The Story of Evolution and the Evolution of Stories: Exploring the Significance of Diversity

i think ahad clings to moby dick.

melville tells us that it is most admirable to to go out to sea and experience instead of read and yet the paradox lies in the fact that he is writing this fat book to read.
and another thing i failed to say: i think a tragedy is something that is doomed to fail from the begining ... we know what is going to happen at the end... we know what happens at the end of romeo julliet and macbeth and hamlet .... we are know that we're going to die in the end and yet we stick to life and try to immortalize ourselves ... knowing that we're going to fail ..... but, we live despite this failure .... and we read tragedies ... because we resonate with them and they reflect the human condition???? and we attach ourselves to the doomed characters. and yet that is where the tragedy lies ... in the fact that we surrender ourselves to the doomed.
THAT'S WHAT IT'S ALL ABOUT. i think.
so, i think that melville is commenting on the tragedy of humanity .... we go out into ships and inevitably fail to conquer the white whale ... we hop on ships that are destined to sink ... we try to write epic, all-encompasing books and we inevitably fail ... but we do it anyways.
and i think that ahab is the character that melville most admires ... ahab clings to the white whale and refuses to let go ... and fails ... but that's what it's all about.
and melville, too, makes a stab at the white whale through his writing ... but, writing too is a failure ... md starts out with the image of a failed ishmael dusting of his volumes.
he starts the book in the etymology by saying that words fail and he starts out the peqoud journey by syaing that it is going to fail. they seem to be such similar actions.
that's all the time i have. later, all.

I am rambling, but there was something about Heather's post that really struck a chord since I have always felt myself to be a not so critical and rather naïve thinker.

If Ahab were 'God' and chasing the white whale was a form of 'worship'/'a decree of the Lord', is it not true to say that by following the decree of the Lord we are destined for tragedy? Is Moby Dick a commentary on the naïve nature of humans? Are we so willing to believe in something so powerful that we are ready to die for it?

One of the reasons I think this novel is so successful is because it focuses on basic human relations – in this example, the relationships formed upon the Peqoud between shipmates. Melville knew that any social construct – politics, organized religion, academia – uses human relationships as its basic foundation. In that way, by examining the basic foundation of all social constructs we could arrive at the root of the problem: the problem of human nature.

I agree with what Ro said in class – that Melville is attacking not just any book, but The Book, the Bible – but using the Bible as an example for all books. How reliable is the word? Not so much. Then why are we a society that is willing to risk our humanity for it?

Simran's thoughts are very interesting to me. I had a conversation with Anne about this, but in the context of a discussion of introverted vs. extroverted information procesessing. The forum, I think allows for an abundance of stories, for people to both talk and listen at the same time... a sort of equilization of the "who gets to tell a story," playing field... It's not necessarily the people who are the most facile with the spoken word. It accomodates people who prefer the written word also... But this is not as specifically related to Simran's point... more specifically I'd just like to say that I agree. I'd much prefer to listen to someone else's story and believe it whole heartedly than to tell my own. Or maybe this is not true... maybe it's more of an entropy-like thing... I'd like to listen to more stories from others then the number that I produce... to listen more then tell but when I do tell, to tell well... if this makes any sense.

I remember spending time with my cousin Chuck when I was younger (he is four years older than I am). We had an interesting relationship then... I would do whatever he would ask me to do-- something that comes to mind is sitting at my grandmother's kitchen table for three hours copying an encyclopedia for him... he made me do this as a sort of mischievious "what-will-I-be-able-to-get-her-to next-she-is-so-gullible-and-nieve-and-young," type of thing but I actually really loved doing it because it was the first time that I had "written" something that long... it was like claiming ownership over the words "making the story my own." At any rate, Chuck would also make up these elaborate stories with the intent of fooling me. One of my favorites that he once made up was a story about the ancient pirate gold that he had in his backpack. He told me about how the gold came to be there and how each piece had a different value, one piece with an elephant symbol was worth $1 million dollars and one piece with a mummy on it was worth a billion dollars and the final special piece had something so secret that he didn't even know what it was on it. He told me this piece was worth "ten zillion" dollars. I was completely absorbed and in love with the story that he was telling me. As a child I DIDN'T really THINK that he had those things in his backpack but I DID BELIEVE him because it was so wonderful to enter the world of that story. I believed the story because it was absolutely lovely to believe. Doesn't everyone want pirate gold in his or her backpack? The best part of the story was that I could "have a piece of this pirate gold" if I knew "the secret code." That is what ended the story. I told him that I didn't know the secret code and at this point he took out a couple of quarters from his backpack and laughed at me. I laughed too. I would always laugh and tell him that he really fooled me. He loved the feeling of being able to fool me... I loved being able to enter into his stories.

