Blogging the Great White Whale - Oh Cap'n, My Cap'n

Through to the 8^th chapter of the book and I now have had the opportunity to meet up with the first of the major characters that Ishmael introduces to the story – the unique Queequeg.  Queequeg, a Fijian, is tattooed from head to toe, is uncommonly massive and shaves himself with a harpoon.  Nowadays Queequeg would play rugby for Leinster, like the current Fijian star, Isa Nacewa http://www.leinsterrugby.ie/profiles/index.php?player=14900&includeref=dynamic .  But back in the 1800’s, Queequeg instead was on the front line of the most dangerous game afoot – the whaling ship.  Even at this early stage of the book the respect that both the narrator, and the other whalers, seem to have for Queequeg is apparent.  I also get the feeling that Queequeg is going to be such a big part of this narrative that we’d be better off leaving an in depth examination of him until a bit later. 

But the early parts of this book are full of other things that are worth talking about.  Melville basically takes the reader on a walking tour of New Bedford, checking in to an inn down by the docks, spending some time in the rough bar associated with this place of accommodation, finding himself sharing a bed with the aforementioned Queequeg, strolling about the town the next morning and stopping in to the local church. 

It is at this church that a rather strange thing happens.  Ishmael is looking around at the plaques on the wall, most of which relate to whaling men lost at sea, when the local preacher wanders in and ascends the pulpit.  Melville describes the pulpit as if it were a ship, and there is indeed a ladder that is used to get into it that is an exact replica of a ship’s ladder – right down to the fact that the preacher pulls it up behind him after he has climbed in.  Melville (through Ishmael) even comments on the symbolism of the act – and it’s symbolism that I’ll talk about next.

Moby Dick is, by every account, full of symbolic meaning at every level.  The whale itself is, as we’ve discussed, perhaps the greatest metaphorical symbol in literature.  The whale means something, the pulpit means something, the fact that Queequeg is tattooed certainly means something – and by “something” I mean something other than an oceanic mammal, a place from which to give sermons or skin markings. 

In fact, my worry is that it will be hard to read the book without the symbolic possibilities getting in the way.  This probably derives more from my built in prejudices concerning the book's “importance” than from anything else, but I’d be willing to place a bet that there are plenty of people who have spent time worrying about the meaning of the “harpoons” in the story while overlooking the fact that they are the long pointy things that get stuck in the whale.

I don’t want to be “that guy” – the one who sees too much behind every image in the book.  First of all, I think it dilutes the value of the truly symbolic images.  Secondly – I think it cheapens the story.  Most of all I don’t want to get hung up on relatively meaningless symbolism because I think that we deal with far too much of it in our everyday lives. 

“What?” you say. (Yep – I saw you).  “He’s crazy – modern storytelling uses much less of heavy metaphors than the type of writing from back in Melville’s day”.

“You’re right” I answer.

“And the most common form of storytelling isn’t even writing anymore – it’s film and television – and while some TV (like “The Wire”) and some film (like “Citizen Kane”) get into literary metaphors and symbols – most of it (like “Scream III” and “The Brady Bunch”) are just light entertainment.”

“You’re right there too” I say (even though deep down I believe that the Brady boys change to frizzy perms symbolized their longing to break the chains of their suburban bondage).

“So how do you think we end up with an overload of symbolism in the 21st century? – what makes you think that we get bombarded by things that aren’t really what they seem but just stand for something else?”

And to this I answer:

                Hot dogs – Armour hot dogs – what kind of kid eats Armour hot dogs?

                Fat kids, skinny kids, kids who climb on rocks

                Tall kids, small kids – even kids with chicken pox

                Eat hot dogs – Armour hot dogs

                The dogs kids love to BITE!

Advertising is pretty much nothing but symbols, and I do not mean that in a good way.  Hot dogs are not really that good for you, and Armour hot dogs aren’t appreciably better than any one of the hundreds of other brands you can get.  But if you grew up during a certain time I pretty much guarantee that five words in to that jingle you remembered the tune and were singing the  words in your head.

