EDITING MOBY-DICK
Daring to edit a 170-year-old classic
The Chase—Fourth Day
Editing Moby-Dick, Ground Rules
I’m not here to rewrite Moby-Dick. Part of an editor’s job can be to offer suggestions for how a writer might say or add something. But an essential fact of that process is that even if a writer keeps an editor’s suggested words exactly, they choose to do so, making them essentially their own words. Melville can’t do that; he’s dead.
Not that I’d change much about the writing in Moby-Dick. The style is wholly unique and holds up all these years later. The mission behind editing Moby-Dick is to unclutter Melville’s entirely random sense of structure to see what’s really going on. His structure entails one chapter of plot followed by five chapters of pure research. More than a few Melville chapters start with some variation of “oh wait, I forgot to explain some detail in the last chapter,” or my favorite specific version of this, “oh wait, let me add one more thing to that thing I forgot to explain”. Melville loves to amend an amendment. So what happens if you straighten it all out a bit, make the story more linear and disentangle the digressions from the plot?
A visual representation of how it feels to edit a 650-page book
Giving Melville a Post-Modern Structure
Because we’re not removing or changing a word in the book, the structure that leaped out to me as an editor was a footnote style structure. Most famously, and quite fittingly, two notoriously difficult novels to read, Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace and Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov, both use a heavily footnoted narrative structure. These are not academic footnotes of the one-sentence-to-one-paragraph-explanation variety, these footnotes are incredibly long (sometimes pages-long) digressions that often give a long-winded explanation of context by way of an entirely new backstory. One reads Infinite Jest and Pale Fire with two bookmarks—one for the text and one for the footnotes. Fitting, right?
The elegant solution is that Moby-Dick will, as such, be divided into two pieces. Piece one is Moby-Dick, the story of how Ismael joins the Pequod and hunts down Ahab’s white whale. Piece two will be the footnotes, all of the encyclopedic chapters that serve as context for the story and what whales look, smell, and taste like. We’ll call this footnote section The Folio of Whales, a name taken from the chapter “Cetology” (now a footnote)—folio being “a volume of the largest standard size” as well as the largest classification of whales in Melville’s eccentric encyclopedia.
Like Pale Fire and Infinite Jest, these footnotes are not throwaways, but comprise entire chapter’s worth of asides. They’re worth reading, but also if you get tired of them, you can just ignore them and you won’t lose the thread of the main story. The other cosmetic change coming with these footnotes is new invented titles such as “Whale Oil Storage”, “Whale Law”, and, naturally, “Whale Law Continued”. These new titles will be presented in the form of “[New Title], or [Original Chapter Title]”, so readers can refer back to the original text. For instance: “Do Whales Have Skin, or The Blanket”.
One informational chapter, “The Whiteness of The Whale”, I kept in place because although it is a digression on Melville’s own symbolism, it’s not a general informational chapter about whales or whaling, but about the character of Moby Dick. For a different reason, I left “The Gam” in the main text as well—while it is certifiably a digression, about 80-85% of Moby-Dick’s plot depend on this device, so the explanation is actually the exception that proves the rule, a Melville digression that actually serves the plot.
Ordering of Footnotes
I’ve generally tried to place these footnotes into chapters that adhere to the book’s original outline, so that if you read every footnote, you’d essentially be reading the book in its original form. A lot of time this was incredibly intuitive and logical—i.e., Stubb eats whale meat and Melville discusses the variations of whale meat as a delicacy. Sometimes it doesn’t, and what’s interesting is the few instances where Melville chose to explain a term or whale part in the opposite order that they appeared in the story.
What does reordering Moby-Dick do?
This unique structure is likely not something that Melville would ever have seen examples of in his time—Pale Fire, for instance, published 100 years later—but maybe it is more fitting for the way his mind works. Instead of going straight through the novel in a traditional linear manner and dealing with Melville’s shifting moods, the footnote announces that if you would like to pause and learn about whale law, or whale heads, or whale lines that you are about to stop the traditional narrative for several pages to do so. The idea is that the reader—like this editor—will not be as jarred or forgetful about the story if the asides are announced and opted into as opposed to randomly foisted upon them. Or, if you wish to remain ignorant of 19th century whale knowledge, you can save yourself a few hours of reading.
