Reading the Classics with Paul- Moby-Dick- Week 12

In this week's reading two things happened in the text and one thing happened to the reader.  In the text, Ahab encountered a British vessel which had recently come across Moby-Dick.  Ahab throws social conventions to the wind in his haste to get to the hunt, tipping his hand of madness to the Captain and alcoholic doctor of the British ship. 

The rest of this week's reading was taken up by Ishmael's description of a very large whale skeleton he saw one time.  He then talks about whale skeletons, how big whales can get, what's inside a whale, what's outside a whale, and probably a lot of other things about whales I forgot mere seconds after I read them.

What happened to me was just this.  I was gripped by Ahab's obsessive, leg-breaking leap back to the ship and likewise overcome realizing I was within 90 pages of the end of the book.  Suddenly keenly aware that I am the last man standing in this series and therefore beholden to no one for the schedule, I think I've decided to muscle through and finish the book this week.  Next week I intend to post my concluding post on the book.  After which I will probably very soon post a sum up of the entire 10 essential classical series.  Also a forthcoming post about Sir Thomas Browne and a Christmas decoration post. 

Which I plan on doing in my copious free time.  I suppose 'tis the season when we feel keelhauled by our obligations, even the self imposed ones.  Now, if you'll excuse me, I have an appointment with three ghosts.

Christmas List 2010

A "French Press" style coffee maker- "But wait a minute, Paul!"  I hear you cry, "Don't you already have a french press?"
"No, I had one.  But I wash dishes like the West Wind and apparently that is why we can't have nice things."
"So, what sort of coffee maker do you have?"
"Your standard American auto-drip."
"Oh really?  Do you also roll in your own filth and hate all things beautiful?"
"Look, let's get something straight about our labels.  Yes, I am an aesthete and a gastronome.  But first and foremost, I am a Bohemian.  In other words, I have made music from a four-track machine that I found by a dumpster on a college campus on graduation day.  I have taken a vow of poverty which is a synonymous way of expressing that I majored in Theater.  In short, I either come by things through the largess of others which, if I'm not mistaken, is the true meaning of Christmas, or I go without."
"My dear man, I apologize abjectly.  How you suffer without a french press coffee maker is an inspiration to us all.  Truly you, of all men, deserve a french press coffee maker."
"Yes, it has been many a year of toil and labor for my happiness.  But somehow I have suffered through it all.  You know, for art."
"Well, allow me to do my part and let your readers know that a french press coffee maker can be found at any major chain coffee house or decent kitchenware store.  Cost Plus certainly carries them for a modest price.  Smaller, local, Mom and Pop places may have them, but then they may not.  And it's not like anyone else is going to know where you bought it, so why not relax and make it easier on yourself?"
"Ah, I see you're kind of a corporate shill as well!  Back into the void of non-existence with you, Imaginary Objector!"

The Autobiography of Mark Twain Vol. 1- The new book by Mark Twain or, rather, the book that he made sure 100 passed before it was published.  Doesn't that make you curious?

The Classical Style- possibly the essential text on late 18th century music and a gross oversight in my personal library mainly due to its wide availability in public lending libraries.  Not that I need more books right now as I'm steeped in the Harvard Classics Library, wading through Moby-Dick, and threatening to start Remembrance of Things Past in the top of the upcoming year.

The Most of Wodehouse- Also in books, this seems to be an excellent Wodehouse anthology.  Readers of this blog know how much I love the Jeeves stories.  If you like it when I lighten up, this is the manner in which I lighten up.

Wagner: The Terrible Man and His Truthful Art- With a title that pretty much sums up Wagner and, as I understand the reviews, a text that follows suit, I would love to read this book about a man who is at once one of my favorite artists in history and a person I am glad I'll never have to meet.  Ah, but I see I've already put four books on this list when I promised myself I would put none.  Moving on!

The Jeeves and Wooster DVD set- I would love to own this.  I would love to sit and watch this with Laurie.

The Top 10 Classical Albums of the Year-  at least, so says Tom Huizenga, but I happen to think I would be interested in every title on this list.  Yes, I just went back and re-read it and any one of the albums on this list I would be absolutely tickled to own.

Sonic New York by Sxip Shirey- One of the best new musicians I know of.

Unemployed Philosophers Merch- I love this catalog.  This is catalog from which I got my Friedrich Nietzsche watch.  People who know me can poke around and find many things I would like from this catalog.  Almost anything from them would be fantastic.  I would especially mention the Freudian Slippers because 1) that's hilarious and b) my current slippers are looking super-bohemian at the moment.

Reading the Classics with Paul- Moby-Dick- Week 11

Real ambergris from a whale. Photographed by Peter Kaminski. Used by some Wikimedia Commons general permission grant.

I think at long last I settle on my judgment on this book.  It is as follows: uneven.  There are passages of truly sublime writing.  This week I find myself wondering if I'd spoken too soon about self-reference in Moby-Dick.  I thought the ambergris chapters were well written and compelling in the midst of many very dull, bloated, unwieldy chapters about whaling.  The chapter in question is about finding a very valuable item in a whale corpse after going through a ridiculous and difficult rigmarole in order to get to it.  Again, this chapter could be a metaphor for the entire book. 

Exhibit B for uneven writing this week is the minor character of Pip.  Pip encompasses the theme of the seemingly capricious nature of the gods and the often horrible, crushing realities of existence.  However, Pip is a minor character in the middle of a long, hefty book filled with material I would call superfluous.  This serves to make a minor character all the more minor.

I've also been thinking about a discussion Rob and I had over the years about The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym by Edgar Allan Poe.  Rob thought that was an uneven piece of writing because the tone and style of the very end of the book shifts so quickly that he felt the transmission go out.  I, on the other hand, thought it was an excellent book.  Putting on my comparative literature glasses, I think it is by far the superior Victorian American nautical proto-Existentialist work of fiction.

This next week we read through chapter CVII which, in my text, brings us to page 430.

John Milton's Areopagitica and Of Education

I am going to be spending a lot of time with John Milton's work over the next month or so.  I've just completed these two and am about to finish Sir Thomas Browne's strangely brilliant Religio Medici, after which in the Harvard Classics lineup comes the complete poetic works of Milton in English.

Milton was a very strange man. While Milton was distinctly ranked as a Non-Conformist in his day, he had the hubristic and distinctly Un-Puritanical belief that God had ordained him to be the greatest epic poet in the English language.  This was before he'd ever even written a poem. 

In the introduction, the author of the introduction (unnamed, so I must assume it's mine host Dr. Charles Eliot) writes:

"In spite of Milton's association with the Puritan party in the political struggles of his time, the common habit of referring to him as "the Puritan Poet" is seriously misleading.  The Puritans of the generation of Milton's father were indeed often men of culture and love of the arts, but the Puritans of the Civil War, the Puritans whom we think of to-day in our ordinary use of the term, were, in general, men who had not only no interest in art, but who regarded beauty itself as a temptation of the evil one."

Young John Milton also had a fervent and outspoken devotion to the concept of chastity which he drew from a bizarre reading of Revelation.  He believed, if I am understanding him correctly, that the 144,000 written of in St. John's Revelation chapters 7 and 14 are poets or writers (hence the "new song") and that since he (Milton) is clearly to be numbered among them he must retain his virginity.  His college chums (if any) at Cambridge said that he was all the time on about virginity.  It is difficult to imagine such a person in today's colleges. 