I kind of forget the exact reason why I wrote that... I believe when I started writing it I felt I had more of a profound point but at any rate, I've always loved listening to other people's stories- usually more than telling them. Especially when I was a child... I hardly ever talked at all and this coupled with my general "gullibilty" (which was actually just a profound enjoyment of other people's lies) made people think that I either had a learning or speech problem. There's more to that story too but i think it's better not to digress further. The bottom line is that I think it's fine and even natural to want to listen more than talk... it's a matter of preference... people find their own ways of contributing to stories in progress... For each story being told there are two functions, that of listener and that of teller... and I think that in the world there are more people inclined to tell than there are to listen. So listeners provide an excellent service to the perpetuation of stories. People would get tired of telling if there were no one there to listen. So I respect and agree with Simran's thoughts-- and would like to suggest that silence does not necessarily leave someone without a story at all but rather leaves one with the potential to accumulate other people's stories to eventually have better stories to tell. But conversely, one should never be AFRAID to speak or tell a story because one feels that it's not good enough... I suppose it's not consistent but I've often felt this way too... people can do it better than me, so why speak at all? I guess it's just important to know that everyone's story is equally valid and the way of coming to that story and expressing it should be able to vary widely without any feelings of guilt or inadequecy.
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I also wanted to include some quotes which I think pertain to our class discussion about Moby Dick and ideas about stories, today. They are from an article by Craig Owens called "The Allegorical Impulse" This is one of the articles that I am reading for my art history class (Contemporary Art and Theory)

"All attempts to decipher [Rauschenberg's] works only testify to their own failure, for the fragmentary, piecemeal combination of images that initally impells reading is also what blocks it, erects an impenetratable barrier to its course." (225)

Here Owens is quoting Smithson a site specific artist who wrote a text called "A Sedimentation of Mind: Earth Projects" This quote is from this particular text.

"The names of minerals and the minerals themselves do not differ from each other, because at the bottom of both the material and the print is the beginning of an absymal number of fissures. Words and rocks contain a language that follows a syntax of splits and ruptures. Look at any word long enough and you will see it open up into a series of faults, into a terrain of particles each containing its own void." (217)

Here is Owens quoting from Paul de Man "Allegories of Reading"

"We write in order to forget our foreknowledge of the total opacity of words and things or, perhaps worse, because we do not know whether things have or do not have to be understood." (217)

Thanks! See you all soon :-)

ps anne mentioned that she thought i was done with clinging.
just for clarification if i ever was done with clinging i'm back to it.
i really like it tonight.
maybe i won't tomorrow.

Are we saying, some of us, that we move from less finished to more finished as life/learning/thinking go on? Is that notion of progress towards "perfection" so engrained that our 'thought litter' embarrasses or worries us? Why do we care what people think about stories we wrote and then outgrew? What's the risk (always a good question) if they read it? What bad things might happen?

DOES WRITTEN THOUGHT DEFINE US MORESO than what we think to ourselves? Or what we speak informally? Written language does evolve far more slowly than spoken language. Is that, in part, because we sense the extra import of our written words? What's the risk? DOES THE WRITTEN WORD ISOLATE US as much as it connects us to each other?

Thoughts frozen in words define us no more, no less than our footprints, as children, define our feet as adults. Or do they? Just how integral is the written word with the woman?

