The Night Ocean, New England Ports, and Sober Cannibals
Bigotry makes for bad characters
A Page at a Time: Moby-Dick by Herman Melville, or The Reading of a Daunting Classic (one chapter every morning)
Progress: Days 8, Pages 46
Ignorance, Empathy, and Desire
From the biblical opening six pages, Ishmael goes through a noticeable downshift in the next several chapters. Instead of going out to sea, he pads around the New England port finding lodging, eating breakfast, and going to church, offering no real clues as to exactly what his plans are for getting onto a whaling ship—the thing he is, presumably, aiming for. Instead, Melville’s often noted sexual angst is on full display as we are treated to several rather funny pages of Ishmael wondering if he should or should not sleep in the same bed as a…harpooner. This internal debate, whether he should sleep next to the harpooner (but the bed is giant!), rages on for longer than we’ve spent on whales so far. There has been a lot of literature and academic speculating about Melville’s sexuality due to his love of Nathaniel Hawthorne to whom he wrote quite effusive—and, as far as historical record would have it, unrequited—love letters. Moby-Dick’s dedication is: “In token of my admiration for his genius, this book is inscribed to Nathaniel Hawthorne.” A dedication that sounds, quite frankly, even to contemporary ears, desperate. There’s no hard evidence Melville was gay, but it was the 1800s so that’s hardly surprising. As a reader the innuendo sure doesn’t feel like he was hiding. There’s something about these passages that’s both charming and refreshing, and simultaneously hard to watch as Melville squirms to keep it all under the surface, just barely.
The unfortunate part of these next few chapters is Queequeg, a bad caricature of a “savage” from a far-off land who grunts and sells shrunken heads on the streets. In the classic Western literature of 18th and 19th century—and frankly 20th—that has survived, there are lots of these kinds of narrow-minded portrayals. That’s definitely not to excuse it with the old “those were the times” saw, but one thing that I think gets missed in the “can we read this if it’s problematic debate” is the very practical takeaway you can gleam by reading old literature with a modern eye. Namely, that these caricatures are simply bad writing. In books that are filled with otherwise timeless storytelling or insight, these characters often stick out as sorely clunky and uninteresting. That’s because blind spots and bigotry don’t stand the test of time; unlike the ever-relevant quest for the white whale, Melville’s Queequeg has nothing true to say about the world. A confined view of the other makes for bad character and is as grating as dull sentences and cliches. What’s interesting is that, in the same breath, Melville also shows a little bit of empathy and, if we’re being generous, does seem to understand he’s being a little ignorant, as Ishmael remarks that it is “better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.” Which is…fairly enlightened? And Ismael decides to put aside his presumptions and cozy up with the harpoonist after all. It’s a shame Queequeg is written so one dimensionally, because his shaving with the harpoon the next morning and using it as a fork at breakfast would have been genuinely comical if you didn’t have the sense that it was a joke somewhat at his expense.
A sentence!
Our weekly reminder that this guy can really write
What (else) to Read: The Night Ocean by Paul La Farge
The New York Times reported last week that novelist Paul La Farge died, tragically, at just 52 years of age. I can’t claim to have read Paul’s whole body of work, but I read The Night Ocean a couple of years ago and was blown away by his artistry. His sentences were just as beautiful as the structure of the book. Between perspectives and switching forms (letters, video cameras, etc.), I found it breathtaking. It’s not a book for everyone maybe, but it would be unfair to call it a “writer’s book,” as there is a tremendous tenderness to the storytelling. La Farge treats one of the novels main subjects H.P. Lovecraft (a notorious racist)—unlike Melville’s Queequeg—in a morally complex way. He shows how the consequence of an artist’s legacy, influence, and value go far beyond “were they a force for good or they were a force for ill?”, and can even be meaningful to the people that artist hated. If you don’t need your plot tied up neatly or the camera fixed on one character at one point in time, I highly recommend The Night Ocean. I’ll certainly be visiting his other books in the coming years. Although he is no longer with us, Le Farge’s legacy and value as an artist has not yet been settled either.
It’s also one of the most beautiful book covers ever, you have to see it in person to get the full effect of those hypnotizing lines.
Back Matter: Links and other Happenings
The TV show that I most wish we had a (modern) book version of returns March 26th. The HaperCollins strike continues into its third month. Random House’s CEO steps down, marking the third major executive to leave the company in recent weeks. Pamela Anderson has a new memoir coming out and is all over the Internet, here are some highlights. Teachers don’t panic, but instead use the AI tool ChatGPT to basically teach their students editing.