Although, left on its own, that part of his personality might not grate too harshly against one's preconceptions of Puritans, but I should also mention that in spite of this early fervent fixation, by the time he left this world he had been married three times.  This did not seem to effect his standing as the greatest epic poet in the English language.

I am a bit charmed that he would say things like "I am predestined by God to be the greatest epic poet in the English language" and then turned out to be exactly what he predicted.  I'm further charmed by his rhetoric.  I heard from Professor John Rogers upon going in to read Milton that one possible key to appreciating his work is to allow yourself to be charmed by his verbosity, logophilia, and his love of his own knowledge.  And there was a point early on in my reading where I thought, "My gosh, he's just like me!"

Areopagitica was a speech given by Milton to Parliament in support of unlicensed publishing/printing in England.  As you may know, in 1643 Parliament passed a licensing law in which censors would have the first read and veto power over anything published in England.  Milton was arguing against censorship from (get this.  Also possibly hard for some with modern eyes to imagine) a Christian point of view.  There lies the main value of the work for me as every once in a while some Pharisee will inevitably make a disparaging remark against my reading of material that does not bear their preferred Christian label.  Previously my response was to re-examine the circles I'm moving in.  Milton's arguments range from the importance of seeking wisdom to the true Christian's incorruptibility therefore how all avenues of wisdom should be accessible to censorship smacking of Papism, specifically monasticism and the Inquisition.

Two smacks of irony after the fact: First, this speech was made all the more famous by being widely published.  Second, Milton never lived to see the censorship in England slackened.  In fact, at the Restoration at the end of Milton's life, censorship became much more severe.

Of Education was written by Milton at the request of his friend Samuel Hartlib.  Hartlib requested Milton write down the thoughts he'd expressed in conversation on the topic of educational reform.  It reveals a vigorous educational regimen which reveals a lot about Milton's values and the different values of that period of history.  For example, Milton recommends languages which include Greek, Latin, and even Syrian.  Most charming, I thought, was his exercise portion which included fencing and wrestling.  This was meant to prepare the young student for the possibility of warfare.  Although, to modern American eyes, fencing is usually reserved for more nerdy elements.  I should know.  I loved fencing. 

Milton also, probably not surprisingly, proves a fellow Classicist.  He also stresses a strong foundation in virtue which I suspect Dr. Eliot took to heart while compiling this series of books.

I look forward to the month or so ahead of me with John Milton.  He is both an excellent writer and highly entertaining whether or not the latter was intentional.

Reading the Classics with Paul- Moby-Dick- Week 10

I really don't think I have a lot to talk about this week as this week's reading remarkably resembled last week's reading.  A couple of chapters on whaling, specifically on whale anatomy, followed by a whaling account.  This week's whaling account featured being chased by native islanders (who I was secretly rooting for) and a pod of many whales.

The week's reading ended with a chapter about the British practice of the whole, if not all, of any whale captured in British seas belonging to the royal family.  An account is given of some poor sailors whose whale is appropriated by a government official.  The story is rather blatantly manipulative in its anti-Crown attitude and while there may be truth in the observation, one of the more difficult struggles with Melville and I has been than I don't find Melville to be a particularly interesting thinker.  Or an original one by any means.  He's a man of his time and he is, in my estimation, inelegant in presenting his thoughts.  His metaphors are so close to the surface that you can see their blowhole a mile away.  Which I think I find even more discouraging than the repetitiveness.

I read Moby-Dick when I was in college for Professor James "Killer" Miller's American Literature class (the nickname was given him by other students on account of his difficult tests.  I never really understood the epithet as I excelled in his classes.)  The advent of the internet has been a boon to civilization and here I remark on an extremely micro-level.  Try as I might, I have no memory of my reaction from that earlier reading by that earlier Paul.  I really wish I did.  I am very glad that now I will have a record I can look back on and see how I felt now in times to come.  So, I thought I would take a moment and make a brief argument in favor of journaling on what you are reading.  Not only may it help others but at the very least it will be there for you fifteen years from now when you think "You know, maybe I should try to read Moby-Dick again."

What I do recall from my earlier reading is the impression that there was a great density of chapters on whaling information.  I also remember a few plot points to come which I find myself encouraged to know are still coming.  I haven't lost hope that exciting passages may be in my near future.

Next week we shall read through Chapter XCIX which, in my text, brings us up to page 401.  If I'm counting correctly, we have four weeks left in this series.

Podcast Roundup!

It's been years since I've assembled a post like this, but occasionally I like to write a post of podcasts I listen to, perhaps to effect the outcome of directing some reader toward something they would like but did not previously know existed.  And, as I so often find is the case with posts of lists, most of you will not read more than two sentences of the exposition before the list, so we may as well dive right in.

The Splendid Table: A podcast for epicureans.  Excellent food and drink resource, often with recipes, usually linking to the interactive website.  You will learn wonderful things about food with this podcast.

WGBH Classical Performances:  Simply put, WGBH brings highly talented classical musicians into their studio and records them playing a piece, often with a bit of exposition on the piece.  This is very often my "drive home" podcast.

Judge John Hodgman:  It may not surprise you to learn that I am not terribly interested in comedy in general.  However, two (arguably three) "comedy" podcasts have made it onto my list although this one is a bit of hybrid.  The podcast takes an argument, allows the two sides to present their case, and John Hodgman makes a decision that they half-jokingly agree to adhere to.  What strikes me is not only the brightness of the creators of the podcast, but the remarkable brightness of the "litigants" on the show.  Topic so far have included "Is chili a soup or stew?" "Are machine guns robots?" and "Does handsoap belong in a kitchen sink dispenser?"

Fresh Air: Which doesn't really need my publicity as it's already one of the most downloaded podcasts in the history of everything.  I don't always download this one because it is daily, but the quality of interviews on this show is beyond anything anyone else is doing.  Usually at least once a week they'll have a guest on an episode that I feel I absolutely need to download.  I don't think I've ever been disappointed either.

 Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me!: This is NPR's weekly news quiz show.  It is a highly entertaining presentation of the week's news.  Very clever and I always come away a bit more informed.

Orland Evangelical Free Church:  Our church podcasts our pastor's weekly sermons.  Given my work schedule, I often listen to it in the car instead of in the pew.  The website seems to be down at the moment I'm writing this, but it is on iTunes as well.

Smiley and West:  This is a new one and one of my favorites.  Tavis Smiley and Dr. Cornel West have a weekly radio show where they offer commentary on bits of the week's news, have a segment devoted to allowing a listener who disagrees with something they said to voice their point of view, and then a long interview segment with a public figure who doesn't necessarily have something to promote at the moment.

The Pod F. Tompkast: As I've said, I don't think of myself as a jokey guy and I usually can't stomach what passes for comedy these days.  Paul F. Tompkins, however, is close as I've found to my sense of humor in a contemporary comedian.  I think his podcast is excellent and surprisingly charming.  If you do check in on this one, it's newer and only has four monthly episodes so far.  But they are episodic, so you will probably want to start with #1.

This American Life: I think that This American Life is simply the best thing on the radio right now.  The stories they tell are always fantastic.

Radiolab:  Although Radiolab is a very close second.  They produce fewer episodes, but are of such great quality that one finds oneself listening to them many times over.  They take a big topic like Sleep or Time or Mortality or Stress or Animal Minds or Race or Cities (etc.) and devote an hour to exploring the meaning of the topic and, often, recent scientific breakthroughs in our understanding of them.