The metaphors and symbolism used in advertising are almost never as deep or subliminally sneaky as some would have you believe – and that is, in many ways, the problem.  The usual means by which ads try to hook you is by making you associate the imagery of a cute face, catchy song, sexy model, scary situation or (most often) unfulfilled need with their product.  As a result symbolic imagery in the modern world is not so much associated with intelligence as with absurdity.  We all get hit with so many in–your-face images in advertising that we are simply not prepared to work at recognising and appreciating the subtle ones in literature any more.  Disagree if you will, but I ask you, would you really be loved if you were a processed sausage?  That’s what I was told when I was a kid – and I remember it to this day:

                Oh I wish I was an Oscar Mayer weiner;

                That is what I’d truly like to be –ee-ee

                'Cause if I was an Oscar Mayer weiner;

                Everyone would be in love with me.

I don’t know that changing yourself into a sausage is the road to true love, or, Freudian imagery aside, that the use of it as a symbolic stand in for the road to affection is intellectually challenging – but it sure was catchy.  There are other examples of the lingering effects of the advertising that I grew up with.  For instance – the most memorable seagoing commander of my childhood was not Ahab.  Or Queeg from The Caine Mutiny.  It wasn’t Cook, Hook, or any other hero of the seas.  It was another Captain – Crunch.  (Sorry “Cap’n”).  Cap’n Crunch promised to stand up to milk – and he did.  Cap’n Crunch the cereal tasted all right – but it was made so hard to keep from softening in milk that it was like eating gravel.  Seriously – there used to be little tatters of skin hanging from the roof of your mouth after you finished with the stuff.  Not to mention that the cereal would get so pasty that when you chewed it you could make up a decent school lunch by scraping the leftovers off your teeth when noontime rolled around.  Still – I ate it.

The jingles associated with that multitude of products still reverberate in my head.  Here’s a selection of some of the greatest hits:

                Hold the pickles, hold the lettuce,

                Special orders don’t upset us,

                All we ask is that you let us

                Serve it your way

                HAVE IT YOUR WAY (at Burger King)

McDonalds fired back:

                Twoallbeefpattiesspecialsaucelettucecheesepicklesonionsonassameseedbun.

Of course we would try to twist the words around every once in a while, for instance, the neighbourhood kids did this with one McDonalds jingle:

              McDonalds is your kind of place

              Hamburgs in your face

Pickles up your nose

French fries between your toes –

And don’t forget their chocolate shakes –

They come from polluted lakes

MCDONALDS IS YOUR KIND OF PLACE!

Kawasaki let the good times roll, Giant Glass is who you call when your windshield’s busted, Pepsi claimed a generation  and Coke even changed the words of a hit song so much that to this day I still think of it first when I hear “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing” (“I’d like to buy the world a Coke”).

In addition to the intrepid Crunch, breakfast cereal was sold by a tiger, a toucan, three homosexual elves, a rabbit who never could get the cereal away from kids (give him some Trix for crying out loud), an alien (who remembers Quisp?), a vampire, a ghost, a re-animated strawberry-flavoured corpse, a leprechaun, a wig wearing eighteenth century member of a pacifist sect, a cuckoo, a wizard named Jarvis, a frog, a honey bear and, finally (though I’m sure I’m missing loads of these) a guy I actually went to college with whose brother hated everything.

Advertising teaches you that if you drink a certain type of beer you’ll feel like you’ve been wandering across a clean, crisp Rocky Mountain hillside (I love beer but after a session I more often feel like I’ve fallen off a clear crisp Rocky Mountain hillside), if you use the proper underarm spray you’ll get the best looking women (yep, that worked), if you wear the proper footgear you’ll end up in the Hall of Fame (still working on my speech for Cooperstown), if you don’t buy your parents a special alarm they may fall and never get up and, if you use the proper shampoo, you’ll have a thick, full head of hair (filthy, rotten, no good, LIARS!). 

