Not P but Moby-Dick (84)

[Michael Bailey]

Yes, Ahab the mariner not Ahab the king seems the most reasonable choice.
Ahab the king was a bodacious warrior but there’s no mention of a harpoon
in the Bible

 (although there might be reasons for the name choice;
King Ahab miscellany -
a) King Ahab married Jezebel; one might opine that any feminine influence,
even that of Jezebel, might have been beneficial on Captain Ahab

b) at least once he sincerely repented (for killing a dude and stealing his
vineyard)(they don’t say that he gave up the vineyard afaik)

c) held a mojo contest between the prophets of Baal and Elijah - Elijah won

d) Micaiah the prophet correctly predicted King Ahab’s death in battle -
this part of his story aligns with Captain Ahab’s - Flask, for one,
provided such a prophecy - Ahab the King’s demise was blamed on his
following false prophets; Captain Ahab leans toward idolatry in his perusal
of the coin)


On a musical tangent,
https://youtu.be/tYn_6NjcopY?si=nDvi_EZCN15dqMx7




On Mon, Mar 11, 2024 at 4:54 AM Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
wrote:

> From Chapter 104:
>
> Then the whole world was the whale’s; and, king of creation, he left his
> wake along the present lines of the Andes and the Himmalehs. Who can show a
> pedigree like Leviathan? Ahab’s harpoon had shed older blood than the
> Pharaohs’. Methuselah seems a schoolboy.
>
> Here "the Pharaohs’" means "the Pharaohs’ blood", is that correct? The
> previous translations interpreted it as "the Pharaohs’ harpoon", which
> makes no sense to me.
>
> Also, some of the previous translations treated Ahab here as the seventh
> king of Israel, not Captain Ahab, which seems obviously wrong to me as
> well.
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>