1. "In bony, ribby regions of the earth, where at the base of high broken cliffs masses of rock lie strewn in fantastic groupings upon the plain, you will often discover images as of the petrified forms of the Leviathan partly merged in grass, which of a windy day breaks against them in a surf of green surges."
    Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, the Whale
  2. wordsandeggs: fuckyeahmobydick: Nantucket Trading Company Whale Art by Geministudio via ETSYal Nantucket Trading Company signage, via Gemini Studio on Etsy.

    wordsandeggs:

    fuckyeahmobydick:

    Nantucket Trading Company signage, via Gemini Studio on Etsy.

  3. C is for…Chabon

    When I thought of C (and the structure of this exercise might prove grating at some point but for now restrictions breed creativity, eh? eh?), I thought of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. That’s not really right at all though, is it? If we’re going author, C could be Coetzee, of course, but we’ll get there. I’m going for instinct, right? First memory up and all that. Kavalier and Clay could’ve been the A, actually, was my second thought. I’m happy with Atonement, though. I’m blithering. C could’ve been Crime and Punishment or A Clockwork Orange. Maybe we’ll get there too.

    My first experience with Chabon was Werewolves in Their Youth. It feels seminal for me, as a reader. It was one of the first books I loaned out and didn’t get back. It was the first book I must’ve bought because of something I’d read in college. Is that right? It doesn’t feel right. I read one of the stories my first year in class with Dan Chaon, but I couldn’t have read it right after that. I mean, all I remember reading was Atlas Shrugged that summer of 2004. Sophomore year was dominated by the Old Testament class I was taking, and then Moby-Dick. Could Werewolves have come before Moby-Dick? Yeah…maybe…the seminal before the seminal!

  4. 10 Questions About Books In Your Room

    katurian-katurian:

    7. Which is your favorite?

    That is an absurdly difficult question.  I’d say its a tossup between This Book is Full of Spiders, The Pillowman, and my Shakespeare anthology.  If I was at home right now this question wouldn’t be fair.

    8. Pick up another random one and type the last sentence of the book:

    “It was the devious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing children, only found another orphan.”  Moby-Dick

    9. And the first sentence of that book?

    “Call me Ishmael.”

    1. How many books do you own?

    I’m a little over half way through my inventory, and it’s at 264 right now. Maybe four hundred, then.

    2.  How many are in the same room as you right now?

    Oh, those four hundred are in my room. I have another three or four dozen at work. Maybe a dozen in my car too.

    3. Pick one up, turn to page 54, type the first sentence you read:

    “Again and again the moaning invaded his sleep until, reluctantly, Bird woke up.” - A Personal Matter, Kenzaburo Oe

    4. Pick another random one, turn to page 46, type the first two sentances you read:

    “When Vera answered the telephone with the usual cheerful how-are-you, there was a pause. —Lousy.— And then that cry of a laugh.” - None to Accompany Me, Nadine Gordimer

    5. Of the books in the room with you, which has the best book cover?

    Maybe I should’ve done this at work. The old Narnia covers are pretty awesome.

    image

    6. How many of them do you really like?

    There are not many books I *don’t like.* There’s Wicked, of course. There are a lot of books I still haven’t read, though.

    7. Which is your favorite?

    Favorite? They’re all in here, so let’s just refer to my favorite tag. (I mean, not the tag which I most prefer but rather the tag about the word “favorite.” I distinguish because I’d like to think about favorite tags at some point.)

    8. Pick up another random one and type the last sentence of the book:

    “Now we have closed the eyelids of the Revolution, closed our eyes on the Revolution, now we have broken down the Wall of Shame, now that the lips of protest are closed (with the sugar of history which melts on the tongue), now Europe - and memories - are no longer haunted by the spectre of communism, nor even by that of power, the aristocratic illusion of the origin and the democratic illusion of the end are increasingly receding, we no longer have the choice of advancing, of persevering in the present destruction, or of retreating - but only of facing up to this radical illusion.” - The Illusion of the End, Jean Baudrillard

    9. And the first sentence of that book?

    “Various plausible hypotheses may be advanced to explain this vanishing of history.”

    10: The first sentence of your favorite book in that room:

    “Call me Ishmael.”

  5. “When Melville was on, he was ON.”

    Not sure I explained this well. In case you’re unfamiliar, here’s a timeline.

    1846 - Typee
    1847 - Omoo
    1849 - Mardi
             - Redburn
    1850 - White-Jacket
    1851 - Moby-Dick
    1852 - Pierre

    These are not short books. After Moby-Dick wasn’t as successful as he’d hoped, he tapered off, but there were still all the short stories. Then there was Israel Potter and The Confidence-Man two years apart in 1855 and 1857.  He stopped writing fiction when he was thirty-eight! (until Billy Budd.) It’s kind of like what they say about poets peaking in their youth.

    Mardi and Redburn clock in at over 700 pages. In the same year! Madness.

  6. Typee was published in 1846, when Melville was 27. Moby-Dick was published when he was 32. (When Melville was on, he was ON.)

    1984 was published in 1949, when Orwell was 46. His first novel Burmese Days was published when he was 31.

    The Edible Woman was published in 1969, when Atwood was 30. The Handmaid’s Tale was published 16 years later, though.

    Fitzgerald was crazy. He was 24 when This Side of Paradise was published and 29 for Gatsby.

    Joyce got Dubliners published at 32, but he published a collection of poetry seven years prior. Ulysses came when he was 40, with only Portrait and a play in between.

    I want to talk about Beckett, but…(Kafka too, for different reasons, of course)

    Coetzee started publishing at 34, but I think the story goes that he didn’t commit himself to novels until 35.

    Philip Roth started publishing at 26.

    Junot Diaz was 28 when Drown came out.

    Capote’s first novel came out when he was 24. In Cold Blood came out 17 years later.

    Sarah Vowell started publishing around 28.

    Susan Sontag’s first experimental novel came at age 30. Her nonfiction started at 33.

    Diane Ackerman published poetry at 28 and nonfiction at 32.

    Edward Abbey was 27 for Jonathan Troy, but didn’t publish nonfiction for 14 more years.

    Hemingway’s short stories started getting published when he was 24.

    Faulkner was 29.

    James Baldwin was also 29. His first published work was Go Tell It on the Mountain.

    Alice Walker was 26 for The Third Life of Grange Copeland. The Color Purple was twelve years later.

    Toni Morrison was 39 when The Bluest Eye was published.

    Paul Bowles was 39 when The Sheltering Sky came out.

    Ralph Ellison was 38 for Invisible Man.

    Actually, let’s end with those.

  7. soycrates: Here, have some pictures of my dick. into it

    soycrates:

    Here, have some pictures of my dick.

    into it

  8. "Monomania is what it sounds like: a pathologically intense focus on one thing. It’s the opposite of the problem you have if your gaze is ever flitting from your Tumblr to your spreadsheet to your baby to rush-hour traffic. It’s the opposite of the problem you have, in other words, if you are a normal, contemporary, non-agrarian 30-something. It was when I left Los Angeles for the primeval hush of the Midwest that I became a monomaniac."
    Benjamin Nugent - The Upside of Distraction (The New York Times)
  9. "I try all things; I achieve what I can."
    Ishmael in Melville’s Moby-Dick

  10. jhermann:

    Teju Cole continues to devastate in 140 characters or less.

    ProPublica: Everything we know so far about drone strikes

About me

Pursue understanding. Deconstruct systems in order to taste building blocks. Happiness waits else/everywhere. And the heart(h). Do spheres not pull at each other?
Moby-Dick, Forward

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