So I think these days, as advertising bombards us with simplistic images that we really don’t need and probably wish to escape, (thank God for TIVO and SKY Plus, which allow you to fast forward through the commercials) we’ve kind of lost our appetite for images that make you work to grasp their meaning  – however worthwhile understanding those symbols might be.  That’s why reading a book like Moby Dick is good for you – it keeps you sharp. 

So, while I don’t want to be the guy who over-analyzes this book, I also don’t want to skip past the important symbolic moments when the book is obviously saying one thing but telling you more.  That pulpit is important – at this early stage, (without knowing where this will lead), I’d guess Ishmael is telling us that the reason the place from which the preacher tries to reveal God’s truths looks like a replica of a ship is because the real place where you can find those truths is not something that just looks like a ship – but is a ship.  (Now, queue the “Old Spice” jingle).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBeP8yc5P64&feature=related

BLOGGING THE GREAT WHITE WHALE - WHAT'S SO FUNNY?

Now to get started – I can report that I’ve read the first three sections of Moby Dick, which consist of a first part called “Etymology” during which Melville goes through the word for “whale” in multiple languages – including Greek, Hebrew, Latin (Cetus, hence “Cetacean”) Danish (Hvalt), Swedish (Hwal,) Spanish (Ballena) and Fijian (or as Melville puts it “Feejee”, where the word is “Pekee-nuee-nuee”).  He does all this in good humor, saying that the list was provided by a “Late consumptive usher to a grammar school”.  This is followed by a dedication (to Nathaniel Hawthorne) and then “Extracts” – which are a few pages of quotes about whales from books ranging from the Bible (“Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah”) to Blackstone’s Laws (which sets out that sturgeon and whales, when “cast ashore or caught” automatically become the property of the King).  This initially leads me to believe that this book is going to more about whales than people – and maybe it will – but then I recall that each of these quotes is about humans’ perception of the whale – what it is, who it belongs to, what to do with its parts (Hawthorne builds a doorway with a whale’s ribs in Twice Told Tales) and what they look like.  In one quote there is a report of a harpooner who caught a whale that “was white all over”.

Again this section is presented with a bit of a nudge and a wink – it is supposed to have been compiled by a “sub-sub librarian” who belongs to the “hopeless, sallow tribe which no wine of this world will ever warm”.  I like the fact that Melville is not taking this too seriously and can have a bit of fun with the whole thing – one of the fears I have starting in to this book is that it is going to be too damn “important” – that it will be so shot through with symbolism and heavy messages that I’ll have to fight my way through it like a thigh high snowdrift.

This worry is thankfully soon eased by the tone of the first true “chapter” of the book, called “Loomings”.  It is here that you run in to the famous opening words of the book, the ones everybody knows:

“Call me Ishmael”

I’d always pictured the speaker of these words to be a Moses-like figure (as played by Charlton Heston in a beard) solemnly invoking this phrase as the story begins.  This turns out not to be the case at all.  Ishmael is actually a funny dude – at least so far.  “Call me Ishmael” is less the product of a stuffy after dinner speaker than it is the banter of a used car salesman.  The tone is more like this:

“Hey, you there – my name? Call me Bob.  Listen, funny story - a few years back (don’t even ask how long ago) I decided that I was bored out of my gourd.  You know how it is.  Anyway – when I get like that – I know it’s time to go walkabout.  Well – sail about.  I make for the sea my friend – I make for the sea.  And that’s where I went this time.  But even though the family has a bit of money – I don’t sign on as a passenger.  Passengers have to pay to go aboard – I’d much rather get paid.  So I signed up – as a swabby mind you, not as an officer, and took off on a whaling voyage.  You probably read about it in the papers – you know “Presidential Campaign Enters Final Days”; War Breaks Out In Afghanistan” “Bob Goes Looking for Whales” – the usual headlines.  Anyway – you wouldn’t believe what happened”.

