Why not do a group read of THE great American novel? Moby-Dick?

[kelber at mindspring.com]

Or we could just watch the movie:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHmFW-1Cwkw

2010: Moby Dick

Hilariously bad, with plastic-sub-in-a-fishtank special effects (Ahab's the captain of a nuclear-armed sub), but I was totally hooked by this early dialogue:

"Doc! Hey, Doc! DOC!!!"

(irritably) "Call me Michelle."

Laura



-----Original Message-----

From: Michael Bailey 

Sent: Apr 13, 2014 12:13 AM

To: P-list 

Subject: Re: Re: Why not do a group read of THE great American novel? Moby-Dick?




  
  
  You make a good point!



That part about fast fish and loose fish isn't so much about the america that could've been as about the law of having & holding - Mr Dick maybe represents that wonderful america, turtle island, this huge intelligent being that was minding its own business - colonizing krill, if you will - till Ahab came along. Oh yeah

And with his harpoon

Pricked Moby-Dick - Owey! O weh!





alice malice <alicewmalice at gmail.com> wrote:

    Great questions and comments. Yeah, hard to keep folks engaged. But

    thee has been talk of reading M-D here for years so...

    

    Yeah, we would certainly take on the American novel question. M-D

    doesn't go west across the continent sized nation, cutting it open,

    exposing its buried voices, it doesn't race through the dust to the

    grapes of wrathful California, it doesn't even take a road less

    traveled or go into the woods to suck deeper from the bone marrow of

    land. Most of the action takes place far from America, on ships,

    boats, islands, though it does begin, as Melville's life begins, in

    NYC, it quickly ships off with an international crew, islanders

    mostly, and with one noted exception, none of the crew return to

    America. But that one voice is American, it does return to America and

    the yarn Ishmael spins is American, is told from an American Point of

    View, and is about America, albeit, about a subjunctive America, one

    that might have been, one that had promise but lost its way. So, in

    theme, the book is most Pynchonian or Pynchon's are Melvillean. And

    Ahab, the tragic captain has much to say about how America has

    organized its sick crew of of islanders and chased whiteness and oil.

    

    

    

    On Sat, Apr 12, 2014 at 7:55 AM, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:

    > Why is Moby-Dick a Great American Novel? Honest question. I've never

    > understood it as a novel that grapples with the Americanness of

    > America the way so many other novels try to. The way M&D does, or so

    > many of the others you list do. Moby-D is a frickin' GREAT novel

    > written by an American. If I were one for leaderboards, I'd call it

    > one of the greatest books ever written. But it's about the human

    > condition as a crisis between epistemologies and ontologies, not what

    > it means to be American, right? But, not being an American, I may be

    > missing something.

    >

    > And while I'd love a group read, we got about a quarter of the way

    > through the last novel written by the feller we're all subscribed here

    > for. The IV read at least managed to limp across the finish line; the

    > AtD was a long march that lost many good soldiers by the way. None of

    > this is a reflection on the books, just on the world of digital

    > disengagement in which the Pynchon List is a Web 1.0 relic. We've been

    > offered too many mindless pleasures to engage in the kind of deep and

    > ongoing group read these volumes merit.

    >

    > Prove me wrong, kids, prove me wrong.

    >

    > On Sat, Apr 12, 2014 at 9:36 PM, alice malice <alicewmalice at gmail.com> wrote:

    >> Traditionally, though, the typical GAN candidate requires heft, range,

    >> verisimilitude, and--lest we forget--popularity. While beautifully

    >> written and constructed, both William Gaddis's demanding The

    >> Recognitions and Peter Matthiessen's Faulknerian Shadow Country have

    >> failed to drum up a widespread readership. Thomas Pynchon's Mason &

    >> Dixon is, by most measures, a better attempt at a GAN than Gravity's

    >> Rainbow, but the latter boasts a hundred times as many fans.

    >> Similarly, works on the margin, no matter how fine or insightful about

    >> American life, seldom make the grade. One could argue strong cases for

    >> the GANship of John Crowley's Little, Big; John Sladek's Roderick, or,

    >> The Education of a Young Machine; Thomas Berger's Little Big Man; or,

    >> with just a slight stretch, Raymond Chandler's Farewell, My

    >> Lovely--but, even now, they all remain tainted with the dread word

    >> "genre." Yet if Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind can be proposed

    >> for GAN honors, why not Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged? Not that I'm doing

    >> so, by the way.

    >>

    >> http://www.vqronline.org/big-read-can-single-book-sum-nation

    >>

    >> On Sat, Apr 12, 2014 at 7:35 AM, alice malice <alicewmalice at gmail.com> wrote:

    >>> Only problem is with the idea of the great American novel, a concept

    >>> that has, if nothing else, made for pulp and grist to/for/from the

    >>> mill, but it's difficult to dismiss Melville's great white whale as

    >>> candidate, and for Pynchon fans, in the world of great books,

    >>> Moby-Dick or The Whale is a great influence. The common whiteness

    >>> theme alone needs further development, and, as Melville's monstrosity

    >>> gained critical mass when the excesses of market capitalism capsized

    >>> the nation and the world's economy, it's seem a revisiting Melville

    >>> now makes much ado of something, though what that something is has yet

    >>> to be defined, though some will name it and paint it in clear shades

    >>> of blackness, it seems so like the mysterious whale itself that

    >>> smashes down on the masts of industry and greed, then suck all down in

    >>> a Vortex to the bottomless perdition where God's foot weaves the

    >>> tapestry, the mantle of Varo's Earth.

    >> -

    >> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l

    -

    Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l

  

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