a hat or gloves and I was in a hurry. (page 149)

I was given a yellow jacket and hard hat to wear and heavy boots...(page 243)

He was wearing globes and a black wide-brimmed hat I had never seen before. (page 260)

the wide-brimmed hat (page 263)

black hat (page 278)

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Have you read any good dystopian books recently? 

Happy Christmas!

 From our house to yours!

Wordless Wednesday: Scenes of Celebrations

 

Moby-Dick, or the Whale by Herman Melville (Part 2 of 2)

Part 1 here. 

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Note: All page numbers come from the Kindle ebook I used. 

Lines of note:

You cannot hide the soul. Through all his unearthly tattooings, I thought I saw the traces of a simple honest heart; and in his large, deep eyes, fiery black and bold, there seemed tokens of a spirit that would dare a thousand devils. (page 69)

...certain it was his head was phrenologically an excellent one. (page 70)

The above two quotes are Ishmael's descriptions of Queequeg and now I'm going around examining everyone's head phrenologically. 

For what are the comprehensible terrors of man compared with the interlinked terrors and wonders of God! (page 133)

Right? You tell us, Melville. 

For the most part, in this tropic whaling life, a sublime uneventfulness invests you; you hear no news; read no gazettes; extras with startling accounts of commonplaces never delude you into unnecessary excitements; you hear of no domestic afflictions; bankrupt securities; fall of stocks; are never troubled with the thought of what you shall have for dinner— for all your meals for three years and more are snugly stowed in casks, and your bill of fare is immutable. (page 182)

When I read this, I took a few seconds to stare in the middle distance and wonder about what it would be like to just be away from the news for the next three years. I sort of understand why Ishmael wanted to take to the sea. 

Let me make a clean breast of it here, and frankly admit that I kept but sorry guard. With the problem of the universe revolving in me, how could I—being left completely to myself at such a thought-engendering altitude—how could I but lightly hold my obligations to observe all whaleships’ standing orders, “Keep your weather eye open, and sing out every time.” (page 184)

Look, I think this book should be labelled a comedy. Ishmael is hysterical. 

Ah, God! what trances of torments does that man endure who is consumed with one unachieved revengeful desire. (page 230)

REVENGE!!

But where this superiority in the English whaleman does really consist, it would be hard to say, seeing that the Yankees in one day, collectively, kill more whales than all the English, collectively, in ten years. (page 271)

Fuck off, English. LOLz. 

The French are the lads for painting action. (page 301)

Draw me like one of your French girls!!! (Seriously, I have now laughed out loud half a dozen times at this line. The lads.)

Long exile from Christendom and civilization inevitably restores a man to that condition in which God placed him, i.e. what is called savagery. Your true whale-hunter is as much a savage as an Iroquois. I myself am a savage, owning no allegiance but to the King of the Cannibals; and ready at any moment to rebel against him. (page 305)

No loyalty for Ishmael, you see. 

this seems so outlandish a thing that one must needs go a little into the history and philosophy of it. (page 334)

A LITTLE!! This is foreshadowing that you're about to go three chapters deep into a tangent before you wind back to the main thought.

Now some Nantucketers rather distrust this historical story of Jonah and the whale. But then there were some sceptical Greeks and Romans, who, standing out from the orthodox pagans of their times, equally doubted the story of Hercules and the whale, and Arion and the dolphin; and yet their doubting those traditions did not make those traditions one whit the less facts, for all that. (page 408)

LOLz once again.

Oh! happy that the world is such an excellent listener! (page 416)

Yeah, I guess if you're just gabbing about to the ocean, the world is a good listener.

It smells like the left wing of the day of judgment (page 471)

You know exactly what this smells like, don't you? Such great imagery. 

All sorts of men in one kind of world, you see. (page 483)

Preach it, Melville.

Would to God these blessed calms would last. But the mingled, mingling threads of life are woven by warp and woof: calms crossed by storms, a storm for every calm. (page 544)

There are seasons in life. A good reminder that it doesn't matter where we are - the good and the bad take turns. 

