Guest Blogger

My friend Jeff tried to comment on my post about Bulkington, but technical difficulties prevented it. So here are the excellent thoughts he emailed to me:

The one phrase from this chapter that always sticks with me is: "better it is to perish in that howling infinite, then be ingloriously dashed upon the lee..." In a way, it's very similar to the nod to himself as the "Sub-sub Librarian" in the "Extracts" section at the beginning.

In both you get this idea that Melville knows he's embarking on journey that will be doomed-- I take it as an intellectual journey. In Extracts, you get the melancholoy hope of striking unsplinterable glasses in heaven after all is said and done; in Chapt 23 you get the promise of an apotheosis; each after a setting off to do something where failure is guaranteed.

I think he's encouraging himself and the sympathetic reader to remain open minded in spite of everything-- to avoid allowing oneself the comfort of a stable (closeminded) truth. This view, I think, is best expressed at the end of Chapt 85 (The Fountain). (One of my favorite quotes in the whole book.)

Side notes:

1.Universal coincidence... Chapter 23 and the IChing's Hexagram 23 make similar points.

2. I think that the essence of what he's saying here, that we can't find truth enough to save ourselves but must try anyway is wonderfully echoed by Eliot-- see part II of "East Coker" in his "Four Quartets."

3. My cats are named Queequeg and Tashtego. Did you know?

I did not know. I told Jeff that I had considered "Queequeg" as a name for the doglet, but then remembered an X-Files episode in which a small dog of that name is noshed by an alligator (or something). I just couldn't do it.

Additional X-Files digression: The episode with fluffy little Queequeg also contains this brief exchange (more hilarious "in person" because of the deadpan delivery):

Scully: I called [my father] Ahab and he called me Starbuck. So I named my dog Queequeg. It's funny, I just realised something.

Mulder: It's a bizarre name for a dog, huh?

Scully: No. How much you're like Ahab. You're so... consumed by your personal vengeance against life, whether it be its inherent cruelties or its mysteries, that everything takes on a warped significance to your megalomaniacal cosmology.

Mulder: Scully, are you coming on to me?

Ha! Hee! Oh, god ... *wipes eyes* ... are you coming on to me ... heeee ...

Okay, I'm done now.