The Books: “Ahab’s Wife” (Sena Jeter Naslund)

Daily Book Excerpt: Adult fiction:

Even the title kind of embarrasses me. There is a lot that is embarrassing about this book. However I read it, and enjoyed it and also retained almost NONE of it.

Ahab’s Wife: Or, The Star-gazer: A Novel by Sena Jeter Naslund.

Normally I despise even the idea of such books (although Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (Wicked Years) is a ringing exception, beautifully conceived, wonderfully written and obviously struck a huge chord) – and when I see the Pride and Prejudice sequels that line the shelves, the books that take us into Elizabeth and Darcy’s bedroom, I see red. Can’t you just write fanfic on Livejournal like any normal person? Do you have to try to compete with Jane freakin’ Austen in the marketplace? I know it’s a tribute, it’s the writer saying, “I loved those books so much and I just want MORE.” I actually don’t happen to think that that is a valid reason to write a book. Sometimes “wanting more” is the whole point of the original book. I close Jane Eyre and I will never stop wondering what marriage between jane and Mr. Rochester will be like. What on earth do they talk about at the dinner table? Do they have children? But that is part of the beauty of a stand-alone book like Jane Eyre. It is itself. It is singular. We are not meant to know more. Charlotte Bronte actually meant it when she said “The End”.

All that being said, let me throw a wrench into all of it: I understand the draw of fanfic. I get it. I’ve written some myself. The following is mortifying to admit, but that’s why I’m here: to admit mortifying things and have other people say, “You did that?? I did that, too!!” In 6th grade, I was so in love with Han Solo that I wrote stories about Han and how he had a younger sister, who was feisty, obnoxious, aggressive, and, hmmm, she was 11 years old, and looked just like me, coincidentally. I had a ball writing this stuff. I was imagining myself into that epic, I loved those movies so much that I basically wanted to be IN them. Not as an actress, but as a character. There is a place for such fanfic and I know that Star Wars has its own cottage industry of “other stories” that you can read and I suppose the domestic drama of Han Solo and, er, his younger sister … could be placed in that canon. So I’m not saying I don’t get the impulse.

Now let’s talk about Ahab’s Wife. In Moby Dick (one of my excerpts of the book here) – there is one paragraph where Ahab, alone on deck, brooding over his revenge, remembers his new wife back home – something about her head denting the pillow. We learn that that “sweet resigned girl” had had a child by him … and that’s pretty much it. From those two lines of text, Sena Jeter Naslund (sorry. I know it’s unfair but her name pisses me off) – has created an entire book about the wife of Captain Ahab.

First off, let me just say: Read Moby Dick if you haven’t already. Don’t just read Ahab’s Wife and think that you have somehow gotten close to that other tale. No. You won’t be let off the hook that easy.

Secondly: after all my thrashing about here, I have to say that I enjoyed Ahab’s Wife, for what it was. It’s not badly written, first of all (although there are some major problems – which I’ll get to in a minute) – and it’s written in a way (at least structure-wise) that mirrors Moby Dick: short chapters with evocative poetic titles, a narrative that is not quite linear, sudden philosophical ramblings in the middle of the plot, etc. Also – my copy of the book is illustrated with woodcuts, and it gives a really nice “old-fashioned” feel to the whole thing. Yes, it’s kitsch, to some degree – but I got no beef with kitsch if it’s well done, and somehow fits into a greater whole. I never for one second forgot that it was a modern woman writing this book – but the format of the book is pleasingly old-fashioned, and nobody can say that Naslund doesn’t adore and revere Moby Dick – and so that I appreciate. Ahab’s Wife is not about crashing Ahab off of his pedestal (although why that madman would be on a pedestal is beyond me) – it’s not just about humanizing him and showing another side to him (the husband) – it’s about the life of the wives of sea captain’s at that time, living on Nantucket mostly, walking the widow’s walk, staring out to sea. Now that’s a good story – and it has NOT been told … and so that aspect of it is fascinating. This is a story (the story of going to sea in the 19th century) that does involve both genders – the women who stayed home ran things, they didn’t see their husbands for years on end – they flourished, they had far more independence and power than other women, just from the fact that there was no man in the picture, and etc. etc. So I actually found that side of the book really interesting and well done.

