Time off from American ambition and unnecessary excitements
Warning: this is post is rather choppy..but to smooth it out would mean I would have to work, and I promised myself I wouldn't work at anything today...
One of the knocks against M-D (the book, not the character) is that it is about everything, and therefore nothing. Which, I guess, sorta makes it like Web Content....ah...surely this is not all without meaning. Larry (my husband) and I both choose disciplines that are really about everything. (He's Comms studies/rhetoric.) Choosing disciplines that are themselves undisciplined and unweildly seems yet another mark of personal indulgence. It's like a kid standing in front of a buffet of desserts...Everything is too good to pass up so you have to taste it all.
Anyway, this is prescisely what I love about this book. It's about everything. Everything can be seen through its lenses.
For example: American ambition and the unrelenting need for a constant stream of information or, as Melville calls it "unnecssary excitements."
There is a constant theme of the particularly American drive to work more, get more, and relentless pursue a singular goal without regard to cost. Take for example this quote from chapter 35:
"In most American whalemen the mast-heads are manned almost simultaneously with the vessel's leaving her port; even though she may have fifteen thousand miles, and more, to sail ere reaching her proper cruising ground. And if, after a three, four, or five years'voyage she is drawing nigh home with anything empty in her--say, an empty vial even--then, her mast-heads are kept manned to the last; and not till her skysail-poles sail in among the spires of the port, does she altogether relinquish the hope of capturing one whale more."
As I think about the week that just passed where I was completely exhausted, felt like I could work non-stop and still not have everything I needed to have done completed, and where I was constantly turning over work issues in my dreams--all because of my own vanity and my own pursuits, I was particularly interested in the topics of by the discussion of Flask, who never gets to really eat because of the protocol of the captain's table where he's required to be the last one seated and the first one to leave, "Therefore it was that Flask once admitted in private, that ever since he had arisen to the dignity of an officer, from that moment he had never known what it was to be otherwise than hungry, more or less. For what he ate did not so much relieve his hunger, as keep it immortal in him. Peace and satisfaction, thought Flask, have for ever departed from my stomach. I am an officer; but, how I wish I could fish a bit of old-fashioned beef in the forecastle, as I used to when I was before the mast. There's the fruits of promotion now; there's the vanity of glory: there's the insanity of life!"
This is all contrasted with Ishmael's musings on his dreamy meditations high above in the mast-head, and his admission that he "kept but sorry guard" and openly preferred his musings and meditations to the actual business of looking out for whales.
I was particularly interested in the solace he took in being in a "news-free" zone--even pre-Internet." There you stand, lost in the infinite series of the sea, with nothing ruffled but the waves. The tranced ship indolently rolls; the drowsy trade winds blow; everything resolves you into languor. For the most part, in this tropic whaling life, a sublime uneventfulness invests you; you hear no news; read no gazettes; extras with startling accounts of common places never delude you into unnecessary excitements; you hear of no domestic afflictions; bankrupt securities; fall of stocks; are never troubled with the thought ofwhat you shall have for dinner--" Hmmm...what would Herman say about the Internet and our need to be online and swimming in the streams of information 24/7? I'm sure he would be thrilled and horrified; replused and hopelessly attracted.
So, to avoid suffering said fruits of promotion and insanity of life, I spent my Saturday in "vacant unconscious reveries," working out, reading, watching basketball, napping, painting toenails pink, and trying desparately to be "hopelessly lost to all honorable ambition." Now I'm just posting a quick blog entry before I get dressed to go to my friends' annual Burns night. (mmm...haggis and lots of toasts to the lads and lasses!)
P.S. Are you all at the The Quarter Deck (36) yet? It's one of the most vivid chapters of the book, and the one that all the movie versions seem to fixate on. Strangely enough, from one of my earlier readings I noticed I wrote "Henry V" in the margins by Ahab's rallying speech.