There you go.  Those are the podcasts I download and listen to.  I also often download lectures from iTunes U (currently working through a Yale course on John Milton) and audiobooks from Librivox which run the gamut from excellent to unlistenable.  But, needless to say, everything mentioned at this post are available to everyone with a computer absolutely free.

Reading the Classics with Paul- Moby-Dick- Week 9

I knew, back when I was arbitrarily picking the week's reading schedule for this book, that there would most likely end up being weeks entirely comprised of Melville's sprawling chapters of dated encyclopedic material.  This was very nearly that week, but we were rescued at the last moment by a depressing whaling account (is there any other kind?)

I am not sure I could exposit on the chapters about the heads of sperm whales and right whales, even if I felt the desire to try.  You know, there was one Melvillian apologist I read recently who was trying to make the argument that these informational chapters are Melville attempting to create in the reader the sense of a long ocean voyage.  Not only does one get the information associated with the world of whaling, but one also gets the feel of being in a very boring, long boat ride (the apologist would not have used the word "boring" but that is, in essence, what he was attempting to communicate.)  I'm afraid I reject this hypothesis entirely.  I see no evidence to convict Melville of that level of sophistication.  Which is not a dig at Melville per se.  Art doesn't seem to have evolved to that point of self-awareness or infinite regress of self-commentary in the Pre-Joyce, Pre-Dadaist/Cubist, Pre-Stravinsky world.  It is a danger of the Modern that one can misuse it to interpret the past in ways that the past may not have even been able to understand.  I don't know about you, but this sort of hypothesis always feels a bit like someone walking over my grave.  In my own Modernist, excruciatingly self-aware brain, I catch myself wondering through what kind of filter the people 300 years in the future are going to use to mis-interpret our contemporary works.

What Melville is fairly consistently guilty of is finding the highest point of metaphorical saturation.  I feel we definitely have another example of this in the sinking whale corpse chapter. 

As a brief aside, I would point out another aspect of our narrative that strikes me as being a bit clunky.  Melville has chopped up the through line of the narrative so much that, at this long, middle section, it almost reads more like "The Pequod Tales," a collection of short stories about an established set of characters.  We are that far afloat at this point.  I think the apologist above may have had it in mind to salvage these sections with an argument along the lines of "there is no superfluous material in Moby-Dick."  Which is almost the polar opposite of the Moby-Dick I am reading.

But we were talking about a sinking whale corpse or, rather, a more literal one.  Melville sets the scene of meeting another, decidedly lesser vessel of whalers.  Stubb makes sure to include the slap-stick convention of putting a fine point of the high value of the thing about to be lost.  In a sort of Pre-Darwinian Darwinistic scene, the more intrepid Pequod team bags the whale.  However, the corpse sinks to the bottom of the sea.  Much like life or our dreams or something like that.  An exercise in futility, a great risk taken and lost, leaving me with the rather difficult task of maintaining my position that the book lacks self-awareness.

Next week, we read through Chapter XC which, in my text, brings us to page 370, rather magically 30 pages on the nose.  Which makes me very happy as that is do-able in a single afternoon and let's be get back to things I would much rather be reading at this point.

Chronicle Books Contest!

Chronicle Books is having a contest which I am entering even as I am writing about it now!  In order to enter the contest, the blogger makes a list of titles from the Chronicle Books catalog up to $500 in value (which means there will be math involved in this post) and, if they win, they win their list of books.  And here's where it gets interesting for you.  If I win, one person who comments on my blog post will also win my list.

And, one imagines, if one doesn't win, one has just posted their first Christmas wishlist of the year on their blog entirely from the Chronicle Books catalog.  Well played, Chronicle Books.

So, here is my wish list:

1.  I Love Macarons by Hisako Ogita $14.99- Somewhere at the beginning of the new year, I have slated to read Marcel Proust's Rememberance of Things Past.  I think owning a good macaron cookbook is going to be essential for this project.

2. Dante's Divine Comedy boxed set by By Sandow Birk and Marcus Sanders $100.00- I read about this version back when I was deciding which version of Inferno to read this past year.  I ended up passing on it because of the uncertain line between version and adaptation, but it is a work I've read very good reports on.  Considering the full Divine Comedy is coming up in my Harvard Classics series, this is one I would love to have and am very curious about.  Curious enough to blow 1/5th of my make-believe money on it.

3.  This is NPR  By Cokie Roberts, Susan Stamberg, Noah Adams, John Ydstie, Renee Montagne, Ari Shapiro, and David Folkenflik $29.95-  Laurie and I are rabid NPR heads and everyone knows it.  My step-daughter, completely unprompted, knew that the perfect Christmas gift for me would be a season of This American Life.  One of the most exciting things that ever happened to me was when Robert Krulwich wrote on my blog comments urging me not to really vote for him for president.  We get most of our news from Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me.  This would be the perfect coffee table book for our home. 

4.  San Francisco Ballet at Seventy-Five By Janice Ross $60.00- A venue of world class proportions so close to us that we would both like to visit someday.  This looks like a gorgeous book and one that both Laurie and I would enjoy.

 5. Tea & Crumpets: Recipes and Rituals from Tearooms & Café By Margaret M. Johnson $19.95- Ah, something for the twee, cardigan wearing, Pooh Bear Paul.  I love tea, European culture, and comforting foodie books.

6. Coffee: Scrumptious Drinks and Treats By Betty Rosbottom $14.95- However, as a bohemian, an Americano, a fervent J.S. Bach fan, and one who rages against his natural tendency to sleep about 10 hours a night left to his own devices, I also love coffee.  Having worked in a few coffee houses in my past, I also am a bit of a coffee snob.  Also, I make elaborate coffee drinks.  I think I would get a lot of use out of this book.

7. New Vegetarian: More Than 75 Fresh, Contemporary Recipes for Pasta, Tagines, Curries, Soups and Stews, and Desserts By Robin Asbell $19.95- As vegetarians, we are always looking for new recipes.

 8.  Absinthe Cocktails: 50 Ways to Mix with the Green Fairy By Kate Simon $19.95- Favorite drink of most of the stark raving mad historical figures I read about.  Picasso, Lautrec, Van Gogh, Poe, Wilde, Baudelaire,Verlaine, Rimbaud, Alfred Jarry, Erik Satie.  I hear Mark Twain used to drink absinthe too.  Due to its scarcity and my poverty, it seems likely that this will be more of a pretty decorative book and conversation piece than anything practical, but I think it would still be fun to have in my library.  However, should we ever happen upon the Green Fairy, this seems like to book to have.

9. Cheese & Wine: A Guide to Selecting, Pairing, and Enjoying By Janet Fletcher $24.95- This is more our actual speed.  It's a book about two of Laurie and my favorite gustatory delights.

10. Dean & DeLuca: The Food and Wine Cookbook By Jeff Morgan $35.00- Anyone who has read my blog know that I consider myself a Classicist.  One of the reasons for that is that I like to go directly to the excellent and stay there without wasting time wading through a bunch of muck to find the diamonds.  This translates to music, movies, and, indeed, cookbooks for me as well.  The product description touts this volume thusly :

 In the alphabet of gourmets, D stands for Dean & DeLuca, long considered one of the finest food emporiums in the world. Now they bring their vast culinary expertise to this stunning new cookbook with over 80 inspired recipes, each complemented by carefully chosen wines. 

Sounds like a book I ought to own.

11. Guastavino Vaulting: The Art of Structural Tile By John Ochsendorf $60.00- Also, those who follow my photo dumps on my other blog know of my fascination with architecture.  This book looks just gorgeous.