Five Lessons from Editing Moby-Dick
1. The Real Size of Whale Digressions
There’s less whale fat to take out of Moby-Dick than I expected. The final count of the main text put up next to the footnotes in this new edition comes in at 163,000 words vs. 48,000 words, respectively. 503 pages of story to 140 pages of footnotes, or about 77% to 23%. That’s still a lot of whale and boating asides but not nearly as many as I would have guessed. This is editing Whale Brian—the idea that as editors we perceive out-of-place parts as taking up more space than they actually do—in action. Reading Moby-Dick for the first time, these footnote chapters seem about novel-length in size, probably closer to 40%, but in reality, they are just a scant one-fifth, novella-length of the entire book. This Whale Brain is caused not because the folio chapters are boring or uninteresting, but because they yank the reader out of the story all of the sudden and force your brain to constantly switch tracks and reset when you come back to the central story (wait, what happened on the ship last time?).
2. Sagging Middle
The majority of the chapters that became footnotes came in the very middle of the novel. Right after the Pequod kills their first whale, it opens up the floodgates of going over the whale and the ship piece by piece. In contrast, in the beginning and end of the novel there are hardly any certifiably extraneous chapters. (This isn’t entirely accurate. There is an entire chapter that reads as follows: “Um, um, um, Stop that thunder! Plenty too much thunder up here. What’s the use of thunder? Um, um, um. We don’t want thunder; we want rum; give us a glass of rum. Um, um, um!”.) Moby-Dick, in one estimation, might fit the clean definition of a “sagging middle” type of flawed novel.
3. That’s What “Grandissimus” Means (NSFW)
Did I stop and take the time to look up exactly what chapter 95 “The Cassock” was about when I read Moby-Dick the first time? No, not exactly. But when figuring out where to footnote this chapter, I had to have a firmer grasp of what this chapter was about more specifically. Upon first read I got the general impression that it was yet another chapter about whale skin and how to cut up a whale up, and it is, sort of…The part of the whale in question here turns out to be the whale’s penis (or “the grandissimus”), and this entire chapter is about is how one of the sailor’s cuts holes in the skin of the whale’s penis and wears it like a cassock. Okay, then!
4. Whale Archology is the Height of Melville’s Madness
There’s a revised table of contents below to this new edit of Moby-Dick. Rearranging the book, the sorest thumb of all the chapters that were transformed into footnotes were the four chapters on whale skeletons and archeology. No natural antecedent comes up in the proceeding chapters and when the story resumes on Ahab after these whopping 22 pages, there are no whales, let alone any talk of prehistoric whales or their size or their insides. I ended up placing these footnotes/chapters nearer to when Moby Dick appears in the story (spoiler!) with the idea that although they don’t naturally go anywhere as explanatory footnotes, they do make a strong case for how epic and immortal whales are before the whale-to-survive-all-whales appears.
5. There’s Four Chapters with Identical Names
Melville just didn’t have an editing gene (it’s probably a good thing—if he did, he could have never written this book). It took double and tripling checking, but yes there are two pairs of chapters that have exactly the same title “The Deck” and “Knights and Squires.”
Bonus: Moby-Dick Now Has a Perfect 100 Chapters
99 plus the epilogue, a pretty pleasing coincidence!
Revised Table of Contents
Chapters made into footnotes in bold.
CONTENTS.
1: Loomings
2: The Carpet Bag
3: The Spouter-Inn
4: The Counterpane
5: Breakfast
6: The Street
7: The Chapel
8: The Pulpit
9: The Sermon
10: A Bosom Friend
11: Nightgown
12: Biographical
13: Wheelbarrow
14: Nantucket
15: Chowder
16: The Ship
17: The Ramadan
18: His Mark
19: The Prophet
20: All Astir
21: Going Aboard
22: Merry Christmas
23: The Lee Shore
Footnote 1: This Business of Whaling, or The Advocate
Footnote 2: Dignity, or Postscript
24: Knights and Squires
25: Knights and Squires
26: Ahab
27: Enter Ahab; to him, Stubb
28: The Pipe
29: Queen Mab
Footnote 4: Footnote 4: The Folio of Whales, or Cetology
Footnote 3: Rank of Officers on a Whale-Craft, or The Specksynder
30: The Cabin Table
31: The Mast-Head
32: The Quarter-Deck. Ahab and all
33: Sunset
34: Dusk
35: First Night-Watch
36: Forecastle. — Midnight
37: Moby Dick
38: The Whiteness of the Whale
39: Hark!
