Moby Dick is no doubt the Great American Novel. Nothing else from this continent can stand with Dante, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Dumas, Dickens, TolstoyMoby Dick is no doubt the Great American Novel. Nothing else from this continent can stand with Dante, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Dumas, Dickens, Tolstoy and the like. William Faulkner may be the greatest of American authors, but nothing in his vast catalog quite measures up to Herman Melville’s opus. The southern modernist apparently agrees, as it is cited in various publications that Faulkner named Moby Dick as a book he wished he’d have written.
It is both modernist and romantic, nearly as digressive as The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman: nearly equaling the adventure in a completely different type of classic, The Three Musketeers. It is an encyclopedic epic—some other examples being the aforementioned Tristram Shandy, Ulysses, Foucault’s Pendulum, Infinite Jest, and Gould’s Book of Fish. It is a miracle of a book—an epiphany nearly every page—almost flawless.
Ernest Hemingway wrote to his publishers in the late 1940s and cited Melville as one of the writers he was “still trying to beat.” This he never accomplished. We honor Hemingway’s blue-gill sized yarn, The Old Man and the Sea, but how puny that is when compared to the one true Whale Tale.
A list of sayings from venerable literature mentioning the whale startsthings off, like a myth. The whale is the “Salt-Sea Mastodon.”
Much of the book is an ode to the sea. And of course the sea represents so much, mainly the unknown. When the soul is on dry land it is worm-like; but on the open ocean it lifts its sails and spears its prow through both treacherous waters in dark tempests and shimmering diamonds of blue on peaceful, sunny days.
Even early on one can tell Moby Dick is one of the rarest books, seeming to contain the whole world in its finite pages.
It is not long before we find our author rather gloomy: “…this earthly air, whether ashore or afloat, is terribly infected with the nameless miseries of the numberless mortals who have died exhaling it…” But not without hope: “…man, in the ideal, is so noble and so sparkling, such a grand and glowing creature…” Nearly all misanthropes were molded first by the unrequited love of their fellow humans. All noble things are touched with some melancholy.
Our narrator, Ishmael, is progressive, philosophical, and inquisitive. Upon meeting Queequeg, a “clean, comely-looking cannibal”, we get these tolerant lines: “A man can be honest in any sort of skin,” (Queequeg being covered in tattoos) and, “Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian,” sentences that champion the idea of judging everyone on individual merit, rather than by preconceptions of groups. Melville’s forward-thinking ideas about “savages” align him with Rousseau.
Finally aboard the Pequod and ready to set sail we find that the harpooner is to the lancer as the squire was to the knight. There is even a bit of The Canterbury Tales in Moby Dick.
Once out of the frigid temperatures of the Atlantic near Nantucket and into agreeable weather, Ishmael displays more of his skilled prosody, “…when the red-cheeked, dancing girls, April and May, trip home to the wintry, misanthropic woods; even the barest, ruggedest, most thunder-cloven old oak will at least send forth some few green sprouts to welcome such glad-hearted visitants…”
But the sun does not warm Ahab, who infrequently takes over for Ishmael, either in soliloquy or in thought, and he is a different kind of narrator, character, and man. Monomaniacal is used many times to describe his obsession with the murder of Moby Dick.
Captain Ahab is a monster, a hero, a villain; but perhaps above all, he is a poet, an insightful psychologist. He’s of one mind with Dostoevsky when he says, “This lovely light, it lights not me; all loveliness is anguish to me, since I can ne’er enjoy. Gifted with the high perception, I lack the low, enjoying power; damned, most subtly and most malignantly! Damned in the midst of Paradise!” There is no way of knowing, but Dostoevsky probably never read Moby Dick, as Melville was not known internationally in his day. In his 1886 novel, Crime and Punishment (Moby Dick was published in 1851), Fyodor writes, “Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness.”
Melville’s pessimism sometimes seems to come straight from Arthur Schopenhauer; however, we only have proof that he read the German philosopher later in life. Like Rousseau, we can either speculate that Melville was familiar with him before writing Moby Dick, or that he came to similar conclusions independently. Like in many of these situations, it was probably a bit of both. We know less about his influences, outside of The Bible and Shakespeare, than we do about whom he’s influenced. James Joyce never mentions reading Melville, but it seems possible that the Irishman came upon the idea for writing a chapter in Ulysses in the form of a play from Moby Dick.
An interesting aside: a night of drinking on the ship sees the sailors and harpooners sing a song, a Napoleonic ballad called, “Spanish Ladies.” This song is also sung in the 1970s movie, Jaws, by the ship captain in that film who leads the attempt to find and kill the man-eating great white shark.
Ishmael has been on ships before, and though he is able to see the wonder in the world, he can also reduce the grandness of global travel to cynical lyricism: “Were this world an endless plain, and by sailing eastward we could forever reach new distances, and discover sights more sweet and strange than any Cyclades or Islands of King Solomon, then there were promise in the voyage. But in pursuit of those far mysteries we dream of, or in tormented chase of that demon phantom that, some time or other, swims before all human hearts; while chasing such over this round globe, they either lead us on in barren mazes or midway leave us whelmed.”
