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My review for Melville in Love by Michael Shelden is submitted to Library Journal and now I can get back to my own reading. I don’t feel like I can write a review of the book here, but you should know it is really good. I have a whole new picture of Melville now that I am still boggled over.
Melville fathered two children during this long-term affair with Sarah Morewood but Morewood’s husband chose not to notice that they did not look like him as did Melville’s wife. You may have heard that Melville had major financial problems, well, that’s because he bought a farm that he could not afford in order to live next door to his lover. However, Shelden presents a good argument that Moby-Dick, Pierre and Billy Budd would not be what they are if it had not been for Morewood inspiring Melville to greatness. So, look for the book when it comes out in June. It’s a good one!
How’s that for a non-review?
I get email newsletters from my favorite fountain pen store, Goulet Pens, and in a recent newsletter there was some mention about bullet journaling. I did not bother to investigate further because I assumed it meant writing a journal/diary using bullet points and what was the point of that? But today Goulet Pens posted a link on their Facebook page to a Los Angeles Times newspaper article, Why is Everyone Crazy for #bujo?. I realized this is obviously a thing so I read the article and have now been enlightened.
Have you heard of bullet journaling? It has nothing to do with keeping a diary or journaling your thoughts and feelings. It turns out to be a time and project management technique that involves using a blank journal and a pen or pencil instead of an app or a calendar or elaborate Franklin Planner. The guy who invented it has a website with a video and other step-by-step explanations on how to do it.
At first it seemed like an elaborate system but the more I followed along, the more intrigued I became. It isn’t so very elaborate after all, and once you have the basic structure down you can customize it to your needs and do whatever you want with it. The customizable bit is the most interesting part. Because you are using a blank journal (of course you can buy a “bullet journal” that has already been set up for you if you want to) you can make it your own. And the website has photos and videos of how other people do bullet journaling. Some of it is quite elaborate and intimidating and artsy and made me wonder why would you waste time drawing and doing all kinds of other stuff in a calendar/project journal? But that, it turns out, is the neat part about it.
So I’ve been wondering if I should try it. It could potentially be an efficient way to keep track of current and future events, gardening things, bookish things, work things, blog post ideas, essay ideas, things I want to look into further, to do lists, and on and on all in one place. Have any of you tried it? And if so, what do you think? Just one more bandwagon sort of thing or something truly useful?
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Warner Bros. has unleashed the final trailer for In the Heart of the Sea. The video embedded above offers glimpses of actors Chris Hemsworth, Cillian Murphy, and Ben Whishaw.
According to Deadline, Oscar-winning filmmaker Ron Howard served as the director on this film adaptation of author Nathaniel Philbrick’s National Book Award-winning nonfiction title. This survival story inspired beloved novelist Herman Melville to write Moby Dick.
Variety reports that this movie will hit theaters on Dec. 11. Follow this link to watch an earlier released trailer.
 |
Celtic celebration of Samhain,
or Halloween, where a door opens
briefly to the other world. |
Perhaps one of the most profound mysteries we are confronted with might be simply stated as "why is there something instead of nothing?" Countless philosophers, theologians, and scientists have addressed this question, some from the seemingly unprovable first cause principle--a prime mover, or God. Others, most often the scientists, are apt to point out we just are not there yet, but look how far we've already come in understanding our universe. We can even demonstrate all that exists today, starting from a distant Big Bang event, which happened some 14 billion years ago, and the complete, scientific answer is just around the corner.
Well, since this is a fiction writer's blog we are hesitant to delve too deeply into the philosophical or rhetorical arguments that support either camp. However, might we sometimes ponder about what view of God's existence was held by certain characters in our reading? If the author had had an opportunity to seamlessly integrate a spiritual viewpoint in the fiction, might it have given even greater depth, some flesh and bones, to the character, and the choices he makes in the story?
Some of this thought process springs from the reading of
The March, by E. L. Doctorow. The historical fiction covers the devastating Civil War march through the southern heartland, by General William Tecumseh Sherman. Sherman's army of about 60,000 Union soldiers carried out a scorched earth campaign through Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina, as the war neared a close and a collapse of the Confederacy. Like many, if not most, soldiers in either army, it seems safe to assume from writings of that era that the existential view of the combatants was Christian, fundamental Protestantism. However, most of the officers of that conflict were trained at West Point Academy, which would have had a tradition from the Founding Fathers of the U.S. for a belief in God, but not necessarily in a dogma of any established religion. And so the concepts of sin, resurrection, and eternal life in heaven, may not have been the uniform view of officers from the Academy. It was rewarding to read the following, given as internal dialogue of Gen. Sherman before the battle of Savannah:
But these troops, too, who have battled and eaten and drunk and fallen asleep with some justifiable self-satisfaction: what is their imagination of death who can lie down with it? They are no more appreciative of its meaning than I...
