Live streaming of MDM16

If you're not able to make it to New Bedford this weekend, you can watch a live stream of the entire Marathon. Last year's inaugural stream was very well done — the camera and audio techs stayed attentive for the entire 25 hours, following the Marathon as it moved to the Seamen's Bethel, and through several rooms in the Museum. The streams were available later as archived recordings. (You can view recordings of MDM15 now, although they may be replaced by MDM16.)

Note 1: My Safari browser under Mac OS X 10.5.8 has trouble with the video player, but Firefox works fine.

Note 2: If you tune in before the kick-off at Noon this Saturday, you may only see a static image or some canned footage.

What to expect?

Packing for MDM16 now, I was reminded of reading this 4-part post when I was anticipating my first MDM.

 ... The young woman Carol spoke with last night is one of them, now attired in pajamas and bathrobe. ...

 If this is your first MDM, you can expect a well-organized, tolerant, focused, quietly convivial affair.

The Extracts, yes!

Announced on the Whaling Museum's blog:

At 11:30 a.m. in the Bourne Building, Melville Society members will read many of the 80 brief "Extracts" related to whales and whaling, which Melville included before Chapter 1.

Is someone at the Museum reading this blog? Both Lemuel and I have argued that the MDM curiously omits two chapters of Moby-Dick: Etymology and Extracts. (And the Iron-Bound Bucket concurs!)

Now it appears that the MDM is, at least partially, addressing our pleas. (Why not read all of the Extracts? Why skip Etymology?)

Still, it's clear, the Marathon gets better every year!!

Note: The Bourne Building is that older part of the museum, which houses the Lagoda.

How To Prepare for the All-Night Reading

What, if anything, can you do to stay alert for the entire 25-hour reading of Moby-Dick? Lemuel seems to have no problem staying focused for the whole show, while I start to flag around 4:00 AM and nod-off in my chair a couple of hours later. Chalk it up to age (mine), intelligence (his), or the fact that Lemuel arrives sober as the chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, while I less so.

A troll of the Web returns lots of suggestions from college kids who face all-night cram sessions: caffeine, B-vitamins, pumpin' music, occasional 10-minute naps (and bumming Ritalin from dorm-mates [not recommended by Lemuel or me]).

One article cites "chronobiologist" Cynthia LaJambe who, even after her studies at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR), can only advise "a short nap [less than 20 minutes] and a moderate amount of caffeine, like a cup of coffee, is still the best approach."

An article in The Guardian gives advice for cricket fans trying to go for days without sleep so they can watch The Ashes match series televised from Australia. They recommend: a high-protein meal beforehand, high-protein snacks during, no alcohol, no large doses of caffeine, vitamin B supplement afterwards.

One study holds particular promise for us Marathoners: "Sleep Extension Improves Performance and Facilitates Task Acquisition During and Following 7 Nights of Subsequent Sleep Restriction," by Dr. Tracy Rupp, also at WRAIR. Its findings were summarized by BBC News. The bottom line is: extra sleep each night of the week before the MDM will help you "perform" better, and recover faster. They call it "banking sleep." (Dr. Tracy also recommends naps.)

Here's my list of suggestions:

• Arrange local accommodations for Sunday night well before the MDM. (See Lemuel's post on sleep-deprived driving.)
• Come well-rested and well-fed. Try to "bank" some shut-eye the nights prior.
• Bring a copy of M-D with large type.
• Stay hydrated.
• Pace your intake of caffeine & sugar. Some folks use green tea for its reduced caffeine content -- bring your own (hot water is available).
• Take breaks in the snack room. You'll meet some interesting folks there.
• Step outside for some bracing January air and imagine Melville's arrival in New Bedford.
• Save the adult beverages for after the reading, if you're absolutely convinced that it will help.

How to Be a Good Moby-Dick Marathon Reader, Part 3

Reading aloud involves a continuously repeated series of steps.  The reader receives visual stimuli (printing on a page or screen), deciphers the words and phrases represented by the stimuli, determines how to say them, says them, hears himself say them, perhaps also sees or hears the audience's reaction to what he's said, and adds what he's heard himself say (and possibly the audience's reaction) to his determination of how to say the words and phrases that come next.  On top of all that, by the time he's saying one set of words, he's already beginning to digest the next set. 