There is an entire section that reads as if Melville had already read a copy of Darwin’s, On the Origin of Species. But that book was published almost a decade later. We are given a surprisingly accurate explanation of the taxonomy of cetaceans, not without its errors but still prescient. It is a satisfying portion where we see that even something as hideous as whaling has taught us much about the world. The baleen of the Right Whales, Humpbacks, etc, is described as looking rather like Venetian blinds. The amount of oil each whale species can produce is logged as well.
After a literal, and rather complex, description of the whale lines and their danger, we get this beautiful and poignant metaphor: “All men live enveloped in whale lines. All are born with halters around their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turns of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life. And if you be a philosopher, though seated in the whaleboat, you would not at heart feel one whit more of terror, than though seated before your evening fire with a poker, and not a harpoon, by your side.”
Despite the quality of the book as a whole, the first description of a successful whale hunt is every bit as gruesome and hard to read as one might imagine. The force that propelled the evolution of certain land mammals into fully aquatic animals, whales, did not account for the coming of man, the building of ships, the mastheads of said ships, and the deadly call of the watch, “There she blows!” The fate of so many creatures sealed by the otherwise ingenious adaptation of the blowhole. For no matter how deep the whale sounds he must inevitably surface to expel his air, thus perpetually signaling to the death-ship his location. This brings the lowering of the whaleboats, the line of the harpoon, and the sting of the lance.
The killing of the whale is sad and atrocious—blood spouting from the blowhole—necessarily torturous. What humans are able to do, though sometimes amazing, is often horrendous.
The description of “cutting in” the whale is almost as rough as the hunt and the killing. The blubber is rolled off with a line pulled by the windlass—a hook and a couple spades begin the cut into the dead whale. Sharks must constantly be fended off. This whaling business was truly a rough trade. That was one of Melville’s aims: to show the harshness and the barbarity. But there is always admiration in Ishmael’s descriptions. This is why the measurements and the listing of the different whales are important parts of the book. They show the respect for whaling and the whale that the narrator possesses. Whaling led to much discovery for humankind: commercially, geographically, and scientifically.
Ishmael often admires the battering ram capabilities, and other qualities, of the sperm whale. This love he has for the whale, and the compassion he shows for life in general, mitigates some of the horror of the book. The whalemen who hunt sperm whales are at the top of the heap. They think of hunting any other species as an inferior endeavor.
Melville seems to be writing for posterity. There is no way a contemporary human can comprehend the whaling profession of the mid 19th century. At least we have this work to tell us a little about it—the immensity, the danger, the thrill; and despite the wrongness and cruelty in killing such a smart, curious, and gentle creature, a giant dog in the sea, we can tell it took some kind of man to be a whaleman. The kind of danger involved ended with the invention of exploding harpoons. Humans are hard to beat when it comes to destruction. “There is no folly of the beasts of earth that is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men.”
Another harrowing whale hunt shows more of Melville’s sardonic, misanthropic disdain. We are not spared any detail, but I will spare the reader here and only say that the maiming and killing of one poor whale was almost too much to bear.
For what is all this murdering? From the novel, regarding this particular whale: “But pity there was none. For all his old age, and his one arm (fin), and his blind eyes, he must die the death and be murdered, in order to light the gray bridals and other merry-makings of men, and also to illuminate the solemn churches that preach unconditional inoffensiveness by all to all.”
Above all books on which to linger, there is Moby Dick—to study cetology, the evolution of whales, to discover arcane words and obscure references. And like all the great books, not all the learning is academic.
Most chapters begin with the goings on of the ship; but after these practicalities are described, we get interesting observations both sorrowful and inspiring. Not only is the chief narrator, Ishmael, full of high-minded thought, but the brief sojourns into the minds of Ahab and Starbuck (the first mate) give us recondite but beautiful language.
The future of whales is pondered. Can they survive the onslaught? Melville thinks a bit too much of man and the leviathan. He could not foresee the aforementioned exploding harpoons, the endless entanglements caused by discarded fishing lines and nets, collisions with cruise ships—ships of a size that a sailor from the 19th century could never imagine.
The book is tangential, meant to meander. There is no guilt of prolix. So timeless is the work that it is frozen in the infinite.
The narrator knows he must accept the world of whaling for what it is—a nasty business, but one where beauty and awe are found. The birth of a sperm whale is described, and this gives us some needed humaneness.
Ishmael respects the whale, but he must hunt him, help kill him. He must ruminate on things for which there are no answers. He must describe the feelings for which there are no words. The whale is the world and the world is the whale.
Sometimes a beautiful morning begins a chapter, but we know this is not for long. Blood and death are the order of the day. Ahab says, “Were I the wind, I’d blow no more on such a wicked, miserable world.”
No matter if the reader comes to enjoy Ishmael’s musings, laugh at Stubb’s humor in the face of danger, admire Queequeg’s sincerity and courage, or take interest in Ahab’s poetic fatalism, the whale is the hero. Any respectable reader must root for Moby Dick to break the planks of every boat. One must hope for the giant flukes to smash the oars, lances, and harpoons to bits. Unlike Jonah, all aboard the Pequod can take the whale’s belly for their cemetery.
