The Sheila Variations

For Mike R -

A conversation sprang up (sprung up?) in an email exchange with Mike R, one of my regular (and wonderful) readers. Moby Dick was the topic. I said something about how I was made to read that book in high school, for our summer-reading list. I hated every second. I remember me and all my friends - Kate, Beth, Betsy - all of us sitting at the beach as the summer wound down, a week left until school began, and we had to read Moby Dick in a week's time. We sat at the beach, occasionally going swimming, or occasionally going up to the concession stand for popsicles - but mostly, we sat, in the sunlight, grimly, tearing through the book. It was a chore. We were MAD about it. Why do we have to read this book? What is the big deal? Who CARES??

Additionally, except for the blowsy woman who serves Ishmael chowder in the 2nd or 3rd chapter, there are NO women in this book. NONE. There is the memory of Captain Ahab's new bride at home, her head denting the pillow - but other than that - NO GIRLS. Although, if you look at the book in another light (as Camille Paglia does so brilliantly and so bizarrely in her chapter on it in Sexual Personae) - the whale could be seen as the "spirit" of female energy in the world. It is pretty obvious that the great white whale is a male, although it is never specifically said - but Paglia made me see something else going on. Whaling boats were 100% male, they lived out on the ocean for 3 or 4 years at a time - There were no women. None.

Melville himself was an unrepentant and vicious misogynist - He tried to kill his wife - She would flee from the house in the night, screaming, etc. It is well-known that he had many homosexual experiences during his time at sea. Many whalers did.

Paglia believes that Melville was writing out his anxiety and his anger towards women, in general. But not just 'women' as in 'a person who happens to be female' - but on a larger level: Woman as nature, woman as chaos, woman as the uncontrollable force running the universe.

Paglia feels that the entire book, with not one woman in it, is actually haunted by this spectre of female-ness.

HOWEVER - back to my tale - me and my grumpy friends reading it on the beach did not care about any of that.

We hated the book and we hated reading it.

Another book on the summer reading list was A Tale of Two Cities - and we all completely LOVED that one. We had no problem reading it, we couldn't put it down. I remember me and a good friend roaring with laughter about Madame LaFarge, putting her evil little gossip into the garments she was knitting.

A couple of years ago, I picked up Moby Dick again. This was in the beginning of my phase where I gave myself the assignment to re-read all of those books we were forced to read in high school. I went through them all. I re-read Gatsby, I re-read The Scarlet Letter, I re-read Madame Bovary. And I re-read Moby Dick.

The book so blew me away the second time I read it that I honestly felt as though I had never read it before.

It's a big mess of a novel - I wouldn't even call it a novel, actually. It's more of a spontaneous outpouring of Melville's subconscious. We have 20 chapters which are basically marine biology. The point of view switches inexplicably. The first line of the book "Call me Ishmael" sets it up that this is a first-person narrative.

But there are private moments of Captain Ahab and Starbuck described - moments Ishmael could never have witnessed. During the entire breakdown of the whale chapters - where we learn about blubber, and the spout, and their mating rituals, etc. - the voice changes from first-person to omniscent. For no reason. And the "I" in the beginning of the book, Ishmael's "I", does not seem to be the same "I" who gives us marine biology lectures throughout the middle of the book. It is not the same voice at all.

In the end, none of that matters.

It is an unconventional book, with its own narrative rules. Once you succumb, you will not have a better reading experience. The same could be said for Joyce's Ulysses. If you just trust the author, even though they seem to be off on their own personal jaunt, just writing to please themselves, not giving a shit about whether or not you follow, they will take you places you could not even imagine.

The "interminable" chapters on whales, the chapters which I found so unbearable in high school, are what make the book so stunning, so bizarre. What is Melville's genius here is that - he starts out telling you, "Okay, so let's talk about the spout-hole ..." And he takes you through it, telling you how it works, what it is, blah blah blah. But throughout this, somehow, he elevates each part of the whale into something almost allegorical, or spiritual. A spout-hole is not just a spout-hole. Blubber is not just blubber. Blubber can actually teach us something about ourselves. We all can learn a lot about ourselves from studying the different parts of whales.

My favorite chapter, in these sections, is the one on the skin of the whale. It is called "The Blanket".

I read it, and it seems relatively informational, matter-of fact, and then by the end, Melville does a little jujitsu move in his prose - and I found myself in tears.

