NP: Ahab and the black cat

[glthompson]

Just a thought as we near Halloween--

jbor wrote:

> lycidas2 at earthlink.net wrote:
>
> > I think an extreme subjectivism has little value. Moby-Dick, I like to
> > say, is not about my mother and her little black cat.

and jbor:

> . . .  No kid is ever going to say that
> Moby-Dick is *about* your mother and her cat, but she or he, after reading
> that particularly novel, might finally open up and start to discuss the way
> Mum was always having to chase that damn cat until one day the both of them
> ran under a bus, and so begin to come to terms with the death of a parent.
> Depends on your purpose.

"'He tasks me; he heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable
malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the black
cat agent, or be the black cat principal, I will wreak that hate upon him.'" And
later, "when, with body arched back, and both arms lengthwise high-lifted to the
poise, he darted his fierce iron, and his far fiercer curse into the hated cat."

Anyone else ever see the series of classic American literary works rewritten for /
about cats?

G.