But Melville knows exactly how to end his tour de force. His is like all the great misanthropic minds—all those who realize humanity’s overreaching ways are not only harmful to the earth’s other inhabitants, but also harmful to humanity. He wishes, as I wish, that there were a great creature, on land or sea, too massive and powerful for humans to defeat. It might do a lot to temper our arrogance. If only there were beasts we still had to fear, adventures left to take.
In a last bit of irony, it is the coffin fitted for Queequeg, the one that had been repurposed as a lifeboat that resurfaces at the end of it all to save Ishmael. The sharks won’t bother him at this point; even nature knows that someone must tell this story....more
To paraphrase a top reviewer here, Bill Kerwin, this may not be the most profound of novels, but it may be the most compelling. I would add that perhaTo paraphrase a top reviewer here, Bill Kerwin, this may not be the most profound of novels, but it may be the most compelling. I would add that perhaps its profundity is discounted more than it is deserved. I might add too that it is possibly the most entertaining of novels.
Dumas was a bestselling author of his day. The Three Musketeers is not mentioned in the same breath as more literary 19th century works such as War and Peace or A Tale of Two Cities. In fact, I doubt I am not the only reader who suspected before opening the book that it might be a little lowbrow or even geared toward children.
From the first chapter to the last word, this novel puts contemporary bestsellers to shame. It would slay a thousand Kings, Rowlings, and Meyers. It is written in majestic prose, and even though there is plenty of swashbuckling and cloaks and daggers, one can find some high minded thought sprinkled throughout. There is much comaraderie and court intrigue. There is historical significance, though it is not meant to be historically accurate.
One of the title characters, Athos--a lover of wine (Spanish or French), has many thoughtful lines, such as: “Life is a chaplet of little miseries which the philosopher counts with a smile. Be philosophers, as I am, gentlemen; sit down at the table and let us drink. Nothing makes the future look so bright as surveying it through a glass of chambertin,” and, "In general, people only ask for advice that they may not follow it or if they should follow it that they may have somebody to blame for having given it.”
The Cardinal, Richelieu, also tends to muse like a great thinker, albeit a rather deceitful one. Louis XIII is shown as a weak monarch who is frequently out-crafted by Richelieu. Lady d'Winter is an archetypal femme fatale. Aramis is a womanizer with noble aspirations aimed at the cloth and is one of the more interesting characters.
One weakness of the novel is its predictable nature. Dumas lingers a bit too long on Lady d'Winter's imprisonment and the seduction of her captor. But even here, there are enough twists, and things lead to such calamities and exciting scenes, that all is forgiven. Dumas must build up sufficient hatred for the dastardly characters and enough admiration for the honorable ones....more
Maybe the single greatest short horror story that has ever been written. Disclaimer: I haven't read all of the short horror stories that have ever beeMaybe the single greatest short horror story that has ever been written. Disclaimer: I haven't read all of the short horror stories that have ever been written throughout the world....more
The book is not voluminous, but it is deep and wide in subject matter. It is a book to mull over. Schopenhauer uses multiple examples to support his aThe book is not voluminous, but it is deep and wide in subject matter. It is a book to mull over. Schopenhauer uses multiple examples to support his arguments. These are helpful and part of the philosopher's artistry.
A little about the author: sandwiched between two, perhaps more well known thinkers, Kant and Nietzsche, sits a clearer and more quotable writer, a more pragmatic philosopher, and a greater influence on authors, musicians, and artists. He does not purport a system for academics to disentangle. His pessimism is often described as depressing.
But Schopenhauer is a superior realist who can live in a world of ideas. He presents the problems of humanity and offers solutions. They may not be solutions many folks would like to try; indeed, Schop did not practice asceticism, though he prescribed it as an escape from the suffering of the world.
The writing is refreshing, insightful, and grounded in more reason than most. There is truly original thought here.
He is present in the work and/or mentioned directly by Darwin, Freud, Tolstoy, Nietzsche, Thomas Hardy, Thomas Mann, Richard Wagner, Edgar Saltus, Ivan Turgenev, Oscar Wilde, Carl Jung, Dostoevsky, Faulkner, Einstein, Joseph Campbell, Joseph Conrad, Kurt Vonnegut, Wittgenstein and Thomas Ligotti, to name some heavyweights.
Now, for the book itself:
The Will is not only energy. All living things, and even non-living objects, are manifestations of the Will.
Kant was right, that we cannot know the thing-in-itself wholly. However, through one's consciousness in relation to the body, in voluntary and involuntary movements and processes, we can gather an idea of the Will, which does the moving and motivates all action.
We intuitively relate all objects around us and everything we experience only as far as how they relate to other objects, and especially how they relate to us: how they affect us, how we perceive them.
The Will is in eternal flux; thus, the world is in eternal flux. This takes us back to Heraclitus.
Without a subject to acknowledge and play by the same rules as an object, the object is nothing. The world is full of many subjects and many objects. We are subjects to objects which are subjects to us.
A sensation should not be held as the cause of, or to come from, an object, but as merely something that our senses, one of them at least, has sensed. We only know that an object is real because it stimulates at least one of our senses.
Our objective comprehension is subjective.