In it are Chinese poets who have gathered along a promenade in Beijing to discuss their poems--both the content/form and the brushwork itself. But look how they do it! By "writing" in water on sun-warmed pavement. As they share their ideas, the words evaporate!

I was thinking about our discussions regarding the written word, the responsility of the writer, drafts floating around that some of us wish would decay and disintegrate, but they don't. Maybe water instead of ink is the answer...

Here's Ro's picture ...

Sure. There are distinct differences around the globe...by the way, spies (so my NSA cousin tells me) are schooled to mimic stances, gestures, and the like...but are you convinced that "body language" is 100% cultural?

I wonder. Paul?

So, anyway, I feel more revived now, more important, more productive. Not that I discredit any of what we have learned so far, but I found the emphasis on 'telling our stories' incongruous to my experiences so far in the course. As I see it, you can be telling a story, or you can be listening to a story, and we haven't really been focusing on the more passive aspect of storytelling. I think the two are mutually exclusive (granted, everything we do, even listening to a story, creates a story, but go with me here for a minute). I feel as though up until now, I have been listening to a story. Not that this is bad, but it does lend itself to the feeling of being stagnant that I get in classes of seemingly 'bounded' subjects (generally math, science, etc). I know we are supposed to be questioning and making up our own stories, but I have felt as though I need to learn more before I can produce.

I'm thinking now, looking back, of how it looks to be celebrating a move back into a subject that doesn't require me to be outside of my comfort zone. But I guess that's too bad, I like it in here, even if I am sometimes pushing against the walls.

or not counteract the silence, because the silence is just a state in which we are beside the reality of existence. but, i don't just want to exist BESIDE this reality, i want to attack it. in the vacumed space left by tragedy what is there to say? what is there to feel? who is there to blame?
i want to blame, i want to fling sharp words, but there are none sharp enough. but, i'll go mad if i can't throw something, so i throw words. but, those who can exist in silence get farther than i do. get closer to what IS.

starbuck says, "vengence on a dumb brute! that simply smote thee from blindest instinct! madness! to be enraged with a dumb thing, captain ahab, seems blasphemous."
ahab responds "that inscrutable thing is cheifly what i hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, i will wreak the hate upon him. talk not to me of blasphemy, man; i'd strike the sun if it insulted me." (139-140)

yeh, ahab is mad ... but don't we all want to take a stab at cancer? beat it into a bloody pulp? so i'll assert tonight that ahab is the most human character in this book. mad or sane ... but mortally and painfully and so so tragically human. oh ahab ahab ahab.

and it's like we're all tightrope walkers ... we're on this thin thin rope of sanity and we could fall into maddness as ahab does, in a frenzied, hopless flinging flail ... or we could fall off the other side and deny our humanity, our instinct to cling to something. deny our humanity and sit in a constant silence.

Melville appears to take powder from so many puny bullets to make one bomb. We presume we know his motives (meaning of life, yadayadayada), but how did he come to believe that LITERATURE is the answer...the essence of Dennett's "universal acid?"

Perhaps it Is a good thing for his health, but I question whether giving into one's depression should be commended. His intentions were honorable, but I think that his actions show a weakness in his personality. And, as he states at the begining of the book, he goes to sea whenever he feels depressed. He is treating the symptom rather than the problem. Perhaps this is why these characters are so doomed.

so in a way we are each God. when i look at you you are completely other from me and therefore are a form of God.

(((btw ... i think world peace will come when we step beyond the tolerance that everyone talks about and learn to see each other as Godly beings....but that's irrelevant.)))

and i think that is what ahab is doing; he is boldly confronting THE ABSOLUTE OTHER. he is threatening God directly in the face.

i said today that i think that (some sorts ... forgot to mention that) of sex are just this : the attempt to KNOW, the attempt to delve into this ABSOLUTE OTHER .... or to receive and contain ABSOLUTE OTHER.
we conquer this otherness in sex.
maybe??
maybe sex is the only place (as opposed to in writing) where the OTHER is conquered.

and so maybe ahab doesn't fail in the end, because he conquers the otherness, the whiteness and becomes one with the whiteness and KNOWS the whiteness.

