In the Heart of the Sea

[Scott Baxter]

Does anyone know of the plans for a movie on Philbrick's book? The news on the Internet is sketchy and wondered if anyone on the list had heard.

Scott

Sent from my iPod

[Clare Spark]

You do understand, Scott, do you not, that by accepting Philbrick as
any kind of Melville expert, you buy into the notion that the text is
what it seems, a story about whalers and a crazy Captain. There are
Melville critics who read MD that way, but there are many who do not.
Lawrance Thompson of Princeton was one of the latter. I read him
first, and wrongly assumed that he was par for the course.

Clare Spark

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--
Clare Spark, Ph.D.
Director, The Yankee Doodle Society
Clarespark.com
clare...@verizon.net

[Scott Baxter]

I don't know if he would consider himself an expert on Melville, I think of him first and foremost as a historian of Nantucket( although he has written on the Mayflower, the Wilkes expedition and Custer's Last Stand) I would very much like to see a movie on the Essex, I hope it gets made. I have a few questions for you( and anyone else) regarding 'Moby Dick'; when did you first read it, how many times have you read it and have your views changed over time( or readings) I truly think one of it's great secrets is that there is no secret; the mundane details of life aboard a whaler is much like our lives. Some moments of terror or excitement surrounded by hours of lookout at the masthead. There of course is so many intriguing angles; the absence of women, the fact no ports are touched during the voyage, the diversity of the crew. I suppose I am odd but the chapters and chapters on whaling and whales and the details of life aboard ship are to me as interesting as Ahab/Starbuck and the chase for Moby Dick.

Scott

Sent from my iPod

[Clare Spark]

You are seriously asking me how many times I have read Moby-Dick? Is
this a joke?

[Scott Baxter]

I was curious as to if you read it every year, every 5 years or just chapters or sections periodically that are of special interest. I have only read it twice all the way through but read chapters or sections I enjoy from time to time.

Scott

Sent from my iPod

[Clare Spark]

If one is to write a scholarly book on an author, one must not only
read the accepted masterpieces, but all of the books, and preferably
in the sequence in which they were composed. One reads the difficult
ones over and over. I would write a section or a summary, and go back
to the text to make sure I had not hallucinated. As an exercise, I
once suggested that one read Moby-Dick taking care to see what Ahab
said in his own voice about his quest, in contrast to what the
narrator Ishmael said about him.
At times, I suspected (in print) that Ahab seized the narration
from the more timid and conformist Ishmael, especially in Loose Fish
Fast Fish.
I gather, Scott, that you have not read my book on Melville and
the distortions of the so-called Melville Revival. It took decades to
prepare, and I could easily do another edition, revising some of the
earlier judgments. Such is life and learning.

Clare Spark

[Tim Strzechowski]

One must remember that Clare Spark has written a book on Melville. She reminds us of it every chance she gets.

Sent from my iPad

[gordon poole]