40: The Chart
Footnote 5: Why Moby Dick is Not a Myth, or The Affidavit
41: Surmises
42: The Mat-Maker
43: The First Lowering
44: The Hyena
45: Ahab's Boat and Crew—Fedallah
46: The Spirit-Spout
47: The Pequod meets the Albatross
48: The Gam
49: The Town Ho's Story
Footnote 6: Whale Art, or Monstrous Pictures of Whales
Footnote 7: Slightly Better Whale Art, or Less Erroneous Pictures of Whales
Footnote 8: Whale Art Part III, or Of Whales In paint; In teeth; etc.
50: Brit
51: Squid
Footnote 10: The Line
52: Stubb kills a Whale
Footnote 9: The Dart
Footnote 11: The Crotch
53: Stubb's Supper
Footnote 12: The Whale as a Dish
54: The Shark Massacre
55: Cutting In
Footnote 13: Do Whales Have Skin, or The Blanket
56: The Funeral
57: The Sphynx
58: The Pequod meets the Jeroboam. Her Story
59: The Monkey-rope
60: Stubb & Flask kill a Right Whale
Footnote 14: The Sperm Whale’s Head
Footnote 15: Whale Head Comparison, or The Right Whale’s Head
Footnote 16: How Powerful is a Whale Head?, or The Battering-Ram
Footnote 19: The Great Heidelburgh Tun
61: Cistern and Buckets
Footnote 17: The Face of a Sperm Whale, or The Praire
Footnote 18: Whale Brain, Skull and Spine, or The Nut
62: The Pequod meets the Virgin
Footnote 21: The Honor and Glory of Whaling
Footnote 22: Amendment to The Glory and Honor of Whaling, or Jonah Historically Regarded
63: Pitchpoling
Footnote 24: Whale Spouts, or The Fountain
Footnote 25: The Tail
64: The Grand Armada
Footnote 23: Whale Herds, or Schools and Schoolmasters
Footnote 26: Whale Law, or Fast Fish and Loose Fish
Footnote 27: Whale Law Continued, or Heads or Tails
65: The Pequod meets the Rose Bud
Footnote 28: Ambergris
66: The Castaway
67: A Squeeze of the Hand
Footnote 29: Whale Penis, or The Cassock
Footnote 30: The Try-Works
Footnote 31: The Lamp
Footnote 32: Whale Oil Storage, or Stowing Down and Clearing Up
68: The Doubloon
69: The Pequod meets the Samuel Enderby of London
Footnote 33: Ranking Whalers by Nationality, or The Decanter
Footnote 20: Whale Anatomy, or A Bower in the Arsacides
Footnote 34: Measurement of the Whale's Skeleton
Footnote 35: The Magnitude of Whales, or The Fossil Whale
Footnote 36: Whale Archology, or Does the Whale’s Magnitude Diminish?—Will He perish?
70: Ahab's Leg
71: The Carpenter
72: The Deck. Ahab and the Carpenter
73: The Cabin. Ahab and Starbuck
74: Queequeg in his Coffin
75: The Pacific
76: The Blacksmith
77: The Forge
78: The Gilder
79: The Pequod meets the Bachelor
80: The Dying Whale
81: The Whale-Watch
82: The Quadrant
83: The Candles
84: The Deck
85: Midnight, on the Forecastle
86: Midnight, Aloft
87: The Musket
88: The Needle
89: The Log and Line
90: The Life-Buoy
91: Ahab and the Carpenter
92: The Pequod meets the Rachel
93: The Cabin. Ahab and Pip
94: The Hat
95: The Pequod meets the Delight
96: The Symphony
97: The Chase. First Day
98: The Chase. Second Day
99: The Chase. Third Day
Epilogue
Wow, You Read the Entire Table of Contents
You’ve passed the test, here is the PDF to Moby-Dick, and The Folio of Whales by Herman Melville (edited by Sean deLone).