and throughout the book ahab and moby dick are moving toward being ONE.
what is ahab without md ? just a lame old sea captain. what is md without ahab? just a battered old whale.

page 157. "ahab's lunacy subsided not, but deepeningly contracted." and i DO think that this is an extreemly contracted book .... (simultaneously very expanded ... like we talked about) melville is monomaniacal like ahab in a way. maybe a little more sane. it's really all about the whiteness of this whale. it's melville's attempt to stab the ABSOLUTE OTHER.
stab God.
i'd call that pretty blasphemous. he's trying to kill God.

and maybe the reason that melville fails and ahab doesn't is because ahab is more contracted than melville....ahab is is monomaniac.
((i think i remember reading this fabulous quote actually saying that ahab had lost his own identity amidst md.....but, i can't find it. nothing more frustrating))

and FINALLY to the actual whiteness ...
don't have much time, i'll just quote to you:

"hit spiritual whiteness chiefly, which so clothed him with divineness; and that this divineness had that in it which, though commanding worship, at the same time enforced a certain nameless terror." (161)

God is Other. God is terryfying.

in conclusion: i chuckle at some of meville (especially the part in ch. 23 when queequeg talks about the lack of couches in his county) but, in essence, i think that meville is brutally truthful about the nature of living......and i don't think, in my 20 yrs, of anyone who has convinced me more fully.

• Moby Dick is not so much a "bomb" as an explosion. Did Melville actually believe that LITERATURE is the answer"? Whether he did or not (since an author may or may not "know" what s(he) hath wrought): is the "LITERATURE in the answer" the answer to the question "what is Moby Dick about?"
• What about Anne's claim that the book is a self-reflexive joke, an assertion that literature lacks meaning?
• Did Peter Pan evolve from Moby Dick?
• Moby Dick itself evolved from a newspaper article about the whaleship Essex (In the Heart of the Sea)
• Ahab, in response to Starbuck's assertion that the whale attacked Ahab "from blind instinct", asserts that behind the "unreasoning mask" there is "some unknown but still reasoning thing" (Chapter 36). Does Ahab think there's a storyteller/skyhook there against which he needs to contend? Does Melville think the "whiteness" masks a malevolent storyteller/skyhook?
• Is Moby Dick "masculine"? In what sense?
• Does Chapter 84 contribute meaningfully to the earlier questions about homoeroticism in Moby Dick? To the question of whether Melville and Hawthorne were sexually involved with each other? Does it matter whether they were or weren't? Might Mellville have been less negative about books if his earlier ones had been as popularly successful as Hawthorne's? How did this and/or the preceding relate to either the close relationship between Hawthore and Melville or to the abruptness with which it ended or both? What role did Hawthorne's wife play in either?
• The story of the evolution of whales is evolving.
• Moby Dick is funny to some people, not to others.

An old memory from junior high school. Relevant? I and a group of friends were assigned to read Poe's The Pit and the Pendulum and to report on it to class. We spent a painful week trying to figure out the significance of a number of the lines in the short story, including an apparently symbolic last line with an obscure reference, in order to be sure we could report on the story's meaning. Frustrated, we went to the teacher for help, who patted us on the head and then encouraged us to stop trying to find the "meaning" and think instead about why the story was written.

So who is the antagonist? Moby Dick? I think that Moby Dick is more of a concept than a character—kind of a tangible representation of what humans are searching for, but will never fully grasp. He is the belligerent god who Ahab is fighting to conquer, but this battle will ultimately destroy Ahab in the end because Moby Dick is such an integral part of who he is and in attempting to annihilate the whale, he will destroy himself. In this sense, Moby Dick is reminiscent of the biblical Tower of Babel story, in that humans are attempting to gain knowledge of something elusive that is beyond their understanding. I think that at its core, this novel is about the relationship between Man and his god, and the consequences of our inquisitive, wanderlust-y nature.

So perhaps there is no real antagonist in this novel...except for ourselves?