Dear Scott:
        I think I have read Moby-Dick three times in my life, plus -- like yourself -- single chapters or episodes. My favorite chapter is 87, where the question repeatedly posed and returned to throughout the romance, the nature of the whale, receives an answer: it is an enormous, gorgeous, sea-going mammal. The book is constructed around Ahab's mad conviction that the whale means something. Books have authors, so a whale in a book can of course mean something. Whales in nature don't mean, unless one thinks of the world and nature as a book, the liber naturae, with an Author, as Melville's religious contemporaries of course did. What is curious about the white whale is that the narration constantly conspires to suggest his meaningfulness, he's being perceived as a floating symbol, especially in Ahab's warped mind, but of course neither Ahab nor nyone else ever finds out what he symbolizes. When theologians attacked Moby-Dick as blasphemous, they knew what they were about.
        I also share your fascination with the descriptions of the whaling industry and its paraphernalia, lowerings, life on board, gams, all the quotidian nitty-gritty that fills so much of the book. This is the material reality on which the mad game of transcending is based. If the reader does not understand from the outset that Moby-Dick is first of all an adventure story about whaling and an alpha-male skipper sick with fixation, he will jump off into rootless speculation and turn the story into some kind of proving ground to test his pet philosophical or literary critical theories, or maybe get bored and stop reading.
        One of the reasons many Italian students don't like Dante's Divine Comedy is that they no sooner read about the pilgrim in Canto 1 being prevented from ascending a delightful mountain by three threatening beasts when some teacher or the footnotes themselves distract him prematurely by seeking to identify the symbolic meaning of the beasts. The Divine Comedy is first of all a travelogue about a man on a physical journey to the pit of hell, up the mount of purgatory, and into a marvelous light-show called paradise.
        The reader of both Moby-Dick and The Divine Comedy is well advised to start with the adventure stories; in one case the astounding adventure of men in a boat, rowing backwards right up to a huge whale, daring to try to kill it for profit; in the other a fantastic journey through other-worldly realms, filled with powerfully drawn characters, demons, monsters, saints, angels, an incredibly beautiful, beatifying woman, and a final electrifying visio Dei that knocks the pilgrim out cold. The other levels of interpretation, important as they are, should come when the physical reality of the itinerants' experiences, Ishmael's and Dante's (I mean the pilgrims, not the narrating Is) is felt and absorbed.
                Gordon Poole

[Scott Baxter]

Very good descriptions on both books; a good friend of mine is obsessed with The Divine Comedy as I am with Moby and I read it last year for the first time. Amazing work, I really like the Ulysses Canto and was blown away by the imagery. Don Quixote is a favorite as well, incredible novel. I thought of you today with the earthquake, I am glad your ok and hope any family and friends there are ok as well.

Scott

Sent from my iPod

[Clare Spark]

To Tim, that was a gratuitously nasty comment you made about me. If
anything, my last message was about how much I would like to revise
the book and proposed a way to study Melville or any other author with
integrity.
Clare

[Tim Strzechowski]

And "Are you seriously asking me how many times I've read Moby-Dick? Is this a joke?" isn't a snarky reply to Scott Baxter's inquiry? Sorry, but for someone who flaunts her academic creds and accomplishment the way you do, I expected less pomposity from you.

You clearly expect to be held to a high standard in this forum. Earn it.

Sent from my iPad

[fin john]

All,

 

     I first came upon Moby-Dick in college. A friend who was a year ahead of me was reading the novel for class. He tried to tell me the ending, but I would not let him. He was irked.

     I believe that summer I was reading the novel in my father's garage. I remember coming across the word "farrago" early in the novel and wondering what it meant. My father came along and asked what I was studying. I said that I wasn't studying anything. In my mind I was reading for pleasure, not studying. Communication with my alcoholic father was not always easy.

 

     Probably some seven years later I became interested in the stars, the constellations. Although I had read Moby-Dick but once at that time, I knew that Melville had used the Christian constellations for the novel.

 

    Some years later Howard Vincent conducted a whale conference at Kent State. I went down to Kent, met Vincent and Harry Hayford and the crazy Viola Sachs. The rest continues history.

 

John Gretchko

[Scott Baxter]

What a great story, I too love the constellations and sailing the seven seas in a frigate( guided missile frigate) I got to see them beautifully, the 'starry archipelagoes' as Melville would say. Unfortunately, I also share having had an alcoholic father, died when I was 16. He too was in the Navy, I wish he would have seen me in my crackerjacks, he was a good man but the bottle got the best of him. Don't know why I went on with that but if there are those on the list whose Dad is still here, count yourself blessed.

Scott

Sent from my iPod

[fin john]

Scott, just curious. As a sailor, did you ever know of some sort of nautical relationship between the star Spica in Virgo and the star Arturus in Bootes?

 

Tim, criticism is fine. But could we limit it to one's work and not one's person.