When we say something is matter, we not only say that something exists but also that it is perceived.
An easy starting point to ponder the Will: involuntary acts of the body--unwanted thoughts, innate desires, absent-minded gestures of the hands while speaking.
The Will, apart from the body, is still only knowable abstractly. This means Kant's thing-in-itself, as unknowable, still holds validity. But Schopenhauer has taken things beyond Kant, his garrulous, moralistic predecessor.
The Will is present in non-living objects. It gives objects their particular qualities. In living things, the Will can be subordinated in a more overt manner.
A stone rolls down a hill, an animal hunts its prey--both are manifestations of the Will.
Gravity does not cause the stone to fall to earth. The cause is the stone's proximity to earth. Gravity is always there.
Causality is only present in time and space. Gravity and all energy is eternal and exists outside time and space.
Schopenhauer's Will takes Plato's Forms and expresses them in myriad replicas we see in time and space.
Though we harness fire & electricity, etc, these things would exist if we did not harness them. Nature's laws sometimes seem extraordinary to us, but they are not. The laws are consistent. We become shocked when we see a natural phenomenon that is new to us, but we should not be. It has always been so and will always be so when circumstances dictate.
Animals must eat plants and one another. Everything preys on something and/or is preyed upon by something. This displays the constant strife, the essential discord, of the Will. The Will feeds on itself. Humanity devours itself. Everything is trying and striving to express its highest Form, and to do so generally impinges on the striving of something else.
The Will is the force propelling evolution, all the tiny mutations.
Our actions are guided by motives which are guided by the Will. The Will wants to strive, thrive, and live.
Nothing, not gravity, a stone, an insect, or a human ever reaches a final goal. All is merely eternally becoming.
The Will is pure desire. In humans, the intellect must be called on to temper the Will. The Will does not plan. It desires; its motives can be hidden.
Human disposition is always cycling through three states of emotion: desire, momentary satisfaction, and boredom. Two of the three cause pain and suffering, and the other is ephemeral.
Schop says the Kantian "thing-in-itself" is the Will, but not a realized objectification of the Will. It is the becoming part of the thing, since Kant's thing needn't take any form.
Everything we see is only a copy of an Idea, coming and going in time and space.
Knowledge can break free from the Will. When an individual is involved in, producing or contemplating or executing, something artistic, the individual breaks free from the awareness of time and space; thus, it can break from the Will. But this can only be temporary.
A loss of individuality comes from perceiving the object as the Idea, without relationships to other things subject to causality. An individual can become a "pure subject of knowing." This respite from the Will is fleeting, though. One must sustain this higher level to produce art.
On nostalgia: we look back on things and see them in an objective light. We forget all the worries and troubles we had in those times. The time elapsed separates us from our old subjective selves, even though our current selves are as subjective as ever.
Beauty can facilitate our transference from subjective knowledge of particular things to the objective contemplation of Ideas.
In music, melodies represent the great striving and gratification of the will. Catchy, short melodies in dance music mimic everyday pleasures. Winding, meandering melodies with painful discord and sustained, languid notes show sadness and tragedy, while gratification is expressed when the music falls back to the key-note.
Like in Buddhism and Hinduism, in Schopenhauer, we are taught that the best way to live would be by denying the Will. But here it's by using the intellect, knowledge, art, and wisdom to totally set oneself free from cravings and desires. Still, for the most part, this is impossible.
I will leave off with a few quotes from the gloomy philosopher and some from others he used in this most remarkable philosophical masterpiece:
Schopenhauer:
"The world is my idea."
"The body is a condition of the knowledge of the Will."
"Genius is the clear eye of the world."
"The Principle of Sufficient Reason is thus again the form into which the Idea enters when it comes to the knowledge of the subject as individual."
"Often, we don't know what we wish or what we fear."
"For one wish that is fulfilled there remain at least ten which are denied."
(on literature) "Man's unspeakable pain and misery, the triumph of malice, the tyranny of mere chance, and the irretrievable fall of the just and the innocent, are here presented to us; and in lies a significant hint as to the nature of the world and of existence."
"Optimism is not only a false but also a pernicious doctrine, for it presents life as a desirable state and man's happiness as its aim and object. Starting from this, everyone then believes he has the most legitimate claim to happiness and enjoyment. If, as usually happens, these do not fall to his lot, he believes that he suffers an injustice, in fact that he misses the whole point of his existence."
Agrippa von Nettesheim:
"It is us he inhabits, not the underworld, nor the stars in the sky. The spirit who lives in us makes those."
Plato:
"What is that which always is, and has no becoming? And what is that which is always becoming and never is?"
"Time is the moving picture of eternity."
Goethe:
"No ill can touch him who looks on human beauty; he feels himself at one with himself and with the world."
"To fix in lasting thoughts the hovering images that float before the mind."
Thomas Paine:
"It is only a short step from the sublime to the ridiculous."...more
Infinite Jest is a challenge, a delight, a potentially life-altering novel. Here are some scant insights:
The author goes to great lengths to describeInfinite Jest is a challenge, a delight, a potentially life-altering novel. Here are some scant insights:
The author goes to great lengths to describe the buildings (all tending to look like something from human anatomy) and serpentine tunnels that surround the tennis academy; even MIT's radio station gets a brain-like roof. Boston is described in great detail, reminding one of Joyce's lyrical sojourns in Dublin.
