Trip Feedback - A+

Though Moby-Dick is more than a ship's log, I definitely found its ship lingo and nautical images pretty overwhelming at times. When I saw the comparable whale ship in Mystic, the Pequod's story became a lot more real and relatable. I felt like I could interact with the text more since I knew where on the ship the oil was prepared, where men like Ishmael slept, and where Ahab would have eaten dinner. Seeing everything up-close allowed me to become more than a clueless onlooker, and therefore made the book more interesting for me. In Moby-Dick, Melville provides the reader with "extracts" and other pieces of external testimony meant to corroborate the evidence of the story. These are snippets of information that are held "outside" the main text in order to validate the reader's experience. For me, seeing the ship was a necessary bit of outside "reading" that encouraged my experience with the "inside" reading.

Overall, I really enjoyed the trip! (+ the moussaka pizza - delicious)

Stein vs Melville

The self-professed genius Gertrude Stein wrote a poem in Tender Buttons that I think gets the gist of Moby Dick in a much more condensed language:

"A White Hunter"

A white hunter is nearly crazy.

The Whiteness of the Trail: Alta

Capitaine Achab

just out in France, I think

white (killer) whale spotted

Human Tofu!

http://www.strangenewproducts.com/2005/09/tofu-that-tastes-like-human-flesh.html

Came across this the other day and thought it was pretty funny. They recently took this product off the market, but the idea of cannibalism for vegetarians struck me and made me think of Typee. Unfortunately, the product's actual web site was taken off the internet.

Pizza and whales? Odd

Stretching a bit for this one. Maybe not, especially if we're going to mystic pizza (!! !!!!!). Whales and pizza sit just fine with me.

Shatner, the white whale

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJTi7KJPx_E

Star Trek 2: Wrath of Khan trailer.

Couldn't find a clip, but Imdb confirms that Khan speaks such lines as "To the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee."

Sperm whale attack

A video of what a real sperm whale attack might have been like.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHIBwl-rSaI

Nathan Swain

Nathan Swain is mentioned twice (as far as I can remember), the first time being on p. 27, when Ishmael describes the interior of the Spouter-Inn, decorated with a "heathenish array of monstrous clubs and spears" that make "you shudder as you gaze, and wonder what monstrous cannibal could ever have gone a death-harvesting with such a hacking, horrifying implement." Also hanging on the wall alongside the "storied weapons" of heroic whalers like Nathan Swain, who "fifty years ago did kill fifteen whales between a sunrise and sunset."

The second mention of "young Nat Swain" is on p. 85-6 when Peleg stops Bildad from preaching scripture to Queequeg, afraid of his "spoiling our harpooneer": "Pious harpooners never make good voyagers--it takes the shark out of em'; no harpooner is worth a straw who aint pretty sharkish. There was young Nat Swain, once the bravest boat-header out of all Nantucket and the Vineyard; he joined the meeting, and never came to good. He got so frightened about his plaguy soul, that he shrinked and sheered away from whales, for fear of after-claps, in case he got stove and went to Davy Jones."

I did a google search for Nathaniel Swain and found some genealogical records for the Swain family, who apparently were among the founding families involved in the settlement of Nantucket, forced to move from Puritan New England to the island for sympathizing with Quakers. It appears that there was a Nathaniel Swain alive during the 18th century. Several records claim that Nathaniel's father Benjamin was "killed by a whale." Whether Melville knew of a historical Nathan Swain or was just using a typical Nantucket surname to create a fictional whaler-hero, there is still the dusting of a pretty sweet (and relevant) storyline here: Quaker son takes to the sea to avenge his father's death and becomes a whale-killing legend.

The Melville Scholar at Microsoft

To add to Professor Baraw's suspicions, Microsoft Word suggests "tattoo" for "Tashtego."

There are not wanting some points of curious similitude

Today's Onion

http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/whale_expert_measures

today

today when a stranger asked me what I writing and reading about, I told him Moby Dick. he then asked what I thought Ahab held onto while he was riding the whale.

has anyone else had people (outside of classmates) talk to them about reading "the whale"?

Quietude

When I type "Queequeg" in Word, it wants to correct it as "Quietude."

ironic, when we think of "savagery" vs. "quietude"

McSweeney's List

McSweeney's Internet Tendency has a feature of lists submitted by readers that is sometimes funny and sometimes falls completely flat. Actually they are mostly absurdly dorky and obscure but I found one that was ok: "Chapter Titles in Herman Melville's Moby-Dick that Misleadingly Suggest Racy Content". Its funnier probably because I'm pretty sure that the titles are not misleading, but in fact Melville's intention. So despite the smugness of the author, it is actually perhaps a helpful list if you want to keep track of Melville's dirty sense of humor. Man, "A Squeeze of the Hand" is insane.