 

John Gretchko

[Alvin Hass]

Dear Gordon and Listmates,      The first time I read Moby-Dick, I was 10-going-on-11, sitting on the beach at Asbury Park, NJ, and listening to the surf.  I read it for a sea adventure, and I was not disappointed.       Regards, Normie --- On Sun, 5/20/12, gordon poole <go.p...@libero.it> wrote:

[Clare Spark]

As I wrote earlier, Lawrance Thompson, in his 1952 book Melville's
Quarrel With God, talked about the lower layers in MD, and was
adamant about the first and most obvious reading of MD being a kind of
snare for the reader. Harrison Hayford said in no uncertain terms that
MD was about "the quest for truth." I agree with him. I still maintain
that Philbrick is a poor guide to the many layers of meaning in MD,
and that reading about the actual sequence of drafts of MD, and its
clashing interpretations is a valuable guide to students. Along with
that, I maintain that you can't understand the first thing about HM or
any other author without reading all of his works in the order
composed.
The fact that I spent so many decades studying Melville and the
Melville problem appears to be an irritant to Tim and perhaps others.
I make no apology, nor do I expect agreement about my historical
analysis of the controversies in Melville scholarship, only that they
be engaged, and proven wrong, but please, not by ad hominem attacks on
myself, which is tantamount to dismissing the very labor that Melville
poured into works, works that often brought the condition of workers
to the foreground of the reader's attention.
I will not end this without mentioning misogyny. Is there any on this list?

Clare Spark

[gordon poole]

Dear John:
        I met Viola Sachs many years ago. I can't remember when or where, but she was accompanied by a few female students who were under the influence of her interpretations of Melville. I supose that when you say that she was "crazy," you mean no more than that you were in strong disaccord with her ideas on Melville, not that she was insane. (Otherwise your epithet would have been offensive.) If so, I agree. She formed a coterie of French students who followed her lead in Melville esegetics, such as Janine Dove.
        Maybe great works of art, for some reason, attract esoteric interpretative thrusts, like those of Gabriele Rossetti and other similar critics on the Divine Comedy. I mean critics who get hung up on one interpretive slant, that leads them away from the text, but that they cannot give up. It doesn't have to be an obsessive search for language play, as in Dove and Sachs (only apparently textually oriented, confined to the strictly lexual dimension), but can be ideological, scientific, astrological, astronomical, or political as well. Sachs and Jove scour the text of Moby-Dick for words that phonetically suggest other words and hence convey arcane meanings that Melville, perhaps fearful of ideological discovery as a disbeliever or for whatever reason, would have wittingly hidden beneath the surface of his texts, codified only for his inside readers, the real afficionados; while a few other readers, like Clare Clark (but I have not read her book), uninterested in close criticism but no less ideologically motivated, and agreeing with the idea that Melville was hiding himself away behind his words in order to avoid being discovered (which I find to be a rather demeaning critical assessment), see him differently. Then there are those who, unable to come to an assessment of his works, opt for ambiguity as the interpretive key for understanding his works. My idea is that he was not ambiguous; he was offering solutions but evidencing problems and challenging his readers to deal with them.
                Gordon

[gordon poole]

At 16.00 21/05/2012, you wrote:

[Clare Spark]

Gordon Poole feels comfortable characterizing my reading of Melville,
though he has not read my book. Perhaps he has read the review in
Leviathan, that though it generally praised the book, also accused me
of an Ahab-like project to get even with Pacifica Radio, that had
purged me as Program Director of KPFK.
If my book does not consist of close readings, then I am a white
whale or worse.
Any historian will look at patronage, family history, prior
influences, what can and cannot be said at a given historical moment,
and the silences in the text, in addition to looking at ambiguity and
the ideology of the readers themselves, that may or may not filter out
disturbing subjects such as double binds, ambiguity, and ambivalence.
I recommend Harrison Hayford's underappreciated book on Melville's
Prisons, since my own is apparently out of bounds.