Things I looked up: (much help due to Power Moby-Dick, an online annotated version of the book)

...particularly if you come of an old established family in the land, the Van Rensselaers, or Randolphs, or Hardicanutes. (page 20)

• Van Rensselaer family - a family of Dutch descent that was prominent during the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries in the area now known as the state of New York. Members of this family played a critical role in the formation of the United States and served as leaders in business, politics and society
• Randolph family -  a prominent political family, whose members contributed to the politics of Colonial Virginia and Virginia after it established statehood in June 1788, following the American Revolutionary War. The Randolph family was the wealthiest and most powerful family in 18th-century Virginia.
• Hardicanutes - variant spelling of Harthacnut (Hardicanute), a 11th‑century Danish king of England

Black Parliament sitting in Tophet (page 24) - Black Parliament refers to a meeting of Scottish King Robert's parliament in 1320 or to a meeting of English King Henry VIII's Parliament in 1524. Tophet is a biblical city where the inhabitants sacrificed children by burning them alive. Also, hell itself. 

pea coffee (page 25) - a beverage made by boiling roasted peas or chickpeas; a substitute for coffee

Javan seas (page 28) - seas near the island of Java (I thought this was some biblical allusion or something)

Cape of Blanco (page 28) - a fishing village in northern Peru

catarrhs (page 31) -  a buildup of mucous in the nose or throat

arrantest topers (page 31) - most utter drinkers? I HAVE NO IDEA.

farrago (page 34) - a confused mixture

Mt. Hecla (page 34) - a volcanic mountain in Iceland that had erupted in 1845, six years before the publication of Moby-Dick

grego (page 38) - a hooded jacket

sledge drawn by dogs as Ledyard did (page 48) -  John Ledyard (1751-1789), an American explorer who traveled with Captain James Cook on the expedition during which Hawaii was discovered

Feegeeans, Tongatobooarrs, Erromanggoans, Pannangians, and Brighggians (page 50) - Natives of Fiji, the Tongataboo Island of Tonga, the Erromango Island in Vanuatu in the South Pacific, Penang on the northwest coast of Malaysia for the first four terms. Scholars do not know what Brighggians refers to. 

Moluccas (page 52) - Collectively known as the Moluccas, the Maluku Islands are an east Indonesian archipelago comprising 2 provinces, Maluku and North Maluku. They're known for their volcanoes and palm-lined beaches.

Isle of Desolation, off Patagonia (page 53) - part of the Tierra Del Fuego archipelago

cenotaphs (page 58) - a monument to someone buried elsewhere

Joppa (page 61) - Jaffa, Israel, near Tel Aviv

Tarshish (page 62) - in the Bible, this can mean "sailing ships" or "ships going far away," rather than a particular location

kelson (page 68) -  keelson, a structure running the length of a ship just above the keel

Kokovoko (page 75) - the fictional South Pacific island home of Queequeg 

Czar Peter content to toil in the shipyards (page 76) -  Peter the Great of Russia (1672-1725) dreamed of creating a Navy. To prepare, he worked incognito in shipyards of the Dutch East India Company and the British Royal Navy. Later, he conquered the port that became St. Petersburg

more lonely than the Eddystone lighthouse. (page 83) - A lighthouse on the dangerous Eddystone Rocks, off the coast of England - I did a bit of a deep dive on this (read the Wikipedia article) and there have been four structures at the site of the Eddystone lighthouse. The second of these structures would have been standing when Melville wrote Moby-Dick.

ancient Medes (page 91) - an Iranian people in the eighth to the sixth centuries B.C.