"there are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke...There is nothing like the perils of whaling to breed this free and easy sort of genial, desperado philosophy; and with it i now regarded this whole voyage of the Pequod, and the great White Whale its object."

i guess you could look at life that way.
i don't.

In the beginning the relationship was a great source of comfort and intellectual stimulation to Melville, who believed he had finally found the soul mate for whom he had been yearning. As Sophia Hawthorne observed, "Mr. Melville, generally silent and uncommunicative, pours out the rich floods of his mind and experience to [Nathaniel Hawthorne], so sure of apprehension, so sure of a large and generous interpretation, and of the most delicate and fine judgment." Hawthorne's influence, in fact, is credited as the prime catalyst behind Melville's decision to transform what originally seems to have been a light-hearted whaling adventure into the dramatic masterpiece that is arguably the greatest American novel of all time.

In August of 1852 Melville wrote to Hawthorne about the true story of a New England woman who had taken in and married a shipwrecked sailor only to be abandoned by him. "The Story of Agatha", Melville thought, would be a perfect subject for the application of Hawthorne's talents; the older man, however, felt little enthusiasm for the project and after a few desultory attempts suggested that Melville write the story himself. Melville agreed, but it is uncertain now whether he ever actually did anything with the material; at any rate, no published version of the story by him has been discovered.

The "Agatha" correspondence marks nearly the end of the Melville - Hawthorne relationship, which had lasted only a little over two years. The initial abundance of warmth and fellowship had faded for reasons which can only be conjectured. Melville may have come to feel that Hawthorne was not as profoundly sympathetic and responsive as he had at first seemed; for his part, Hawthorne was unsuccesful in using his long-established connections with Franklin Pierce to secure a government post for the impoverished Melville, a failure that left him "embarrassed and chagrined" and probably made him reluctant to pursue further encounters. The two men met for the last time in November 1856: en route to the Mediterranean Melville stopped in Liverpool, where Hawthorne had been appointed American Consul; the two spent several days together, which Hawthorne recorded in his journal as follows:

"Herman Melville came to see me at the Consulate, looking much as he used to do (a little paler, and perhaps a little sadder), in a rough outside coat, and with his characteristic gravity and reserve of manner.... [W]e soon found ourselves on pretty much our former terms of sociability and confidence. Melville has not been well, of late; ... and no doubt has suffered from too constant literary occupation, pursued without much success, latterly; and his writings, for a long while past, have indicated a morbid state of mind.... Melville, as he always does, began to reason of Providence and futurity, and of everything that lies beyond human ken, and informed me that he had "pretty much made up his mind to be annihilated"; but still he does not seem to rest in that anticipation; and, I think, will never rest until he gets hold of a definite belief. It is strange how he persists -- and has persisted ever since I knew him, and probably long before -- in wondering to-and-fro over these deserts, as dismal and monotonous as the sand hills amid which we were sitting. He can neither believe, nor be comfortable in his unbelief; and he is too honest and courageous not to try to do one or the other. If he were a religious man, he would be one of the most truly religious and reverential; he has a very high and noble nature, and better worth immortality than most of us."

More about Hawthorne later this weekend...I've got some stuff Melville wrote about Hawthorne as an author that may shed some light on Melville's M-D motives...was it a hugely laborious prank? Or was it a dare to us all to find meaning in it--our own--and his be damned? Need to root around and then cull it--if I find anything useful.

I think the straightforward text- the opposite of the inaccesible text- would actually result in a limitation of the gamut of possible meanings. I want to go back to the wonderful example posted on this forum- that of someone having a thought, converting it into language and presenting it to another in whose mind the thought unfurls, but often in a different way. I think that if a text was over-simplified (by this I mean different layers of meaning), it would restrict the different range of possible ways it could expand in the listener/reader's mind. The layers of meaning, I think, give each reader the option of interpreting the message according to how it best fits them, according to where in their lives they are. I guess these layered "inaccesible" novels appeal to me so much because they allow room for my interpretations, resulting in a story that includes me thus is more personal and of more value to me.

