Call Me Ishmael

You are reading, or at least being told to read, my favorite book.  It may be the most difficult book you ever read--it's among the most difficult I've read.  Difficulty does not equate with greatness, though, and I'm not quite sure what DOES, but what I AM sure of is that all that stuff Dante and Milton FAILED to do, Melville does do.  Like a lot of things I throw at you, my hope is that you remember where this book is when all this education stuff is done.  I needed it.  You may as well.

While on the subject of greatness, here is a short excerpt from an essay by the great D. H. Lawrence on Melville and Moby-Dick.

But he was a deep, great artist, even if he was rather a sententious man. He was a real American in that he always felt his audience in front of him. But when he ceases to be American, when he forgets all audience, and gives us his sheer apprehension of the world, then he is wonderful, his book commands a stillness in the soul, an awe.

(Here is a link to the entire essay, if you are at all interested.) 

The soul stillness starts almost from the very beginning.

The title of the is post is the supposed first three words of the novel--one of the most famous opening lines in all of literature, "Call me Ishmael."  By the middle of this paragraph, I am in the most profound awe, by the end, I'm laughing--uncomfortably.  To paraphrase Lawrence, the narration has moved like quicksilver.  But allow me the first of many digressions.

The book starts with a dedication--to Melville's literary idol, a man he sought and found, a man with whom he developed a bit of a bro-mance, a bro-mance which ended in dude-vorce.  There are speculations as to the..ahem..exact nature of this bro-mance, and, indeed, there are some not so subtle homoerotic undertones and overtones throughout the novel.  To all of this I reply, "So what?"  At any rate, it is certain that Hawthorne brought the thunder to this book.  Melville had shared his manuscript with his friend, a typical adventure novel like the first two Melville wrote, and Hawthorne told him to pump up the spiritual angle.  Melville did.  His promising literary career flatlined.  Ironically, though, he provided me with what might be the core my own career.

The novel continues through the oft-dismissed Etymology and Extracts prologues.   I don't ask you to read all the extracts.  I do want you to pay attention to the way Melville draws the characters of those who provide these sections: the pale usher and the sub-sub-librarian.  Note also that both are iterations of Melville's past--as a failed school teacher and as an unhappy low-level clerk.

By the time we get to page one of chapter one we've gone through two narrators.  Then we get "Ishmael."  Were we privileged at this moment to be face to face, I'd quiet the entire class (yes, I can do that when I want to) and start reading.  "Call me...........................................Ishmael."  Those words tell me a few things.  First, he isn't Ishmael.   Second, he is choosing to identify himself as the rejected son.  (Look it up.  Genesis.)

The first chapter is just so bloody marvelous!  The first paragraph tells you EVERYTHING--and I'll leave it to you to figure out.  Let me leave you, please, with one line.  "Whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul."  That line gives me chills.  That line earns Melville two hundred pages of reading.

Sometimes literary studies are like golf.  Golf is tremendously frustrating.  The clubs don't do what I want them to do, the ball doesn't cooperate--usually.  But, occasionally, I hit a perfect shot, pitch my second shot right up to the hole, sink a sixty foot putt, and I say to myself, "This is why people play this game."

Find your joy.