That the first chapter of the book is actually not deadly serious – is in fact kind of funny, got me thinking about what “funny” is.   We’ve all run in to lots of “funny” in our time – and there are different types.  I’ve often seen blurbs on book covers or jackets (not for Moby Dick) that will say something like “Hilarious!” or “A comic trip through the dark underbelly of America”.  Much of the time this is straight out misleading.  For example – I’m looking at “This Boy’s Life” by Tobias Wolff and on the back cover it says the book is “as comic and transcendent as Huckleberry Finn” – on the inside cover it will tell you that it is “richer, darker and funnier” than anything else Wolff has written.  Now – I think This Boy’s Life is a great book – one of the most painfully honest memoirs I’ve ever read – but it ain’t funny and it ain’t Huck Finn.  Same thing applies to Pat Conroy’s The Lords of Discipline, a tremendous novel of racism and abuse at a southern college (Conroy’s alma mater, The Citadel, basically blackballed him for years because he wrote it).  There are blurbs on it that make you feel like you’re picking up a novelisation of Animal House.  The problem here isn’t that the books don’t have moments when the authors relate narratives with a bit of good humor – it’s that these aren’t what the book is about – and to pull those few moments out to try and sell the book as “comic” is misleading.  A truly “comic” novel would be the aforementioned Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – which, while hiding a serious message – sets out to be funny.  Kurt Vonnegut’s books strike me this way as well – except Vonnegut’s books often involve another tool used to make things funny – absurdism.  In the middle of his work outlining the deadliest, most serious event of his life (his survival of the firebombing of Dresden) Vonnegut takes time out to have his protagonist transported to outer space with a pornographic film star.

Then there is another type of humor – let’s call it “hyper-reality”.  The greatest example I ever saw of this was from a writer who worked in Boston when I was just getting out of college.  Her name was Caroline Knapp, and she wrote a column every week for the Boston Phoenix.  Aside from the men who were cruising the back pages for the “escort service” ads, it was the main reason people picked up and read the Phoenix.  The articles often took the form of something called “The Adventures of Alice K” and they outlined the everyday concerns of what must have been Knapp’s alter-ego,” Alice K (not her real initial)”. Everyone would pick up the paper on the T, take a cursory look at the headline – and then flip through looking for Alice K.   If you can track down a copy of the book that eventually resulted (“Alice K’s Guide to Life”) – get it.  It’s hilarious and if you are a human male attempting to figure out the post college single female – well it probably won’t save you, but you might at least catch a clue.  If you’re a woman – this is a book written for you.  Here is an example from one of the chapters – “Alice K’s Male Sensitivity Assessment Quiz”: (to be given to potential boyfriends)

                Explain the connection between:

Elbows and lemons

Hairspray and panty hose

Masking tape and hems

Bananas and PMS

Failed relationships and suicidal depression

Identify the following words and rank them according to the degree of anxiety they provoke:

                Cystitis

                Cellulite

                Celibacy

                 Season basketball tickets

If your girlfriend is traumatized by an extremely bad haircut the correct response is:

a)       “Your hair looks great!”

b)       “Your hair looks great!”

c)        “Your hair looks great!”

d)       “Your hair looks great!”

          

Caroline Knapp was ready to have an incredible career – but got side-tracked by alcoholism.  No matter to her – she overcame it and wrote a great book called “Drinking – A Love Story”.  Then, goddamn it, she got lung cancer and was dead at 42.  If you get a chance to read anything by Caroline Knapp don’t miss out.

There is also writing that just sets out to make you laugh.  For novels I’d recommend Jay Cronley, who wrote books like Funny Farm and Quick Change.  If you can get ‘em, read ‘em – they’re a riot.  Jay Cronley is one of my favourite “hidden” writers – ones that I think I know about and no one else does.  Other people do know about him of course, (otherwise he wouldn’t have published so many books) but he’s sufficiently hidden for me to feel like I’m passing on a secret here.