Clare Spark

>><<mailto:clare...@gmail.com>clare...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > To Tim, that was a gratuitously nasty comment you made about me. If
>> > anything, my last message was about how much I would like to revise
>> > the book and proposed a way to study Melville or any other author with
>> > integrity.
>> > Clare
>> >
>> > On 5/20/12, Clare Spark

>> <<mailto:clare...@gmail.com>clare...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >> If one is to write a scholarly book on an author, one must not only
>> >> read the accepted masterpieces, but all of the books, and preferably
>> >> in the sequence in which they were composed. One reads the difficult
>> >> ones over and over. I would write a section or a summary, and go back
>> >> to the text to make sure I had not hallucinated. As an exercise, I
>> >> once suggested that one read Moby-Dick taking care to see what Ahab
>> >> said in his own voice about his quest, in contrast to what the
>> >> narrator Ishmael said about him.
>> >> At times, I suspected (in print) that Ahab seized the narration
>> >> from the more timid and conformist Ishmael, especially in Loose Fish
>> >> Fast Fish.
>> >> I gather, Scott, that you have not read my book on Melville and
>> >> the distortions of the so-called Melville Revival. It took decades to
>> >> prepare, and I could easily do another edition, revising some of the
>> >> earlier judgments. Such is life and learning.
>> >>
>> >> Clare Spark
>> >>

>> >> On 5/20/12, Scott Baxter <<mailto:srlb...@aol.com>srlb...@aol.com>

>> wrote:
>> >>> I was curious as to if you read it every year, every 5 years or just
>> >>> chapters or sections periodically that are of special interest. I have
>> >>> only
>> >>> read it twice all the way through but read chapters or sections I
>> >>> enjoy
>> >>> from
>> >>> time to time.
>> >>>
>> >>> Scott
>> >>>
>> >>> Sent from my iPod
>> >>>
>> >>> On May 20, 2012, at 12:13 PM, Clare Spark

>> <<mailto:clare...@gmail.com>clare...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >>>
>> >>>> You are seriously asking me how many times I have read Moby-Dick? Is
>>
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[Phil Walsh]

...and hence convey arcane meanings that Melville ... would have wittingly hidden beneath the surface of his texts, codified only for his inside readers, the real afficionados

Is there a specific term in the vocabulary of literary criticism for this phenomenon?

[Clare Spark]

My work is all together a defense of autodidacts. To turn me (?) into
some kind of arcane, snooty elitist is tantamount to slander. You
should be aware of the insinuations of these attacks on my work or
that of others.
Anyone here is capable of doing the work I did. And everyone else
is part of a community of readers, free to criticize each other on the
basis of evidence. Or is evidence beside the point?
Clare

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[gordon poole]

Dear Scott:
        A hug!
                Gordon

[gordon poole]

Clare Spark:
        You have written: "I maintain that you can't understand the first thing about HM or any other author without reading all of his works in the order composed." I hesitate to believe you mean this literally, because it would be absurd, but who knows? In order to understand "In a Bye-Canal" must one have read Typee, or she should keep her mouth shut?!
        More worrisomely, you have raised the specter of misogyny on this list, by which I suppose you mean that you have been subjected to ad feminam attacks by someone : "I will not end this without mentioning misogyny. Is there any on this list?" If it were so, it was a grievous fault. You must furnish evidence at once that this has taken place, and I am sure that the web master will take remedial action. If that person should not, I will certainly raise my voice. But if you don't furnish evidence, I will conclude that your accusation is groundless, which would reflect on your credibility. Then the ball will be in your court. In any case, I did not suspect that your curt, to my mind unwarranted put-down of Scott, rightly criticized by Tim Strzechowski, was gender oriented, that you were putting down the uppety male. I interpreted it rather as that of a self-defined authority, writer of books (insistently touted), the expert, laying down the law to a presumed underling.
                Gordon Poole

        
At 20.44 22/05/2012, Clare Spark wrote:

