How I Read a Moby-Book

Everybody read Moby Dick in school, whether high school or college. (And let's get this out of the way right now: No hyphen.)

I'm glad I got to read it at Grinnell under the guidance of my English Yoda, Richard Cleaver. I still hear his gentle voice extolling the virtues of Henry James--and that re-reading him is what retirement was for. I'm for Melville, however, but really can't afford to wait until retirement to enjoy my nineteenth century.

I am a slow reader. A very slow reader. I just finished rereading the beat-up paperback edition I had in college days, and it took over three years. Note the boarding passes as bookmarks. (To my credit, I did read a couple of other things during this time, too, including Doris Kearns Goodwin's 800-page Team of Rivals.)

And I read word by word, often imagining being read to by a great voice. Sam Waterston would be a great Moby Dick voice. And I scribble in the margins. I look stuff up if I can't figure it out, and there's a lot I couldn't figure out in Moby Dick. Even Shakespeare could be more accessible at times.

I have at least two hard cover editions of Moby Dick, including one that's part of a humongous (and hence unreadable) collection of unabridged Melville novels. These look nice on my bookcase. I also have a Kindle version loaded on my netbook, which I haven't inspected yet. (My "Complete Shakespeare" on Kindle omitted all of the plays that were categorized as Romances, so bye-bye Tempest, Cymbeline, and Winter's Tale.)

I have little interest in trying to read Moby Dick electronically anyway. I rather enjoyed seeing "my" notes in the margins. My handwriting was so fussy and fine in those days. And I know perfectly well, even 35 years later, those were not my thoughts in the margins. They were Mr. Cleaver's.

"Whitmanesque" on page 123. What a laugh. I might be able to pick a Whitman poem out of a line-up of Poe and something in the New Yorker, but just forget it you think I'd think of Whitman while reading Melville.

That said, there is poetry in Moby Dick. There's theater in Moby Dick. There's encyclopedias, bibles, art, anthropology, mathematics, history, and every book in every library in Moby Dick. There's not just the whale stuff, there's everything. There is quantum physics before there was quantum physics. From Chapter 41, "Moby Dick" (page 183 in the above edition):

One of the wild suggestions referred to, as at last coming to be linked with the White Whale in the minds of the superstitiously inclined, was the unearthly conceit that Moby Dick was ubiquitous; that he had actually been encountered in opposite latitudes at one and the same instant of time.

Mostly, for me, there is a philosophy in Moby Dick that has shaped my worldview since Mr. Cleaver's class sometime in the mid-1970s. In one of the many levels that Cleaver encouraged us to consider Moby Dick was Ishmael's acceptance of everyone else's worldview. And it was Ishmael who was saved. Cause and effect? That universal (even ubiquitous) acceptance is our ultimate salvation? 

I don't know. I have tried to live by that idea, though. That's one reason why I wanted to reread Moby Dick. 

A quick Internet search reveals that I'm not the only re-reader of Moby Dick to stop short on the reference to the "now egotistical sky" (Chapter 79, "The Prairie," page 335 of my edition). The question I scribbled to myself in the margin here: "God is egotistical? or man has inserted his ego into the deity's domain?"

A former-English-teacher friend of mine tried to explain something about Melville's critique of the Transcendentalists of his time. I may go read up on that at some point. (In addition to being very very slow, I am frequently very very lazy.) I'll simply redirect the philosophically inclined toward the New York Times Opinionator blog dated December 5, 2010, by Sean D. Kelly, "Navigating Past Nihilism." 

The deep thinkers of the nineteenth century were struggling over Nietsche's atheism (God is dead) and the fanaticism (exclusivity) of many religious believers. The elevation (transcendence) of humanism was one alternative. Kelly writes that Ishmael's (Melville's) acceptance of these multiple worldviews could be called "polytheism." The term doesn't quite satisfy me, but I don't want to be a stickler for semantics. Polytheism wouldn't include humanism.

But I do like what Kelly writes here:

Melville hoped for a life that steers happily between two dangers: nihilism and fanaticism. ... Melville himself seems to have recognized that the presence of many gods—many distinct and incommensurate good ways of life—was a possibility our own American culture could and should be aiming at. The death of God therefore, in Melville’s inspiring picture, leads not to a culture overtaken by meaninglessness but to a culture directed by a rich sense for many new possible and incommensurate meanings. 

The pursuit of a good way of life. And as simple as that sounds, that's what it's all about. I'm not sure if that's what Mr. Cleaver was telling us back in the day, but it's a good takeaway now.

Love, hosaa

Mobied

Whatever Happened to the Beauty Queen

Back from the first preview night performance of Round House Theatre's production of The Beauty Queen of Leenane, the more-black-than-comedy black comedy by Martin McDonagh and directed by Jeremy Skidmore.

The plot revolves around an invalid mother and her long-suffering (and bitching about it) caregiver-daughter in an isolated Irish village. Who's driving whom crazy and what happens next, well, I don't need to spoiler it too much if you've already seen Whatever Happened to Baby Jane.

While I think I can handle challenging material, I prefer it to be abstracted a bit more. I need the distance. This is a little too close to home, even in an isolated Irish village. Maybe if it were Shakespearean. Stacy Keach in King Lear I could handle, this I could not. Go figure.

I will say the acting, directing, and set are, as always, outstanding. (Sarah Marshall is a local treasure.) For me, it's the play. Sometimes it's because I can't relate to the characters (e.g., Glengarry Glen Ross); sometimes it's just too in my face, putting me through something I already survived. I just don't need it.

Sarah Marshall via Capital Talent Agency

Season poster, via Round House Theatre Facebook

Set design, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, via Round House Theatre Facebook

Frankly, I'm not optimistic about the new artistic direction at RHT. At least not the play selection. I'm not seeing any joy yet. Not that it all needs to be technicolor dreamcoats and spoonfuls of sugar with me, but I could use a break from the bleak at least once this season.

