My Moby-Dick Library Part II

Note- If you're reading backwards - go back and read the last post first -thanks

Good Morning - today we are going to continue to embark on the journey of discovering books that inform and compliment the reading of MD. In honesty this is my way of offering up a resource that I wish I had four years ago when i started to gather some quality MD ephemera in earnest. Its been a literal scavenger hunt online, in old bookstores, at the library, yard sales etc and though its been fun I wish someone had compiled a list like this - you can always google MD and they'll list a million books on it but it may take you years to filter through them to find the good ones - (and never mind the annoying bing commercials - that search engine isn't any better) anyways -here's a continuation of some of my favorites...

I'll start by saying that one of my favorite characters is Pip, the black cabin boy on the Pequod and i find it entertaining to read scholarship pertaining to him and to the issue of race in general in Melville - Amazingly the discussions in MD about multi-culturalism are immense and well-informed - Melville is singularly modern in his understanding and development of human nature, of the relationship between men of different backgrounds and the Pequod is by far the most diverse society in Literature - any serious or even jovial discussion of the novel would be nonsensical and ill-informed without an examination of this melting pot of humanity and the way we as humans interact according to, in spite of, or in deference to racial politics. so here are a few takes on race in MD -
** Again for more info on this subject in addition to these listed go back and read James' book -"Mariners, renegades, and Castaways", shakespeare's king lear, the lottery of babylon by borges, and the great essay by fred bernard in the academic textbook edited by Bloom.
**also theres a blog I love that has some great posts on Pip called 'confessions of a bathroom blogger' by a very cool woman, scholar, politician Professor Rebecca Williams - go to her blog and search for old Pip articles- well worth the read -

Ok - let's begin

African Culture in Melville's Art - by Sterling Stuckey
This had a nicer dust cover but I lost it - this book was written fairly recently and it is amazing - Stuckey examines how African -American culture of melville's day informed and educated him, particularly the music of drum circles and entertainers in the albany and Manhattan of Melville's youth. Stuckey realizes there is a big gap in the scholarship of Race in MD and he fills it here - He also talks at length of Benito Cerano - another later HM narrative that is about a slave revolt aboard a ship but the MD parts are fascinating as well - especially the attention to historical accuracy and even some speculation about the life of Black culture around HM. This is a much needed book and could stand alone as American history as much as a book about Melville

The narrative of the life of Frederick douglass - essential reading to frame America and New bedford and the black experience of the 1800's

slave girl narrative - excellent

african-american art - this is just fun and great in that it documents the intellectual and artistic contributions of a much maligned and ignored aspect of American art

Riverside anthology - definitive academic text collecting many many narratives in one book - could spend years reading this

The souls of black folk - w.e. du bois
continuation of the black literary tradition

From freedom to freedom - another great book

 The list would be incomplete without this -

Also - on another cultural note - and to gain insight into a much more ignored aspect of Native American history read this book -

Ok - and last on this subject - and actually this one is more about the literal blackness of Man's soul and the darkness of metaphor that writer's use, but touches on race here and there and is a heady discussion of metaphor in Melville and others - I know I keep saying books are 'great' but this one was a good find -

This could be a good segue into Melville's peer, Nathaniel Hawthorne who is worth reading and reading about to get a glimpse into the contemporaries of HM

and a good study of allegory concerning many writers but touching on these two

here's a novel written very smartly about  Melville, ishmael, Hawthorne, frederick Douglass and others from the perspective of Ahab's wife - Great extrapolation of a few lines in the MD text into a completely new narrative - To be honest not my favorite - though the author writes better than I could - I feel this is better read as a young girl's coming of age story rather than an informative MD resource - nicely written but didactic - I felt I was getting "life lessons" thrown at me in every chapter - but great addition to the MD ephemera

To return to Melville studies read these next few books -

and this is a hard to find book that exhaustingly breaks down almost every reference to MD and guesses at exactly how HM constructed his novel - brilliant!

and here are some other melville works - let me say that owning various publications of the novel is good just for the different intros and prefaces by scholars - i like to get varying perspectives on the book and the  introductions are a good touchstone to MD scholarship at the time of publication

and here's a great artistic rendering of ethereal woodcuts framing Melville's poetry - very political and rare - I got it for $2 then saw a 'rare' book dealer here in town trying to sell it for $80 - but in my opinion all his book are way overpriced - i won't mention the name but its on nicollet mall :)
anyways this is a protest in paperback

 and this brings me to the issue of art again and its relation to MD - I must say I was never really a comic book reader growing up - I read the comic strips but never comics with the exception of - as I got older - I discovered  some great graphic novels  - The apex being Art Speigelman's (sp?) "Maus I and II" - by far  one of the masterworks of art, literature, jewish cultural studies, and Holocaust memoirs -
but with that in mind I recently bought this collection of comic books and it made me regret not reading them in the past - My whole idea of MD was reinvigorated and refreshed by the masterful visual depictions - I hope my son gets into these when he gets older - Buy them!!!

I'm jumping around but back to some more historical framing of MD -

Abe Lincoln in Illinois -
and again  this is a civil war era fiction - actually a play about Lincoln that is great and I'm not sure how I acquired it but it is signed by the author with an inscribed note to a friend - wonderful!

and more melville works-

and more melville works -

And if you're in high school and read these you're cheating but they are great as a quick resource to get an overview of big tropes in MD -

This book influence Melville immensely - and all western thought for that matter -

 and so did this

on the leviathan theme - read these books -

and a fun picture book for young readers  - this is really informative about whales -

and HM was influenced perhaps by this too - I know borges was -

and every novelist owes debt to this genius text -

 and to these books

 and for fun - the last one spawned this

I seem to be veering off the subject so to return to melville I just got this book -

 and then to veer again off-course - here's a captivating photo book that reminds me of my hometown of Maine and will bring you to the visceral level of the sea whilst reading MD -
Great book by Maine's pre-eminent photographer Neal Parent - signed by the author - My brother joe gave this to me for Christmas one year - Thank you, Joe

For today I'll leave you with those great pictures - tomorrow we will wrap up my Moby-Dick Library - Have a great, no I mean, freakin' stoke-filled day! JTM