As I wrote earlier, Lawrance Thompson, in his 1952 book Melville's
Quarrel With God,  talked about the lower layers in MD, and was
adamant about the first and most obvious reading of MD being a kind of
snare for the reader. Harrison Hayford said in no uncertain terms that
MD was about "the quest for truth." I agree with him. I still maintain
that Philbrick is a poor guide to the many layers of meaning in MD,
and that reading about the actual sequence of drafts of MD, and its
clashing interpretations is a valuable guide to students. Along with
that, I maintain that you can't understand the first thing about HM or
any other author without reading all of his works in the order
composed.
   The fact that I spent so many decades studying Melville and the
Melville problem appears to be an irritant to Tim and perhaps others.
I make no apology, nor do I expect agreement about my historical
analysis of the controversies in Melville scholarship, only that they
be engaged, and proven wrong, but please, not by ad hominem attacks on
myself, which is tantamount to dismissing the very labor that Melville
poured into works,  works that often brought the condition of workers
to the foreground of the reader's attention.

[Clare Spark]

This will be my last posting on this thread. I raised the question of
misogyny because I have long felt that the Melville discussion groups
were more of a boy's club than is readily admitted. I hope that I am
wrong. But it is true that a female scholar has laid out what she
considers to be adequate investigation of an individual author. This
seems to have outraged a few of you. That is your problem, not mine.
We just have different standards as to what constitutes legitimate
scholarship. That I have cited Hayford twice, seems not to have made
an impression.
These messages, directed against me, are obviously personal and
offered in bad faith. I am truly through the Looking Glass. No more of
this.
Clare

[Scott Baxter]

Not sure of any direct nautical connection but I seem to recall both names as stars that we used for navigation. I wish I had paid more attention to celestial navigation when I was in, an amazing art.

Scott

Sent from my iPod

[Scott Baxter]

Thanks Gordon!

Sent from my iPod

[gordon poole]

Dear List:
        Clare Spark says: "If my book does not consist of close readings, then I am a white whale or worse." I confess that have not read Clare Spark's book, so I may be wrong about her lack of interest in close readings, although nothing she has written in Ishmailites or in old and defunct Ishmail has led me to think she has any interest in explicating Melville -- explicating in the sense of explication de texte. i.e., close reading.. Nor, when I have in the past called her to account for her understandings of Melville's thoughts, has she ever supported her opinions with textual quotations, at least as far as I recall.
        And, yes, as Clare suspects, I have read Dennis Berthold's review of it in Leviathan (V, 2, 2003). I wonder how Clare could have read the latter and come away with the idea that Berthold had "praised" her book. Berthold, generally a gentle soul, although he did his best to evidence what he found to be the positive aspects of Clare's work, criticizes her severely for her critical method, noting -- just to give an example -- what he held to be her "penchant for over-generalizations, name-calling, and rhetorical exaggeration," presumably not the virtues of a "professional historian." Clare's issues with Pacifica Radio, which she misleadingly singles out in her recent message as a major thrust of Berthold's review, were actually a sidenote in a single paragraph in Berthold's review. His conclusion is that "for all Clare's relentless digging in the archives, estimable attempts at synthesis, and mighty aim of overturning the 'Melville industry' by reinstating Ahab at its center, her book fails to convince. For the ironic 'truth' is, she fits into the same tradition as her bétes noires Olsen and Murray, those oddball iconoclasts whose cranky and single-minded takes on Melville sometimes dazzle but often blind."
        Let me be clear. My remarks obviously do not regard Clare's book, which, to repeat, I have not read, but Berthold's review of it and, above all, Clare's faulty summary of the purport of the latter.
        I fear, rereading the above, that I have fallen into the trap, which already threatened to happen way back in Ishmail, of shifting the emphasis of the list from Melville to Clare Spark.
                Gordon Poole

[gordon poole]

At 00.02 23/05/2012, Clare Spark wrote:

> >><mailto:ishmailites%2Bunsu...@googlegroups.com>ishmailites+unsubscri
> b...@googlegroups.com.

