Thoughts Literary and Otherwise

We come to a close soon.  We are finishing the novel, and we are finishing the year.  A lot of things are coming together.  We hear, in a way, a number of voices, a number of competing voices blending together, sometimes harmoniously, sometimes in opposition. That is what a symphony is.  Were we not sheltering at home (which is where I usually shelter) and teaching and learning remotely (and, let's face it, we have often been remote), I'd devote a day to the study of chapter one hundred thirty-two, "The Symphony." I'd make you listen to this , if I felt ambitious. It's the first movement of Romantic composer Anton Bruckner's Seventh Symphony .  If I were feeling less ambitious, or sense that the class just didn't have twenty minutes of stillness in it (no condemnation--just a remote finger on the metaphorical pulse), I'd play this ,  the much more familiar Adagio for Strings by Samuel Barber.  I would be trying to set a mood, give you a fee...

It's fun pretending to be Ahab, at least as long as it lasts.   I mentioned what I do to a colleague in another state one time, and she suggested that I should teach the entire novel in character.  I'm not quite certain I could do that. Truth be told, Ahab Day is really only Ahab twenty minutes--and that's enough.  It takes a lot out of me.  He broods too hard.  He wants answers.  The malignity he sees in Moby Dick eats at him until he is left living on "with half a heart and half a lung."  It's easy to access that sort of energy, yes, because we've all been there.  As the great Scar once said, "Life's not fair, is it, Simba?"  It hurts to dwell there though. It is much better to be Ishmael.  He gets to live.  He also gets to achieve his quest--right there in chapter eighty-seven.  But the hint is in chapter one--as Ishmael muses on water: Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a sepa...

Long before Leonardo DiCaprio--and I'm judging by memes and publicity stills, I simply don't see his films--failed to read the novel but starred as Gatsby, a dear friend and I had a conversation about a previous adaptation.  This one starred Robert Redford, whom you may remember as Alexander Pierce in the Marvel universe, as Gatsby.  Mia Farrow was Daisy.  Etc.  All in all it was a "meh" film.  I mention the conversation for the last line in it.  My friend said, "If there never were a novel called The Great Gatsby , I might have enjoyed this film."  He doesn't ever see adaptations of books he's read or may some day read, and I can see the logic in that. We do, however, as we read anything, make what "Simple Jack" in Tropic Thunder (an underrated comedy) calls "mind movies."  I read a novel with characters and settings and plot and I see people doing things in specific places.  I see everyone.  I see the crowd in a crowded resta...

The above are some basic notes, like those I would put on the white board of my classroom, were you and I lucky enough to be in a classroom with a whiteboard.  The concern the heart of one of the great arcs of Moby-Dick , what I call the Whale Head Arc. Back in chapter 24, "The Advocate," which was not a chapter I assigned, but which still, of course, by virtue of being in this book contains words of great merit, Ishmael makes this  outlandish claim: And, as for me, if, by any possibility, there be any as yet undiscovered prime thing in me; if I shall ever deserve any real repute in that small but high hushed world which I might not be unreasonably ambitious of; if hereafter I shall do anything that, upon the whole, a man might rather have done than to have left undone; if, at my death, my executors, or more properly my creditors, find any precious MSS. in my desk, then here I prospectively ascribe all the honor and the glory to whal...

First, take a look at THIS and maybe also THIS. Both are cartoon explanations of one of the foundational ideas of Western Thought: the Allegory of the Cave.  You may have encountered the idea in previous classes, but a review of a key concept is always welcome, especially when one is about to see it twisted back upon itself, as we will see with Gatsby. You see, Plato's Allegory was about a sacrificial philosopher (literally: lover of wisdom) who refused to accept the manacles offered him, broke free from the shadows which we see as reality, and found the true reality, the world of forms--a reality more real than any we can experience while shackled in a cave.  A truly selfless philosopher, he comes back to the cave and sacrifices himself in an attempt to free his fellow creatures, people who would rather not be challenged, people who would rather gaze at the shadow on a cave wall than see the bright beauty without.  James Gatz, the given name and identity of the en...

I recall with great clarity an incident a few years ago.  The Moby-Dick Unit Exam loomed, and one student approached me and asked first if there WAS a movie version of the novel, second if I possessed a copy, and third if he could borrow it.  There are several.  I have them all.  And, of course, I am a RIVER TO MY PEOPLE. Because of my river-like nature, I added this: it's not going to help. There are a number of cinematic reactions to Melville's magnum opus.  The most recent is the Ron Howard explosion of yellow filters and bad accents: In the Heart of the Sea .  This is not Moby-Dick , but rather the dramatization of the wreck of the Essex , a whaling ship which was stove by a whale, whose crew eventually resorted to cannibalism to stay alive.  Rumor has it that Melville met a survivor, got the story, and it haunted him.  It is important to note also that, while Chris Hemsworth could easily play both Steelkilt and Bulkington, there is no c...