There is Only the Sea
A brief note about Moby-Dick and one mind-blowing sentence
A Page at a Time: Moby-Dick by Herman Melville, or The Reading of a Daunting Classic
Progress: Days 69, Pages 348
I believe it was Anne Lamott, who may have taken the idea from somewhere else, who said there are only two metaphors: rivers and gardens; it’s either the endless flow of time or growth, death, and renewal. Out in the salt rich waters of the ocean, there are no gardens. After two-and-a-half months of reading Moby-Dick a strange thing has happened to my language in everyday life. Writing about the bestseller list on Tuesday I wrote: “if the Times favored maritime gift shops, we’d hold every author event on the Battleship New Jersey.” Looking for an absurd example, this came seemingly out of the depths of nowhere. More and more, Melville’s own mania has started to pervade my choice of example, metaphor, and simile. So far, I’ve been somewhat dismissive of the idea that Moby-Dick is a large brooding, tortured novel. And although it is not quite as bleak as its reputation would suggest, there is an odd all-encompassing, dominating effect that sneaks up on the reader. The central metaphor of the quest to capture and kill Moby Dick is less the driving force of the novel and more so Melville’s obsession, which starts to exsert its influence on you whether you laugh at its absurdity or not. The tide is shifting, the winds are a changing, and the storm is coming.
A “Great” Sentence
This week we have to put “great” in quotations, but it is an astonishing fact:
“In 2019, the largest banks in America charged customers $11.68 billion in overdraft fees. Just 9 percent of account holders paid 84 percent of these fees. Who were the unlucky 9 percent? Customers who carried an average balance of less than $350.” —Poverty, by America, Pg. 71