Hal, Orin, and Mario Incandenza, as well as Don Gately, all stand in, at least a bit, for the author. Hal is annoyingly knowledgeable and bright. Orin is a humorous lothario. Mario is kind but damaged. Gately is gruff and diligent.
The humor is often juvenile, but much of it takes place at what amounts to a fancy high school; thus, this seems appropriate and unsurprising.
The long descriptions of the rules and of the playing of one out-of-hand game of "Eschaton" are tiresome, though there are interesting bits about math and geopolitics in this small section.
The book's descriptions of AA meetings will not make the reader want to attend one. However, the work as a whole might be a good deterrent, or even aid in the recovery, for various types of addictions. The sober life is not made to look exciting, but the life of an addict is made to look unbearable, morbidly odious, utterly abominable. In other words, life is hard either way, but hustling for fixes is a disastrous way to exist.
There are occasions of first person narration, but mostly, there is an omniscient voice that channels the inner thoughts of the main character(s) in a given episode. The omniscient voice attempts to use a vocabulary similar to that of the given episode's character(s), but when the narrator must use a word outside the scope of the character in question (a lot of the time this involves Gately), then an end-note will appear, to the back of the tome, where the thoughts are described in a more accurate manner.
When a scene features Marathe, a French Canadian, the omniscient voice uses several incorrectly structured forms of English idioms to describe the thoughts of the Francophile Canuck.
It's often a third person POV featuring the personality and vernacular of whatever character is most important in the scene.
The more polished, erudite prose is used to describe those at the educational institution. Slang and vulgarity are prevalent at the recovery house; and there is a lower, more guttural type of writing used for the class of folks lower than those at the recovery house--the drug dealers and addicts still using and still on the street, "Out There."
Hamlet, Ulysses, 1984, and Gravity's Rainbow are all paid homage. There are Vonnegut-esque scenes involving a wraith. Faulkner is hearkened. Nabokov's influence is seen throughout, and there are enough digressions to satisfy Lawrence Sterne.
The novel contains mystery, but this is not the prime mover of the plot. Loneliness, depression, anxiety, fear, advertising, and entertainment all get special treatment.
Here are a couple decent but obscure quotes from this astonishing book (despite its length, it is not especially quotable).
"There's something elementally horrific about waking before dawn."
"... Saturday still being the week's special mythic Party-Night even for persons who long ago ceased to be able to do anything but party 24/7/365."...more
Gore Vidal may have been one of the most knowledgeable and well-read Americans of the second half of the 20th Century. He probably could have been a fGore Vidal may have been one of the most knowledgeable and well-read Americans of the second half of the 20th Century. He probably could have been a famous actor, politician, humorist, or screenwriter. He flirted with all those careers but for our benefit he became a novelist.
Burr rings with the kind of truth that can only be found in fiction. We are not to believe all we read here, for it is a novel, but we should be aware of Vidal's reputation for painstaking research.
Washington, Jefferson, Monroe, and Madison come off as less than heroic, sometimes ghastly, shallow, incompetent: and in the case of Jefferson, downright hypocritical and almost evil.
Thomas Paine is barely mentioned, if at all, but Benedict Arnold is lauded as is Andrew Jackson.
Vidal's biting wit, imagination, and knowledge should be welcome in any political climate. This is a fun read that's finely crafted....more
This divagating novel is about more than fish. For whatever twists and turns in the plot—which include the protagonist traveling from England to AmeriThis divagating novel is about more than fish. For whatever twists and turns in the plot—which include the protagonist traveling from England to America and back, then to Australia and to Tazmania—and whatever strange cast of characters—which includes a visionary but maniacal golden masked commanding officer and a surgeon who mangles his reproductive organs during a window mishap—it is a philosophical and far-reaching book. It is about history, and about how all the history books in the world added together don't equal the truth. The truth is vaporous. All is subjective, even if all encompassing.
It's about one’s station in life. How that station is dictated by and challenged by one’s birth as well as one's actions. Whatever that entails for each of us, there is endless awe and endless brutality in the world.
"... all life, properly understood, is a savage dream in which one is shuffled about, taken by the tides and winds and the knowledge--constantly in danger of being lost--that one is only ever an awestruck witness to everyday wonder."
The protagonist, a prisoner named Gould, lives in a world crueler than most. But Gould does not envy those who rule him. Fame and glory add nothing in the end. The quest for power and money is silly in the face of love, but even love is no salvation.
The prisoners of Sarah Island are a mighty "chain-gang." A huge number of men are made to perform heavy labor while suffering unspeakable tortures and daily humiliations. All this for the glory of Mother-England. Tazmania was merely a bonus in the conquest of Australia in the heydays of that country's imperialism, Sarah Island only a penal colony far away and out of mind. Another source of riches and pride. All this is not even the worst as genocide occurs in the background to the antipodean aboriginals.
"The wealth of a few seemed so curiously dependent on the misery of the many."