Thorkill-Hake’s carved buckler or bedstead. (page 91) - Thorkill-Hake was an 11th-century Icelandic Viking hero whose adventures were illustrated with carvings in his furniture

Pottowotamie Sachem’s head. (page 92) - the head of a Native American tribe is called a Sachem

young Hittite (page 111) - a member of an ancient people who lived in Asia Minor and Syria from 1700 to 1200 B.C.

psalmody (page 126) - the singing of psalms or sacred canticles

Krusenstern (page 134) -  Adam Johann von Krusenstern, (1770-1846), a Russian admiral who led the first Russian voyage around the earth

Ahasuerus (page 145) -  a biblical king of Persia, sometimes thought to be Xerxes I

taffrail (page 152) -  the rail around the stern (rear) of a ship

binnacle lamp (page 154) - binnacle is a built-in housing for the compass on a ship

hustings (page 173) - political campaigns

expatiate (page 180) - write about at length

Saint Stylites (page 181) -  Simeon Stylites (c. 390-459 A.D.), a Syrian Christian ascetic, who achieved notability by living 36 years on a small platform on top of a pillar near Aleppo (in modern Syria) - Seriously, friends, how did I never hear about this?

binnacle magnets (page 184) - magnets affixed to the ship's main compass to counteract the magnetic effect of iron in the ship

who offers to ship with the Phaedon instead of Bowditch in his head (page 185) 

•  Plato's Phaedo, a philosophical dialog in which Socrates discusses the afterlife
• the contents of The New American Practical Navigator by Nathaniel Bowditch, first published in 1802 and still used today as a main guide for ocean navigation on U.S. ships

Crammer's sprinkled Pantheistic ashes (page 186) - English religious reformer John Wycliffe (mid-1320s-1384), a critic of the Catholic Church. After he died of stroke, the pope had his body exhumed and burned, and the ashes thrown into a river. (The first American edition of Moby-Dick named Thomas Cranmer rather than Wycliffe. My edition, and apparently many others, further confuse matters by using Crammer instead of Cranmer.)

Leyden jar (page 193)  - a special glass jar that could store static electricity - SCIENCE EXPERIMENT TIME.

ye deaf Burkes and blinded Bendigoes! (page 196)

• James "Deaf" Burkey - one of England's early boxing champions (1809-1845)
• William Abednego Thompson  - the (not blinded) English boxing champ who beat Deaf Burke in an 1839 fight (1811-1880)

Ophites (page 212) - a religious sect from about 100 A.D. who believed that the serpent who tempted Adam and Eve was the story's hero, and God its villain

Pegu (page 216) - Bago, a city in Burma (Myanmar)

Froissart (page 220) - Jean Froissart, a chronicler of medieval history

Saul of Tarsus (page 237) - the apostle Paul, who became a follower of Christ after seeing a blinding flash of light while on the road to Damascus

marline (page 245) - a light rope made of loosely twisted strands

Crozetts (page 268) - The Crozet Islands are a sub-Antarctic archipelago of small islands in the southern Indian Ocean

archiepiscopacy (page 294) -  following the Anglican or Episcopal church, rather than the Catholic church

famous cavern-pagoda of Elephants, in India. (page 295) - The Elephanta Caves form a collection of cave temples predominantly dedicated to the Hindu god Shiva; UNESCO has designated them as a World Heritage Site

Leuwenhoeck (page 302) - Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, commonly known as the Father of Microbiology, one of the first miscroscopists and microbiologists who discovered bacteria, protists, sperm cells, blood cells, and much more (1632-1723)

Mendanna (page 306) - Álvaro de Mendaña de Neira (1542-1595), a Spanish navigator who discovered the Solomon Islands

Figuera (page 306) - Spanish writer Cristóbal Suárez de Figueroa (1571-after 1644) wrote about Mendaña's voyage

made a Mazeppa of (page 316) - tied to the back of a wild horse. In the 1819 poem Mazeppa by Lord Byron, this is the fate of the title character, who was loosely based on the life of a Ukrainian kossack by that name

Dunfermline (page 334) -  an abbey in the Scottish town of the same name

Neskyeuna Shakers (page 351) - members of a communal, celibate, emotional Protestant denomination whose first U.S. settlement was founded in 1776 in Niskayuna, New York - they're mostly known for the furniture they created today, but some of the stories about the Shakers are wild

freshet (page 352) -  a sudden overflow of a stream, for example after a spring thaw

calomel (page 360) - a chemical compound used as a treatment to purge the bowels

jalap (page 360) - a Mexican vine whose dried roots are used as a treatment to purge the bowels

gamboge (page 364) - a strong red-yellow color

Isthmus of Darien (page 379) - the narrow strip of land through which the Panama Canal would eventually be built

Lavater (page 387) -  Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741-1801), a Swiss physiognomist

Gall (page 387) -  Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828), the founder of phrenology

Spurzheim (page 387) -  Johann Spurzheim (1776-1832), who worked as an assistant to Gall but later split from him

Phidias’s marble Jove (page 387) -  a massive, seated sculpture of Zeus in Olympia, Greece, considered one of the seven wonders of the ancient world

Then I had to look up the seven wonders of the ancient world because there are only seven. Shouldn't I know them?

