New Bedford: Was That Ishmael Across the Street?

My betrothed and I had the day off together yesterday (how nice), and decided to nip down-state a ways to visit New Bedford and see a bit of Melvilliana. Since I just finished Moby Dick a couple weeks ago (see all related posts here), I thought it would be fun.

The day turned out to be full of surprises, some great, some not. The first was that the famous Whaling Museum (located at 18 Johnny Cake Hill – top that address) was closed. It seems the president of Portugal was visiting the town this random Friday afternoon, and various worthy tourist sites were closed. (We checked the Web site before coming, but, sadly, missed the small warning text that was posted. The visit was likely an homage to the large population of Portuguese in New Bedford.) This was, without a doubt, a let-down. The museum looks to be very good. The visitor’s center did have a neat scale model of a whaling ship of nearly the same vintage as the Pequod, though, so all was not lost.

The town itself looks a bit depressed, like many functional seaport towns. If you’ve been to Gloucester, Mass., you have the general idea. Many empty storefronts, lackluster antiques stores with a few dusty baubles in the window, and a hundred convenience stores. There are some local employers, mostly branches of national concerns such as phone companies and banks. And your usual nicely renovated mill buildings, etc., two-thirds filled with professionals of various stripes. The whole thing has a certain down-at-heel charm, but you walk around feeling a bit concerned, as you would for an aging uncle who was an interesting conversationalist on certain topics, but generally seemed like he just might be going slowly to seed.

We stopped at the Seamen’s Bethel, where Father Mapple preached fire, brimstone and stormy seas in the famous chapter from Moby-Dick. It was interesting, humble and well-kept. The prow-shaped pulpit is right there at the front of the church, but we found out that it was not originally part of the building. That little feature sprang whole from Melville’s prodigious brow. However, visitors were so disappointed after traveling to New Bedford and not seeing the ship-shaped pulpit, that the church was basically forced to put one in. It works, in its own weird way. We also sat in Melville’s pew, and read some of the cenotaphs commemorating sailors who’d died at sea – also noted memorably in the book.

From there, we wandered down to a 19th Century schooner docked in the harbor. We were hoping to roam the deck a little, as we’d been told might be possible. We found the same bored police presence in front of the boat that we saw at the museum. Presumably, the officer was protecting the site for the absent foreign president (not due in town for two hours). He sullenly honked his horn and waved us off, without even opening the window of the car to speak to us. Does this town really rely on tourism for income?

The saving grace of the day was the Whaling Museum Research Library. This is housed in a separate building, a relatively easy walk from the other sites. The betrothed is a librarian, so, needless to say, we both have warm feelings toward such institutions. Our esteem was not wasted. Unlike most other places in town, they welcomed us, despite the fact that they were closing at 4:00, and it was 3:55. Lovely editions of Melville abounded, of course, along with antique ship’s logs, scrimshaw, and whatever other exhibits the small (but appealing) space would allow. I overheard two librarians discussing a 19th century ship’s log detailing a very successful voyage to Java, including entries for all kinds of quirky expenses.

Best of all, I waylaid a head librarian just at closing time and managed a short talk with him. I asked him if he had a background in maritime history before working there, and a wave of righteous anger rose to the surface. “No,” he replied, color rising in his face, “I had 24 years of schooling before I arrived here, and not one course of study on maritime history!” With his knitted brow and sharp tone of voice, at first I thought he was angry at me for some reason. But he was just extremely chagrined at the way that part of our history is ignored in the public curricula. "This was a maritime nation up until a certain point in the 19th Century!" he said. Walking to the car, the betrothed and I agreed that we had loved his passionate anger on behalf of quality education. Had the museum been open, we probably would have missed this little treasure of a library.

Later, we slid down to the spit of land just south of town and caught some sun for an hour on a small, pretty beach that was all but deserted (this was the other saving grace of the day). We had a decent seafood dinner, walked the pleasant, middle-class seaside neighborhood a bit, and pointed the car toward Boston.

I’ll post pictures as soon as we get them off the camera.

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.

Michael Chabon and Moby Dick -- Again!

Holy cow!

I've been writing about both Michael Chabon and Moby Dick here -- and even the relationship between the two -- for about two weeks or so, and look what I just found! (Just enter "Chabon," or "Moby Dick," or both, into the search field at the top of this window to see previous posts on the subject.)

With a spontaneous search on Google for another purpose, I happened upon a quote from Chabon:

"Moby Dick - that book is so amazing. I just realized that it starts with two characters meeting in bed; that's how my book begins, too, but I hadn't noticed the parallel before, two characters forced to share a bed, reluctantly."

It's not made clear on the web page with the quote, but I'd guess he's referring to Joe Kavailer and Sam Clay, at the beginning of his book bearing their names.

As my mother and I like to say, "Everything's connected!"

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!