In this war among the states, why should the reason for the fighting count for anything? For if death doesn't matter, why should life matter?
But of course I can't believe this or I will lose my mind. Willie, my son Willie, oh my son, my son, shall I say his life didn't matter to me? And the thought of his body lying in its grave terrifies me no less to think he is not imprisoned in his dreams as he is in his coffin. It is insupportable, in any event.
It is in fear of my own death, whatever it is, that I would wrest immortality from the killing war I wage. I would live forever down the generations.
And so the world in its beliefs snaps back into place. Yes. There is now Savannah to see to. I will invest it and call for its surrender. I have a cause. I have a command. And what I do I do well. And, God help me, but I am thrilled to be praised by my peers and revered by my countrymen. There are men and nations, there is right and wrong. There is this Union. And it must not fall.
Sherman drank off his wine and flung the cup over the entrenchment. He lurched to his feet and peered every which way in the moonlight. But where is my drummer boy? he said.
And where else might a writer also go to study a moving portrayal of the metaphysical views of a major literary character in American literature: perhaps
Moby Dick, by Herman Melville:
"What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it; what cozening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor commands me; that against all natural lovings and longings, I so keep pushing, and crowding, and jamming myself on all the time; recklessly making me ready to do what in my own proper, natural heart, I durst not so much as dare? Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of himself; but is as an errand-boy in heaven; nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible power; how then can this one small heart beat; this one small brain think thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I. By heaven, man, we are turned round and round in this world, like yonder windlass, and Fate is the handspike. And all the time, lo! that smiling sky, and this unsounded sea! Look! see yon Albicore! who put it into him to chase and fang that flying-fish? Where do murderers go, man! Who's to doom, when the judge himself is dragged to the bar? But it is a mild, mild wind, and a mild looking sky; and the air smells now, as if it blew from a far-away meadow; they have been making hay somewhere under the slopes of the Andes, Starbuck, and the mowers are sleeping among the new-mown hay. Sleeping? Aye, toil we how we may, we all sleep at last on the field. Sleep? Aye, and rust amid greenness; as last year's scythes flung down, and left in the half-cut swaths—Starbuck!"
But blanched to a corpse's hue with despair, the Mate had stolen away.
Ahab, too, is of an earlier era when fundamental Protestantism was the rule of the land, though his First Mate, Starbuck, finds Ahab to be of a frighteningly blasphemous nature. Note the ornate dialect, almost as if reading from the King James bible, and which makes the passage doubly dramatic.
So far, the discussion relates only to how a central character struggles to express some understanding of a God-based meaning of life, usually falling somewhere within the tenets of written Scriptures of three major monotheistic religions, and on reflections of the character's own life experiences. A big hurdle is that, however inspired the Scriptures may have been, they were written about two thousand years ago and by men of uncertain erudition. Since then, vast amounts of human learning and experience has occurred, but religious dogma, once established, changes only at glacial speed. It might be refreshing to have a few characters express new visions of what a God-based vision of life is for them, where some rational account is taken of the exponential growth of experience and knowledge gained in that two millenniums.
The strange perplexities of quantum mechanics comes to mind as a potential backdrop for new, innovative fiction. A recent NY Times article discusses ongoing confirmations for a proof of entanglement theory in subatomic physics. In essence, subatomic particles, like electrons and photons, have an infinite but measurable range of properties, such as velocity, location, and spin. However, as soon as a measurement is made of a property in one particle of any entangled pair, the entire range of potential properties collapses into finite, correlated values in each of the particles. Experiments demonstrate that this happens no matter the distance introduced between the particles, presumably happening for a distance even to the far side of our universe. Einstein did not like the idea, and he and other major scientists fought it. There was 'the finger of God' aspect in it for them. Nevertheless, the theoretical underpinnings and the experimental data have continued to hold up through today.
What new kind of characterization of God might this prompt in literary fiction writing? Perhaps it might lead to concepts far more sophisticated than the anthropomorphic characterization we presently are constrained with in our stories.
By: Hannah Paget,
on 7/10/2015
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Our two most ambitious and sublime authors remain Walt Whitman and Herman Melville. Whitman creates from the powerful press of himself; Melville taps his pen deeply into the volcanic force of William Shakespeare.
The post “Daemonic preludium”, an extract from The Daemon Knows appeared first on OUPblog.
Warner Bros. has unveiled a new trailer for In the Heart of the Sea. Oscar-winning filmmaker Ron Howard took the helm on this film adaptation of Nathaniel Philbrick’s National Book Award-winning nonfiction title.
The video embedded above offers glimpses of actors Chris Hemsworth as Owen Chase, Cillian Murphy as Matthew Joy, and Ben Whishaw as Herman Melville. Deadline reports that this movie features the “true survival story of the whaling ship Essex that inspired Melville to write Moby Dick.”