what i take away from human brains being a skyhook is that we determine meaning. we just get to choose. so i ask myself, what one thing would i like to know? and i don't have to stop at one thing, and i may revise myself, but, as a fellow clinger, it takes some shaking. some things i'm pretty sure i won't revise- i like them too much, and i find them useful.

i don't guess we get to choose all on our own, we've got the whole world to infuence us, not to mention our biology.

so as to melville and whether moby dick is a joke, maybe it could be, but that seems counter-intuitive for me. i find it difficult to imagine going about life or writing such a big book or in any way seriously investing themselves in something they think is ONLY ultimately laughable. maybe that's only because i find it insulting- i take myself rather seriously! i can laugh at myself, sure, and often do so in response to taking myself too seriously, but in the end i find the idea that i and the things i am invested in are all a joke very threatening. so i've decided they're meaningfull!

i think of moby dick more a an often playful, through an admittedly futile, search for meaning, a search that melville is nonetheless earnestly engaged in.

the moral of my story today is: sunshine makes everything okay.
enjoy the beautiful weather, friends.

From this point of view, Ishmael's and Ahab's stories resemble a rendition of "Hotel California" or the R.L.Stevenson's Suicide Club: "Fear is the strong passion; it is with fear that you must trifle, if you wish to taste the intense joy of living."

Bored with his existence as a school master, Ishmael embarks on this journey to test whether life still means anything to him. Upon the premises of death Ishmael finds out that he does care about his life. Facing death, he is able to appreciate the moment and live it out fully without regretting a single second...

Ahab is driven by hate towards Mobidick and the inscruitable force it represents. What generates this hate? Isn't it the fear of the unknown that he cannot bring under control that humiliates him and, thus makes him hate? Making Ahab experience so strong emotions, the fear does instill life into him...

I was reminded of this conversation (and reminded that I wanted to record it) by Mary Catherine Bateson, the keynote speaker for the conference Integrating Environmentalism @ Haverford this weekend, which Su-Lyn told us about. At the end of her talk about making education "more ecological," someone asked Bateson where she would go to school now, were she 17 again. She said she would most likely do what she did before: spend a year in Israel, learning a culture and language different from anything she'd ever participated in before. And so learn (again) how to be an anthropologist, a participant-observer, someone involved/invested in a culture, BUT ALSO able to look @ it from the outside, to see that it is only one of myriad options for constructing the world.

Observe/Participate.

Joke/Invest.

Endistance/Engage.

Head in Clouds/Feet on Ground.

To Sea/In a Ship.

Thank you all for all this Backikng-and-Forthing.

It keeps me Im/Balanced.

A link, from my daughter Lily, perhaps a contribution to various lines of discussion above, both about jokes and sexual play? See Mo B. Dick: The Art of Kinging: "Instead of being an angry woman, I became a funny man!"

Anne's question on Thursday (one of many questions: Do you think there is such a thing as fate in this book?) got me thinking about the mysterious Fedallah and his crew. They appeared out of thin air it seems (although they were hinted at many times before their appearance) and I wonder if they function as a representation of fate. Fedallah, interestingly enough, in Arabic means 'in the hands of God' (Did Melville know that? My 'Specters of Moby Dick' Prof last semester at Haverford didn't seem to think so but it just seems like such an extraordinary coincidence). There are also curious passages throughout the book that alludes to Ahab and Fedallah being one man – Fedallah an externalized insecurity perhaps? Fedallah, shadow, stare, wordless communication...it's all rather supernatural.

I didn't know exactly what I was thinking, but I did find out (writing often works that way)—my gripe is that this book is either too much effort or too much risk. Effort = time and thought. Risk = the seduction of all those wacky postulations about good/evil, free will/fate, the whale as gold...the sea as the prairie...the quest as the gold rush, etc.—yeah, theorists actually said that stuff. I would have been embarrassed.

Why MUST we know Melville's motives? In its first writing, this book was a romance novel. Reportedly, it was nearly finished when Hawthorne convinced Melville to rewrite it as allegory. But that was Hawthorne's shtick, not Melville's. Doesn't it seem unlikely that an author's early attempt at allegory would become the greatest American novel? Are WE are making it THAT BIG...seeing THAT MUCH in it?