12. Edie: Girl on Fire By Melissa Painter and David Weisman $29.95- Edie Sedgwick is a cultural figure I find absolutely fascinating.  A figure from (arguably also a casualty of) the Warhol scene, Sedgwick was one of those doomed figures of the glamorous life of the fat days of mid-last century America.  It's a piece of space-time shared with Warhol, Truman Capote, The Velvet Underground, Taylor Mead, Dennis Hopper in his arty period, Candy Darling, Studio 54 and all of that jazz straddling the gilded age between the Hepburns and the Hiltons (wow.  I may as well submit this for a writing position with E!)

13. Ramayana: Divine Loophole By Sanjay Patel $29.95- I've heard wonderful things about this artistic adaptation of the Ramayana.  Contemporary religious art is of great interest to me.

14. Paris Out of Hand: A Wayward Guide By Karen Elizabeth Gordon With Barbara Hodgson and Nick Bantock $22.95- Someday.  Someday.

 So, there's my list.  I hope I win it.  If you would like a chance to win this entire list too, comment (on the blog.  If you're reading this in a Facebook cross post, you're going to have to go to my original blog post to comment)!

The New Atlantis by Sir Francis Bacon

The New Atlantis is a book in a form that has nearly entirely fallen by the wayside, which is to say the Utopian work. In earlier manifestations of Western Civilization, great thinkers would sit down and write a book about their version of Utopia. Merriam-Webster defines the term as follows:

a place of ideal perfection especially in laws, government, and social conditions

Whose ideal perfection? The author's task in a work such as this is to make the case for their Utopia being agreeable to the reader.

One could make the argument that the replacement in popularity with Dystopian works indicates the collective unconscious' resignation to a society in decline. I wouldn't overtly make that claim. I would, however, make the suggestion that a Dystopian work is just the other side of the coin of Utopian works and that the existence of a Dystopia presupposes a standard of ideal from which it deviates. 

Although, there have been modern examples of Utopian works. Aldous Huxley wrote a very good one called Island. If you have access to a large selection of movies through this modern age's vast film resources, I would recommend the 1937 Capra film adaptation of James Hilton's Lost Horizon.

They tend to follow a form out of necessity. In the beginning of the work the author must needs explain how we came to knowledge of this place and why we aren't going there all the time. This usually works out into somewhat of a brief adventure story. (I sailed a wild, wild sea, climbed up a tall, tall mountain, etc.)  The key to exploring the fictional location's virtues is usually whatever reason/philosophy the society has for allowing the outsiders in to explore the fruits of their culture. Sharing wisdom seems to be your entry level Utopian fantasy. This is usually followed with what tends toward part-travelogue of a fictional location, usually with a sage for a tour guide. This is where the writing craft comes in because this could either be terrifically engaging or tremendously boring depending on the author's skill.

Bacon's Utopia, as I understood it, goes something like this:  It's a secluded and exclusive island in which the society revolves around the advancement of human knowledge. This, of course, necessitates the exclusion of the evil outer world, but their thirst for human knowledge also necessitates a corps of intellectual reconnaissance agents who travel abroad checking out inventions and thought. (A major point in Bacon is the pragmatically elegant or beauty in function.)  It's also probably worth mentioning that this is an unfinished work or, at least, unperfected. Written after Bacon's fall from public life, it's likely that he didn't polish it as much as he might have wanted, on account of his dying. 

The island has several rituals described in the text. Family is highly valued (our modern eyes have to allow for the ignorance of earlier stages of naturalism. There is no mention of the generational effects of genetics in a highly closed pool of coupling candidates. It probably didn't even occur to Bacon whereas it's one of the first objections that sprung to my mind.) Celibacy is only broken in cases of extreme monogamy. (If someone felt the irrepressible urge to characterize Bacon as a nerd, I doubt I would expend too much precious energy defending him against that allegation.) There is a large section at the end where an official talks at length about their advances in industry and breakthroughs in the natural sciences. Also, there is financial integrity in the officials (which may be an indication that Bacon learned a lesson in his own life or may be an indication that our understanding of his biography might differ dramatically from what his own interpretation of events would have been) as well as a great culture of generosity. 

I feel I'm not overstating my case when I say that the hibernation of the form of Utopian works is much to the detriment of human civilization. The purpose of the works seems to me to show that we can create whatever kind of world we choose. At present, we, as in America, don't seem to be convinced as a society that we are ascending. We also may be too rapacious and individualistic to seek unity in a vision; a byproduct of an economy based upon the human constant of cupidity. It may be too optimistic and socially responsible for current societal trends in the West, but the function of a Utopian work is an attempt to set up a bellwether toward which a Great Society can aspire. Which is a wise move because otherwise we're kind of just rushing around patching leaks as they arise. A Utopian work is having a plan instead of just having a system in which to put your faith for all situations. Of course, Utopias are most likely objective, but the purpose of great minds at one time all producing their own Utopian vision may help to focus emerging patterns. 

So, your homework and mine:

What would your Utopia look like?

If you want, write a report or a Utopian work.  If you choose to make a diorama, please send photos.

Reading the Classics with Paul- Moby-Dick- Week 8

I found this to be one of the more interesting weeks of reading thus far.  We start with the grotesque scene of the whale steak.  The comparison of the ravaging sharks on the whale carcass and Stubb eating the steak on-board seemed a fairly concise argument for vegetarianism.  Once again, I question if Melville is horribly archaic in his views on race or if he is offering subtle commentary on views of race in his day.  Although in my less generous moments I would be tempted to remind you that Melville's track record on subtlety tends toward the scanty fare.  Ah, I'm mixing metaphors again.  Oh well.  I've buttered my bread and now I must lie in it.

Still, there is something horribly lonely and desperate behind the jocularity of the scene.  Perhaps I'm bringing my own baggage to the table (let's just do away with metaphorical consistency, shall we?)  but there was, for me, a dark, existential absurdity to the scene of the disgusting, carnivorous Stubb commanding the ancient black cook to "preach" to the sharks who were eating the whale, each other, themselves, their own innards eaten by them and coming back out of their gaping wounds upon swallowing.  It struck me as a ferocious microcosm of the human experience beyond anything I've read in more contemporary dark writers (and if there's one thing I know, it's dark writers).  This was one of the more excellent scenes in the book so far in my opinion.

We encounter the Jeroboam, a ship with a bizarre power dynamic at work.  I thought this was a fairly overt commentary on the sort of fiery "gifts" one like Melville would no doubt have encountered in the Second Great Awakening, which would have been going on in New England around the time of the composition of this book.  In essence, you have a group entirely perverted by and at the whim of a religious charlatan who gets people to do as he wishes by adding divine authority to his speech.  It's a dark view of religion... and, in my experience, not an inaccurate one.

We end this week with the acting out of the repulsive superstition of lashing the head of a sperm whale to one side of the ship and the head of a right whale to the other side (I'm sure there are nautical terms for each side.  I find myself blocking out nautical terms by this point in our reading) to prevent them from capsizing literally, if not morally.  If there were a theme to this week's arbitrary section of the book, I think it would be along the lines of the horrible things that human beings do, most of which are entirely unnecessary, much of which cause great suffering, all of which reveal our fragility and inherent madness in the face of an irrational, rudderless universe.

In short, I loved it this week!

In this next week, we shall read through Chapter LXXXIII which, in my text, will take us up to page 340.