The psychologist Egon Brunswik devised a model for our processes of perceiving and acting that (in the way social scientists have of describing things) cloaks a familiar experience with rather unseethroughable terminology.  In simplified terms, at one end of the model sits the "distal stimulus," such as words printed on a page.  The distal stimulus emits "proximal cues" (such as reflected light waves) from which the "organism" (i.e., you or I) selects those cues that are relevant for the organism's present purpose (some marks on a page are relevant to reading aloud, while others, such as finger smudges, are not).  From the selected cues, the organism derives an ultimate perception, or "percept" (e.g., the idea that the next phrase to be read is "great, Monadnock hump").  Then there is an "action" process that works somewhat in reverse.  It begins inside the organism, with a "central motivational state," on the basis of which the organism chooses "proximal means" to achieve a "distal end."

Depending on your habits of mind, that last paragraph is either helpful or ridiculous.   If you're a mental plodder like me, you might be thankful to have handles for the different things that go on when we read aloud.  Reading aloud demands the execution of impressively complex behavior, since the reader steadily takes in printing -- proximal cues from a stream of distal stimuli -- while simultaneously producing comprehensible speech -- harnessing proximal means to reach his distal ends.

Given everything that has to happen, most of it inside the reader's head, for someone to read out loud, determining why someone has difficulty reading well is nigh impossible.  But I'll venture to say that many marathon readers who perform poorly do so largely because they pressure themselves to read faster than they comfortably can.

All of which leads me to the third principle in our continuing series:

Rule 3:  Read at a pace that is comfortable for you, even if it seems too slow.


When a reader pushes herself to read as fast as she can, or faster, two things happen.  First, the phrases come out in disjointed spurts.  A familiar clause comes out at breakneck speed, then a difficult word or two is stumbled over, then some more familiar words are rushed through, and so on, with phrasing dictated not by Melville's meaning, but by how easy or hard the language is.  Second, the reader makes far more mistakes than he otherwise would, prompting constant self-correction as a word is misconstrued, the error is caught, and the word is repeated.

No one expects the text to be read quickly.  We're not in a rush to find out what happens in the end; we all know that Darth Vader is Ishmael's father.  We listen because we love how Melville wrote.  We want to enjoy his artistry.  What most of the audience would prefer, therefore, is a smooth, steady reading, at a lazy, conversational pace.  In all the hours I've spent listening to marathon readers, I can think of only one who struck me as reading too slowly.  And even he was not annoyingly slow.  On the other hand, many many readers read (or try to read) too fast.

Related posts:

• How to Be a Good Moby-Dick Marathon Reader, Part 1
• How to Be a Good Moby-Dick Marathon Reader, Part 2

The Moby-Dick Marathon Can Be Dangerous to Your Health

If you attend the entire New Bedford Moby-Dick marathon and don't nap at any point, you will be awake for at least 25 hours.  (In reality, you will be awake longer than that, because you will have been up for at least an hour or two before the marathon starts and will remain up another hour or two after it ends.)  Since the marathon ends in the middle of the day, your inclination might be to drive home as soon as it's over.  But that's probably not a good idea, unless you have a very short drive.

The fine folks at "Mythbusters" demonstrated the effects of sleep deprivation on driving in a recent episode of the show.  (Specifically, it was episode #153, which originally aired on Nov. 3, 2010.)  Two of the younger members of the crew, Kari and Tory, tested the claim that driving while sleep deprived is more dangerous than driving while tipsy.  A driving course was laid out, including both a complicated "city" portion and a monotonous "highway" portion.  Then Kari and Tory drank enough to raise their blood alcohol level to just below the legal limit in California.  Each of them drove the course, and their errors were recorded.

For the sleep-deprivation part of the experiment, Kari and Tory stayed awake for 30 hours, which, as it happens, matches pretty well the experience of staying awake for an entire Moby-Dick marathon.  They then drove the same course.  On the "highway" portion, both of them did much worse than they had while tipsy, making more than twice as many recorded mistakes.  On the "city" portion, Tory also did a good deal worse while sleep deprived (Kari was actually a tiny bit better tired than tipsy).