The Book of Fish is about how human life is only important while it's being lived. As soon as breath ceases, all dies: who one was, and what one did. It dies with the dead. How it happened, how one lived, is only known by those who were there, only known absolutely by the one who lived it. And then, memories are also dubious. Even if the history of a person, of an epoch, is written, it is second hand. But if it were 100% true, which is impossible, what would it matter? What would it mean to the one who had lived it, one's whole life written on so many pages? What would it mean to anyone else? All is subjective. All is full of wonder and mystery.
If you think the novel sounds pessimistic, you're right. Even when Flanagan’s musings start brighter, like when in the beginning he describes the need for literature, and more broadly art, he ends equivocally at best:
"... reading and writing books is one of the last defenses human dignity has left... that we are more than ourselves... we are other than hungry dust. Or perhaps not."
And part of the book is seeing the world in the eyes, and even through the eyes, of a fish:
"...it was my own fear at this cracked world in which I and they and everything was trapped. It was a funny thing but then it didn't seem so funny that all these things were bound together for a moment and all existed as a single dying Kelpy."
Flanagan manages to show us some of the beauty in the world, but both beauty and horror are inescapable. Through the squalid life of the prisoners we see the worst humanity has to offer, the suffering civilization has given us. The devices of torture, the gruesome executions, all kinds of hell on earth. How glibly those fortunate enough to live outside such hell seem to ignore and shrug off certain facts of human history and life.
"He came to accept the world of endless labor, ceaseless brutality and pointless violence from both his masters and his fellows as the way all life was here, there & everywhere."
The style is a bit like that of Cormac McArthy's Blood Meridian. It takes some from Robert Louis Stevenson and a lot from Laurence Sterne and Herman Melville. Flanagan's vocabulary and knowledge of history are impressive. It is a dark world of words he uses to conjure an even darker world of deeds. He is not as recondite as Joyce or Pynchon, but he leans in both their directions while remaining more readable. The book is not lacking in humor either:
"If shit ever becomes valuable, the poor will be born without assholes."
History is a story—as many have said—that is "written by the winners." As soon as the present is known as the past it ceases to exist except as history. But The Book of Fish makes history appear frightening, because it is not the retelling of the past. It is the fictional story of the past, what’s left. This makes the real past meaningless. Our mistake is to take history as truth. Then, in the end, it is the truth that doesn't matter. And this is why the horrors of history repeat themselves, and the only lesson we learn from history is that we never seem to learn much from it....more
Nabokov really makes me sick. What was English, his 2nd language? He wrote great novels in Russian and English. Fluent in French. Created new words wiNabokov really makes me sick. What was English, his 2nd language? He wrote great novels in Russian and English. Fluent in French. Created new words with Shakespearian aptitude. Games with puns and grand allusions even an avid reader has to stop and ponder, or seek help, to fully understand. Most can’t write a second-rate novel in their first language. This guy wrote first-rate novels in his second language. Let's not even get into the lepidopterology.
Yet no writer, no matter how talented, can write a perfect novel. Lolita is as close to perfect as anything gets; but some of the tongue-in-cheek style is a bit too silly, some almost scoff-worthy. “Perfectly perfect.” Nobody needs that.
Overall Vlad’s prose is polished and tasteful, rivaling the unknown Edgar Saltus and the ubiquitously known Charles Dickens. Add to this the playfulness of Oscar Wilde, and the writing comes out the only way it should: ecstatic, enthusiastic, provocative, riveting. Take this for example: “A cluster of stars palely glowed above us, between the silhouettes of long thin leaves; that vibrant sky seemed as naked as she was under her light frock.”
The plot seems to be a stumbling block for some. As most are aware, it involves the premeditated manipulation and (statutory?) rape of a twelve year old girl by a middle-aged man—pedophilia. Certainly an atrocious thing. But this is not for gratuitous shock. Let us recall all the great novels in which bad things do not happen…The polyglot polymath is telling us something about desire, and not only the taboo kind. There is a kind of selfishness and recklessness involved in unfettered passion.
A few things regarding plot:
A sophisticated, hyper-educated, European deviant comes to America after his divorce.
He rents a room in the home of a single mother and her daughter; he falls in love with the daughter (she reminds him of his prepubescent first love), marries the mother, and the mother dies. Because we can tell this fellow is a trickster, are we to believe the death of the mother is caused by such an unlikely accident? An accident which happens at such a convenient time and is such a fortuitous event for our anti-hero?
According to our not-to-be-relied-upon narrator, who goes by the alias Humbert Humbert, the twelve year old girl, Lo, genuinely likes him, at least in the beginning. She even initiates their first kiss at the outset of their cross country trip. When she learns of her mother’s death, after a brief episode of grief, the step-father/daughter love affair heats up.
Much is clouded by the alcoholic Humbert’s suspect memory and his sometimes mendacious tendencies. But by the end of the book we see what has transpired, perhaps having to revisit the foreword for some clarification. Still we must assume what we’ve read is a veiled story, worse than H.H.'s version.
One of the masterstrokes of the novel is that through all the descriptions of lust and sex, all the lubricious asides, nary a vulgar word is found. All the while, even an astute reader may miss some of the allusions; some of the wordplay may fly overhead.