[Phil Walsh]

Dear list-mates,

My question regarding the vocabulary of literary criticism was an honest one. Unfortunately, in its brevity and terseness it has the effect of voicing support for or approval of Gordon Poole's original post. This was not my intent and I apologize for the confusion.

Phil Walsh



Sent from my iPod

[Fernando Velasco]

Dear Gordon:

    

Can you expatiate a little more on this 'strictly lexual dimension' analysis of Sachs and Dove (or Jove)? What are the basic books/papers? If I remember right Harold Beaver notes include many instances of this type of interpretation.

 

Fernando

[fin john]

Gordon,

    Yes, I meant that Viola Sachs was crazed, not crazy. I met her but once, although I did correspond with her a couple of times. Howard Vincent had met her when he was in Paris, then invited her to Kent State. Perhaps we should respect her intuition, if nothing else.

 

    I am reading Milder and ? editing of Hawthorne's notebooks. I believe published by Ohio State. The editors do a good job of boiling down the notebooks, although I have never seen the originals. Hawthorne in England visited Delia Bacon, an American who believed that Shakespeare had been written by a composite of people. Hawthorne seemed to like her but did not adhere to her theories. She was a nice person who could not give up her crotchet, if I may use that word.

 

    Similarly, I cannot give up my crotchet respecting Melville's use of Christian constellations. But I have given up other ideas, which I held respecting Melville. I intuit that I will cradle this obsession until my demise.

 

   Do you agree with Clare Spark that Moby-Dick is a quest for truth? If so, what is truth?

[Clare Spark]

To Phil, apology accepted. Yesterday was upsetting to me, for I felt
generally attacked for scholarship that has occupied me since 1976 at
least. To John G.: I quoted Harrison Hayford, who was not only my
friend and supporter, but opened his files to me in ways that
strengthened my arguments in HCA. But I agreed with him, to be sure.
You ask the correct question: What is truth? It depends on the
evidence at hand, and will always be controversial, as competing
readings are ever at play, as long as we are divided by class and/or
ideology. Historians are only as good as their sources, and even when
we do extensive archival research, we must reckon with the biases of
the writer. I tried in my book to report what had remained hidden for
decades, because the materials were either sequestered, or were
ignored by scholars with an axe to grind.
To Gordon: to marginalize major figures in the Melville revival
such as Henry A. Murray and Charles Olson as cranks reflects poorly on
your character. I'm sorry. They have had their followers, and in my
view, were more insightful than most in their initial responses to
Melville's writing. Were they biased and opportunistic? Who isn't? Are
you claiming superior insight and morality for yourself? I did not,
though I was sometimes accused by readers of my ms. before publication
that I was another Ahab, because not postmodern enough in denying the
existence of "truth."
And yet this very long book was published by an academic press,
and then reissued five years later as a paperback, in a second
edition. I would probably make even more revisions an corrections
today, were I given the opportunity.

I will probably write a blog about this dispute (yesterday's) and
feature the Hobbesian attack on curiousity as a dangerous passion. See
Hawthorne's Caleb Williams for a delicious example, and it was one of
the books HM bought on his first trip to Europe.

Clare Spark

On 5/23/12, fin john <stein....@gmail.com> wrote:
> Gordon,
> Yes, I meant that Viola Sachs was crazed, not crazy. I met her but
> once, although I did correspond with her a couple of times. Howard Vincent
> had met her when he was in Paris, then invited her to Kent State. Perhaps
> we should respect her intuition, if nothing else.
>
> I am reading Milder and ? editing of Hawthorne's notebooks. I believe
> published by Ohio State. The editors do a good job of boiling down the
> notebooks, although I have never seen the originals. Hawthorne in England
> visited Delia Bacon, an American who believed that Shakespeare had been
> written by a composite of people. Hawthorne seemed to like her but did not
> adhere to her theories. She was a nice person who could not give up her
> crotchet, if I may use that word.
>
> Similarly, I cannot give up my crotchet respecting Melville's use of
> Christian constellations. But I have given up other ideas, which I held
> respecting Melville. I intuit that I will cradle this obsession until my
> demise.
>