Now, one important difference between Kari and Tory's sleep-deprivation experience and that of most marathoners is that Kari and Tory were not permitted any caffeine or sugar during their period without sleep.  Most Moby-Dick marathoners get plenty of caffeine, and sugar is also much in evidence.  But I wouldn't rely on that to get me home safely.

My recommendation is that if you're going to stay for the whole marathon, you plan to spend Sunday night in New Bedford.  That way, you can enjoy a leisurely afternoon and dinner following the marathon, and a good night's rest before facing the drive home.

How to Be a Good Moby-Dick Marathon Reader, Part 2

The sine qua non of the New Bedford Moby-Dick marathon is the viva voce reading of all (or just about all) of Moby-Dick.  That's why we make the pilgimage to the New Bedford Whaling Museum, why we go without sleep, why we sit for hours in chairs that become less and less comfortable with every passing moment.  It's all about the book.

Hence the next principle in our ongoing series:

Rule 2:  Speak the text, the whole text, and nothing but the text.

Your responsibility as a reader is to pick up where the previous reader left off and to read on until you're signaled to stop, when the next reader takes up the burden.  The entire marathon should comprise an unbroken series of different voices that together take us, without frolics or detours, from "Call me Ishmael ..." to "... only found another orphan."

When you read, therefore, you should adhere religiously to what Melville wrote.  The words that he set down, in the arrangements he selected, move us and inspire us to sustain this communal experience.  Without his text, we are become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.

Ideally, nothing in Moby-Dick should be omitted.  In practice, however, some things are.  The introductory "Etymology" and "Extracts" are deliberately excluded, as I've discussed.  The handling of chapter titles and Melville's footnotes varies from reader to reader; some skip them, others do not.  I would prefer that readers not skip chapter titles and especially not footnotes.  A much more serious matter is the occasional accidental skipping of text.  Readers have been known to skip a couple of paragraphs by accident.  No one likes that, but it is usually allowed to pass in silence.  In 2010, however, one reader skipped so much text (presumably by turning several leaves at once) that the "watch" stopped her and asked her to go back. 

By the same token, nothing should be added to what Melville wrote.  The audience wants no jocular asides, no dedicatory prefaces, no autobiographical embellishments, no pleas for indulgence, no shout-outs to peeps.  The participants in the New Bedford marathon take their Melville straight.  He provides more than enough commentary and wit for anyone, and doesn't need our feeble efforts to "improve" upon his work.

Related posts:

• How to Be a Good Moby-Dick Marathon Reader, Part 1
• How to Be a Good Moby-Dick Marathon Reader, Part 3

Facing the Podium at the Moby-Dick Marathon

Lemuel's post of January 19 recalled other associations that have struck me at MDMs. I can't be the only one who is reminded of the rhapsode of ancient Greece, who spun out epic poems from memory. These ancients competed, while at the MDM a joyfully co-operative and inclusive atmosphere is maintained. Still, one year we may see someone at the podium who recites from memory. (Most of us could probably reel off the opening paragraphs without much trouble.) Lemuel is well-qualified to sing the parallels between and Ahab and Achilles:

Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus, that
brought countless ills upon the Achaeans. Many a brave soul did
it send hurrying down to Hades, and many a hero did it yield a
prey to dogs and vultures, for so were the counsels of Jove
fulfilled from the day on which the son of Atreus, king of men,
and great Achilles, first fell out with one another.

- The Iliad, Book 1

The arena for the rhapsode was a religious festival, which the MDM could be argued to be; a celebration of literary genius, of the novel as an art form, of the days of sail, of Melville himself.

A second association for me (sans apology) is with the post-nuclear tribe of kids in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. In some paranoid, sleep-deprived lunacy, a Marathoneer might envision MDM63, where survivors take turns "doing the tell" of the barely-remembered book, struggling to keep it alive one more generation.