There is a part fairly early on when the sad, reclusive, passive and restrained life of a pedophile living among us is described. It is meant to make us feel pity. We almost pity poor Humbert, but we know he isn't trustworthy, and worse, he's a sexual predator. It tests the limits of empathy. Can one pity a rapist? It is of course quite easy to pity Lolita.
Things become more depressing halfway through. Lolita has truly been kidnapped by now. H.H. does whatever he must to coerce the child into "strenuous intercourse", convince her to stay. Threats. Bribes. It is serial rape. It is sick. He berates the girl for her lack of interest in anything besides soda, movies, magazines, and ice cream. Her tastes are not refined enough for the scholar. “Then I picked up her book. It was some trash for young people.”
His nymphet is becoming too human for him. But we also can see he loves her. In his sick, dissolute way, Humbert loves Lolita; at least he is convinced of this.
He is quick to tell us how he feels about women closer to his own age. He calls one such woman: “A full-blown fleshy handsome woman of the repulsive type to which I was particularly attractive…” Are we to believe the narrator is as good looking as he says—so accustomed to the attention of women? More vagaries from our unstable storyteller.
In the course of the inventive and invigorating prose, the crisscrossing of America by our two main characters, a reader may momentarily forget what sordid things occur at whatever motor lodge or cabin the pair winds up staying in on any given night. But Nabokov is not going to let us off the hook. We are occasionally tossed heartbreaking details, like this one:
“…her sobs in the night—every night, every night—the moment I feigned sleep.”
The book is also somewhat of a commentary on America in the 1950s. It is not too explicit, but it seems that certain aspects or types of locations were targeted. H.H. says of one locale, though he could be speaking of many, “a ball-playing, bible-reading, grain-handling town.”
Lolita’s feelings for Humbert are complicated. She is obviously a victim. But she has feelings for him, as a lover and a father-figure. At times she hates him—when his rules do not allow her to go on dates and do as she pleases. Still, she feels real tenderness for him, tenderness not truly revealed until late in the tale.
I’ll say nothing about one shadowy figure, an important character. Nabokov has made finding out the role of this person part of the game of reading the novel.
Lolita can make one laugh and cry; it is both inspiring and dispiriting. The writing is beautiful, ugly the subject matter. But Nabokov wasn’t only playing around with one of the most taboo topics; even in jest he manages to tell us something about ourselves.
Lolita reminds us that we do not choose to what or whom we are attracted. “A man can do as he wills, but not will as he wills," a philosopher once said. Humans hold themselves in high regard, much too high: individually and as a species. We do not control our feelings, our deepest cravings. We can prevent ourselves from acting on them, but we cannot stop their existence.
So many who speak of Lolita must belabor the fact that Lolita is a victim, and Humbert is a terrible human. That what H.H. does to Dolores is horrible. Yes. That this goes without saying goes without saying. Yet in this very review I find myself, several times, reiterating that Humbert is bad, that I certainly don’t condone this type of thing. We are compelled.
Only recently has our society improved its view of homosexuality, treating it for the most part as a normal variant of human sexuality. Most of us recognize that we do not decide upon on sexual orientations. However, this is not acknowledged regarding paraphilia in general: pedophilia especially.
This is true even outside of the taboo. Desire is not directed by freewill. How many stories are about a character choosing the wrong lover? “The heart wants what the heart wants,” is often the refrain.
Obviously, no decent person condones what fictional Humbert Humbert or what any real life pedophile or pederast might do to children to satisfy inappropriate, unhealthy, unacceptable, and unwholesome desires. The disorder could partly be caused by certain brain structures, and abuse early on is thought to spur it. Most studies point to genetics as the primary factor. Strangely, pedophiles are usually left handed. They live among us, some never acting on their immoral urges, others impelled by their affliction to cause harm to themselves and others. Their existence, and society’s unmitigated hatred for them, is a strike against the idea of god and creation, an indictment of humanity itself....more
Nothing less than a particular and vivid history of thought, up to the last portion of the 19th century, this scholarly look at atheists, agnostics, gNothing less than a particular and vivid history of thought, up to the last portion of the 19th century, this scholarly look at atheists, agnostics, great thinkers, philosophers, and poets hurdles through centuries with the ease and grace of a gazelle in tall grass. That Saltus is an obscure writer should be considered a tragedy.
Starting with the Samkhya of Hinduism, to Buddha and Pyrrho, touching on Jesus, generally skipping medieval tomfoolery, and on into modern history, Saltus gives insights on the major themes of skepticism. He has the objectivity to admonish dogmatic atheists as much as shallow optimists and religious zealots.
He never lingers too long on one figure or on any one school. He is at ease discussing poets, emperors, philosophers, and charlatans. His vocabulary is voluminous, and his prose is stellar....more
Schopenhauer's clarity cannot be discounted. This is not to say his ideas are simple or do not need some reflection and thought for thorough cognitionSchopenhauer's clarity cannot be discounted. This is not to say his ideas are simple or do not need some reflection and thought for thorough cognition. The main theme of Schopenhauer is the suffering of life in this world. While some may find this type of pondering sort of pointless, since there isn't much we can do about it, those with the inclination to contemplate the nature of existence will find his musings necessary for further explorations into metaphysics.