Melancthon (page 388) - Philipp Melanchthon (1497-1560), a German theologian with receding hairline

Champollion (page 389) -  Jean-François Champollion (1790-1832), a French scholar who deciphered the Rosetta Stone

Bartholomew Diaz (page 409) - Bartholomew Dias (c. 1450-1500), a Portuguese explorer who in 1488 became the first European known to have sailed around the western tip of Africa

Cleopatra’s barges from Actium (page 411) -  Actium was a Roman colony in Greece, in 31 B.C. the site of the decisive naval battle in the war between the Roman emperor Octavian and the combined forces of Mark Antony and Cleopatra, queen of Egypt

Darmonodes’ elephant (page 421) - scholars don't know the source of this name, but the story recalls one in Plutarch's Moralia in which an elephant falls in love with a flower-girl and caresses her breasts with its trunk

As Ptolemy Philopater testified of the African elephant (page 422) -  a pharaoh of Egypt who reigned from 221-205 B.C.

King Juba (page 422) - probably Juba I (85-46 B.C.) of Numidia, an area encompassing modern-day Algeria and part of Tunisia

proas (page 425) - various types of multi-hull outrigger sailboats of the Austronesian peoples

rowels (page 427) - small, rotating, spiked wheels on the end of a horse's spur, used to give subtle cues to the horse, with designs varying from blunt (gentle) to sharp (strong)

King Porus’ elephants in the Indian battle with Alexander (page 428) - King Porus was a ruler of Paurava, in the modern-day state of Punjab, India, in the fourth century B.C. In the battle of the Hydaspes between Porus and Alexander the Great in 326 B.C., Alexander won

Gulfweed (page 432) - sargassum, a free-floating seaweed

en bon point (page 437) - embonpoint, plumpness

Bashaw (page 438) - pasha, a military or civil official in Turkey

Vidocq (page 439) -  Eugène François Vidocq (1775-1857), a French private investigator who started life as a criminal and wrote about the young women he'd seduced

You might have heard of the Vidocq Society -  a voluntary brain trust of retired and working criminologists that meet the third Thursday of every month to assist in the investigation of cold-case murders from all over the country. Meetings take place in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Justinian’s Pandects (page 441) - a 50-book digest of Roman laws compiled for Emperor Justinian I in the 6th century

Coke-upon-Littleton (page 442) -  an important commentary on British property law written by Sir Edward Coke (1552-1634)

Brandreth’s pills (page 456) - Pills heavily advertised by Dr. Benjamin Brandreth and known as a laxative

poltroon (page 461) - coward

squilgee (page 466) - a swab made of untwisted yarn

Hydriote (page 471) - a person from Hydra, an island in Greece 

Canaris (page 471) -  Constantine Kanaris (c. 1793-1877), a naval officer during the Greek war for independence from Turkey. In 1822 he began using fire ships against the Turks by stealthily attaching a small ship to a Turkish flagship and setting it on fire

Rabelais (page 474)  - Francois Rabelais (1494-1553), a French satirist

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego (page 476) - three men who, in a story in the Old Testament book of Daniel (3:12-30), refuse a king's order to worship a golden idol. They are punished by being thrown into a furnace, but they survive without harm. The king then orders his people to worship their God

metempsychosis (page 478) - the reincarnation of a soul after death into a new body

Pactolus (page 479) - a river in Turkey that once contained gold sands linked to the myth of King Midas washing away his golden touch in its waters, and a source of wealth for Lydian kings like Croesus

