For fun, I am going to try to list a few of my resources and maybe drop a few words about the ones that influenced and educated me about the book. Forgive this list, it may get exhausting if not exhaustive. And let me preface it with the disclaimer that there are a bazillion other books on the subject probably equally of merit and an innumerable trove of info online - the best place being either "powermoby-dick - the online annotation" website or the melville society page, the new bedford whaling museum home page, etc etc etc but here are my Favorites from my collection.
**Some are THE book Moby-Dick, some are about it, some are about melville, some are from his era, and some have nothing whatsoever to do with anything but have influenced my reading of Moby-Dick so they may be included - this little list will show just how wonderful the Novel is because it can provide a lifetime of other reading to inform and enrich the text - so here they are... in no particular order.
**And let it be noted these are all copyrighted materials and forgive me for photographing them and some of the artwork within - my intent is to honor the works and definitely not to steal from them - thanks JTM
-Floodgates of the Wonderworld -
- I got this book in the mail today - and it immediately became one of my favorites - i'm still in the process of reading it but I've wanted it for awhile - and I got it cheap off amazon but it is beautiful - the haunting silkscreen artworks are amazing - the writing is great as well - instant classic of my library
Call Me Ishmael by Charles Olson
This is, in my humble opinion, THE best thing ever written about melville and Moby-Dick - this guy was an almost seven foot crazy drunk 'black mountain poet' slash gloucester hermit - brilliant and wild -the prose is poetry and he takes Moby-Dick head on the same way Melville took on America
Olson/melville - a study in affinity - by ann charters
this is an awesome study of the previous book and its writer - the access she gained is priceless and could only have come from the same woman who had intimate access to Jack Kerouac as well - I spent my young twenties devouring Kerouac and her books about him - No disrespect but she is very old but still alive and that makes Professor Ann Charters the one person who I would love to sit down with and discuss Olson, melville, new england, Kerouac, writing and life before she passes - great book, great photos
Mariners, Renegades & Castaways - by C.L.R. James
Recent acquisition as well, got it last week - almost done with it - this is a controversial but exciting breakdown of Moby-Dick from the perspective of class and economic structure aboard the Pequod - great discussions of race and socialism and communism and economics and the working class struggle and slavery and the last chapter was omitted in prior printings for being too crazy and incendiary and critical of America's class and economic system - James wrote this in the 50's while being imprisoned on Ellis island before he was deported - this is much like Olson's book because in a way they both are Outsider art, ie almost non-academic treatises by fans of melville who were not trying to write their way to tenure... this book is heady, smart, and full of vocab that oft made me run for the dictionary.com - Wonderful and also I love it because its from one of the few non-white multicultural melville scholars of his era who offers a much more unique perspective than many of the old white men who fared much worse trying to do the same
Bloom's Modern Critical interpretations - Moby-Dick
This is by far the most academic (and most expensive) text I have but it is a must read after you have read Moby-Dick - Harold bloom is kinda the badass of literary criticism - albeit not without faults and biases - He's as prolific as the golden arches - if you are an oenophile, he's like the Robert Parker of books - by that I mean he's got his nose in almost too many wines to really be able to judge them anymore but here he does choose some of the best essays ever written about melville and MD. Included is a passage from Olson's book and also famous essays on Race, sexuality, civil war, the pop culture of melville's day, the megalomania of Ahab and many more - Bloom's essay may be the weakest one but that is saying alot - bloom probably knows more about shakespeare than any human on the planet so he's qualified to edit this book - if you ever want to analyze Melville and MD these essays are probably where to begin
Moby-Dick - my first copy
This is the signet classics copy my english teacher had us read the one year i spent in boarding school - THIS is how a book should look - thank you Mr. Greason - you started me down the melvillian rabbit hole
Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges
This book has nothing to do with Moby-Dick but you cannot be informed on any writer, or the art of writing, or the art of thinking, or the art of knowing why life is worth living without reading and pondering Borges - His short stories, essays and poetry taught me how to think about myself as a writer because he writes about the strangeness and self-awaredness of writing about himself as a writer - he taught me the infiniteness of the universe and of knowledge, the nature of cyclical time, and the best lesson I ever learned from Borges is that I will never be smart enough to really know what the hell he was talking about and that I'll never be smart enough to really Know Anything - and the wisdom to know that I'm cool with that
Moby-Dick - intro by philbrook
this is my nicer copy - great cover - I have a bad habit of throwing away the dust jackets of hardcover books - they are a pain in the ass if you actually read books not collect them but often I lose great artwork by doing so, so it is nice when a paperback book comes with a nice cover - the enfolding art is great and philbrooks intro is smart and heart-felt - he wrote "in the heart of the sea" which was a best seller so he knows his stuff even if - and forgive me - i never finished it nor do i own it - I prefer the older more original takes on the wreck of the whaleship essex - and also see Olson's book again for the best retelling of the saga anyways
Stove by a whale -
this is an older, more original telling of the wreck of the whaleship essex - for which melville based his book - wonderful
Poems by walt whitman including leaves of grass
- general era of MD - even if later than it but provides insight into america before during and after the civil war - priceless, divine
A Dead whale or a stove boat -
Let's digress for a second and talk about animal cruelty - I abhor it - whaling is by definition a brutal inhuman inhumane violent task - I love Moby-Dick it was a great book and i'll go as far as saying that whaling had its place in american history - even go as far as saying it was vital and without it we would have floundered in the vast wilderness of our new world, however I'm cool with there never being anymore whaling - even by the inuit or the japanese -
That being said - this next book is awesome - in the literal sense that it gave me awe because it details an actual whaling voyage and is amazing in its honest portrayal of the fishing at hand, the multicultural crew, and life on a whaleboat. Therefore - if faint of heart shield your eyes if reading this book but if you can find a copy it is without peer.
Ok - this post is getting long so I'll give you one more before retiring for the night -
I've got plenty more ready to go especially a bunch on one of my favorite aspects of MD - racial politics and my favorite character Pip which I will tackle tomorrow......
but here's a vital one to end the day- the sine qua non
Thanks for reading - JTM
I agree, "Floodgates of the Wonderworld" is a beautiful book. For a wider perspective on Moby-Dick and the visual arts, you should check out Elizabeth Schultz's "Unpainted to the Last: Moby-Dick and 20th Century Art," a heavily illustrated primer on Moby-Dick and the visual arts--drawings, paintings, sculpture, architecture, illustrated editions of MD, graphic-novel treatments of MD, etc.
ReplyDeletePhilbrick's "In the Heart of the Sea" is certainly worth reading. After you finish it you could try Caroline Alexander's "The Bounty." Those two books will give you a much clearer impression of the realities of shipboard life, as well as the very real terrors of being 'lost-at-sea.'