The comic essay is another great standby – if you like political humor read P.J. O’Rourke – regardless of political persuasion.  Shit, I’m supposed to be a liberal and I like his stuff just fine.  (I’m not really that liberal – I just happen to think Barack Obama was born in America and Sarah Palin and Donald Trump are assholes, which qualifies one for liberal status these days). 

Stand-up comedians are usually good at this type of writing, if you can get them to sit down to write (which is a bit counter-intuitive).  Here’s some of Steve Martin’s “The Sledgehammer – How it Works”:

The novice sledgehammerer (from the German sledgehammeralamalamadingdong) must be familiar with a few terms:

Thunk: the sound the “clanker” (street term for “heavy weighted slug”) makes when wielded against the “stuff” (see next)

                Stuff:  Things that are to be wanged (see next)

                Wang:  The impact of the clanker and the stuff.

                Smithereens:  The result of being wanged.

Woody Allen is pretty good too – this is from his “Selections from the Allen Notebooks”:

Thought – why does man kill?  He kills for food.  And not only food:  frequently there must be a beverage.

Should I marry W?  Not if she won’t tell me the other letters in her name.  And what about her career? How can I ask a woman of her beauty to give up the roller derby?  Decisions…

If you get a chance to check out Allen’s “The Irish Genius” contained in his book Without Feathers it’s worth the glance just to have a laugh at the pretentiousness of a certain type of academic criticism.  Here’s a sample:

Viscous and Sons has announced publication of The Annotated Poems of Sean O’Shawn, the great Irish poet, considered by many to be the most incomprehensible and hence the finest poet of his time.  Abounding in highly personal references, an understanding of O’Shawn’s work requires an intimate knowledge of his life, which, according to scholars, not even he had.

These sorts of short snippets really verge on being “epigrams” and there really was an Irish genius associated with these sorts of short, snappy sayings.  Oscar Wilde was probably known as much for his writings that covered one or two sentences as for his longer works.  Here are a few of his choicest bits:

                One should always be in love.  That is the reason one should never marry.

                We have really everything in common with America these days, except, of course, language.

                The English have a miraculous power of turning wine into water.

                I can resist everything but temptation.

                Always forgive your enemies; it is the thing that annoys them most.

The list of people who were great at this sort of thing is endless.  Mark Twain (“Giving up smoking is easy – I’ve done it thousands of times…”), Noel Coward (“Blown his brains out you say – he must’ve been an incredibly good shot…”), and, of course, Winston Churchill, who reportedly had this exchange with Lady Astor;

                Astor:  “Winston – if you were my husband I would flavor your coffee with poison”.

                Churchill:  “Madam, if I were your husband, I would drink it”.

Of course, with all these insults and epigrams flying around it is hard to remember who said what – in fact, there is supposed to have been a good bit of joke stealing going on.  Once, when Oscar Wilde spoke up and said “I wish I’d said that” James Whistler retorted “You will, Oscar, you will.”  (Or at least that’s how the story goes.)

And of course there is humor to be had in the true facts surrounding everyday life.  I love these sorts of items.  I once found a memory aid book that someone had forgotten at a bus stop in Harvard Square.  That amused me for a week.  There are whole books of this sort of thing.  I particularly like the ones where they screw up the headlines in newspapers.  Here are some favorites:

                “Mayor Says D.C. Is Safe Except For Murders” (OK – the politicians are a problem too…)

                “Bush Gets Briefing on Drought; Says Rain Needed to End It” (See what I mean?)

                “Moorpark Residents Enjoy a Communal Dump” (Who needs privacy?)

                “Ability to Swim May Save Children from Drowning” (You don’t say…)

                “Multiple Personality Rapist Sentenced to Two Life Terms” (makes sense to me…)

                “April Slated as Child Abuse Month” (Look out kids…)

                “Include Your Children When Baking Cookies” (Really – look out kids…)

                “Local High School Dropouts Cut in Half” (That’ll teach ‘em)

There are also the odd wedding announcements that make the news, such as the historic wedding of Elizabeth Beers to Thomas Franks (“Beers-Franks”, a perfect couple); Bonnie Lynn Flint’s engagement to Timmy Stone (“Flint-Stone”, meet the …) and the unbelievable union of Robert Love with Mary Theresa Organ.  (People – I have pictures – this really happened).