How to Be a Good Moby-Dick Marathon Reader, Part 1

The New Bedford Moby-Dick marathon, to its credit, involves a cast of hundreds.  The opportunity to be one of the readers is open to all, first come, first served.  About eight weeks before the marathon, the museum begins registering volunteers to read, and even on the two marathon days themselves, anyone who has not already registered may sign up to be a stand-by reader. 

When you register, no one inquires into your qualifications or lack thereof.  They don't even ask if you've read Moby-Dick or are a member of the museum.  Not unlike a Quaker meeting, where the Inner Light might move anyone to speak, the marathon denies nobody who registers the opportunity to be heard.  Eloquence or learning is not a prerequisite. 

Just as not everyone is a born preacher, not everyone is a born reader.  The quality of marathon readings varies as much as the backgrounds of the volunteers.  Still, I believe it's possible to agree on a handful of principles that, if observed, will help you read in a most pleasing manner.  We will propose these principles from time to time in a series of posts.

Rule 1:  Do not shout.

The podiums at which the readers stand are equipped with sensitive microphones.  They will pick up and amplify perfectly well whatever you say in a normal speaking voice.  If you come on board "shouting like a boatswain in a gale of wind," the amplified sound will knock the listeners out of their chairs.  It's painful.  The back row will hear you fine without shouting.

Related posts:

• How to Be a Good Moby-Dick Marathon Reader, Part 2
• How to Be a Good Moby-Dick Marathon Reader, Part 3

The Graveyard Shift

The Graveyard Shift -- from about 10:00 on Saturday night until about 8:00 Sunday morning -- forms the heart of the New Bedford Moby-Dick marathon.  Reading straight through the night makes the marathon a marathon.  If instead we were to read, say, for only eight hours, three days in a row, knocking off at 5:00 pm each day to have dinner and wash up and sleep, it would be hard to claim that we're participating in any kind of marathon.  We'd have abandoned the idea of reading Moby-Dick in one sitting, taking it all in in one Big Gulp. 

Moby-Dick being what it is, a 600-ish page novel, it cannot be read in one sitting without including the wee hours of the morning.  The fact that the New Beford Moby-Dick marathon is held in early January, when the nights are especially long and cheerless, only strengthens its right to hold itself out (should its organizers so choose) as the marathon of marathons. 

I enjoy the Graveyard Shift more than any other part of the marathon.  The beginning and end of the marathon are the crowd-pleasers.  That's when the most novelistic and most accessible parts of the book are read.  Ishmael meets Queequeg; Orson Welles (oops, I mean Father Mapple) gives his sermon in the Seamen's Bethel; Ishmael and Queequeg join the Pequod's crew; we meet Ahab, Starbuck, Stubb, Flask, Tashtego, and Daggoo; "Death to Moby Dick!" ... Then jump ahead 400 pages, we chase Moby Dick around the Pacific, "Ahab beckons" (well, maybe not), Finis.  No shortage of readers and listeners for those parts of the book.

The Graveyard Shift attracts the die-hards.  This is when we reach the chapters that casual readers are inclined to skip: "Of the Monstrous Pictures of Whales" (Ch. LV); "The Great Heidelburgh Tun" (Ch. LXXVII); "Jonah Historically Regarded" (Ch. LXXXIII); "A Bower in the Arsacides" (Ch. CII).  But those who stay up for the Graveyard Shift are treated to the rarefied pleasures of haute école expository Melville. 

It is also at this time that every individual's contribution is most strongly felt.  Those participating and following along can be taken in with one glance -- perhaps a dozen in all.  Even if you don't speak to them, they become your comrades in a way that cannot happen when it's light outside and a crowd is on hand.  The comedy of it, too, becomes most apparent.  Sitting up at 3:00 am listening to people take turns reading Moby-Dick out loud -- how is this not ridiculous? 

Perhaps most enjoyable of all is seeing the winter sky, visible through the large windows behind and above the readers, ever so slowly change from black to navy blue to purple as dawn approaches, and those who have been paying attention can again bask in the feeling of being stuffed with hours of Melville at his Melvilliest, top-heavy "as a dinnerless student with all Aristotle in his head" (Ch. CX, "Queequeg in His Coffin").

