Saturday, March 1, 2008

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.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

hurray! We had this link on our melville blog in 06; it;s very funny to read the TOC this way--and I agree Melville knows it (alas, not everyone , even at the excellent McSweeney's is as informed as we are!)