A bit chilling

Jess posted this picture of Rob and I, taken about a year and a half ago, and it struck me very hard.  It was the weekend of the worst storm in recorded history in the area.  Rob and Jess came to visit and we cooked dinner without electricity.  The next morning we went out to lunch at the Sierra Nevada Brewery.  This picture was taken right as Rob and Jess were leaving.  The storm had passed and we were stalling good-byes out in the front yard.  I think Rob called for Jess to take a picture of he and I in front of my house.  I also believe, in spite of weekly phone calls, unknown to either of us at the moment captured here, that this is a photo from the last five minutes I saw my best friend alive.

The Essays of Sir Francis Bacon

no

no

yes

The Essays of Sir Francis Bacon reads very much like a secret, although mostly benign, document for ruling the Western world in the age immediately following Elizabeth (as Bacon puts it, the post hempe period, an acronym which stands for Henry Edward Mary Philip and Elizabeth. The old wives' rhyming "prophecy" of the day was "When hempe is spun England is done."  Bacon points out, rather astutely in my opinion, that there is truth to the saying in that James followed and England became the British Empire.)  Although it should probably be noted that there was nothing secret about it.  Bacon lived an extremely public life (much to his eventual detriment. I'll leave that tidbit dangling for those who might be tantalized into further investigating Bacon's fascinating biography.  Don't miss his place on the list of scientists killed by their own experiments!)  The book is simply the accumulated wisdom of a very sharp man.

A man who was not William Shakespeare by the way.  Let's get that out of the way right off.  For those of you who don't know, there has been a aberrant school of thought in Shakespearean scholarship which posits that Sir Francis Bacon actually wrote the works of William Shakespeare.  Scuttling Occam's Razor, there are books which talk about Bacon's connections to people associated with the London theater, skepticism cast of the production history of Shakespeare's first play, links made between Bacon's passion for English history, and phrases hidden in acrostic in the First Folio. The "Bacon as Shakespeare" school was a hypothesis I've been familiar with for years, but now that I've read Bacon, I feel entirely safe in assuring you of the bêtise of said hypothesis.  Utter rot, I say!  One need only have the barest grasp of their stylistic differences to bury that theory.  

Such ear-tickling theories of esoteric knowledge may sell books, but does not have a place in serious scholarship anymore than suggesting Bacon was also the Merovingian ambassador to the Mole People who live beneath the surface of the hollow Earth.  One can speculate anything.  That doesn't make it scholarship or worth considering.  Even though we are talking about a time 300 years before the invention of television, I'm sure Sir Francis Bacon's life was far too busy to also produce the works of Shakespeare in his free time. 

His Essays are a remarkable collection of human thought.  He writes about, as I mentioned, aspects of ruling and deportment in positions of power.  He also covers general human behavior and experience.  They are brilliant and I found it a little unnerving that, for example, a man 400 in the grave observed the formulaic state that atheism will rise when there is widespread, well-known corruption  in the clergy coupled with gross disunity in the Church, leading to a culture which condones mocking religion.

There was a great deal in his work that I found rich and rewarding.  A few points on which I already heartily agreed with him (I thought his assessment of prophecy was entirely in line with my own experience.  He agreed that instances appear to have existed, then went on express his extreme distrust of prophecy and suspicion that most of it is concocted ex post facto.)  Also he mentions the stages of a great society in formulaic form.  He says that a great empire focuses on diversification of goods, services, peoples, climes, and so forth.  There is great wisdom in this although one might level the accusation that this mode of thinking lead to the British imperialism that made life very unpleasant for a lot of people in the following centuries.  His formula also states that an early great society focuses their attention on arms, a middle period great society focuses on learning, a period follows of a mixture of the two, and an empire in decline focuses on merchandise and mechanical arts (what Mark Twain would call "gee-gaws.")  Although I think I take a little issue when he elsewhere encourages leaders who want a great nation to focus on arms.  The Quaker in me objects.

I wont write at length about the individual essays as there are many, but I found this to be a highly valuable volume of human thought.  I'm sure it will, like so many books in this series, give me great food for thought for years to come.  I would recommend it to anyone.

Reading the Classics with Paul- Moby-Dick- Part 7

The chief bypath of this week's reading was a survey of whales in art history.  More specifically, Ishmael spends several chapters comparing the appearance of whales in famous paintings and then stating that the paintings do not capture the appearance of whales as they appear in consensus reality to sailors a-hunting them.  Rather an archaic, Philistine's view of art if he were really suggesting that art need "look like stuff looks," but I'm sure the point he was driving at was to lead people away from fantastic representations toward a more accurate mind's eye view, especially as we're about to get to some whale killing in our story.  Let's take a moment and appreciate a novel instance of relevance in transitions from informational chapters to narrative.

Ah.  Sweet relevance.

The painting above is Pêche de la Baleine by Ambrose Louis Garneray.  Garneray was a contemporary of Melville's although it's doubtful they ever crossed paths.  The painting above is what Ishmael finally arrives at as a good representational example of whaling in art.  Note the "stripping" of the other whale in the background by the ship.

So much of this book would have demanded a tremendous amount of research (or apathy) from the reader in days before the advent of Google Image Search.  Having the ability to readily see the images he's referring to proved quite helpful to me this time and far more engaging.  Still, this was a bit of an exception to the text which, at this point in our reading, seems to be entirely side-trails.  I'm not sure the chapter about whaling lines was necessary.  I'm also not sure the chapter about the squid was necessary, although that one at least had the feature of idiosyncrasy to shake the reader awake.

Here is an example that Ishmael sites as a bad example, although more in step with the bulk of whales in paintings (albeit this one is an illustration rather than a painting.  One imagines mainly from the artistic problem of depicting something that dwells beneath the surface of the ocean.)  It's William Hogarth's depiction of Perseus and the whale:

Just for the sake of fun, compare with modern illustrator Tony Millionaire's whale:

The whale in art, as far as my own quick overview has revealed, seems to be more of a source to communicate unbridled, natural power beyond the means or comprehension of humankind.  Which is rather in keeping with what Melville seems to be trying with this book.  Again, his time spent poo-pooing whales in art history here seemed to me more a means to direct the mind's eye in viewing the coming chapter of whale hunting with a modicum of realism.  I found it to be a successful technique, although, again, only with the benefit of the visual examples to which he refers. 

We then have a chapter about the line used in whaling, a chapter where a giant squid shows up and spooks the easily spooked crew.  Then we finally get a good, full description of a successful whale hunt.  Stubb bags himself a whale through the efforts of his subordinates.  I guess the commanding officer gets the distinction of the successful whale hunt just for showing up.

I don't have a lot to add at this point.  Merrily we roll along.  Something's bound to happen sooner or later.

In the coming week, we shall read through Chapter LXXIII which, in my text, takes us up to page 306.

Moby-Jack

Each Hallowe'en, Laurie and I do a bare minimum of joining in on the festivities.  We're not against the holiday or any such nonsense.  We are simply two working adults without small children nor a circle of friends who throw parties which they invite us to.  This year, I'm working on the night of the holiday.

So holidays tend to be a bit low key around our house.  This mainly translates to "we do the part of the festivities that we like and ignore the rest."  In the case of the very strange hybrid holiday known as Hallowe'en, the part we like is carving pumpkins and roasting their seeds.  We also tend to get a modest bag of candy on the off chance that a mendicant, masquerading moppet comes a-gently rapping on our chamber door.  Given our neighborhood, we tend to have a lot of leftover candy.

So, we went to Trader Joe's.

Laurie notes that, in keeping with our tastes, Laurie chose the large, handsome, classical one and I chose the small, elegant, white one. 

