The MDC at Arrowhead

I was fortunate to catch William Petit at Arrowhead, talking about his renowned Moby Dick Collection. It was great to finally meet the man behind one of my "must read" blogs.

Mr. Petit spent the morning in Melville's study creating a watercolor of the view out toward Mt. Greylock. (His painting is visible in the left corner of the photo above.) Later he talked about the genesis of his collection, the surprises encountered, and the insights gleaned in the process of accumulating over 200 copies of Moby-Dick.

His current white whale is a braille edition. As John Hartford sang, "Next time you go to the attic, look and see what you got."

Happy Duplicates

...they seem a mob of unnecessary duplicates...
                           - Chapter 107

I'm looking forward to Bill Petit's talk at Arrowhead this weekend (details in this post). He is the keeper of The Moby Dick Collection, an ever-growing stockpile of hard-copy editions of our cherished text.

Highlights of the collection are posted on his blog — old and new, hardcover and paperback, English and "non" (Estonian anyone?).

He muses over the various illustrations of Ahab (right-pegged or left?).

He is especially fond of copies that indicate the reader's relationship with the book. Why did Judith Spiegler cease her underlinings on page 240? How did tenth-grader Douglas Rogers feel about receiving M-D as a mathematics prize (circa 1949)? Did young Vermonter "Pete H." ever finish the novel, after repeated renewals from the Flynn School library? What's with the teeth marks on this 1942 Dodd, Mead & Co.?

I suspect that most of us Melvillians have our own, smaller, "Moby-Dick Collections" — editions we've adopted out of a sense of pity, or lust.

Of what use is such a "collection" of apparent duplicates? One benefit was driven home after the Scholar Chats at MDM16 [long-story alert]...

Professor Mary K. Bercaw Edwards (U. Conn.) had asked the group if we ever wondered why there were so many duplicates in M-D: two departure ports (New Bedford and Nantucket), two inns, two innkeepers, two would-be mentors (Bulkington and Queequeg) , two (or three) captains (Bildad, Peleg, Ahab) ...and why does Bulkington disappear after the first hundred-or-so pages?

Northwestern University professor Harrison Hayford, she said, had written a paper explaining why.

Back home, the question became, where to find Hayford's paper? A bit of Web searching revealed that it is included in the Norton Critical Edition, 2nd Edition. Hey, I have a copy of that! Picked it up for 50¢ at a library book sale, mostly for the rigging diagrams.

Those "duplicate" M-Ds are anything but unnecessary.

BTW, Hayford's Unnecessary Duplicates is fascinating. He deduces Melville's process of composition from the appearance of "duplicates" and details of word choice.

Herman's 193rd

courtesy of jasonlam

Remembering our man, born 11:30 P.M. on Sunday, August 1, 1819, at 6 Pearl Street, NYC.

Here's Google's view of that location today:


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The gam that changed literature - July 23, 1841?

In all Melville's life he is not known to have so intricately tangled up so much misapprehension and misinformation as he did about Owen Chase.
                                               - Hershel Parker, Melville, v.1, p. 197

The details of Melville's acquisition of a copy of Owen Chase's Narrative, and the confused notes he made in it are worth reading. The story involves Judge Shaw's connections in Nantucket, a whale-man mistaken for Owen Chase, and the "surprising effect" the Narrative had on young Herman, about to turn 22 years old and hunting whales in the same ocean where the Essex was sunk by a vengeful sperm whale. See Parker's Melville, pp. 196-199 and Parker's notes on Melville's notes in the Norton Critical Edition of M-D, 2nd ed., p. 571.

On 23 July 1841 the Lima of Nantucket gammed with the Acushnet... ...this may have been the occasion when he [Melville] met a son of the famous Owen Chase, and first held a copy of Chase's Narrative.
                                               - Hershel Parker, Melville, v.1, p. 196

So, one hundred seventy-one years ago today may have been Melville's first reading of Chase's horrific encounter with a sperm whale.  Ten years later, the fruit of that seed was ripe.

Events to Note @ Arrowhead

If you can make it to Arrowhead this summer, here are two events to catch (part of the Call Me Melville celebrations).

On July 29, at 11 A.M., Dr. Wyn Kelley (noted Melvillian and M.I.T. professor) will read and discuss The Piazza Tales, on the "piazza" of the title. (Bring bug spray.) Dr. Kelley is sure to deepen your appreciation of these stories.

On August 25, Bill Petit (of The Moby Dick Collection) will be at Arrowhead to discuss and paint(!). At 10 A.M. he'll be painting scenes around the property. At 2 P.M. he will be in the barn to talk about his impressive collection, 200 volumes and growing.

Addendum, 7/18/12: If you have a couple of days to spare, make your stop at Arrowhead part of a Melville tour. This 1986 article in the NY Times highlights some nearby points of interest.

Halfway to MDM17

At midnight tonight we'll be midway between MDMs—halfway to the next Moby-Dick Marathon, MDM17. (That is, if we assume MDM17 will follow the museum's recent pattern of launching the Marathon on the first weekend after New Year's Day.)

Clear the decks and mark your calendar.

Heed the advice of this post—take Monday (1/7/13) off and book a room for the night of the close of the Marathon (1/6/13).  New Bedford and neighboring Fairhaven have a number of hotels and B&Bs. The fine Fairfield Inn & Suites is a three-block walk from the Whaling Museum. You'll spot some luminaries of Melville studies at breakfast there.

Lemuel and I will keep an eye on the Whaling Museum's website for definitive schedule info.

Andrew Sarris, 1928-2012

The exhilarating film culture of the sixties and seventies would have been much less so without the informed insights of Andrew Sarris, who died yesterday. His column in the Village Voice was the reason I subscribed. (If I recall correctly, his review of a Woody Allen movie bore the headline: "What more do you want, and who else is even trying?") Scan the titles in this compilation of over forty years of Sarris Top Ten lists and dream of a time when movies mattered.

His influential survey, The American Cinema: Directors and Directions, 1929-1968, mentioned John Huston's film of Moby-Dick, unflatteringly, in the chapter Less Than Meets the Eye:

The turning point in Huston's career was probably Moby Dick. In retrospect, he should have acted Ahab himself and let Orson Welles direct. This was his one gamble with greatness, and he lost, and like the cagey poker player he is, he has been playing it cool and corrupt ever since.

Just reporting, not agreeing; although the idea of a Welles-directed M-D is such stuff as dreams are made on.