"I call them 'the truly [effed].'"

Here is a breezy, entertaining article about the 2009 New Bedford Moby-Dick marathon published in the Financial Times.  The author, one John O'Connor, seems to have attended the marathon more out of curiosity than anything else.  His interest in the text flagged within the first few hours, but he did manage to record some interesting conversations with attendees. 

Particularly memorable was this comment by Peter Whittemore, Melville's great-great-grandson:

[Whittemore said,] “There were issues Melville was thinking about in 1850 that I ponder today. This question of ‘Who am I?’ If you’re the kind of person who’s satisfied just knowing the Red Sox score, then God bless you, have a good life. But if the Red Sox score won’t do it for you, then there are lessons in Moby-Dick.”

Turning and scanning a throng of spellbound Melvillites, Whittemore bowed his knees slightly, as if preparing to spring into the air. “Like me, the Red Sox score won’t do it for these people,” he said. “I call them ‘the truly fucked.’”

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.

News of the 2011 Moby-Dick Marathon

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