Taking the Podium at the Moby-Dick Marathon

American Idol starts its 250th season tonight, beginning as usual with a lineup of dreadful aspiring singers who haven't a clue as to how dreadful they truly sound.  For many people (including my wife), it's a trainwreck they can't keep their eyes off.  Young men and women audition before the judges, hoping for a spot on the show, and four times out of five they're told (to their shock and disbelief) that they don't have a wisp of talent.

If you can tolerate gotcha TV, this display does contain some psychological interest.  The complete lack of connection between how some people sound and how they think they sound raises intriguing questions about self-perception.  It's hard to believe, but apparently true, that many people whose singing sounds like howling cats are nevertheless convinced they actually rival Judy Garland or [insert current pop singer of your choice].

Every January, I wonder if Moby-Dick marathon readers are similarly deluded.  It has to be said that some readers are really quite bad, God bless them.  They mean well; they're genuine Melville fans; they do the best they can.  But no matter who you are, your best in certain endeavors just isn't very good.  Indeed, your absolute best might be among the worst.

Do bad readers know they're bad?  No one in the marathon audience ever gives any indication if someone's performance is less than stellar.  Some bad readers do seem aware of the effect they're having, since I've seen a few gasp with relief when they're done, as if they'd just finished hacking a path through bamboo with a dull machete.  If someone has such self-awareness, I can only respect her the more, even though my enjoyment is lessened.  It's one thing for a person who reads out loud frequently and fluently to stand in front of a crowd of strangers and presume to read Moby-Dick to them.  It's quite another thing for someone who knows he's a halting, stumbling reader to nonetheless risk humiliating himself in order to do his duty by Melville and the marathon.

Etymology and Extracts at the New Bedford Moby Dick Marathon

What is the single most shocking thing about the Moby-Dick marathon at the New Bedford Whaling Museum?  It's that they skip the etymology and extracts with which Melville begins the book. 

I guess I can see the logic behind this choice.  The marathon, which now starts dramatically with an Ishmael impersonator (for lack of a better term) reading "Loomings" in the museum's Lagoda Room, would probably turn off many would-be participants if they had to sit through 15-20 minutes of non-narrative quotations from other authors before even getting to "Call me Ishmael." 

Nevertheless, it doesn't seem right.  A Moby-Dick marathon without "Etymology" and "Extracts" is like a Scarlet Letter marathon without "The Custom-House," or a Giles Goat-Boy marathon without the comic editors' statements on why they should or should not have published the manuscript.  Is it really a marathon if you intentionally omit part of the text?

When I first raised this issue with Gansevoort, he suggested doing a "guerrilla reading" of "Etymology" and "Extracts" in front of the museum before the regular marathon begins.  I like that in theory.  But in the hour before the marathon, most people are too busy getting settled with their gear and what-not inside the building to have any time or attention to spare.  Plus, New Bedford in January is not the best place for standing around reading or listening to yet more Melville. 

Another possibility, now that the museum has started streaming the marathon, would be to have a virtual reading of the introductory material.  Thus, even if it didn't happen live, a reading of the etymology and extracts would at least be part of the marathon in some sense.  And I suppose a third possibility is simply to arrive early and read the etymology and extracts silently by oneself, while waiting for Ishmael to begin.  Who knows, maybe some attendees do that already.

Good Behavior at the New Bedford Moby-Dick Marathon

If you ever attend the New Bedford Whaling Museum's annual Moby-Dick marathon (and I hope you do), you may be surprised by what you do not see.  No one stands at the door to charge admission, take tickets, or check IDs.  No police officer or security guard patrols the entry to expel drunks or hooligans.  None of the listeners shouts out jokes or editorial comments.  No disputes arise over whose seat is whose or how much space someone takes up with her gear or when or how long someone is permitted to read.  None of the readers dispenses with the text and launches into a speech on his particular obsession.

The marathon proceeds in surprisingly good order, notwithstanding that it is free and open to all, in the heart of a modern city.  I don't know what would happen if someone chose to disrupt it; I imagine there are city police ready to respond to serious trouble.  But the fact is that the attendees behave themselves spontaneously.