Then comes the choice of Jack-o'-lantern style.  I put it to the internet Hive Mind and got some excellent suggestions (including The Pope, Wilford Brimley, something from a Beckett play, and Dr. Mabuse.)  Finally, however, I was struck with the whiteness of the pumpkin and chose to go with a theme from my reading.  So, I produced this:

That's right!  It's the Great White Whale!  I would direct your attention to the harpoons sticking out of his side which I fashioned from paperclips and thread.  The fluke is simply a wire hanger with the stem also papered over.

To answer your question, yes, I was the kind of kid who loved to make dioramas for school projects.

Reading the Classics with Paul- Moby-Dick- week 6

The bulk of this week's reading comprised a story which sort of serves as our "we're going to need a bigger boat" scene.  In this story within-the-story, we finally see Moby-Dick in action.  In all fairness to Ahab, at this point one might mention that the number of whales eaten by people remains at 0 so far, while the number of people eaten by the white whale is now at 1.25.  The rather violent tale serves to further illustrate not only the dangers of the whaling trade (which I can't believe is even still a thing!) but especially the dangers of this particular whale.  If Ishmael's meditation on the unbearable whiteness of being didn't do it for you, now you have a dead guy in the whale's belly.

I don't have a lot to add this week.  The story was long and rambling although I was engaged at the parts where the narrator stuck to the story.  I was confused, to the point of flipping back a page to see if I'd missed something, at the breaks in the narrative to talk to the people listening to the story.  And the priest part at the end struck me as a bit maudlin, although, again, in such a way that raised fears that I may be too modern and cynical to appreciate this book.

Although, I thought the fight, with the guy's jaw gushing blood on the deck much like the whales they cut up, was well described and kind of exciting.  As was the account of the insubordinate sailors hiding in the forecastle (although they were being drama queens, didn't you think?)  This served to further my contention that Melville was a decent adventure story author.  As I understand it, in his lifetime, that's largely what he was known as.  I feel it's telling that no one reads his other works today.  I haven't and I have no intention of ever doing so.  The strangeness of this book, and I'm not sure I've ever had this experience reading before, is that it does occasionally hit transcendence, but it's so clunky, so few and far between, so buried in notes on knot tying and what-not, that I find myself constantly hyper-aware of this fact the whole time I'm reading.  I've jokingly suggested to friends that this might be very early meta-fiction, that the greatness of the book is like the white whale itself, unseen and constantly looming below the surface.  You are pretty sure that it's going to emerge from the deeps sometime in the process of reading it, you just don't know when.  If someone posited that hypothesis in seriousness, I would refuse to take it as such.

On the other hand, we are in the middle of Moby-Dick where nothing happens.  That was my recollection from having read it a decade ago.  I came to this reading assuming my brain was indulging in its usual propensity for exaggeration.  I found that I was right on the money.  We're driving around in an ocean looking for one particular whale.  Get comfy.

That's all I have for this week.  Next week, we'll read through Chapter LXIII which, in my book, takes us up to 273 (and we're past the halfway mark, people.)

Meditations on Meditations

“Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.”

When Rob died, I was reading the Stoics and Dante's Inferno. This was not planned. It was an accident of my reading lists, although my reading of the former works at that critical time smacked a bit of divine superintendence to me. It was, for me, the right words delivered at the right moment. The Stoics have helped me through a difficult time (although, to reveal a chink in my armor and have a moment of sincerity on this too too public blog, I should admit that I say "through" with a hint of ironic, self-deprecating cynicism) with a stipulation.  I'll come back to my closing thoughts on my Stoical sojourn in a moment.  First, I need to talk a bit about this final Stoic work in the Harvard Classics series, The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. 

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus was the emperor of Rome from the year of our Lord 161 until his death in 180.  He was one of the better Roman Emperors, especially at that time, although one of the dark marks in his otherwise fine record is that he did persecute the early Christians for a time. This was apparently buckling to popular opinion on his part. This is not one of the more important details of his biography as he was hardly a Nero, but it may be worth noting that scholars have apparently tried to rescue Marcus Aurelius from this black spot on his record. George Long (the translator), in an essay following the text, mentions a document that has surfaced which claims to have been written by Aurelius begging the Senate to not persecute the Christians. Long says it's a rather ham-fisted forgery and it is unlikely that Aurelius put that much thought into the matter at all.

The saddest part of the text is that it is a book written for one seeking to live a virtuous life, full of the wisdom gained by the insightful ruler, apparently for the amelioration of his son, Commodus. Commodus was one of the bad emperors. It was Pax Romana under Aurelius, but Commodus threw a spanner right into those works. In the case of this book, I envision a scene much like the claim of old Bosie Douglas upon receipt of Wilde's De Profundis that he threw it into the fire unread.

I got slightly less out of Aurelius than I did from the excellent Epictetus, partially because Aurelius was a little more obscure and Long admittedly tried to preserve Aurelius' innocence of rhetorical skill. This lead to some confusing passages. But I still found it to be an excellent work. Aurelius camps long on contentment which, as a Christian myself, I find rather lacking without the focus on glorifying God. Aurelius has a great deal of that as well, although he and I would be speaking of different Gods. However, his focus on chucking attachments of pain and pleasure put me in mind of the areas in which Buddhism and Christianity meet in ways I find helpful.

I would be remiss if I didn't speak on the struggle that ensued for me from the Stoic presentation of contentment. I found it a bit hollow and soon realized why. It stems back to the old question "Is it possible to have morality without God?"  A question to which my personal answer, at least in my experience in my own life, is "no." You see, Aurelius' instructions for a life of contentment are all well and good. If followed as prescribed they should effect the desired outcome. But that's just it. For me (and, I daresay, for Commodus), it lacked the reasoning as to why one should desire to, as it were, "keep it on the rails." Why does it matter to live a life of contentment over one of gross hedonism? Why, even, is it preferable to alive or dead? In the case of the Harvard Classics series, one supposes that its place in the progression, following Socrates' fairly solid case for living a virtuous life for the sake of living a virtuous life, it offers some keen tools. However, taken on its own, it's a bit like having a detailed and easy to follow recipe for Boeuf Bourguignon, but having no idea how to eat.

Fortunately, I have an answer which causes all of the pieces to fall into place and makes contentment a very valuable lesson indeed. The answer I have is the focus of a life toward God and the outworkings that stem from that focus.

However, even more helpful in this temporal life, I thought, was his focus on social justice. He brought forth concepts like: what is bad for the hive is bad for the bee. He also appeals to our nature in doing what is set before us, just as a fig tree produces figs, do what you are to do.

Also, he is a bit starkly honest in admitting that life is not all about happiness and good times. I remember when I was a child having a reaction at a certain part of a popular children's film. It was the Gene Wilder version of Willy Wonka and there was a line that the Oompa-Loompas sing in one of their finger-wagging songs, after having dispensed their advice concerning the chapter of the story that had just closed, along the lines of "you will live in happiness too, like the Oompa-Loompas doompity-do." I remember thinking that they didn't strike me as being particularly happy-seeming. They seemed rather stern and, as it were, stoic. But age brings perspective and now I see that there is wisdom in the house of mourning. So often I've found that living at the frequency of levity makes the fall much further when tragedy inevitably strikes. Also, if one maintains a level of gravitas in one's character, one is more accessible to those who need someone in times of trouble.