Popayan (page 481) - a city in Colombia, South America, that had a famous mint

Golconda (page 481) -  a ruined city in India, once famous for its wealth

Daboll's arithmetic (page 481) - a textbook used widely in schools in the United States

seignories (page 500) - (or seigniories/seigniories) were feudal land grants, essentially lordships or domains, in places like France, New France (Quebec), and British North America, where a seigneur (lord) held rights and obligations over the land and its inhabitants, involving rents, fealty, and jurisdiction, existing until abolished in the 19th century but leaving legacies in place names and historical land tenure systems

Pompey's Pillar (page 504) - an ancient, freestanding column in Alexandria, Egypt, built not by Pompey (a leader of the Roman Republic in the first century B.C.) but in honor of the Emperor Diocletian, who ruled Rome in the third century A.D.

temple of Denderah (page 508) -  the Dendera Temple complex in Egypt

multum in parvo (page 519)  -Latin for "much in little"

"...We must up Burtons and break out." (page 525) - 

• Up Burtons - raise the burtons - a kind of light tackle used for hoisting
• Break out - lift all the barrels of oil out of the cargo hold

Zoroaster (page 529) -  the chief prophet of the Zoroastrian religion was said to have been assassinated

corpusants (page 557) - another name for St. Elmo's Fire, a spooky, glowing electrical phenomenon seen on ships during storms, named from Portuguese for "holy body" (corpo-santo) because sailors thought it was a saint's manifestation

“Mene, Mene, Tekel Upharsin” (page 558) - the writing on the wall in the biblical book of Daniel

here now’s a patched professor in Queen Nature’s granite-founded College (page 574) - I've no clue. I assume he's suggesting the person he's talking to is a weak man - "patched professor" - but I've no idea about the rest. 

Antiochus’s elephants in the book of Maccabees (page 608) -  in 1 Maccabees, a book of scripture included in the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox bibles, the Greek King Antiochus V shows his elephants grape and mulberry juice before battle, to incite them to fight

Note: There are a surprising number of elephant references in Moby-Dick. 

Fata Morgana (page 632) - an optical illusion that makes objects on the horizon appear longer and higher up than they are

Ixion (page 634) - a figure in Greek mythology punished for various sins by being bound to a winged wheel of fire

Hat mentions (why hats?):

(There's the line about knocking people's hats off - I talked about it in the previous post.)

 He now took off his hat — a new beaver hat — when I came nigh singing out with fresh surprise. (page 38)

He commenced dressing at top by donning his beaver hat...(page 44)

What under the heavens he did it for, I cannot tell, but his next movement was to crush himself — boots in hand, and hat on — under the bed...(page 44)

At last, he emerged with his hat very much dented and crushed down over his eyes and began creaking and limping about the room...(page 45)

...staving about with little else but his hat and boots on...(page 45)

 ...smoking with his inseparable hat on... (page 49)

He wears a heaver hat and swallow-tailed coat, girdled with a sailor-belt and sheath-knife. (page 50)

Shaking off the sleet from my ice-glazed hat and jacket, I seated myself near the door...(find page)

...for his tarpaulin hat ran down with melting sleet, and his great pilot cloth jacket seemed almost to drag him to the floor with the weight of the water it had absorbed. However, hat and coat and overshoes were one by one removed...(page 57)

...with slouched hat and guilty eye...(page 62)

broad-brimmed hat (page 97)

Drive down your hat in presence of the Czar, and take it off to Queequeg! (page 136)

With slouched hat, Ahab lurchingly paced the planks. (page 154)

With bent head and half-slouched hat he continued to pace, unmindful of the wondering whispering among the men (page 188)

he pulled his hat from his head, and stamped up and down on it (page 254)

still slowly dripping from the unremoved hat and coat. (page 267)

his slouched and gaily-ribboned hat betoken his grand features (page 283)

Let me remove my hat. (page 294)

snatching off his hat, dashed the sea-water into it. (page 320)

the men tossed their hats off to it (page 322)

Hold your hat in one hand, and clap t’other a’top of your heart, when I’m giving my orders, cook. What! (page 332)

