Try All Things As I Might
TPUsher
Dear Hardeman,
I question my sanity in responding thus...
Final question first: The allegorical device of the text itself demands Melville “kill them off.”
As the previous post was pointed at myself, at least in part, I will explain myself via apologia.
It did not escape me that all dialog halted upon my words, leaving me in a brown study. I do appreciate your response directed at my probing questions. It is a curious thing to assert dialog depends on a single person when that person has spoken, no matter in how rhetorical (and perhaps pretentious) a manner. The meaning (or Truth) seemed poked and prodded at so clearly in your initial words from Nobody in Particular. So let me just depart with these thoughts.
Foremost, I sincerely understand the personal investment people have in subjects which they have dedicated much of their time, whether in a professional or lay capacity.
I very much enjoy the commentary which seems pointed at the secret within Melville's charmed circle, most especially when it points at the I, the narcissistic-subjective, which paradoxically bars entrance therein. It is the appropriate gateway to the truth--as Melville calls it, "the key to it all."
Foremost, I sincerely understand the personal investment people have in subjects which they have dedicated much of their time, whether in a professional or lay capacity. I truly do. But that does not change things.
As for speaking to what I believe and am willing to put myself far out on a limb declaring to be Melville’s intended meaning, I promised myself I would not dive into exegesis of any other works until my first work (on Moby-Dick) has got out there.
The offer still stands to read it to those interested in being second or third guinea pig.
After some twenty years of attempting to engage Melvillean's about that precise meaning (contacting, emailing, calling, meeting, submitting essays, applying to conferences), and having come up empty handed (surprise! people are interested in truth as much as identity, politics, and identity politics), regular avenues (ie-Ishmail) no longer seem wise. None have even chanced to listen to a word. I can only imagine, after 170 years, the claim seems crackpot. And so, I have conclude that I have put too much work into the project to just give it away. As an independent scholar, which I know some of this forum’s champions to be, some twenty years have been spent working in unsought solitude (I’d rather a paid position) on explaining the reading (in book form). I hope all can understand, it is for this reason one does not feel absolutely comfortable just sharing it willy-nilly. People steal IP all the time. The internet is not safe. Thus the formal offer of my book to beta readers.
On rare occasion, I have had the opportunity to be spoken at (sometimes aggressively, all times belittling) by some very prominent Melvillean's, all unwilling to receive the pitch let alone engage the possibility that there may be a specific meaning underlying Melville's words, none willing to accept Melville's words are not intended to impart meaning on a person by person basis. Of course, Melville was aware of this tendency to read themselves into a text in the individual, actively employing in much of his writing as a means to bar readers from recognizing his True meaning. This is the reason for the double-speaking surrounding Narcissus.
Without a doubt, I must conclude I lack any artful tact. The words of my previous posts bare an undeniable tone of “knowing” underlying them. I know not how else to broach the subject unless it be superficial foreplay--a waste of time. To remove the tone of discovery of meaning or intention would be to remove what I believe is the Truth. And that would be false. There is no intended haughtiness to this claim—all haughtiness lies with the proclamation itself. Still, no word can elicit defenses as quickly as that word, Truth. Mumbled in the meekest of voices, it is weight is enormous. Its plainest utterance seems able to make quick enemies in certain circles. But ignoring it is a risk. Recent publicized developments in Alzheimers research are a perfect example. The ivory tower failed the whole world for 40 years, and due to what? ego. So, then, how talk to ones so deeply invested in their own truths who in turn might proclaim the subjective truth for all cases before even considering them, even though one may be the real thing? It is a paradox which dances its self-perpetuating dance around the truth. Interestingly, all of this would not be lost on Melville, rather he would have delighted in, though he certainly publicly lamented the loss of his own Truths.
Once upon a time, truth seemed a strong thing, immovable, self-propagating. However, I've come to learn truth is a frail ember which needs a billows of many strong minds to feed its flame less the winds of infinite words tamp down its light and die. Thus I came to Ishmail some years ago.
I vent some of my frustration here. Forgive me this, for I have humbly offered the thing so many times only for it to be shouldered aside, likely all for the word Truth, and by ones in whose position is an implicit proclamation of truth seeking, no matter in what cranny it hides. So empathize: how does one talk about a new Truth to a group of invested specialists? As I said before, I get what it means to be invested. For my part, much of these twenty years have been spent wrestling with fears of confirmation-bias on top of feeling restrained from being able to do what seems the simplest, most obvious of things to solve my predicament, which is just come right out and say, does anybody want to see the secret meaning of Moby-Dick? The position necessarily situates one between a rock and a hard place.
Honestly, in some twisted way, I do wish I could chock my reading up to a personal reflection in the text--then I wouldn't have to have butted my own blasted head into the dead blind wall in an attempt to share meaning or truth (as did Melville). Surely, some unknown one that bursts in shouting "Eureka!" to a group of the brightest and most literate must be self-deluded. Ironically, I'd tend to think so. And, of course, potentially being self-deluded, I'd not think so in my own case. I catch the two and two. However, if one is actually a truth seeker, if one wants to see what a mind like Melville's can truly conceive (and it is absolutely spectacular!), in such a case they will chance it. It is not mine. It is all Melville's (but for my own lowly errors). Still, it is wondrous and one-of-a-kind. It is Shakespeare on fire. Though you might read Melville a thousand times, you’ve never seen this sort of metaphysical drama. There really is nothing like what he has accomplished in English letters or any literature that I know of.
Thus should it be understood why I came here peddling a chance to be a beta reader of my book. That offer was then retracted via frustrated deletion of my posts, because, frankly, a mind tired from trying only to be ignored grows calloused. Unthinking acceptance is not expected but at least some probing interest seemed reasonable.
Thus far, have I given my life over to an amazing truth, to a project that has shown me no thanks, provided no food for my plate, in an effort to cultivate wonder, and propagate progress (I should have just chased money and gone to law school).
As for the book, it has been tested out on an Oxford PhD who hadn't read Moby-Dick in 50 years. He returned with the enthusiastic proclamation "to hell with the intentional fallacy police, what you have written is a reconstructed intention of Melville's mind. A gem... fascinating… exciting... fun... etc..." I'd have much liked a Melville enthusiast to have read it first, but alas we live in a post-modern world which has birth a climate of post-truth inseminated by literary theory. People are not at all interested in intention (or Truth) except what they perceive, that is unless if comes from perceived authority. Again, the irony of this statement does not elude me.
All I know is I unwittingly, unintentionally tripped face first in a mess of Truth and, in the accident, discovered that the very Truth-telling that turned out to be Melville's own demise was destined to be my own. There's irony for you. How frigid the world does appear when what the narcissistic-I thinks to be impossible becomes ironical master over any and all hopes for even the faintest, playful light of truth—here is a diagnosis of the enfeebled Humanities and perhaps of Humanity itself.
Finally, I still assert, Bravo! for all the commentary, with little more to offer unless solicited. And right now, all I have to offer is the book. The questions each commentary asks, the ideas gathered, they all point at that single thing Melville is getting at. The question is a narcissistic one, I, ironically, know to be of the I to be certain.
With Sullen but Sincerest Cheers,
WG Long