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By: Maryann Yin,
on 12/10/2014
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Fifteen writers have been working as contributors for the “Bookends” column at The New York Times. All of them have revealed the titles that gave them “their favorite reading experience of 2014.” Below, we’ve collected free samples of most of the books on the list for your reading pleasure.
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At Powell's, we feel the holidays are the perfect time to share our love of books with those close to us. For this special blog series, we reached out to authors featured in our Holiday Gift Guide to learn about their own experiences with book giving during this bountiful time of year. Today's featured giver [...]
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At Powell's, our book buyers select all the new books in our vast inventory. If we need a book recommendation, we turn to our team of resident experts. Need a gift idea for a fan of vampire novels? Looking for a guide that will best demonstrate how to knit argyle socks? Need a book for [...]
Polly Bresnick, Amanda Bullock, and Molly Rose Quinn will come together to host a marathon reading of Herman Melville’s beloved novel, Moby Dick. The trio has raised more than $5,000 through crowdfunding to pull off this event.
The group first launched this event back in 2012 with the participation of more than 150 readers. Last year, they presented a Moby Dick-themed variety show. This year, they plan to have this reading from November 14th to November 16th. We’ve embedded a video about the project above. Here’s more from the Kickstarter page:
“The funding will help pay for the aforementioned expenses (printing and providing spoons and such) but it will also allow us to make the whole marathon bigger and better: color programs, hiring a designer to create print and online materials, higher quality print souvenirs, more chowder spoons, and the countless miscellaneous expenses that producing an event of this magnitude requires. We not only hope to fund this year’s marathon, but also to grow the MDMNYC community.”
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Biblioklept.org has put together a list of one-star reviews of Herman Melville‘s classic novel Moby Dick. At the time of writing this post, the book averages four stars with 939 total reviews. That includes 530 five-star reviews, 154 four-star reviews, 107 three-star reviews, 73 two-star reviews and 75 one-star reviews.
Here are some of the reviews highlighted on Biblioklept.org, taken from Amazon exactly how they were written
i personally didn’t enjoy the philosophical or deep side of the book, i have read much much better books in that regard.
It is 540somepages of boring whaling details.
I think if you made it into a short comic strip, you would have liked it.
There is no suspense, and I find the idea of people hunting whales offensive. Offensive with a capital O.
No wonder Melville flopped as a writter.
OMG, this is tedious and torture to read.
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Readers around the globe have unwrapped new tablets and eReaders this holiday season. Below, we’ve included a long, long, long list of free and legal eBooks you can download right now for any device.
Explore our Project Gutenberg lists and click “read this eBook online” to sample the book without downloading anything.
If you have an iPad, iPad Mini, iPhone or iPod Touch, you can download the ePub edition. If you have a Kindle or a Kindle Fire, you need to download the Kindle edition. If you have a Nook, Sony eReader or a Kobo, you should download the ePub edition.
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CNN has projected that President Barack Obama will win the 2012 Presidential election. We’ve collected links to five free eBooks that inspired Obama during his road to the Presidency.
In a 2009 essay, New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani wr0te about the books that inspired the President. Here’s an excerpt:
Mr. Obama’s love of fiction and poetry — Shakespeare’s plays, Herman Melville’s “Moby-Dick” and Marilynne Robinson‘s “Gilead” are mentioned on his Facebook page, along with the Bible, Lincoln’s collected writings and Emerson’s “Self Reliance“ — has not only given him a heightened awareness of language. It has also imbued him with a tragic sense of history and a sense of the ambiguities of the human condition quite unlike the Manichean view of the world so often invoked by Mr. Bush.
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What’s your favorite kind of book? We’ve created a giant flowchart to help you browse the top 50 free eBooks at Project Gutenberg.
Click the image above to see a larger version of the book map. Your choices range from Charles Dickens to Jane Austen, from Sherlock Holmes to needlework. Below, we’ve linked to all 50 free eBooks so you can start downloading right now. The books are available in all major eBook formats.
Follow this link to see an online version of the flowchart, complete with links to the the individual books.
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Today Encore will launch a three-hour adaptation of Herman Melville‘s Moby Dick, airing in time for the author’s 192nd birthday. Follow this link to download a free eBook copy of the classic novel.
The production stars William Hurt as Captain Ahab, Gillian Anderson as his wife and Ethan Hawke as Starbuck. Mike Barker directed and Nigel Williams wrote the script.
Here’s more about the miniseries: Moby Dick is set in Nantucket, 1850. Captain Ahab, a veteran whale hunter who lost his leg to Moby Dick, wants revenge. Twisted by bitterness, he’ll put the entire crew of the Pequod in extreme danger to hunt down the great white whale. And he’ll stop at nothing to kill his nemesis.”
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