19th Century Weapon Found in Whale

Kudos to my betrothed for finding this perfect coda to my completion of the delectable Moby-Dick. It's a wonderful, short article:

19th-century weapon found in whale

Note that the weapon in question was manufactured in New Bedford, where Moby-Dick begins! How enchanting is that?

The weapon in the story dates to roughly 40 years after Melville's book (and the apex of whaling ships -- after the 1850s, the kerosene lamp put a permanent leak the demand for whale oil). However, think on this: the whale in this story was without doubt a contemporary of Melville, and might even have passed the author's ship on some silvery maritime midnight. (It would not have been hunted by the Pequod, as that ship's crew turned their noses up at all but the gold-standard sperm whale quarry).

I flatter myself that, if Melville were reading, he would comment with something to this effect: "O, deep, blubberous burial ground of harpoonish totems! Would but I had been buried there with you, in the heavenish flank of a worthy Leviathan, there to float past my mortal limits, and later to start the very eyes from the sockets of posterity!"

Someone Else is Crazy Enough to do Moby Dick Farce

Cabrero, a new-found friend and apparent kindred soul, has a terrific farcical post on his blog, The Goat Rope, regarding Moby Dick. Those who've been enjoying my posts in a similar vein definitely need to check his out. I recommend the whole site -- it's hilarious, unique, informative, and slanted the right way politically and culturally (that is, of course, my way).

Cabrero also reminded me that,

"The thing about Moby Dick that many people miss is that it is laugh out loud funny, or at least parts of it are."

Quite right, my friend. I have laughed out loud at Starbucks during my daily reads there various times. Melville could range from gently, intellectually farcical to broadly humorous pretty much at will.

Off to Starbucks.

Moby-Dick and Yiddish Policemen's Union

Reading Moby-Dick (see many previous posts on Thinkulous by using the search field, above) has reminded me, in its marked flavor of uniqueness of thought and -- principally -- its ambition, of the work of one of my other favorite authors, also impressive for the volume of his output: Michael Chabon.

Chabon approaches most projects with Melville’s wild, voracious appetite gleaming in his eyes. He spends endless months at libraries, on-line and on the phone interviewing experts. I get the feeling that if he can’t learn, by heart and to the last detail, three or four complete and complex worlds before starting a book, it just doesn’t seem worth it to him to begin. And, like Melville, he writes long -- sometimes, a bit too long, but I forgive him because of the sheer joy of reading his language and plots.

In his latest, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union , he weaves in relatively seamlessly (and in that sense, he is very different from Melville) entire continents of secular Jewish history, sociology, linguistics and psychology; large swatches of Judaism both obscure and well-known; technical, historical and cultural perspectives on the game of chess; multiple themes of immigrant life and persecution; half the extant language of Yiddish, plus a bunch of Yiddish words he repurposed for the story… oh, yes, and a complete and self-contained film noir culture and plot. All while conjuring, to the minutest door-hinge, an alternate-Israel, surreally established in Alaska in the late 1940s and grown to fruition, and then spoliage, since then.

Try that, Melville!