Moby-Dick, but just the punctuation
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Once, I was talking to Herman Melville. He said, “I’m writing book called Moby-Dick” | Gilbert Gottfried
RIP Gilbert Gottfried, 1955-2022
A Careful Disorderliness | Forty Riffs on Moby-Dick
I did not set out to write forty riffs on Herman Melville’s 1851 novel Moby-Dick but that’s where I ended up. I don’t think what I’ve done here is a resource of any worth, but I do hope to encourage people to read this funny, humane, poetic, and devastating novel. Here are links by chapter to the… Continue reading A Careful Disorderliness | Forty Riffs on Moby-Dick
The drama’s done | Moby-Dick reread, riff 40
I. In this riff, Chapter 135, “The Chase—Third Day” and the Epilogue of Moby-Dick. The beginning of the end begins, “The morning of the third day dawned fair and fresh” — we are in the tranquil pacified Pacific, beautiful blue, the calm site of a coming calamity. II. After calling for news of the White Whale, Ahab… Continue reading The drama’s done | Moby-Dick reread, riff 40
That wild simultaneousness of a thousand concreted perils | Moby-Dick reread, riff 39
I. In this riff, Chapters 133-134 of Moby-Dick. II. Ch. 133, “The Chase—First Day.” We finally get there. Ahab has posed one question throughout the book: “Hast seen the White Whale?” That is the only viewpoint that matters to him—a viewpoint that can point him toward vengeance. He gets to answer his own question: “There she… Continue reading That wild simultaneousness of a thousand concreted perils | Moby-Dick reread, riff 39
The least heedful eye seemed to see some sort of cunning meaning in almost every sight | Moby-Dick reread, riff 38
I. In this riff, Chapters 130-132 of Moby-Dick. II. Ch. 130, “The Hat.” In which Ahab’s hat is stolen by “one of those red-billed savage sea-hawks which so often fly incommodiously close round the manned mast-heads of whalemen in these latitudes,” and the crew reads it, almost to a man, as an ill omen. At… Continue reading The least heedful eye seemed to see some sort of cunning meaning in almost every sight | Moby-Dick reread, riff 38
A life-buoy of a coffin! Does it go further? | Moby-Dick reread, riff 37
I. In this riff, Chapters 127-129 of Moby-Dick. II. Ch. 127, “The Deck.” Another chapter composed as playwright’s drama—mostly dialogue, and a few spare stage directions. The dialogue is between Ahab and the carpenter. The poor old man has been charged with the task of converting Queequeg’s coffin into a life-buoy (you will recall The Pequod lost… Continue reading A life-buoy of a coffin! Does it go further? | Moby-Dick reread, riff 37
Crying and sobbing with their human sort of wail | Moby-Dick reread, riff 36
I. In this riff, Chapters 124-126 of Moby-Dick. II. Ch. 124, “The Needle.” “The Needle” is another one of Melville’s satanic reversals in Moby-Dick. Lightning from the tempest that The Pequod endured over the past few chapters has caused all compasses aboard the ship to be perfectly reversed. Needles fly in the exact opposite directions. What might have… Continue reading Crying and sobbing with their human sort of wail | Moby-Dick reread, riff 36
Wild nights | Moby-Dick reread, riff 35
I. In this riff, Ch. 123, “The Musket.” Here, we—and by which we, I guess I mean Ishmael’s consciousness–or maybe I just mean we—enter Starbuck’s consciousness. Our good Christian co-commander stands outside crazy Captain Ahab’s quarters, wondering whether to tell his commander that The Pequod has escaped a typhoon–or to kill the tyrant. II. Ch. 123 delivers the longest (I… Continue reading Wild nights | Moby-Dick reread, riff 35
All of us are Ahabs | Moby-Dick reread, riff 34
I. In this riff, Chapters 120-122 of Moby-Dick. II. Ch. 120, “The Deck Towards the End of the First Night Watch.” A very short chapter with a mediumish-length title After the title, we have a stage direction: Ahab standing by the helm. Starbuck approaching him. The rest is a brief exchange between Captain and First… Continue reading All of us are Ahabs | Moby-Dick reread, riff 34
