Ahab (Capitalist) & the red hand and hammar of Tashtego (Socialism) go down together

[Joseph Tracy]

That one got me laughing.  Twice.
On Jan 3, 2012, at 1:34 PM, Ian Livingston wrote:

> I always kinda thought Melville was pointing out the futility of
> working for the man, because the man is freakin' crazy.
> 
> On Tue, Jan 3, 2012 at 7:46 AM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> not many better verbal riffs than one of Melville's for the first work day
>> of the new year.
>> "It's about work"---Alice.........Thanks, alice.
>> 
>> Think Progress site reports "progressive' is the term most view favorably in
>> PEW Research
>> poll.....over 70%.......
>> 
>> From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
>> To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>> Sent: Tuesday, January 3, 2012 6:40 AM
>> Subject: Ahab (Capitalist) & the red hand and hammar of Tashtego (Socialism)
>> go down together
>> 
>> But as the last whelmings intermixingly poured themselves over the
>> sunken head of the Indian at the mainmast, leaving a few inches of the
>> erect spar yet visible, together with long streaming yards of the
>> flag, which calmly undulated, with ironical coincidings, over the
>> destroying billows they almost touched; at that instant, a red arm and
>> a hammer hovered backwardly uplifted in the open air, in the act of
>> nailing the flag faster and yet faster to the subsiding spar. A
>> sky-hawk that tauntingly had followed the main-truck downwards from
>> its natural home among the stars, pecking at the flag, and incommoding
>> Tashtego there; this bird now chanced to intercept its broad
>> fluttering wing between the hammer and the wood; and simultaneously
>> feeling that etherial thrill, the submerged savage beneath, in his
>> death-gasp, kept his hammer frozen there; and so the bird of heaven,
>> with archangelic shrieks, and his imperial beak thrust upwards, and
>> his whole captive form folded in the flag of Ahab, went down with his
>> ship, which, like Satan, would not sink to hell till she had dragged a
>> living part of heaven along with her, and helmeted herself with it.
>> 
>> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> "Less than any man have I  excuse for prejudice; and I feel for all
> creeds the warm sympathy of one who has come to learn that even the
> trust in reason is a precarious faith, and that we are all fragments
> of darkness groping for the sun. I know no more about the ultimates
> than the simplest urchin in the streets." -- Will Durant