Schopenhauer is often only mentioned as a major influence on Nietzsche. To think of him as such is a major mistake, as he is a key modern philosopher with a much broader influence on the whole of western thought.
His ethics are simple--do what you like that does not injure another. He read Plato and Kant voraciously, but what he took from Kant he sums up with a limpidness that philosopher never knew in his own writing.
This particular book is a conglomeration of his essays and aphorisms (per the title). It contains his thoughts on various subjects. Some will find the misogyny in a few essays on women offensive, and even a fan of philosophical pessimism and antinatalism may view a few of his ideas archaic.
Overall this is a great intro to Schopenhauer and a must-read for serious philosophy students.
To quote the forgotten, but excellent, American writer and philosopher of the early 20th Century, Edgar Saltus:
“But to such a man as Schopenhauer,—one who considered five sixths of the population to be knaves or blockheads, and who had thought out a system for the remaining fraction,—to such a man as he, the question of esteem, or the lack thereof, was of small consequence. He cared nothing for the existence which he led in the minds of other people. To his own self he was true, to the calling of his destiny constant, and he felt that he could sit and snap his fingers at the world, knowing that Time, who is at least a gentleman, would bring him his due unasked.”
This is quite possibly the scariest collection of stories known to humankind. It contains horror, the likes of which the world has never seen.
In all sThis is quite possibly the scariest collection of stories known to humankind. It contains horror, the likes of which the world has never seen.
In all severity, though, each story tingles the spine and straightens the hairs that grow on the arms and neck. Please forgive such cliches, but to put it any other way would be malefaction. Poe and Lovecraft were masters at producing creepy atmospheres, unspeakable terrors, and ineffable monstrosities; but Ligotti does something else. He conveys simple things: the meaninglessness and horror of existence, the futility of goals and triumphs. He presents these common pessimistic sentiments in majestic prose. Ligotti's style augments the world his language creates--a world disastrous to live in but impossible to escape....more
This philosophical piece is written with gusto and humor. At times, it is caustic. But Ligotti's style is atmospheric, and his strangely haunting langThis philosophical piece is written with gusto and humor. At times, it is caustic. But Ligotti's style is atmospheric, and his strangely haunting language affects in a very singular way.
To read his fiction, or nonfiction, is to visit a different world, an uncanny place that can feel uncomfortable.
The main idea is that life is more bad than good. While much of the book is an expansion of Schopenhauer (beyond merely promoting pessimism, both see optimism as not only foolish but nefarious), Ligotti touches on lesser-known pessimists: Mainlander, Zapffe, Michelstaedter, and others.
He goes farther than Ecclesiastes, farther than The Last Messiah, even farther than Mainlander's 'will to die.' At the heart of this book is Ligotti's malignant force (similar to Schopenhauer's Will). The force that causes all action, that makes things live and die.
And this force, far from being some benevolent deity or karmic justice, is not even indifferent, as many have said before. This force is pernicious.
There is a paradoxical warmth and consolation in a book so unapologetically nihilistic. What freedom when you realize everything is malignantly useless!...more
McCarthy's masterpiece--sparse, profound, gruesome, and dazzling. Some books encourage aspiring writers because the writing appears emulative. A minorMcCarthy's masterpiece--sparse, profound, gruesome, and dazzling. Some books encourage aspiring writers because the writing appears emulative. A minority of books, like Blood Meridian, encourage because their inimitability inspires, provokes one's own quest for originality, shows that it is possible and what it is like.
If prose were a weapon, McCarthy's would be an ideal melee instrument meant to inflict blunt force trauma. The violence hardly flags long enough for the author, perhaps an amateur botanist, to describe the scenery in minute detail, including common and rare desert and mountain flora and the fauna used for transportation, food, shelter, clothing, etc, as well as abused, burned, killed; and whose corpses lie in the desert while wind and sand reduce all to bones which are too collected and used. All life is used up.
The veracity of the novel's events in regards to the actions of the real Glanton Gang is not important. The legend and real events serve as a vehicle for McCarthy to display the darkest, cruelest, most malicious side of human nature. The reader can feel the crew grow colder, more steely in their murderous endeavors, until most of the men can kill with inhuman apathy and nonchalance, even when dealing with children.
A more horrific representation of human atrociousness may not exist in print. Though it is a work of fiction, we all know it is as true as any book of its caliber. The world of humanity is already finished. It's been over for some time. We are witness to our part of the Great Decline.
The judge, the character most interesting and symbolic, represents the spirit of war inside of our species: in the DNA, the heart. We are the most violent animals. We will fight, always. In the battlefield and in the courtroom, with knives and muskets, with attorneys and loopholes; and worse, with bombs and chemicals.
We were made to rip one another apart in one way or another. Something bloodthirsty lives inside each of us, and someone has to tell us about it, whether we like it or not....more
Flaubert struggled to find the perfect word, the perfect sentence. In one sublime novel, he did it over and over again. This book is almost perfect, aFlaubert struggled to find the perfect word, the perfect sentence. In one sublime novel, he did it over and over again. This book is almost perfect, and the experience of such excellence will remain with the reader long after its completion....more
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