Thoughts Literary and Otherwise

Recently, but not too recently, a colleague asked me what my favorite book is.  Moby-Dick .  It's not even a question to me.  The automatic nature of my response prompted this rejoinder, though. "Really?" As if. There are moments now, alone of in the classroom, when I read a passage and literally--LITERALLY--get gooseflesh.  The novel chills me to the marrow of the marrow.  A passage deep in chapter forty-one is just such a passage. Ahab reveals a portion of his quest to Starbuck in chapter thirty-six, he gives away a little more to us in chapter thirty-seven, where makes himself both prophet and fulfiller.  It all comes out of the fog here, though, and, as we see it, we can see Frodo simply walking into Mordor, ring on a string, ready to end the control that evil has on mankind. We first learn--veeerrrrrrrry slowly--of the nature of Moby Dick.  He is called ubiquitous and immortal.  Indeed, our speaker muses that if one were to apparent...

Other than Christmas, Thanksgiving, and my birthday, Ahab Day is my favorite day of the year.  Ahab Day occurs twice a year, actually, on the exact day that my American Literature and, later in the year, my AP Literature classes reach chapter 36 of Moby-Dick .  It was always a good day--you would scarcely believe just how much fun I have working through this particular material with you--but it became a great day at about 7:55 one morning, ten minutes before first period walked in the door.  I was putting the room in order and reviewing the passage when it dawned on me.  I should be Ahab today--Ahab from chapter 36.  The quick write prompt will remain the same, but I'll be different.  I'll limp and pace around the room, look out the window, be all pensive. And not say a word. The quick write prompt was, is, and ever shall be "How does Ahab persuade the crew to join him on his quest?" I had reservations.  I was, and still am, uncertain as to if ...

While I don't care much if at all about authorial intent ( this YouTube video sums it up for me), I do spend a little mental energy, sometimes, on what authors KNOW.  At the end of chapter three of The Great Gatsby , Fitzgerald's narrator Nick Carraway says this: Everyone suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people I have ever known. This is an interesting sentiment in context.  Jordan Baker has just "deliberately shifted" their relationship, provided Nick with what Captain Jack Sparrow would call an "opportune moment," and Nick remembered the Minnesota girlfriend he is currently quite actively avoiding, you know, the one who develops a "faint mustache of perspiration" when she plays tennis.  (#dealbreaker)  He wants out, but he's not out.  I have told you--and I'm right--that cowardice is speaking. Now I want to tell you something else I'm right about--something ...

I am among the minority.  I think Ishmael is the main character in Moby-Dick .  Ahab is the hero.  Ahab is the most interesting character.  Ahab drives the plot.  Ishmael, though, is the story teller and the entire story showcase, in a way oddly understated, his growth and his SUCCESSFUL quest.  My sense is that he, after not doing so for two novels, followed the primary rule of story telling: If you write a first person narrative, don't make yourself the main character--especially if it's an adventure novel. Nonetheless, due to the extraordinary empathy and skill of Melville's speaker, we get great insight into Ahab.  We see (because Melville through Ishmael breaks a LOT of secondary and tertiary rules) Ahab as what he is: a truly American tragic hero. We started seeing that last week with that passage on page 73.  We conclude, though Ishmael, writing about his adventure after it has happened, never NAMES his Quaker, that Ahab is an amazing m...

In Maxine Hong Kingston's novel China Men , she mentions that Chinese immigrants called California "The Gold Mountain."  (She also wrote a novel called The Woman Warrior which touches on Fa Mulan.)  The thought was, to oversimplify, that one need only endure the trip to California, walk a bit, pick up a pocketful of gold nuggets, and be rich.  The effort--the TRANSFORMATIVE effort--would be rewarded.  There are many such immigrant narratives, and a few of them actually started to approach reality in a few generations.  All of them, coupled with all of those Puritan and Romantic ideas bandied about for a few centuries, culminated in what has come loosely to be known as "the American Dream."  A little research into the phrase "American Dream" leads to this quotation from James Truslow Adams, written in 1931: But there has been also the American dream , that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with op...

I would love to cite the source, trust me, and I spent the last fifteen minutes looking for it, but suffice it to say I'm quoting someone smart, some Shakespeare scholar, probably, and that smart someone said, "Everything Shakespeare is ambiguous."  That, to quote Fitzgerald (as he wrote about Daisy Fay Buchanan) is the "siren's song of it."  I will add here: Everything Melville is ambiguous.  When last we spoke, the AP wrote a little bit about the way religion seems to be portrayed in Moby-Dick , and the answers were various because the portrayal IS various.  Melville, like his buddy Hawthorne--and a few other American authors--are British or even continental style Romanticists (big R Romantics, not guys who buy flowers and candies), but he has a lot in common with his almost exact contemporary Walt Whitman (look it up--uncanny) who wrote, "Do I contradict myself? Very well.  I contradict myself--I am large; I contain multitudes."   Melville...

T. S. Eliot begins his "Wasteland," a poem many consider his finest and an enduring example of Modernism, with these four lines: April is the cruelest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. This is, of course, an odd take on the month of April, at least in the northern hemisphere.  Springtime is most often greeted with delight.  One of the oldest poems in the language (I promise you it's English) has a completely different--and more NORMAL-- take on things. Whan that Aprille with his shour e s soot e , The droghte of March hath perc e d to the root e , And bath e d every veyne in swich licóur Of which vertú engendr e d is the flour; Whan Zephirus eek with his swet e breeth Inspir e d hath in every holt and heeth The tendr e cropp e s, and the yong e sonn e Hath in the Ram his half e cours y-ronn e , And smal e fowel e s maken melody e , That slepen al the nyght with...

For the most part, Gatsby 's chapters center on parties: chapter one features that little soiree at the Buchanan place, chapter two that violent debauch at Tom and Myrtle's "love shack" (baby), and chapter three the first of several bashes at Gatsby's mansion (and a few days after it).  When I go to a party, I go with a few questions in mind: Where's the dip? How's the dip? When should I dip? The first pages of chapter three describe the preparations for Gatsby's party.  While guacamole probably wasn't a thing on Long Island in the 1920s, you can rest assured that the food was as amazing as the drinks were illegal (prohibition, you know).  I would imagine that the awkward silences punctuating the Buchanan soiree were balanced by a pretty good spread.  There doesn't seem to be any redeeming factor in the party at the love shack,  none.  Nick should never have been there, and, even if he did show up, he should've dipped much sooner. ...

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles Who's on first? Yes, it's magic lantern day today, and, if you are moving in a linear fashion from top to bottom, you have watched two scenes which most people find humorous.  First, you see John Candy and Steve Martin spooning.  Then, a famous comedy routine about the confusion which can be caused by homonyms and interrogative pronouns.  Do you not see similarities between these scenes and scenes in your novel? Peter Coffin is an elaborate jokester.  (I like to think he had PLENTY of room in his inn and really was just waiting and waiting and waiting to hear that greenhorn who calls himself "Ishmael" start howling and whimpering and that head-peddling rascal start bellowing--oh, such sport!)  He sets the whole thing up.  He tells a poop joke (page 32, footnote 5 should be crossed out and replaced with the words "poop joke" or just "poop," for those who are into the whole brevity thing).  He whittles toothpick...