> Do you agree with Clare Spark that *Moby-Dick* is a quest for truth? If

> so, what is truth?
>
> John Gretchko
>
>
>
> On Mon, May 21, 2012 at 7:45 PM, gordon poole <go.p...@libero.it> wrote:
>
>> Dear John:

>> ** **I met Viola Sachs many years ago. I can't remember when or

>> where, but she was accompanied by a few female students who were under
>> the
>> influence of her interpretations of Melville. I supose that when you say
>> that she was "crazy," you mean no more than that you were in strong
>> disaccord with her ideas on Melville, not that she was insane. (Otherwise
>> your epithet would have been offensive.) If so, I agree. She formed a
>> coterie of French students who followed her lead in Melville esegetics,
>> such as Janine Dove.

>> ** **Maybe great works of art, for some reason, attract esoteric

>> interpretative thrusts, like those of Gabriele Rossetti and other similar

>> critics on the *Divine Comedy. *I mean critics who get hung up on one

>> interpretive slant, that leads them away from the text, but that they
>> cannot give up. It doesn't have to be an obsessive search for language
>> play, as in Dove and Sachs (only apparently textually oriented, confined
>> to
>> the strictly lexual dimension), but can be ideological, scientific,
>> astrological, astronomical, or political as well. Sachs and Jove scour
>> the

>> text of *Moby-Dick *for words that phonetically suggest other words and

>> hence convey arcane meanings that Melville, perhaps fearful of
>> ideological
>> discovery as a disbeliever or for whatever reason, would have wittingly
>> hidden beneath the surface of his texts, codified only for his inside
>> readers, the real afficionados; while a few other readers, like Clare
>> Clark
>> (but I have not read her book), uninterested in close criticism but no
>> less
>> ideologically motivated, and agreeing with the idea that Melville was
>> hiding himself away behind his words in order to avoid being discovered
>> (which I find to be a rather demeaning critical assessment), see him
>> differently. Then there are those who, unable to come to an assessment of
>> his works, opt for ambiguity as the interpretive key for understanding
>> his
>> works. My idea is that he was not ambiguous; he was offering solutions
>> but
>> evidencing problems and challenging his readers to deal with them.

>> ** **** **Gordon

>>
>> At 16.00 21/05/2012, you wrote:
>>
>> All,
>>

>> I first came upon *Moby-Dick* in college. A friend who was a year

>> ahead of me was reading the novel for class. He tried to tell me the
>> ending, but I would not let him. He was irked.
>> I believe that summer I was reading the novel in my father's garage.
>> I remember coming across the word "farrago" early in the novel and
>> wondering what it meant. My father came along and asked what I was
>> studying. I said that I wasn't studying anything. In my mind I was
>> reading
>> for pleasure, not studying. Communication with my alcoholic father was
>> not
>> always easy.
>>
>> Probably some seven years later I became interested in the stars,
>> the

>> constellations. Although I had read *Moby-Dick* but once at that time, I

[gordon poole]

