From Hell's heart, I stab at thee!

So, if I go a' hunting for anything, and I never ever would, but IF I did, and the creature I was hunting, let us say, actually resisted against being hunted down and killed, in fact, if that creature actually fought back, and took a bite out of me, well.  That's just normal and right, yes, it's trying to survive and doesn't understand why some asshole is trying to kill it.  This is all normal logic, right?  So why does Ahab feel he has the right to go back and hunt the white whale?  The fact that the white whale didn't allow him to commit murder?  And furthermore, what does it mean that there are a lot of people willing to sign on to his ship to support his purpose? This reading group is just getting started.  Mark my words.  :)

Chapter 23.  Take heart, take heart, O Bulkington!  Bear thee grimly, demigod!  Up from the spray of the ocean-perishing - straight up, leaps thy apotheosis! Chapter 24.  And, as for me, if by any possibility, there by any as yet undiscovered prime thing in me; if I shall ever deserve any real repute in that small but high hushed world which I might not be unreasonably ambitious of;  if hereafter I shall do anything that, upon the whole, a man might rather have done than to have left undone; if, at my death , my executors, or more properly, my creditors, find any precious MSS in my desk, then here I prespectively ascribe all the honor and the glory to whaling; for a whale ship was my Yale College and my Harvard. Chapter 25.  Think of that, ye loyal Britons! We whalemen supply your kings and queens with coronation stuff! Chapter 26.  Thy selected champions from the kingly commons; bear me out in it, oh God! Chapter 27.  On the grim Pequod’s...

This is from goodly Bob in Texas, one of the stellar members of this band of literary ruffians: I like the comment re: Elijah, “Elijah! Thought I , and we walked away, both commenting, after each other’s fashion, upon this ragged old sailor, and agreed  that he was nothing but a humbug, trying to be a bugbear.”   The start of Chapter 23: “Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death.”

We have our own Bildad amongst us, which is a good and magical thing.  He’s a bit of an elusive figure, but always an enlightened one, me thinks.  Truth be told, me thinks he’s building a ship of his own as we speak.  A vessel of sorts, by hand.  It’s an old trade, but keeps men young. This phrase/sentence is rather lovely (18):  “Pious harpooners never make good voyagers — it takes the shark out of ‘em’; no harpooner is worth a straw who ain’t pretty sharkish.” Although ‘harpooning’ seems so malicious and cruel to me, somehow, if you are going to jump on that game, this sentence rings very true. There’s a kind of moral and I’m not sure how to say it, but I feel it... I can’t put my foot on it .... Melville and this book.  He kind of captures the hypocrisy of Western culture, without shaming it.  Or coming off as a pompous prick?  Maybe?  Like noting the differences between cultures, and kind of saying our own comes up a bit shy.  ...

“I have forgotten to mention that, in many things, Queequeg placed great confidence in the excellence of Yojo’s judgment....” “I learnt that there were three ships up for three years’ voyages.”  [HOLY HELL IS THAT A BIG COMMITMENT!!!!!  Wow]. “A cannibal of a craft, tricking herself forth in the chased bones of her enemies.”  [Use of the word ‘cannibal’ again, this time in reference to the ship and not Queequeg, but more fusion of metaphor]. [And the ship is also compared to a whale, and has whale teeth,] “...to fasten her old hempen thews and tendons too.” “Merchant service be damned.” “For some of these Quakers are the most sanguinary of all sailors and whale-hunters.  They are fighting Quakers with a vengeance.” “It’s better to sale with a moody good captain than a laughing bad one.”

Nothing to do with Melville, but I just finished what is probably Amler's most famous book "A Coffin for Dimitrios".  Ambler's like Graham Greene but without the crushing guilt (or the Catholicism). Loved by both Greene and Alfred Hitchcock, Ambler merits comparisons to both.  Again, nothing to do with Melville, but read this dude!