drowned dreams, somnambulisms, reveries...

From MDM15 at 2:45 PM, Chapter XIII, Wheelbarrow, read by Larry Chalif in an exotic accent:



It is worth remembering that Sag Harbor on Long Island was a major whaling port in the early 1800's.

drowned dreams, somnambulisms, reveries...

From MDM15 at 10:56 PM, Chapter LIII, The Gam, read in Japanese by Ayako Rooney:

drowned dreams, somnambulisms, reveries...

From MDM15 at 10:55 AM, Chapter CXXVI, The Life-Buoy, read in Portuguese by Dr. Fonseca, Portuguese Consul:

...which is so sweet a music, for one who has an ear for music.
                         - Molloy

drowned dreams, somnambulisms, reveries...

From MDM15 at 6:54 PM, Chapter XXXIV, The Cabin-Table, read in Hebrew by Rabbi Kanter:



Appropriate, considering the Old Testament underpinnings of M-D.

drowned dreams, somnambulisms, reveries...

From MDM15 at 8:56 PM, Chapter XLII, The Whiteness of the Whale, read by Dutch national (and newsmaker) Tjitske Zwerver:

Synopsis of M-D in Dutch:

De mythische strijd van kapitein Ahab met de witte walvis die hem ooit zijn been heeft afgebeten wordt verteld door de enige overlevende, die ons in de beroemde openingszin opdraagt hem Ismaël te noemen. Een meeslepend geromantiseerde encyclopedie van de zee, de walvisvaart, de potvis, de mens en de wraak.

"Official" photos from MDM15

The Whaling Museum has posted a collection of photos from MDM15 on Flickr, and they are beauties. (You can't beat pro gear.)

Given the omnipresence of the "official" photog at the reading, one would have expected many more than the posted thirty-three, but who's complaining?

Other (amateur) photos from MDMs are scattered through the Museum's "Group Pool."

drowned dreams, somnambulisms, reveries...

From MDM15 at 10:13 PM, Chapter XLVIII, a fortuitous pairing of reader and text:

As the publisher tells Isabelle in the film Amateur, "It's poetry, and don't you try and deny it."

Another Report on the 2011 New Bedford Moby-Dick Marathon

A writer named Meera Subramanian attended the entire Moby-Dick marathon this year and has posted a thoughtful account of her experience, with pictures, at Killing the Buddha.  Interestingly, she had never read Moby-Dick before.  Nonetheless, she seems to have had quite a good time:

Some of the readers in New Bedford were born preachers .... They read neither too slow nor too fast. They lingered over words. They savored the stage directions of punctuation. Others were young, or inexperienced, or melodramatic. The resulting flavors were humorous (when an English captain took on a thick Brooklyn brogue) or painful (when the most basic words were mispronounced, prompting one friend to quip, “So that’s how Latin turned into English.”). Yet there was always something fabulously democratic about the mélange. Our lack of reading aloud, or perhaps more accurately, our lack of listening, is the death of our pronunciation. Moby-Dick is advanced; there are deceptive nautical terms where only half the letters are pronounced and 25-cent words galore. When they were spoken correctly, they sang. We listeners learned.

The "stage directions of punctuation" is a nice touch.

HT: New Bedford Whaling Museum blog.

Should one stay or should one go...

This was my third New Bedford MDM, and the first time I permitted myself to skip out for a beer on Saturday afternoon and to leave before the closing chapters instead of fighting sleep to the "FINIS" line.

Sure it's a bit of a survival stunt to stay with the reading for the entire 25 hours. David Dowling ("Chasing the White Whale") compares the experience to running a road marathon. Unlike road racing, there's no way to train oneself to make "the punishment" less grueling. (...or is there? That's a subject for another post.)

If you commit yourself to the entire event, there are times when it feels like a depression-era dance marathon ("The blood would run out of their shoes," my mother recalled), with the knowledge that there are no cash prizes. And can anyone stay awake, much less concentrate on pithy prose for 25 straight hours? Still, as for the pack-filler at your local road marathon, there is some reward in terms of self-improvement, or "life experience", or bragging rights. (ROFL We should live in such a world.) Then there are moments when you feel like a member of a fading order of priests/priestesses, vainly attempting to preserve "The Word" yet another year against the tide of multi-tasking zombies. "We few, we happy few..."

...be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here, ...

Oh yeah, there's also the book. It ain't a "Classic" for nothing. There are worlds within worlds there. Each reading broadens my appreciation, highlights details I'd missed, and makes me marvel how a single book can affect so many people across so many cultures.

Anyway... not staying for the entire reading left me feeling incomplete, having missed the point, having abandoned my shipmates in their hour of crisis. Next year I'll be in for the whole book, spend less time taking photos, and take a turn at the podium.

Photos of the 2011 Moby-Dick Marathon

A set of 42 photos of this year's marathon has already been posted at Flickr by Captain_Peleg.  I think Gansevoort is in one of them.

And here's a Flickr set posted by Friends of Ed & Betty.  I like the photos here of the Saturday-evening chow line (the volunteers are wonderful!) and the marathoners sacked out on the upper level during the wee hours of Sunday morning.

News of the 2011 Moby-Dick Marathon

Some news coverage of the 2011 marathon: South Coast Today, The Sun Chronicle, and NPR.

Marathon 2011 Has Drawn to a Close

Gansevoort and I lived through another challenging and exhilarating Moby-Dick marathon at the New Bedford Whaling Museum this weekend.  Sadly, as a result of bad weather on the road, we missed the pre-marathon lecture Friday evening.  But by Saturday morning, we were back on schedule. "Stump the Scholars," a new event, gave six Melville scholars a chance to display their learning in response to audience questions.  We also took in the new "Visualizing Melville" exhibit. I bought a marathon T-shirt, offered for the first time this year, and a copy of David Dowling's Chasing the White Whale: The Moby-Dick Marathon; or, What Melville Means Today (signed by the author, who was present). 

Neither of us attended the entire marathon this year.  I find it more enjoyable to break up the reading with meals and a little sleep.  Gansevoort (who, unlike me, is a Barney Frank supporter) was on hand for the start of the marathon reading, back in the Lagoda Room after a year's hiatus.  I returned to the museum later in the day and stayed until Sunday morning.  Gansevoort hung in longer than I did on Sunday, but he did not stay for the last couple of frenetic hours.

The rest of Sunday was for recuperation, and today I traveled home.