Do we like the cost/benefit ratio involved? What do we get for our investment? Any new insights? Something that would change our opinions? We do get a well-told story (too long, if that's all), some good laughs (ditto). That's not it. I think that Moby is timelessly, endlessly fascinating because Melville's "out of the box thinking" precipitates an explosion of interpretations, each coming from some unique and personal place within each reader. That's BIG...as big as all of us put together. BIGGER...when we share these interpretations. Combinatorial. Exponential. Melville has de-clichéd the phrase, "touched a cord." There's something for everyone in it.

"It's this course where each boy in class had to get up in class and make a speech. you know. spontaneous and all. and if a boy digresses at all, you're supposed to yell 'Digression!' at him as fast as you can. it just about drove me crazy....that digression business got on my nerves. i don't know. the trouble with me is, i like it when somebody digresses. it's more interesting and all...i like somebody to stick to the point and all. but i don't like them to stick too much to the point. i don't know. i guess i don't like it when sombebody sticks to the point all the time. the boys that got the best marks in Oral Expression were the ones that stuck to the point all the time - i admit it. but there was this one boy, Richard Kinsella. He didn't stick to the point too much, and they were always yelling 'Digression!' at him. it was terrible, because in the first place, he was a very nervous guy - i mean he was a very nervous guy - and his lips were always shaking whenever it was his time to make a speech, and you could hardly hear him if you were sitting way in the back of the room. When his lips sort of quit shaking a little but, though, i liked his speeches better than anybody else's. He pracitically flunked the course, tough, too. he got a D plus because they kept yelling 'Digression!' at him all the time. For instance, he made this speech about this farm his father bought in Vermont. They kept yelling 'Digression!' at him the whole time he was making it, and this teacher, mr. Vinson, gave him an F on it because he hadn't told what kind of animals and vegetables and stuff grew on the farm and all. what he did was, Richard Kinsella, he's start telling you all about that stuff - then all of a suddden he'd start telling you about this letter his mother got from his uncle, and how his uncle got polio and all when he was 42 years old, and how he woun't let anybody come to see him in the hospital because he didn't want anybody to see him with a brace on. it didn't have much to do with the farm - i admit it - but it was nice. it's nice when somebody tells you about their uncle. especially when they start out telling you about their father's farm and then all of asudden get more interested in their uncle. I mean it's dirty yelling 'Digression!' at him when he's all nice and excited." -catcher in the rye 184

seems that sometimes melville is a little like richard kinsella, i mean he is talking about md and whaling and he keeps stopping and saying stuff like: this is a perfect chance to tell you a little more about whales or ships ... stuff that is seemingly irrelevant, but gives the story some shape and just makes the whole thing. .....i don't know.... a lot nicer?
and i feel like we get to know melville better becuase of his digressions, we are intimatly ingrained in his mind.
reminds me of the opening of scarlet letter (my favorite part of the whole book) when hawthorne picks for the reader a red rose and offers it to us. a token of .... ???
hope it makes sense why i think that this quote is relevant ...

one more quote that contradicts a lot of what i've been saying about md and life in general:

"were this world an enless plain, and by sailing eastward we could for ever reach new distances, and discover sights more sweet and strange than any Cyclades or Islands of King SOlomon, then there were promise in this voyage. but in pursuit of those far mysteries we dream of, or in tormented chase of that demon phantom that, some time or other, swims before all human hearts; while chasing such over this round globe, they either lead us on in barren mazes or midway leave us whelmed." (whelmed =engulfed) (196)

Ladies, I'm LOVING your various explorations of tangents...

but actually logged on here tonight to speak to the contrary impulse, Em's lament that she is "trying so hard to have this book become meaningful, and perhaps i am like ahab and those cardboard masks-- i want to pin melville and his message to me down, but i keep on finding this great empty hollowness behind the words."