Credits:
The Beauty Queen of Leenane
Written by Martin McDonagh
Directed by Jeremy Skidmore
Round House Theatre Producing Artistic Director: Ryan Rilette

Cast:
Maureen Folan: Kimberly Gilbert
Mag Folan: Sarah Marshall
Ray Dooley: Joe Mallon
Pato Dooley: Todd Scofield

Set designer: Tony Cisek
Costume designer: Frank Labovitz
Lighting designer: Dan Covey
Sound designer: Eric Shimelonis

Through September 15, 2013, in Bethesda, Maryland.

Love, hosaa,
remembering mom a little more fondly

Second Glance DIY

Ack! My favorite part of Sunday morning is doing the Washington Post magazine's Second Glance puzzle - find the 12 differences. Today they just had the before picture with no after and no key!

So I did it myself.

Original photograph by Washington Post reader Graham Joscelyne; ceramic shoe collection of Shelly Kreykes in Vienna in May.

Click to enlarge and open in viewer. (Bonus question: Name that boyfriend!)

eta, Oops! Too funny: Now that I look at it in broad daylight, there are 13 differences; I forgot to number them when I started. Look in the middle of the picture, slightly to the northwest of center: a little toe detailing on the moccasin removed.

etaa, update 8-26-13: Yesterday the print edition of the Post gave the answers to their version of the before and after. Obviously they doctored different bits in the picture than I did in my DIY, but we had many similarities:

Number 11 in mine (upper right corner), I enlarged the shoe, whereas they removed it.

In my Number 7, we both changed the color of the shoelaces (theirs were blackened, mine got multicolored).

For Number 4 in mine (lower left corner), they labeled their change "Bigger star." HAHA! My "bigger star" is bigger than their "bigger star."  (Clay Aiken Rulzz!)

Fair Days Out

Just a quick note to share a little bit of video from last week's visit to the National Zoo and yesterday's visit to the Montgomery County Fair.


I admit to being disappointed that I didn't get myself up to Maine this summer to see my Clay Aiken performing. It would be nice to take a major vacation anyway, but since I can't, these little outdoor excursions remind me what summer's all about. They made me miss my family.

The music for the video, in case you don't recognize it, is Travis Tritt, in performance at the Birchmere last June. I just finally got around to finding a use for my Travis clack! (A memento from a great night out with cousins.)

And, a reminder to catch Clay on the revived Arsenio Hall show (hopefully in the first week):

Books I Don't Read on Faith (Book of Mormon recap)

Back (last night) from the touring production of Book of Mormon now installed at the Kennedy Center (just 10 days remaining in the run). The show was critically acclaimed, so, despite the difficulty getting tickets (12 hours on the crashy online members' presale) I had to see it. Blind faith (or at least a trust in the opinions of the Tony voters) worked out in this case! *g*

Probably everything that needs to be said about the show has already been said, so I'll focus mainly on the audience experience. The problems my friends had in the side section of the first tier (which I didn't, being on the end of the center section a row farther back) were sight lines and audio direction. The staging was so flattened and centered that people even in slightly off-to-the-side seats couldn't make out the lyrics and couldn't see the title on the revised Book that the cast holds up at the end. If you never get the punchline, the joke is pointless. It spoiled the experience for my friends.

My complaint was just that the program did not include a list of the production numbers and the names of the characters in them. There were actually two cast lists--the official one and the insert for "at this performance" adjustments. For the record, last night C. K. Edwards replaced Bobby Daye as Guard so that Daye could step in as Mafala Hatimbi for Stanley Wayne Mathis. I have no mental image of those characters at this point, but if there were a list of the numbers they appeared in, I might have been able to figure it out.

Edited to add: Also last night, swing player Antyon le Monte stepped in as the Doctor for Josh Breckenridge, who surrendered that role to serve exceptionally well as the General for Derrick Williams.

I keep my programs. I follow careers, or try to. That's how I know the darling dancer Alex Puette is now performing as Levi, one of the brothers, in the Clay Aiken showcasing of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at the Ogunquit Playhouse in Maine, another religion-inspired show I had no desire to see except for its cast (Clay, obviously, is the draw. Alex was a bonus. But with only three weeks' notice, it was not possible for me to commit the time or money. Ogunquit's and I-95's legendary traffic was another deterrent).

But I digress, as Clay often compels me! *g*

Book of Mormon was raucous, rollicking, and crude, and very, very funny. I especially loved the "scary, burn in Hell dream" sequence. (Here is another instance of my friends' problems hearing the lyrics--they didn't know Johnny Cochran was among the residents of this nightmare Hell. The "He saved O.J." line was one of the show's funniest.)

The African version of the Joseph Smith/Brigham Young legend was also hilarious, and reminded me of "Small House of Uncle Thomas" in The King and I. Only smuttier.

But the story was also sinister and disturbing. It was a morality fable about blind faith (the Mormon missionaries) and believing in whatever serves your needs (sex with virgins cures AIDS; female sexual pleasure is evil, so the clitoris must be severed).

[SPOILER ALERTS]

While Elder Price (Mark Evans) did learn the lesson of hubris, the inherent evil of telling other people what to believe remained unchecked. The converted Africans picked up the mission of ringing other people's doorbells. And the hubris merely shifted to Elder Cunningham, as the cast adoringly held up their copies of the "Book of Arnold" (the punchline that my friends missed).

That all left me feeling a little depressed at the end of a very entertaining evening. Issues were brilliantly addressed, but ultimately unresolved.

love, hosaa
not insisting that you to agree with me, but would nevertheless find it pleasant if you did