This lucky salvation was cheaply purchased by the loss of Queequeg’s hat, who, while standing in the bows to prick the fugitive whales, had his hat taken clean from his head by the air-eddy made by the sudden tossing of a pair of broad flukes close by. (page 435)

I say, pass round a hat, some one, and let’s make him a present of a little oil for dear charity’s sake. (page 450)

removing his hat, and brushing aside his hair (page 489)

wore long streamers of narrow red bunting at their hats (page 545)

Same with cocked hats; the cocks form gable-end eave-troughs, Flask. (page 564)

The Hat (page 591) - THIS IS A CHAPTER TITLE!!!

slouching hat (page 592)

stone-carved coat and hat (page 592)

“Your hat, your hat, sir!” suddenly cried the Sicilian seaman (page 595)

Ahab’s hat was never restored (page 595)

From beneath his slouched hat Ahab dropped a tear into the sea (page 599)

slouching his hat (page 612)

Your hat, however, is the most convenient. (page 635 - this is in a footnote)

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Anyone have a favorite Moby-Dick meme I haven't shared yet? I spent too much a lot of time laughing at memes, which, frankly, seems okay for this time of the year. 

Moby-Dick, or the Whale by Herman Melville (Part 1 of 2)

People who pay attention to my reading stats (lololol) might notice that I have not completed an ebook on my Kindle since September. This is because I have been reading Moby-Dick by Herman Melville. This is a classic I've been meaning to read forever and since this was the year of Big Books, I dove in. 

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I think I'm going to do this review in two parts. Today I'll talk about Melville and do a review and then tomorrow I'll do my lines of note, things I looked up (SO MUCH), and hat mentions. Strap in. I've been reading this book for literal months. 

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Does anyone actually know the plot of Moby-Dick? (I sure didn't.)

It starts with the sentence "Call me Ishmael" and immediately you're on guard. Okay, fine, but is that your actual name, Ishmael? Are you an unreliable narrator? You sound unreliable from the first three words!

Note: All page numbers come from the Kindle ebook I used. 

So we're calling the narrator Ishmael and we're basically introduced to him through this very, very hilarious description of his state of mind:

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. (page 17)

(My husband and I used to tell each other not to murder anyone when we go into a crowded situation - usually the grocery store - but now we've taken to reminding the other not to knock people's hats off. We are amused if no one else is.)

So Ishmael goes to sea with a ragtag assortment of folks on the Pequod. This includes Queequeg, a harpooner who just happens to be a cannibal; Starbuck, the Quaker mate from Nantucket; and Captain Ahab, an absolute batshit crazy guy who is obsessed with finding a white whale - the one and only Moby Dick - who had bit his leg off and forced him to use a fake leg. 

“Aye, Starbuck; aye, my hearties all round; it was Moby Dick that dismasted me; Moby Dick that brought me to this dead stump I stand on now. Aye, aye.” (page 190)

A handful of adventures ensue, but it's mostly Ishmael's deep dives into whales, whaling, and life on a ship, Ahab's insane rants, and some incredibly repulsive descriptions of killing sea creatures. 

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Who is Herman Melville? 

Melville was born into a financially stable family in New York City in 1819. His father died, however, and his family was broke as a joke, so he signed up to be a common sailor on the merchant ship St. Lawrence and then to a whaler named Acushset. He wrote a couple of books based on his travel adventures, Typee (1846) and Omoo (1847), and that set him up financially for a time.

Moby-Dick came out in 1851. Trivia alert. Moby-Dick the title of the book has a hyphen, but no where in the book itself does Melville use a hyphen. So if I'm writing about the whale, I'll use Moby Dick (no hyphen), but if I'm writing about the book, I'm going to be pedantic and use a hyphen. 

The book was first published (in three volumes) as The Whale in London in October 1851, and under its definitive title, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, in a single-volume edition in New York in November. Melville drew on his experience as a common sailor and on wide reading in whaling literature for his vivid and sometimes disgusting descriptions of sailing, whale hunting and of extracting whale oil, as well as life aboard ship among a culturally diverse crew. The white whale is modeled on a notoriously hard-to-catch albino whale Mocha Dick, and the book's ending is based on the sinking of the whaleship Essex in 1820. 