I want to tell you a (short) story, one with (long) legs. On Saturday morning, I (and Mary) spoke @ a McBride Open House. One of the prospective students said that she'd delayed so long going to college because she didn't want to be told what to think: that she was a creative person, that she was afraid of being socialized/brainwashed/taught to think like everyone else. I laughed and told her I thought she was old enough, now, to take the risk: that she could bring to Bryn Mawr all she was/all she had accumulated over the years, that we would introduce her to a rich range of things/thoughts she hadn't yet encountered, and that she could enter into conversation w/ them without a fear that they would "take her over" (shades of Dennett's mind-altering memes!).

But then I stopped laughing, and told her a little about my own experience as a first-generation intellectual: someone so overwhelmed by all I didn't know/wanted to know that my Ahab-ian "quest" to understand it all (or @ least vacuum it all up) became a compulsive one. It's taken me years (hey, I'm still working on it) to acknowledge that I don't have to (well, besides I can't) master it all. I am allowed/impelled to CHOOSE WHAT INTERESTS ME, and pursue THAT.

Hence the quote on the bulletin board outside my office: "We are all doomed, by the limits of taste and time, to enjoy only fragments."

Sometimes, Em, what you're offered, when you're offered it, doesn't--for all sorts of reasons--engage. It doesn't have to. Take Fritz's advice: "if the story isn't as interesting as the stories which the words inspire, let yourself and your mind wander to other unexplored places." There's plenty out there (and, qua the perspective: in there)!

You don't HAVE to make meaning of this particular book.

(Though I do: come see, Tuesday.)

as a rower on the bryn mawr crew team I find the little bits about rowing after the whales really interesting. some of what starbuck and stubb and flint (?) say to their crews is very familiar- the way they yell and then wisper and always push their crew to pull harder. I keep trying to imagine my coxwain telling me to break my backbone, like they do in the book. every time we are in a race we check out the other teams and try to look as intimidating as possible, maybe to scare our competition. what if we all pulled out knives and bit down on them as we rowed. now that would be intimidating!

Also, found the book "Strike Through the Mask," by Elizabeth Renker very interesting/ useful.

It was a very dubious-looking, nay, a very dark and dismal night, bitingly cold and cheerless. I knew no one in the place. With anxious grapnels I had sounded my pocket, and only brought up a few pieces of silver&

Footnote: (grapnels- small anchors with several hooks for dragging: here, his fingers)

From what Ive compiled about human thought, back in Homers time of oral story-telling, emotions (and other such constructs of the mind, i.e. beliefs, thoughts, intentions, etc.) were not verbally described. Back then, the construct of the mind was not formulated, until later, when the written word (away from the body and on paper) separated thoughts away from the body. Then the construct of the psyche (the mind) was formulated. Now our mind houses a lot of our abstract qualities including our feelings (emotions), although we also cling to the feelings in the heart idea somewhat. Homers tales have lots of emotions portrayed as happenings of the body, e.g. fear was not described as fear but rather as a spring in the legs causing one to run, or a tightening of the gut to describe nervousness. Melvilles eloquent use of describing his fingers as anxious grapnels contains a telling of the far past. We refer to our body parts much less these days to describe our emotions, especially not our fingers, as now we have such a strong concept of emotions being in the mind.

This is why I said above that Melville has me in the past, present, and the future all at once. This brings me to the idea that human thoughts evolve according to context around us and context that we create. Perhaps this is an example of the lateral spread of cultural evolution?

And to top it off, the beauty of Melvilles words in this passage, whew! To think of the fingers in the pocket looking for money on a dreary night as small anchors dragging looking for something to catch on to. Wow! What an emotional experience expressed in one small group of words.

Also, past, present and future complexity is offered through the dialects, the idioms, and the old style language and grammar. He further provides to me, the story of passage of human thought. And this is just one small part of how reading Melville offers complex context IN his words, not mentioning the philosophy weaved through his words. This novel is BIG. Thanks Melville.

and so maybe i've been wrong all along and i'm not chasing the whiteness, i'm not a clinger to those things that ARE absolutley. maybe pragmatism actually works.
but i'm not sure.

thanks again, su-lyn. see ya'all tomorrow.