This happened to me time and time again when I re-read this great book. I would have a momentary thought, "Jesus, this chapter on the sperm in the sperm-whales is freakin' long, and i wish he would just get back to Queequeg, and the plot ... Dammit, this is so LONG..." And then suddenly, with a few simple phrases, Melville will draw back the veil, and show you the underbelly, give you the real GUTS of what he is saying.

Here's what I mean. This is an excerpt from the stunning chapter "The Blanket" - and look out for the jujitsu move at the end:

The Blanket

I have given no small attention to that not unvexed subject, the skin of the whale. I have had controversies about it with experienced whalemen afloat, and learned naturalists ashore. My original opinion remains unchanged; but it is only an opinion.

The question is, what and where is the skin of the whale? Already you know what his blubber is. The blubber is something of the consistence of firm, close-grained beef, but tougher, more elastic and compact, and ranges from eight or ten to twelve and fifteen inches in thickness.

Now, however preposterous it may at first seem to talk of any creature's skin as being of that sort of consistence and thickness, yet in point of fact these are no arguments against such a presumption; because you cannot raise any other dense enveloping layer from the whale's body but that same blubber; and the outermost enveloping layer of any animal, if reasonably dense, what can that be but the skin? True, from the unmarred dead body of the whale, you may scrape off with your hand an infinitely thin, transparent substance, somewhat resembling the thinnest shreds of isinglass, only it is almost as flexible and soft as satin; that is, previous to being dried, when it not only contracts and thickens but becomes rather hard and brittle. I have several such dried bits, which I use for marks in my whale-books. It is transparent, as I said before; and being laid upon the printed page, I have sometimes pleased myself with fancying it exerted a magnifying influence. At any rate, it is pleasant to read about whales through their own spectacles, as you may say. But what I am driving at here is this. That same infinitely thin, isinglass substance, which, I admit, invests the entire body of the whale, is not so much to be regarded as the skin of the creature, as the skin of the skin, so to speak; for it were simply ridiculous to say, that the proper skin of the tremendous whale is thinner and more tender than the skin of a new-born child. But no more of this.

Assuming the blubber to be the skin of the whale; then, when this skin, as in the case of a very large Sperm Whale, will yield the bulk of one hundred barrels of oil; and, when it is considered that, in quantity, or rather weight, that oil, in its expressed state, is only three fourths, and not the entire substance of the coat; some idea may hence be had of the enormousness of that animated mass, a mere part of whose mere integument yields such a lake of liquid as that. Reckoning ten barrels to the ton, you have ten tons for the net weight of only three quarters of the stuff of the whale's skin...

A word or two more concerning this matter of the skin or blubber of the whale. It has already been said, that it is stript from him in long pieces, called blanket-pieces. Like most sea-terms, this one is very happy and significant. For the whale is indeed wrapt up in his blubber as in a real blanket or counterpane; or, still better, an Indian poncho slipt over his head, and skirting his extremity. It is by reason of this cosy blanketing of his body, that the whale is enabled to keep himself comfortable in all weathers, in all seas, times, and tides. What would become of a Greenland Whale, say, in those shuddering, icy seas of the North, if unsupplied with his cosy surtout? True, other fish are found exceedingly brisk in those Hyperborean waters; but these, be it observed, are your cold-blooded, lungless fish, whose very bellies are refrigerators; creatures, that warm themselves under the lee of an iceberg, as a traveller in winter would bask before an inn fire; whereas, like man, the whale has lungs and warm blood. Freeze his blood, and he dies.

How wonderful it is then - except after explanation - that this great monster, to whom corporeal warmth is as indispensable as it is to man; how wonderful that he should be found at home, immersed to his lips for life in those Arctic waters! where, when seamen fall overboard, they are sometimes found, months afterwards, perpendicularly frozen into the hearts of fields of ice, as a fly is found glued in amber. But more surprising is it to know, as has been proved by experiment, that the blood of a Polar whale is warmer than that of a Borneo negro in summer.

It does seem to me, that herein we see the rare virtue of a strong individual vitality, and the rare virtue of thick walls, and the rare virtue of interior spaciousness. Oh, man! admire and model thyself after the whale! Do thou, too, remain warm among ice. Do thou, too, live in this world without being of it. Be cool at the equator; keep thy blood fluid at the Pole. Like the great dome of St. Peters, and like the great whale, retain, O man! in all seasons a temperature of thine own.

Posted by sheila