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A very precious perishing | Moby-Dick reread, riff 19
Moby-Dick illustration by Barry Moser I. In this riff: Chapters 76-80 of Moby-Dick. II. Ch. 76, “The Battering-Ram.” Yet another hyphenated chapter title; yet another horny chapter title. In this...
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There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true...
I. In this riff: Chapters 81-83 of Moby-Dick. II. Ch. 81, “The Pequod meets The Virgin.” In this long chapter, the crew of a German whaler called the Jungfrau (virgin), hail The Pequod. The Jungfrau’s...
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Doubts of all things earthly, and intuitions of some things heavenly |...
Moby-Dick illustration by Barry Moser I. In this riff: Chapters 84-86 of Moby-Dick. II. Ch. 84, “Pitchpoling.” Another chapter that starts out horny and ends in death. Our Man Ish lets us know that...
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There is no folly of the beasts of the earth which is not infinitely outdone...
Moby-Dick illustration by Barry Moser I. In this riff: Chapter 87 of Moby-Dick. II. Ch. 87, “The Grand Armada.” In this chapter, The Pequod passes by “the long islands of Sumatra, Java, Bally, and...
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And what are you, reader, but a Loose-Fish and a Fast-Fish, too? | Moby-Dick...
Detail from a Barry Moser illustration to Moby-Dick I. In this riff: Chapters 88-90 of Moby-Dick. II. Ch. 88, “Schools and Schoolmasters.” In this chapter, Ishmael distinguishes between the two types...
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The intense concentration of self in the middle of such a heartless...
Moby-Dick illustration by Barry Moser I. In this riff, Chapters 91, 92, and 93 of Moby-Dick. II. Ch. 91, “The Pequod Meets The Rose-bud.” Stubb stars in this humorous chapter in which The Pequod...
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Let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness...
I. In this riff, Chapters 94-98 of Moby-Dick. In these chapters, Ishmael (again) describes the business of rendering oil and etcetera from a whale’s corpse. The chapters show again Ishmael’s push-pull...
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“I look, you look, he looks; we look, ye look, they look” | Moby-Dick reread,...
Moby-Dick illustration by Barry Moser I. In this riff, Chapter 99 of Moby-Dick — “The Doubloon.” II. Moby-Dick is a big big book stuffed with big big themes. One of those themes is perspective and...
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Horror-struck at this antemosaic, unsourced existence of the unspeakable...
Moby-Dick illustration by Barry Moser I. In this riff, Ch. 101-105 of Moby-Dick. II. Ch. 101, “The Decanter.” Ishmael praises the “famous whaling house of Enderby & Sons; a house which in my poor...
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The ineffaceable, sad birth-mark in the brow of man, is but the stamp of...
I. In this riff, Chapters 106-108 of Moby-Dick. This trio of chapters introduces the carpenter, who proves a strange foil to Ahab. Moby-Dick illustration by Barry Moser II. Ch. 106, “Ahab’s Leg.”...
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Millions of mixed shades and shadows, drowned dreams, somnambulisms, reveries...
I. In this riff, Chapters 109-111 of Moby-Dick. II. Rereading these chapters—particularly Ch. 110, “Queequeg in His Coffin”—put me in a melancholy mood, a strange dark mood that I remember from...
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Death is only a launching into the region of the strange Untried | Moby-Dick...
Moby-Dick illustration by Barry Moser I. In this riff, Ch. 112 of Moby-Dick, “The Blacksmith.” II. “The Blacksmith” chapter is neither especially long nor short, and a reader could skip over it without...
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Our souls are like those orphans whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them |...
Moby-Dick illustration by Barry Moser I. I “finished” rereading Moby-Dick a few minutes before I started composing this riff. I feel sad and a little deflated. Deflated here is maybe the wrong word....
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Thy incommunicable riddle, thy unparticipated grief | Moby-Dick reread, riff 33
Moby-Dick illustration by Barry Moser I. In this riff, Chapters 118 and 119 of Moby-Dick. II. Ahab has already gone mad before The Pequod sets sail on this particular voyage, but Ch. 118, “The...
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All of us are Ahabs | Moby-Dick reread, riff 34
Moby-Dick illustration by Barry Moser I. In this riff, Chapters 120-123 of Moby-Dick. II. Ch. 120, “The Deck Towards the End of the First Night Watch.” A very short chapter with a mediumish-length...
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Crying and sobbing with their human sort of wail | Moby-Dick reread, riff 36
I. In this riff, Chapters 124-126 of Moby-Dick. II. Ch. 124, “The Needle.” “The Needle” is another one of Melville’s satanic reversals in Moby-Dick. Lightning from the tempest that The Pequod endured...
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A life-buoy of a coffin! Does it go further? | Moby-Dick reread, riff 37
Moby-Dick illustration by Barry Moser I. In this riff, Chapters 127-129 of Moby-Dick. II. Ch. 127, “The Deck.” Another chapter composed as playwright’s drama—mostly dialogue, and a few spare stage...
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The least heedful eye seemed to see some sort of cunning meaning in almost...
I. In this riff, Chapters 130-132 of Moby-Dick. Moby-Dick illustration by Herman Melville. II. Ch. 130, “The Hat.” In which Ahab’s hat is stolen by “one of those red-billed savage sea-hawks which so...
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That wild simultaneousness of a thousand concreted perils | Moby-Dick reread,...
I. In this riff, Chapters 133-134 of Moby-Dick. II. Ch. 133, “The Chase—First Day.” We finally get there. Ahab has posed one question throughout the book: “Hast seen the White Whale?” That is the only...
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Wild nights | Moby-Dick reread, riff 35
I. In this riff, Ch. 123, “The Musket.” Here, we—and by which we, I guess I mean Ishmael’s consciousness–or maybe I just mean we—enter Starbuck’s consciousness. Our good Christian co-commander stands...
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