Dear Fernando:
        I'm forgetting my English! 'Lexual' doesn't exist; I meant lexical. And the last sentence of my message is missing a 'not': "he [Melville] was not offering solutions but evidencing problems and challenging his readers to deal with them." It must have been late at night when I wrote that message.
        If I quote a little from an article by Janine Dove-Rumé, you'll get the picture. For instance, from "Melville's Fake Gams in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale" (Revue Francaise D'Etudes Américaines, no. 50, November 1991). Discussing the Rose-Bud chapter, she gives importance to the fact that "'bud' spelled backwards is 'dub,' one of the meanings of which is naming, nicknaming." She then notes that in the chapter "The Gam," "the word 'gam' appears in six different forms: GAM (title) ... 'Gam' ... Gam ... GAM (block letters) ... Gamming (capital G, gerund), gamming (small g, gerund). The gerund used twice confers to gam a dynamic nature submitted to change, and evokes creation. It confirms the function of gam as dromenon ... Significantly, the six variations add up to twenty-six letters, the number of God in the Caballa. The Jeroboam's protagonist's coat is said to have been 'cabalistically cut'."
        Get the idea? This is why John Grechko holds that particular school of textual criticism in low esteem. I met them once; I found them a pleasant bunch.
        On the other hand, I have always found the late Harold Beaver's edition of Moby-Dick enlightening and entertaining, although sometimes a bit "off the wall." I met him in Rome, had some interesting conversations with him, and some later comunication with him when he was editing a revue in Holland. Hershel Parker was very critical of him. As I recall, he accused him of plagarizing other peoples' material in compiling his notes to Moby-Dick. I hope I've got this right.
                Gordon

At 13.08 23/05/2012, Fernando Velasco wrote:

Dear Gordon:
   
Can you expatiate a little more on this 'strictly lexual dimension' analysis of Sachs and Dove (or Jove)? What are the basic books/papers? If I remember right Harold Beaver notes include many instances of this type of interpretation.
 
Fernando

De: gordon poole <go.p...@libero.it>
Para: ishma...@googlegroups.com
Enviado: Martes, 22 de mayo, 2012 1:45 A.M.
Asunto: Re: In the Heart of the Sea

Dear John:
         I met Viola Sachs many years ago. I can't remember when or where, but she was accompanied by a few female students who were under the influence of her interpretations of Melville. I supose that when you say that she was "crazy," you mean no more than that you were in strong disaccord with her ideas on Melville, not that she was insane. (Otherwise your epithet would have been offensive.) If so, I agree. She formed a coterie of French students who followed her lead in Melville esegetics, such as Janine Dove.

         Maybe great works of art, for some reason, attract esoteric interpretative thrusts, like those of Gabriele Rossetti and other similar critics on the Divine Comedy. I mean critics who get hung up on one interpretive slant, that leads them away from the text, but that they cannot give up. It doesn't have to be an obsessive search for language play, as in Dove and Sachs (only apparently textually oriented, confined to the strictly lexual dimension), but can be ideological, scientific, astrological, astronomical, or political as well. Sachs and Jove scour the text of Moby-Dick for words that phonetically suggest other words and hence convey arcane meanings that Melville, perhaps fearful of ideological discovery as a disbeliever or for whatever reason, would have wittingly hidden beneath the surface of his texts, codified only for his inside readers, the real afficionados; while a few other readers, like Clare Clark (but I have not read her book), uninterested in close criticism but no less ideologically motivated, and agreeing with the idea that Melville was hiding himself away behind his words in order to avoid being discovered (which I find to be a rather demeaning critical assessment), see him differently. Then there are those who, unable to come to an assessment of his works, opt for ambiguity as the interpretive key for understanding his works. My idea is that he was not ambiguous; m.

[gordon poole]

        Clare not only has misread Berthold's review of her book as generally positive, but she misreads my message. I never said that Murray and Olson were cranks. I was quoting from Berthold's review. It is he, not I, who writes: "for all Clare's relentless digging in the archives, estimable attempts at synthesis, and mighty aim of overturning the 'Melville industry' by reinstating Ahab at its center, her book fails to convince. For the ironic 'truth' is, she fits into the same tradition as her bétes noires Olsen and Murray, those oddball iconoclasts whose cranky and single-minded takes on Melville sometimes dazzle but often blind." So maybe my "character" escapes unscathed after all, even by her less than charming intimation that I am "claiming superior insight and morality for [myself]." Will she redirect her criticism toward Berthold now?
                Gordon Poole