Aurelius and the rest of the Stoics are often criticized on this point, but then, we do live in a remarkably silly culture. I personally think that there is an honesty there that many are uncomfortable with. We have no guarantee of happiness and certainly none of longevity. Aurelius' advice is, in the most simple terms, "be content regardless." If you can find contentment in times of struggle, you can tap into it at any time. Again, I find the divorce from my spiritual walk unhelpful, but remarrying the two I've found this to be a great help to me, a great comfort during a great trial.

In the case of Rob, I've been left holding a bag full of questions. Why him and not me? Why now? What was that all about? What do I do for the remainder of my life without being able to talk to him? The Stoics don't answer those questions directly because no one can. Either there is no answer or it's not for us to know. But now I feel a bit more equipped to be content in my circumstances. Now it's just a matter of employing those tools at the necessary moment instead of wallowing in discontent and worry.

Reading the Classics with Paul- Moby-Dick- Part 5

Above: Things from around my house that would unnerve Melville.

Kids! Can you find nouns around your house that would drive Melville to write three chapters on the unseen dread that invisibly infuses all of observable reality?

In this week's reading, Ishmael talked for a very long time about the whale and its whiteness.  He forged a mad, teetering link between the appearance of the whale and all that inspires fear in... well, him, but him projected on all of humankind.  In short, he decidedly casts in his lot with Ahab's obsessive mission.  Chapter 42 "The Whiteness of the Whale" is one of the key chapters to understanding the entire book.  Not that we were really having much difficulty with that in the first place. 

As a quick side note, this week I was struck by how American the book is in its obsessiveness.  That sort of behavior is the fulcrum of our society and, indeed, the impetus which keeps our economy from completely tumbling over.  It also struck me that Ishmael was the character bringing meaning to the table like the poor dupe that he is.  Ishmael goes on and on about the meaning of the whale hunt.  I get the impression that Ahab's "meaning" is much more simplistic and visceral.  He wants to kill the thing that bit his leg off.  Which rather puts me at a difficult impasse for the remainder of the reading.  This epiphany paints Ahab in my mind as a brute, much like Starbuck's accusation against him after his rabble rousing speech, who seeks human revenge on a dumb beast.  Ishmael, on the other hand, seems to see something which I'm not sure is really there.  Although the link between Ahab and the whale is physical.  Part of the man himself is literally part of the whale now and the ivory leg seems to indicate that part of a whale is part of Ahab himself as well.  Much like Coleridge's Ancient Mariner wearing the albatross (literally.  "Wearing the albatross" sure does sound like a euphemism, though, doesn't it?)

That plays neatly into my own judgement of the book itself thus far: that it is like taking a vacation to a place you've always wanted to visit and having a tour guide who you dislike personally.  Ishmael increasingly strikes me as what I would call "a borderline case."

Christopher pointed out the flipped Gnostic line, "Though in many of its aspects this visible world seems formed in love, the invisible spheres were formed in fright."  Sort of a Proto-Lovecraftian view of the universe.  Indeed, I think Lovecraft did it better and, to seize one of the very rare instances in life one gets to employ a phrase like this, I think Lovecraft was not nearly as heavy-handed.  

Of course, one of the points being set up on stage in this portion of our reading is one of the major themes of the work: To really know what's in the abyss, it is necessary to actually fall in.

We finish out this week's reading with an account of an actual whale hunt.  It is quite tense and riveting.  Ahab, we find, has hidden ringers on the ship who he trots out when the mast-sitter sings out.  I enjoyed this chapter quite a bit.  I felt Melville really captured the rush of hunting giant unseen things beneath you which could surface and kill you at any moment.

I made a decision next week to extend the reading an extra week for a number of reasons.  Foremost was the fact that the brisk schedule I'd married myself to was precluding any other reading from my life, which is unacceptable.  Second, the new schedule will have me finish in time for Christmas.  This appealed to me on a number of levels. 

Right Ho, Jeeves!

Purely in the interest of diversion, I've just gone through another P.G. Wodehouse book in the Jeeves and Wooster series.  This one was Right Ho, Jeeves!  It was a full length novel, a rip-roaring good time, and not, I think, entirely frivolous.  I'll return to this in a moment.

For those of you unacquainted with the Jeeves series, you really should amend that state of affairs in your life.  They are delightful books.  They revolve around Bertram Wilberforce "Bertie" Wooster who is a man of his times (1920s and 1930s, although the earliest stories I believe are from the 'teens), class (upper), and place of origin (Great Britain.)  The stories are written from his point of view.  In his employ is a valet named Jeeves.  Among the more prominent running gags is that Wooster, the master, is a bit bumbling and prone to get into difficult spots while Jeeves, the servant, is wise, highly intelligent, and seemingly infallible in his advice.

To wit, the beginning of the well known British television adaptation with Stephen Fry, one of my favorite living humans, in the role of Jeeves and Hugh Laurie, maybe you've heard of him, as Wooster.


It's a fun series and, yes, there are Jeeves and Wooster geeks.  I am one.

The book in question revolves around a series of romantic mishaps in Bertie's peer group who, through a series of additional mishaps, end up visiting Bertie's Aunt Dahlia's estate en masse.  Bertie gets snippy over a dinner jacket that Jeeves strongly discourages him from wearing and expresses his hypothesis that Jeeves has lost his touch.  Bertie decides that this time he will take it upon himself to solve the problems surrounding him without the help of Jeeves.  You can probably well imagine the direction that takes.  As usual, I'm reluctant to spoil the plot, but the end is in the manner of a Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera where the lovers all fall in with their appropriate lovers and everyone gets the desserts coming to them.

Along with the high entertainment value, the turns of phrase are excellent and extremely clever.  I come away from the books having a light education (finally being driven to look up the details of the wreck of the Hesperus) and vocabulary bolstering (finally looking up the definition of "collation" to slip into conversations that drift toward the culinary) snuck in by a highly inventive author.  It's also the sort of book I can bring up when someone who cares about me expresses concern over the gloominess of my usual literary fare.  I'm surprised it took me this long to say it, but if you've never read Wodehouse before, I cannot recommend him highly enough.

Reading the Classics with Paul- Moby-Dick part 4

If you would do me the kindness of forgiving the obviousness of the statement, we've hit choppier waters.  We begin this week's reading with Cetology, a chapter which I expected to dislike immensely.  However, largely thanks to Christopher's recommendation of the online annotation Power Moby-Dick as a very helpful tool in these chapters of encyclopedic information on whaling, I actually enjoyed this quite a bit.  I do feel that one needs visual aids in this chapter.  Ishmael inexplicably lapses into some strange "Folio" format in relaying the information he has to dispense on the topic of whales, but laying that aside, yes, I found it engaging to hear what passed for Cetological knowledge over 150 years ago.

We then have a series of chapters which go something like this:

A job description of a member of the crew, an account of a meal that the officers take together, an account of pole sitting and how Ishmael gets a bit moony up there, Ahab's inciting incident (150 pages in) of his impassioned speech, his nailing of a plot device to the mast, Starbuck's minor rebellion, a series of internal monologues where we seem to have dashed the established narrator altogether, and we finish with a script of what I think was a dance that turned into a brawl.  My uncertainty stems from Melville's insistence on slopping the 1840s sailor slang on as thick as possible.  It was difficult to follow and, I'm afraid, I wasn't terribly inspired to do the mental gymnastics that Melville was demanding over what I opined was superfluous material.  I seem to lack the capacity to muster the required interest in working out what he means by phrases like: "What hey there, lad!  Tear aside!  Hoist ye knickers!  'Gains the mizzen with the gargamel!"  And colloquialisms of that ilk in the parlance of either the Terpsichorean or the pugilistic.