(For those of you playing along in NGS reading lore, the sinking of the Essex is the basis of my beloved In the Heart of the Sea and is responsible, in large part, for my decision to read Moby-Dick.)

Moby-Dick was published to mixed reviews, was a commercial failure, and was out of print at the time of the author's death in 1891. Whomp. Whomp. 

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So what did you think?

Um. Hm. That's a good question. 

Ishmael is hilarious. As a narrator, I found his voice to be entrancing. I found his enthusiasm for all things whales to be contagious. 

So I was on board, truly, for his in-depth discussions of everything whale - a biological classification, fictional stories, a breakdown of the skeleton, detailed anatomical structures, how to catch one, flensing whales (NOT FOR THE FAINTHEARTED), ambergris, barrels of whale oil, and everything else. I was mostly on board for his in-depth musings on things that came to mind when he thought about whales, including the symbolism of particular animals and colors (whales and white, mostly), man as the top predator, fate, free will, and obsession. 

What I was not here for, it turns out, was Ahab's monomaniacal obsession. As soon as Ahab started talking, I'd find myself zoning out. I also found myself zoning out about religion, but that's par for the course with me. 

While this book is nominally about whaling, it's obviously really about man versus nature and who is top dog. Nature isn't just the white whale, but taking to the sea to collect oil so that people on the shore can light their way at night. It's about loyalty, revenge, and problem solving. It's about life and death, light and dark, and, of course, killing that fucking whale. 

It also took a lot of time before the real "action" started. It wasn't until almost 100 pages in that we actually saw the Pequod:

...were three ships up for three-years’ voyages—The Devil-Dam, the Tit-bit, and the Pequod. (page 91 - first mention!)

Description of the Pequod:

A noble craft, but somehow a most melancholy! All noble things are touched with that. (page 92)

Then it was still more time before we actually set sail:

At length, towards noon, upon the final dismissal of the ship’s riggers, and after the Pequod had been hauled out from the wharf, (page 125 - we set sail!)

Ship and boat diverged; the cold, damp night breeze blew between; a screaming gull flew overhead; the two hulls wildly rolled; we gave three heavy-hearted cheers, and blindly plunged like fate into the lone Atlantic. (page 129)

So, the first part of the book was really not that exciting unless you like sermons about Jonah and reading about how cold it is in New England during winter. 

But, just wait until tomorrow when I post all the things I had to look up. Melville had a much more classical and Biblical training than I did and I did not understand a lot of his references and allusions. However, the Internet is an amazing thing and have you heard of Power Moby-Dick? It's a FREE online annotated copy of Moby-Dick. I used the heck out of it. 

I'm glad I read it, but I will not be reading it again. 3.5/5 stars (I guess - this was hard to rate!)

Have you read Moby-Dick? Are you going to?

Five for Friday, Edition #35

Five Hard Things

1. I recruited a friend to be my co-worker. Did I ever tell this story? I had a friend in book club who was looking for a job and I told her to apply to my office and she did and now her office is across the hall from mine. She's sick. And things are not going well for her. On Wednesday she was admitted to the ICU and I feel like it was stuff with my mom all over again. Anyway, she's probably going to be fine, right?

2. I used to listen to a podcast called Let's Go To Court. It was two women who had been friends since they were in elementary school discussing true crime cases. But the podcast ended and so did the friendship. One of the hosts has a new podcast with her husband called An Old Timey Podcast and at the end of an episode they discussed how hard it was to lose that friendship. She said that in many ways ending that friendship was harder than if she had ended her marriage and I think that's right. When you get divorced, people around you rally around. When a friendship ends, no one really knows. Anyway, I've been thinking about this because I recently took someone off my holiday card list because I hadn't heard from them in a long time and it was clear they have broken up with me, but I don't know why. 