Moby-Dick06 (technorati tag)
One of the knocks against M-D (the book, not the character) is that it is about everything, and therefore nothing. Which, I guess, sorta makes it like Web Content....ah...surely this is not all without meaning. Larry (my husband) and I both choose disciplines that are really about everything. (He's Comms studies/rhetoric.) Choosing disciplines that are themselves undisciplined and unweildly seems yet another mark of personal indulgence. It's like a kid standing in front of a buffet of desserts...Everything is too good to pass up so you have to taste it all.
Anyway, this is prescisely what I love about this book. It's about everything. Everything can be seen through its lenses.
For example: American ambition and the unrelenting need for a constant stream of information or, as Melville calls it "unnecssary excitements."
There is a constant theme of the particularly American drive to work more, get more, and relentless pursue a singular goal without regard to cost. Take for example this quote from chapter 35:
"In most American whalemen the mast-heads are manned almost simultaneously with the vessel's leaving her port; even though she may have fifteen thousand miles, and more, to sail ere reaching her proper cruising ground. And if, after a three, four, or five years'voyage she is drawing nigh home with anything empty in her--say, an empty vial even--then, her mast-heads are kept manned to the last; and not till her skysail-poles sail in among the spires of the port, does she altogether relinquish the hope of capturing one whale more."
As I think about the week that just passed where I was completely exhausted, felt like I could work non-stop and still not have everything I needed to have done completed, and where I was constantly turning over work issues in my dreams--all because of my own vanity and my own pursuits, I was particularly interested in the topics of by the discussion of Flask, who never gets to really eat because of the protocol of the captain's table where he's required to be the last one seated and the first one to leave, "Therefore it was that Flask once admitted in private, that ever since he had arisen to the dignity of an officer, from that moment he had never known what it was to be otherwise than hungry, more or less. For what he ate did not so much relieve his hunger, as keep it immortal in him. Peace and satisfaction, thought Flask, have for ever departed from my stomach. I am an officer; but, how I wish I could fish a bit of old-fashioned beef in the forecastle, as I used to when I was before the mast. There's the fruits of promotion now; there's the vanity of glory: there's the insanity of life!"
This is all contrasted with Ishmael's musings on his dreamy meditations high above in the mast-head, and his admission that he "kept but sorry guard" and openly preferred his musings and meditations to the actual business of looking out for whales.
I was particularly interested in the solace he took in being in a "news-free" zone--even pre-Internet." There you stand, lost in the infinite series of the sea, with nothing ruffled but the waves. The tranced ship indolently rolls; the drowsy trade winds blow; everything resolves you into languor. For the most part, in this tropic whaling life, a sublime uneventfulness invests you; you hear no news; read no gazettes; extras with startling accounts of common places never delude you into unnecessary excitements; you hear of no domestic afflictions; bankrupt securities; fall of stocks; are never troubled with the thought ofwhat you shall have for dinner--" Hmmm...what would Herman say about the Internet and our need to be online and swimming in the streams of information 24/7? I'm sure he would be thrilled and horrified; replused and hopelessly attracted.
So, to avoid suffering said fruits of promotion and insanity of life, I spent my Saturday in "vacant unconscious reveries," working out, reading, watching basketball, napping, painting toenails pink, and trying desparately to be "hopelessly lost to all honorable ambition." Now I'm just posting a quick blog entry before I get dressed to go to my friends' annual Burns night. (mmm...haggis and lots of toasts to the lads and lasses!)
P.S. Are you all at the The Quarter Deck (36) yet? It's one of the most vivid chapters of the book, and the one that all the movie versions seem to fixate on. Strangely enough, from one of my earlier readings I noticed I wrote "Henry V" in the margins by Ahab's rallying speech.
Moby-Dick06 (technorati tag)
posted by Erica at 1:51 PM
1 Comments:
I thought the post was much more coherant than mine. Sort of a similar thought through the whole thing. Like a college paper.
I will say that it must be such a relief, to not be connected to current happenings. Ishmael up there on the mast, watching the blanket of waves, and off in his own world.
Some of my thoughts while reading these chapters echo yours, but I've got to wait until I get home to post about them, so I can get it right.
As far as my progress in the book, I just finished Chapter 48 - The First Lowering. I'm hoping to do a few MD posts tonight and tomorrow.
PS - What a strange coincidence, Henry V.
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