And then there are just jokes.  The internet has allowed greater circulation of jokes than any other medium since Bob Hope.  There are even types of jokes now – you can categorize the attachments to your e-mail by the type of joke it contains.  There is the straight narrative:

A Mafia boss gets out of prison and goes to visit his accountant, taking along his consigliere. He gets right to the point – “Where’s the three million bucks you embezzled from me?

No answer.

“I said – where’s the three million bucks you embezzled from me?”

No answer.

The consigliere looks at the accountant and says “Boss – the guy’s a deaf-mute – he can’t hear you or speak – I’ll use sign language to let him know what’s goin’ on”.  So the consigliere signs to the accountant “Where’s the three million bucks?”

The accountant looks at him and signs back “I don’t know what you’re talking about”.

The consigliere interprets this to the boss who says “I might be able to send the message a bit more clearly”, pulls out a 9mm Glock and places it against the accountant’s head. The consigliere signs “He needs you to tell him where it is!”       

Panicked the accountant signs back “OK – OK – the money is buried in a brown suitcase in my mother’s back yard!”

“What did he say?” the boss asks.

The consigliere answers; “He says you don’t have the balls to pull the trigger”.

Then there is the “category” joke – be it elephant, blonde, Irish, Polish, Black, Redneck – whatever.  Here’s one that can be used for almost any male group – just to show how interchangeable it is we’ll call the participants a blue, a green and a paisley.

Three guys walk into a bar, a blue, a green and a paisley.  The blue says “This bar’s OK, but I know a bar back in Blueland where when you go in there and buy two beers, the bartender gives you the third one free”. 

The green thinks about this for a while and then says “That’s not bad, but back in Greenia there’s a bar where you buy a beer – and the bartender buys you the next one – all night long.”

The paisley nods his head and says “I’m sure those bars are fine – but in Paisylvania I know a bar where you go in – and they buy you your first drink, and then they buy you your second drink, and then they buy your third drink – and then they take you in the back room and get you laid.”

There is awed silence – and then the green says – “You’ve actually been to this bar?”

The paisley says “No – but my sister has”.

There is also the joke that is not a joke really, but just simply a list.  There’s the list of “drinking trouble-shooters” (Problem:  Beer unusually pale and tasteless.  Answer:  Glass empty.  Solution: Get someone to buy next round).  There is also “How to Shower Like a Man” “How a Woman Proceeds through a Drive Thru ATM”, the list of proposed new State mottoes (West Virginia – “One Big Happy Family – Really”).  My personal favourite is always the list of actual questions asked and answered during cross examinations.

                Lawyer:  “And then he threatened to kill you”

                Witness:  “Yes”

                Lawyer:  “And did he actually kill you?”

or;

                Lawyer:  “Doctor, can you tell us how many autopsies you’ve done on dead people”.

                Witness “All my autopsies are on dead people”.

I love those.

There are also loads of pictures passed around on the internet – and they’re funny too.  I most like the ones of signs that just don’t seem right – like the one that says “Give that June Bride a Good Case of Worms – or Other Fine Bait” or the one outside the church that says “God is Still on the Throne”.

Finally – there is always slapstick.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6d_JmZvj6I0

Oh yeah – we were talking about Moby Dick.  The first chapter, in addition to having that famous lead in, does a great job of getting you at ease with your narrator – you know why he’s going to sea, and you’re on his side almost immediately.  But that’s not all – in a perfect bit of foreshadowing the chapter ends with Ishmael’s vision of “one grand hooded phantom, like a snow hill in the air”.  This is the whale (but to those of us in the know, it’s also a great description of the view of Mt. Greylock from Pittsfield).