One of the problems here, though (besides the problem of: why do you even need to write this book? Isn’t Moby Dick enough?) is that the only bad thing that really happens to “Ahab’s Wife” is the fact that her husband goes mad and comes back from that one voyage missing a leg and raving like a lunatic for his revenge. Other than that? The world is full of good and helpful people, everyone has a benevolent side, there is almost no conflict (at least this is how I remember it) … Ahab’s wife has many experiences (pre-marriage, and then as a married woman) – and for the most part, everything turns out okay in all of them. I don’t know. It’s not good novel-writing. You need conflict. You need things to NOT work out. You need to not love your character so much that you can’t bear anything bad happening to her. That’s what I feel has gone on here with Ahabs wife. I feel like Derek Jeter Nasboot loves her main character so much that she just wants her to keep living and loving and growing and changing … with almost no interference from the universe. Well, I have lived long enough to know that the universe always interferes. So that element of the book is tiresome – dare I say amateurish??

However, I wish I would write such an amateurish book and have it be a New York Times bestseller for weeks on end.

There are indeed some set-piece events in the book that have sticked with me. A particularly harrowing river crossing where the characters have to step from ice block to ice block. A storm at sea.

I looked up the NY Times review of the book and much of it made me laugh out loud. First of all, the review is entitled “Call me Una”. And the subheading reads: According to his wife, Ahab was a decent guy (and good in bed) until that whale came along. hahahaha That pretty much sums up the trajectory of the book. The review is quite interesting – here it is – and I almost feel bad of making fun of a book with such good and earnest intentions. But you know, great novels are not written with good and earnest intentions. I’m not saying that See-no-evil Jeter Naslund was trying to write a great novel – and that’s one of the reasons I feel a bit bad – because she obviously is an enormous fan of Moby Dick and wrote her book with a great deal of research and passion behind it. So it’s hard to “review” it, in a way. D’Erasmo, the reviewer, writes:

Naslund, Ahab-like, has taken on an overwhelming quarry in pursuing Melville, but, true to her maternal, liberal philosophy, she does not harpoon the master so much as harness his force to her own. That Naslund is unstintingly reasonable, empathetic and kind should not, however, blind one to the fact that she is, in the most nonaggressive way, rewriting American history, revising American literature and critiquing traditional masculinity. On the froth and foam and rage of ”Moby-Dick” Naslund lays a cool hand, as if to say: ”There, there. Such a fuss about a fish.”

Yup. Which is rather ironic considering Melville’s towering misogyny, in general.

D’Erasmo praises the writing itself – and that’s true – the book is beautifully written, and doesn’t read in a modern manner – it feels like the 19th century. But the critique there is my critique: the world of Una is so gentle and loving – everyone she meets so kind and good … that it’s a bit of a yawn at times, and you yearn to get back out on the ocean, where all the men are, to see how they are faring against that great white whale. Life is NOT kind and good. Nature is red in tooth and claw, Derek Jeter, come on – you can’t ignore that! Women, of all people, should know that best! Women bringing life into the world – often died in that very moment – it was a given that their chances were not good. And the chances of the baby living to adulthood was even worse … so the whole thing is cruel, risky, horrifying, and yet – hey, it’s what we do. But that element does not exist in Naslund’s universe. And that’s the main problem with the book.Another good sentence from that review: “IN this respect, ”Ahab’s Wife” is sometimes reminiscent of a Marge Piercy or Marilyn French novel, circa 1976, minus any anger.” Ha. Yes, exactly.

So I cannot find it in me to be really angry about this book, because I did enjoy much of it – even the yawn-inducing happiness throughout … It is by no means a replacement for Moby Dick and her version of Captain Ahab doesn’t at all touch the one that Melville created, or the one that lives on in my head. Her book just isn’t that powerful. (Wicked IS that powerful … I can’t think about the Wicked Witch of the West now without at least considering the question: What on earth happened to her to make her like that? Some people don’t find that an interesting question at all – or they just find it annoying. I remember a while back I wrote a post about the musical Wicked and some jagoff drive-by made a comment that it was a “blue state version of the story – the witch isn’t evil, she’s just misunderstood”. Oh for Christ’s sake.How difficult is it for you to walk around carrying that giant CHIP on your shoulder? Go away.

I actually think it’s interesting – to re-think things … there’s a series of books out now with modern authors writing their own versions of Greek mythology and they are fantastic – I’m making my way through all of them. Margaret Atwood wrote one, Jeanette Winterson wrote one about Atlas – it’s my favorite thing of hers she’s written in years … I like it: stories are meant to be re-told, re-thought, re-worked – at least the good ones are … ) But here, with Ahab’s Wife we aren’t in that realm. I think if we heard the story through, say, Starbucks point of view – or Queequeg’s – we might have something a bit more resonant.

But, for me, the serious problems with the narrative (mainly how everyone in the book is good) is what I am left with.