3. Yesterday when I walked Hannah in the morning, it was rainy and about 44 degrees (about 7 degrees Celsius). Not ideal, but it was fine. By the time I left work, it was 34 degrees and the temperatures were falling fast. By the time I walked her before bed, it was 19 degrees (about -7 Celsius). A winter weather advisory was issued for something called flash freeze, which is not a term I was familiar with, but some jackass on Reddit wrote "this is completely normal for living in the Midwest" and I'm over here going ???? in my brain. How have I ever never heard this term before?

4. Grades were posted Wednesday, so yesterday I spent the day following up with my students of concern to see how things were going. Most of the news was good and I was able to say congratulations and I'm proud of you. But the students who didn't do well. Ugh. I hate having those conversations. 

5. I'm reading a book that has a lot of buzz and has been well-reviewed and I just don't like it. How long do I have to keep reading it? 

Five Fun Things

1. Tonight we're going to the holiday light show at the local botanical garden with our friends. We do this every year and I'm excited about taking a little bit of fun time.

2. Sunday is the Winter Solstice! We have friends who have a Solstice Party every year where we go to their backyard and hang out around a campfire. It is a lovely time to see people we don't always see regularly and to remind myself that the days are going to get longer.

3. In January, I have blocked out days for me and Bestest Friend to hang out together. We haven't exactly planned what we're going to do yet, but it's on the calendar.

4.Speaking of Bestest Friend, I sent her a holiday card with some of my high school senior photos in it and she put those photos on the fridge. This made me laugh.

5. Did you all know Christmas is next week? And New Year's the week after? I'm super excited for time off and to get to hang out with my in-laws on Christmas Day.

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Are you familiar with flash freeze? Did you take anyone off the holiday card list this year? What holiday celebration are you most looking forward to in the next couple of weeks?

When the Cranes Fly South by Lisa Ridzén

I heard about When the Cranes Fly South by Lisa Ridzén, translated from the Swedish by Alice Menzie, on an episode of Sarah's Bookshelves. 

So, there was recently a discussion about the last book that made you cry in my corner of the blogosphere and I couldn't remember. I just don't cry much at books. So along comes When the Cranes Fly South which seemed to accept this as a personal challenge. 

My parents both died young. They died before we had to have discussions about whether or not it was safe for them to drive, it was appropriate for them to live alone, or if they could care for their pets. And I frequently wish I had more time with them, but I'm forever grateful that those were conversations I got to duck out of. 

My mom loved her dog more than she loved me. I knew that in the pecking order of my mom's affections, it was her dog, my sister, her younger brother, and then me. That's fine. I actually think Dusty and Red deserved more love than I did, so she wasn't wrong in that aspect of the pecking order (the others...I might have some beef). But the idea of having to tell my mom that she was not capable of caring for her beloved pet and having to have the responsibility of removing her dog from her house? That seems impossible to me and I don't know if I would have ever done it. My mom would have preferred to die slipping on the ice taking the dog for a walk than in a home alone without her dog. (YOU GUYS. I'm crying just typing this.)

Bo is a retired mill worker. His wife has dementia, the mean kind, and she is in a home where she doesn't remember Bo and reacts violently when he visits her. Bo still lives at the house he lived with his wife with his dog Sixten and carers come in multiple times a day to check on Bo and help him get dressed, shower, eat, and let the dog out. Bo's son Hans is dealing with a lot - he has a high-stress job, his mom is in a home, and his dad refuses to acknowledge that Sixten is too much for him to handle.

How's all this going to play out?

With lots of tears on my part, friends. Lots of tears.

It was a beautiful book. But, I swear to all that's holy, if you are in a sensitive place right now, do not read this book. 5/5 stars

Line of note:

I feel the urge to get up, to hit the table and tell him I'll do whatever the hell I want. That I'm the captain of this ship.

But I don't, because I'm not a captain. I'm a bundle that's been lashed to the mast in a storm. (page 160)

Hat mentions (why hats?):

wearing a big hat with a ribbon (page 102)

who clams up at the drop of a hat (page 151)

big black hat (page 285)

He picks up his hat (page 286)

holds the hat close to his stomach (page 286)

puts his hat on (page 286)

I've only ever seen people wearing hats like that on TV. (page 286)l

man in the hat (page 289 x2)