I am told there is a very important and great chapter on the way.  I am looking forward to the celebrated Chapter 42.  Over the past few weeks I've read a great deal about how this book went from relative obscurity to a fair bet on a good deal of lists of great literature.  I am still not entirely certain I'm convinced.  In retrospect, I wonder if some of my brain didn't realize, back when I was laying out the schedule for this reading group, that I ought to save this book for the end of our list.  Because the inclination to jump ship at this point is fairly strong.  The last time I read this book was over a decade ago.  I have no memory of my reaction at that time, but I think I've decided that this will likely be my final journey through Melville.  The "hit" in his "hit-and-miss" record thus far strikes me as too few and far between.  I feel anxious to delve into my next reading project where thus far I've struck gold consistently with every title.  It's a bit like I'm sorting through mud in which I am told there are many diamonds, but within plain sight of the mud pile in which I root is a big pile of visible, clean, cut diamonds free for the taking. 

So... I'm sort of grumpy about Melville this week.  You?

Reading the Classics with Paul- Moby-Dick- Part 3

The photograph above is of a statue of Perseus by Benvenuto Cellini.  Melville references it in regards to the appearance of Captain Ahab. He does not say that Ahab looks like Perseus (or even Medusa.)  He says that Ahab is "shaped in an unalterable mold" like the statue.  Although I think we all know enough about the character described to understand the parallels with the subject matter. Ahab has his own Medusa in his sights. As with everything with Melville, there is a distinct thematic reason why he chose this statue. Aside from the timeline discrepancy, something like Oldenburg's Spoonbridge and Cherry would not be appropriate in this instance. "Ahab was one shaped in an unalterable mold like Oldenburg's Spoonbridge and Cherry."  Somewhat wanting in gravitas, eh what?

As a quick side note, one of the benefits of signing on to a reading project like the one I am doing with the Harvard Classics is that, along with leading one to read things one would not have otherwise read, it also leads one to finally read a good deal of "I've always meant to read that" books. Cellini's autobiography is one of those books that I've thought that about for years, but then walked out of the library with some flashy McSweeney's nonsense or something instead.

So, we're three paragraphs in to this week's Moby-Dick post and I've yet to talk about this week's reading.  There is a reason for that. A little frustration has crept in. It's not that I dislike the book. I'm actually enjoying it tremendously. But I have two examples to present to you of what I'm talking about. One is the name of the prophet, which when it was announced, I audibly snorted derisively at the stark obviousness of it, upsetting the dog on my lap. Melville has a heavy, heavy hand. He loves loomings and foreshadowings. In fact, so far, anything else in the book has been a very slow train coming.

The other illustration I have to submit to you is the chapter "The Lee Shore," which talks for a length about Bulkington and has absolutely nothing to add to the narrative aside from tone. Melville is painting a very broad and baroque picture. At first I worried that perhaps my slick, modern sensibilities were preventing me from really appreciating what Melville was doing here. Perhaps the post-television world speed of the culture in which I find myself prevents me from appreciating very fine points being put upon things. But Christopher pointed out, and rightly so I think, that Moby-Dick may not be the best example of the wide, sweeping world of an epic 19th century novel. Tolstoy did it so much better. In other words, I don't think it's me.

I did like the description of Starbuck. I like him. I'm supposed to like him I gather. And the other crewmates: Tubbs and Bud and Spanky and Bruce and Marvin and Leon and Cletus and George and Bill and Slick and Do-right and Clyde and Ace and Blackie and Queenie and Prince and Spot and Rover. And Rudolph, he who is marked by rosacea. I'm just making things up at this point to throw students who use my blog to plagiarize for school papers. Actually, I stole that list of names from a Ray Stevens song.  But there is a series of character studies of fellow shipmates, all of whom are compelling and humanizing, to make us care about their problems. This is in order to make us be sad when the guy who smokes the pipes dies. It's like the cop in the action film whose character development comprises his few days until retirement and seeing his beloved daughter graduate college.

So.... strike that earlier comment absolving myself from modern cynicism.

And we finally meet Ahab who comes out of his cabin and sees his shadow, which portends eight more weeks of winter. We end this week with a dream in a chapter whose title brings Mercutio to mind, which seems an appropriate character, one who might actually fit in this story. There is something of The Bard about the scene in this chapter. I smell whiffs of Hamlet's gravediggers and Clarence's drowning dream from Richard III as well. Melville infused his brain with Scripture and Shakespeare. It shows in what comes spilling out of his mind. It's a quality of his that I would like to emulate. Stubb dreams of a merman who tells him to count a "kick" from Ahab as an honor.

I feel like a high school English teacher even mentioning Ahab's dropping the pipe into the sea symbolizing his abandonment of all Earthly pleasure in deference to his cetacean vendetta.

I am so torn over this text. I think I like it a lot, but I also feel a sort of perpetual impatience. On the other hand, I do like the story he's telling and the picture he is painting. It is a bit like the long waiting periods in hunting or fishing though. Like Persian sherbet in crystal goblets flaked up with rose-water snow.

Next week, we read up through Chapter XL which, in my text, takes us up to page 169 and spits us out before a chapter enticingly called Moby-Dick, threatening headway in the narrative.

Brief Review of a Gastronomic Windfall

So, Chronicle Books is on Twitter (@ChronicleBooks) and occasionally has a book giveaway.  I was recently very impressed with a recipe they posted for a Kadota Fig Tart with Mascarpone Cream. I entered the giveaway for the book from which said recipe sprang and the two photos included in this post ought to tell the rest of the story more expeditiously than a man as enamored with his own circumlocution as I.

As you've no doubt read, the book is The Winemaker Cooks by Christine Hanna (with appropriately lush, if you'll pardon the expression, photography by Sheri Giblin.)  Hanna is the president of Hanna Winery and Vineyards in Sonoma County (which is really only about a day trip away.  I believe this serendipitous acquisition to my cooking library has put the destination on some mental list for some future day when I am able to take day trips.)  

As you can see, it is a very beautiful cookbook, filled with gorgeous and creative dishes.  Very much in the "entertaining" vein of cookbooks with dishes both delicious and impressive; the book itself seems too nice to bring into the kitchen with me when I'm cooking.  My cookbooks tend to chronicle the dishes I've created by ingredients left behind on their pages.  However, I would also add that for a centerpiece of a book, the price is reasonable.  Chronicle Books also sent a small catalog of their forthcoming Autumn line of cookbooks, all of which are similarly impressive and delightful (e.g. The Domaine Chandon Cookbook, Michael Chiarello's Bottega, Tartine Bread, Absinthe Cocktails.)

There is another aspect to the book which I believe will prove dear to me, which actually served as the catalyst for my compulsion to write this post.  There are sprinkled throughout the text questions to and answers by the eponymous winemaker.  Upon opening the package containing the book, I flipped at random to a page about stocking a wine cellar.  I, of course, have, largely by design, structured my economic life in such a way that I will never have my own wine cellar.  But I do have a new, modest wine rack which I am greatly looking forward to stocking.  She gives advice on aiming toward wines which boast the strengths of their given regions and then goes on to give a brief outline of some of those strengths!  When I told this to Laurie she correctly guessed that I would be photocopying this section and carrying it around in my wallet.

I've owned the book for about four hours and I already offer you my earnest recommendation.  Also, poke around the Chronicle Books website.  There is a lot of nifty material there.