We may attribute this partly to the type of person that a marathon reading of a long, complex, philosophical, 19th-century novel is bound to attract -- contemplative bookish folk with an unusual idea of what constitutes entertainment. 

But something else is at work as well, something peculiarly of New England.  In his masterpiece Patriotic Gore: Studies in the Literature of the American Civil War, critic Edmund Wilson writes (in his chapter on Harriet Beecher Stowe) about "the crisis of Calvinist theology" in 19th-century New England, when the old-line Congregationalist ministers started losing large numbers of worshipers to more forgiving churches and denominations.  Yet, as he also points out, the Calvinist mind-habits survived.  Hard work, lawfulness, and the odd blend of self-reliance and community service did not vanish when the doctrine of predestination softened.  Underneath the Emersonian kumbaya, it supplied the core of steel evident in the abolition movement and the Civil War. 

We detect its vestiges today in Massachusetts, in orderly public events such as the Moby-Dick marathon.  The mature gents and ladies who smoothly and quietly run the show, the volunteers who provide dinner and nighttime snacks with uncomplaining regularity, the readers who respectfully take us through Melville's creation, the listeners who peacefully follow along -- I don't believe quite the same picture could be seen anywhere outside New England.

The Moby-Dick Marathon in Its Procedural Aspect

People often ask me, "So, Lem, just what goes on at the Moby-Dick marathon anyway?"  (Actually, nobody ever asks me that.  What usually happens when I mention that I'm going to New Bedford a week after New Year's for a marathon reading of Moby-Dick is that the other person mumbles something about needing to refresh his drink before wandering off purportedly in search of the bar.)

But one of the beauties of the New Bedford Moby-Dick marathon is that it attracts precisely those people who are most likely to be excited about the idea of a Moby-Dick marathon.  If you're reading this, I assume you're one of them.

The marathon has evolved over the years and will no doubt continue to develop.  It is currently a three-day affair.  Everything takes place in the New Bedford Whaling Museum except for one side excursion that I will mention in due course.  On Friday evening, the marathon proper is heralded by a dinner (reservations required), after which a lecture is given by a Melville scholar.  These preliminaries attract, I would estimate, 50-100 people.  Next, on Saturday morning, there was this year a new event that I hope will be repeated -- a stump-the-scholars program in which six Melville experts were divided into two teams and competed in trying to answer Moby-Dick-related questions posed by the audience (and in a few cases by the emcee, one of the curators at the museum if I'm not mistaken).

Finally, at noon on Saturday, the marathon itself begins.  It starts off in the Lagoda Room (which houses the museum's fascinating half-size whaling ship, the Lagoda), where Chapters I through VI are read.  Then everyone packs up and moves across the street to the Seamen's Bethel for Chapters VII, VIII, and IX.  These are the only chapters that are read in the very spot where Melville set them.  Then camp is moved again, this time to the museum's Jacobs Family Gallery (a large "event space" stretching up from just below the lobby level to the second story.  This is where everyone settles down for the long haul, from about 3:00 on Saturday afternoon to about 1:00 on Sunday afternoon.

The reading moves to different spots in the museum for two segments: Chapter XXXII (Cetology) is read in the gallery containing a complete sperm whale skeleton, and Chapter XL (Midnight, Forecastle) is performed by a troupe in the auditorium.  (This year, they added several other chapters to the auditorium segment.)  But by 9:00 or so, we're in the Jacobs Family Gallery for the duration.

Around 6 or 7 pm on Saturday, the gracious volunteers serve clam chowder, baked beans, and bread pudding in an adjoining room.  Coffee, tea, and mulled cider are provided through the night, along with assorted snacks (healthy and otherwise).  The "break room" is also the place to chat with other marathoners.

Attendance is strongest at the beginning and end of the reading.  As Saturday wears on and passes into Sunday, the audience gets thinner and thinner.  It hits bottom around, say, 1 to 4 am on Sunday, when there are perhaps as few as 20 people in attendance, half of whom are asleep. Then the crowd returns with the sun on Sunday, waxing until the final crowd-pleasing duel between Ahab and the whale.

Thank yous, acknowledgements, and it's over for another year.