Thy incommunicable riddle, thy unparticipated grief | Moby-Dick reread, riff 33
I. In this riff, Chapters 118 and 119 of Moby-Dick. II. Ahab has already gone mad before The Pequod sets sail on this particular voyage, but Ch. 118, “The Quadrant,” feels like a tipping point where his madness spills a bit too outside of himself. Starbuck has already expressed his mortification for their revenge mission, but… Continue reading Thy incommunicable riddle, thy unparticipated grief | Moby-Dick reread, riff 33
Our souls are like those orphans whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them | Moby-Dick reread, riff 32
I. I “finished” rereading Moby-Dick a few minutes before I started composing this riff. I feel sad and a little deflated. Deflated here is maybe the wrong word. This is a novel of expansion and contraction, the physical and the metaphysical, the abstract exploding into the concrete. But the novel’s conclusion seems like an undoing to all… Continue reading Our souls are like those orphans whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them | Moby-Dick reread, riff 32
Death is only a launching into the region of the strange Untried | Moby-Dick reread, riff 31
I. In this riff, Ch. 112 of Moby-Dick, “The Blacksmith.” II. “The Blacksmith” chapter is neither especially long nor short, and a reader could skip over it without missing any of the “plot” of Moby-Dick (while also misunderstanding the “plot” of Moby-Dick). And yet, And yet reading the chapter again, I was struck by its terrible pathos (and… Continue reading Death is only a launching into the region of the strange Untried | Moby-Dick reread, riff 31
Millions of mixed shades and shadows, drowned dreams, somnambulisms, reveries | Moby-Dick reread, riff 30
I. In this riff, Chapters 109-111 of Moby-Dick. II. Rereading these chapters—particularly Ch. 110, “Queequeg in His Coffin”—put me in a melancholy mood, a strange dark mood that I remember from previous rereads. I’m not sure why, but there’s something about Moby-Dick’s turn into its final third that’s a specific kind of sad that’s both bitter… Continue reading Millions of mixed shades and shadows, drowned dreams, somnambulisms, reveries | Moby-Dick reread, riff 30
The ineffaceable, sad birth-mark in the brow of man, is but the stamp of sorrow in the signers | Moby-Dick reread, riff 29
I. In this riff, Chapters 106-108 of Moby-Dick. This trio of chapters introduces the carpenter, who proves a strange foil to Ahab. II. Ch. 106, “Ahab’s Leg.” Moby-Dick is a phallic novel, full of thrusts, jabs, ejaculations, and sperm sperm sperm. “Ahab’s Leg” reinforces this theme through negation. Melville (or is it Ishmael?) underscores here the… Continue reading The ineffaceable, sad birth-mark in the brow of man, is but the stamp of sorrow in the signers | Moby-Dick reread, riff 29
Horror-struck at this antemosaic, unsourced existence of the unspeakable terrors of the whale | Moby-Dick reread, riff 28
I. In this riff, Ch. 101-105 of Moby-Dick. II. Ch. 101, “The Decanter.” Ishmael praises the “famous whaling house of Enderby & Sons; a house which in my poor whaleman’s opinion, comes not far behind the united royal houses of the Tudors and Bourbons, in point of real historical interest.” He claims that, years after… Continue reading Horror-struck at this antemosaic, unsourced existence of the unspeakable terrors of the whale | Moby-Dick reread, riff 28
Face set like a flint | Moby-Dick reread, riff 27
I. In this riff, Chapter 100 of Moby-Dick — “Leg and Arm • The Pequod, of Nantucket, meets the Samuel Enderby, of London.” II. I probably should’ve rolled this chapter into my last riff.Chapter 100 serves again to underscore Ahab’s monomaniacal monologuing, his inability to read the world through any lens but his singular quest to… Continue reading Face set like a flint | Moby-Dick reread, riff 27
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