Here’s the excerpt. For me, it’s the main event I remember in the book (although the context is lost): Ahab’s wife (who has just given birth) is helping Susan – a slave woman, escape. They come to a river Susan must cross – and there is no bridge – only floating huge ice floes. I think Nasboot-Jeter-Prenup’s writing cannot be denied. It’s good.

EXCERPT FROM Ahab’s Wife: Or, The Star-gazer: A Novel (P.S.) by Sena Jeter Naslund.

That night, Susan and I stood on the banks of the river, which was moving blackly with its load of white ice floes. The floes were flat on the top and big as the floor of my cabin. Some were as big as a river barge. They all moved downstream in a ghostly procession, separated by jagged black lines where the water was bare. The edges crunched when they touched and hissed when they swept by. In the center of the river, where the current ran swifter, a band of floes moved, much more quickly than those near the sides.

The moon was full, which would make the footing easier for Susan, for she must jump from floe to floe to cross the river. We stood alone – hand in hand at the edge of the water, our skin separated by the wool of our mittens. No other eyes, no other soul, would watch her go. Silence, stillness, cold. They chimed about us as one snowy chord.

Susan and I had fashioned her a coat from a quilt, and called it a Joseph’s coat, because it was truly of many colors, and I had given her my own knitted cap and, under the patchwork coat, an oat-colored sweater. In a cloth bag, she carried some cooked potatoes and johnnycake and a pair of my mother’s shoes. She wore another pair of Mother’s shoes, and we had driven nails from the inside so that the soles would prick into the slippery ice and keep her feet from sliding. Around her neck, in a tiny gathered bag, she carried a lock of my baby’s hair, for he was born with hair and it was red as flame. I have a lock of it, too, intertwined with one of Susan’s, but I do not have a lock of my mother’s hair. I’d given Susan my red mittens; I wore the new black ones. We loosened our grip on one another’s hand.

When I saw Susan step upon the ice, I bit my lower lip till the blood flowed down my chin and crusted in the cold. Here the riverbank was no higher than a step, as from house to yard. In the moonlight, new snow like sugar glittered atop the sheet of ice lying along the bank. Behind her, in a lengthening path, Susan’s footprints indented the sparkling snow. She moved toward the center of the river as calmly as though crossing a broad moonlit road cut through the crush and trees of the wilderness.

When she came to the first black edge, she stepped across the open water as though it were a mere stream. The next floe was smaller, and the next even smaller; they dipped or tilted slightly when she stepped onto them. The spans of open water between them seemed wider and wider, and sometimes she waited for the current to bring the ice rafts closer together. Then she leapt the narrowed fissure and walked on.

It seemed to me Susan was walking on clouds in a black sky. There were clouds in the sky, but they stayed far from the moon and did not block her benevolent light. I blessed the moon that held up her lantern for us. Over the water, from seeming cloud to cloud, some silvery, some gray, some white and bright as mirrors for the moon, Susan stepped across the black water.

As the current accelerated and the spaces between floes widened, Susan ran and jumped from raft to raft; my heart hung in the air with her. In the center of the river, the swifter current zipped the ice rafts downstream, with Susan standing on one of them. Her arms fluttered once for balance, twice.

I began to walk downstream and then to run to keep up with the central river as it swept Susan’s floe downstream. She never turned to look at me, nor did I want to distract her, and I never called any words of encouragement except as the mind blazes out messages brighter than a lighthouse.

Fly! Fly! as she leapt and landed, the floe she landed on already taking her downstream.

At last the treacherous midsection of the river was traversed. She was far from me now – a dark upright using the flatness: flying and landing, running and leaping, from floe to floe. I saw shapes in the ice rafts, mostly like enormous animals, flat, not like a natural swan or bear but flat as a cookie animal or a tin weathervane. Near the other side, approaching a bend, she had to wait for her floe to come close to the bank. Holding the stitch in my side, I continued walking as rapidly downstream as I could till I came to a high but tangled shoreline that thwarted me. Soon the current would sweep Susan’s floe beyond my sight. O, carry her close, carry her close, now, I prayed to the ice, and I prayed that Susan would not feel herself passing beyond my sight and take the risk of trying to jump ashore when the gulf remained too great. The floe that wheeled her toward the far shore was like the palm of a hand, open and presentational.

Patient Susan! Her ice raft nudged the shore, and she jumped. Even as her shoes landed on the snowy bank, she turned and looked exactly where I stood. Together we lifted our arms, blowing each other a kiss across the water, for we had not kissed on parting, saving it till she should be safe, and trusting the sweet air to be our go-between. And then one shout, though it was small from the distance, from Susan: Freedom!