Rereading Moby-Dick: Chapter 1 LOOMINGS

This:

“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.”

How can there be a better sentence? Who doesn’t want to methodically knock people’s hats off? And that involuntary pause before coffin warehouses! That’s got to be one of my favorite sentences in the English language. That is right up there with some Joycean faintly snowfall and Cormac McCarthian horrible legions.

Enough of that, let’s talk hyphens! Is it Moby-Dick or Moby Dick? According to this, the novel is Moby-Dick with the hyphen, and the whale inside the novel is Moby Dick, no hyphen. The title was a marketing addition to the original title The Whale. So now you know. Don't knock anyone's hat off.

Rereading Moby-Dick: The Beginning

So I have started Moby-Dick. But first I had to get through Elizabeth Hardwick’s introduction, which thankfully was short. Short but strangely summative. Why summarize a story most are familiar with even if incorrectly (Ahab chases a white whale…whale’s probably God). I do admire some of her ascertains like for example that it is “the greatest novel in American literature,” but how can you measure or defend such a thing? I’m at age where I’m beyond wanting to fistfight people over their impoverished taste in books, music, and film—well almost at that age. Why even bother measuring at all? I prefer more Rockwell Kent’s illustrations.

 

Also the intro and the biographical sketch barely give a sense of Melville’s artistic despair. Here’s a man that told Hawthorne that he had "pretty much made up his mind to be annihilated.”

 

And don’t get me started on Hawthorne! That prick. I’m not one for judging people’s art based on their personalities or morality (because if you do that you should just burn everything), but Hawthorne is a shit and so is his work, and I’ll fistfight anyone who says otherwise. Here’s Hawthorne’s observation on seeing the starving Irish flood through Liverpool: they were “as numerous as maggots in cheese.” Here’s Melville’s view: “endless vistas of want and woe staggering arm in arm along these miserable streets.”

 

But still Melville was friends with & in awe of Hawthorne. Even dedicating his masterpiece to him: “In Token of My Admiration for His Genius This Book Is Inscribed to Nathaniel Hawthorne.”

 

Anyway, where was I? The beginning. Which as we all know is not “Call me Ishmael.” That’s the first line. But to get to that first line you have to go through the too often skipped etymology and extracts. There are some great selected whale quotes in the extracts. Like the non-sequitur-ish “Very like a whale” from Hamlet. Or a nice description of whale breath from Ulloa’s South America: “and the breath of the whale is frequently attended with such an insupportable smell, as to bring on a disorder of the brain.” But the bit I love best about the Extracts is the character he ascribes their selection to: “Supplied by a Sub-sub-librarian.” And as with the Irish, Melville elevates the lowly, imagining a special place in heaven for such thankless workers.

 

This is to say nothing of the Etymology. I was so taken with it as an undergrad that I wrote a concrete poem. That’s right, a concrete poem. Are you familiar with concrete poetry or shape poetry? It’s poetry that looks like stuff. Like a butterfly or wings. Can you guess what mine was in the shape of? There it is over there. It’s a whale!

Rereading Moby-Dick: Day 1

So I'm rereading (or should it be rererereading?) Moby-Dick: Or, The Whale. I read it--though I suspect abridged--in some honors English course in high school, once in undergrad, and once in grad school. Since then it's just been grazing on my favorite bites like the first page where Ishmael talks about the violent itch that sends him to sea and, of course, The Whiteness of the Whale chapter. And recommending it obnoxiously to people and equally obnoxiously defending it.

Here's a picture of the copy I'm reading, though Lord knows I have a ridiculous amount of editions(more later). That's a real whale on the cover, which kind of bugs me. The way seeing a young girl on the cover of Lolita bugs me. Literal-mindedness. I put the ISBN into Goodreads to do the currently reading deal and the new edition has an artistic rendering, so that's something.

To the whale.

Me in Puerto del Sol

So my short story "Curse of the Mummy" is in the current issue of Puerto del Sol (47:2). The story is not about a mummy. It is about a girl who is into mummification. So sort of a mummy. And Amway.

This Puerto del Sol also has a great section on utopias.

I'm thrilled to be in an issue with writers I admire, like Michael Kimball and Peter Trachtenberg. And even Kim Stanley Robinson!

Me in PANK

So I’m excited to be in the special Pulp Issue of PANK magazine. The issue is edited by the amazing Court Merrigan. My contribution “Parricide” is the longest story I’ve ever published online—so there’s that. Plus it has a broken plastic Adirondack chair in it.

 

The issue also includes:

When I Make Love to the Bug Man by Laura Benedict

The Sea of Intranquility by Stephen Graham Jones

Ghost Pianos & Idle Hands by David James Keaton

Ollie by Tyler Sage

my wife & william by David Romanda

The Hunt by Dominica Phetteplace

The Big Nap by Alex Mattingly

Seven Poems by Norman Savage

The Son of Dajjal by Ali Eteraz

The Little Death by Keisha Lynne Ellis

Scrapped by Patti Abbott

 

Enjoy them all.

Me Interviewed at The Bacon Review

The folks at The Bacon Review, who previously published my story "On Bondage," were kind enough to interview me. Read it to see just how tedious I can be.

Me in The Bacon Review

So my story "On Bondage" is in the May issue of The Bacon Review. Story's about neckties and sadness and Cthulhu. The issue is a great one with poems by Andrei Codrescu. Also an interview with Osmond Arnesto and a prose poem by Parmalee Paula Cover.