THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
01/21/11 -- Vol. 29, No. 30, Whole Number 1633
Frick: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
Frack: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
One-Sided Congratulations (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Detroit and New Jersey (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Great Man vs. Tide of History (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
It?s The End of the World as We Know It! (film/book reviews
of FLOOD, ARK, and 2012 by Dale L. Skran, Jr.)
Raymond Burr and Other Stars (letter of comment by Sam Long)
Time-Spanning Characters (letter of comment by Jerry Ryan)
Myth (letter of comment by Frank Leisti)
The Odyssey and the Argosy (letters of comment
by Kip Williams, David Goldfarb, and Tim Illingworth)
This Week's Reading (MOBY DICK)
(book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
==================================================================
TOPIC: One-Sided Congratulations (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
In Italy we saw a tapestry that we were told was a testament to the
"solidarity between Man and God." Evelyn did not know why I
thought that was a funny concept. I guess I find humor in that
where nobody else would. Somehow it strikes me as funny. It
reminds me of Emo Philips's boast, "I'm a really great lover ...
I'll bet." [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Detroit and New Jersey (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Coming from the Detroit area to rural New Jersey in 1977 was an
improvement in almost every way but one. Evelyn and I have a
taste for exotic cuisine and in the late 1970s there was very
little of that in New Jersey.
Henry Ford had made Detroit a great restaurant town. That was not
intentional, of course. Ford had brought in laborers from all over
the world and then gave them miserably poor salaries. The streets
of Detroit offered a cacophony of different languages from working
men who had to eat but could not pay a lot. You could get Polish
or Greek or Chinese or Soul Food at workingmen's prices.
New Jersey, on the other hand, had the phone company putting up
technical labs in the middle of what had been farm land. The
prices were higher than Detroit's since engineers out-earned
Detroit auto workers. In the late 1970s there was very little in
the way of exotic food. There may have been the occasional Chinese
restaurant in Matawan near us. It was about a forty-minute drive
to get to the nearest Indian restaurant.
What was common in the area was diners. I used to say that a diner
is a restaurant with a huge collection of dishes they almost know
how to make. They would do things like make a Chicken Parmigiana
but substituting a pile of sliced deli chicken for the chicken
filet.
Flash forward to 2010 and Matawan has gotten a lot better. It is
considered to be the dining center of the area. I will not go into
all the cuisines now available. I guess fairly nearby we have
Chinese, Japanese (including a sushi buffet), Korean, Thai, Polish,
and Middle Eastern as well as the ever-present Italian. We have a
good upper-class Mexican restaurant called Aby's. This is Mexican
food, but it is made with attention to sauces including Mole and a
Chipotle Cream sauce.
But the Mexican Restaurants I like are the ones aimed at the
Mexican day-laborers. The food is cheap. The songs being played
on the juke box are in Spanish. Evelyn was surprised that a
chicken tamale had chicken bones. Most of the dishes on the menu I
have never seen before, and frequently they are poorly translated
into English. At one I ordered Tlayuda. I had no idea what it was
when I ordered it, but that only added to the excitement. It
seemed to be meat and sauce on a large fried tortilla. I suppose
it is roughly similar to pizza. The woman who ran the place told
me I was the first customer ever to order Tlayuda. It was good and
when the couple at the next table saw it they placed the
restaurant's second Tlayuda order.
Actually in many types of restaurants I frequently order dishes
with no idea what I will get. Occasionally staff will try to talk
me out of ordering the dish, but they have never succeeded and I
have never complained.
Perhaps when I said we had Chinese I should have made the point
that we have a Chinese seafood house and a Chinese dumpling shop.
These are types of restaurant that are not uncommon in Chinatowns,
but they are rarely found outside. The dumpling shop is called
Shanghai Bun and Sushi. They have been around for decades now and
to the best of my knowledge have never served sushi. That was
probably a plan that fell through, but they never changed their
sign. The woman who serves the customers gives every sign of
hating her work, but the food she brings is very good.
What they do offer is a dish called Steamed Pork Buns or Soup
Dumplings. They are not dumplings in soup or dumplings that one
would put in soups. They are dumplings with meat in wrappers, but
also in the wrapper is soup sealed inside the dumpling. The
dumpling is about an inch and a half in diameter. It is served in
a bamboo steamer. Each dumpling looks like a little purse. To eat
it you carefully roll the dumpling onto a Chinese spoon. Then you
pierce the dumpling with the tip of a chopstick and the soup leaks
out and fills the spoon. You add a drop of soy sauce and roll the
dumpling into your mouth, sipping up the soup to cover the
dumpling. You suck on the dumpling and the last of the soup covers
your tongue. Only then do you bite into the dumpling and soup
together and then, of course, you swallow. It is an experience
unique.
[This article appeared previously in the fanzine Argentus. -mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Great Man vs. Tide of History (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
I was watching the "American Experience" episode about Ulysses S.
Grant, and was struck by a quote from someone who had been at West
Point with Grant. Grant's record there was considerably less than
stellar, leading this classmate to say (many years later), "No one
could be more surprised than I at Grant's amazing success."
Now, in history there are two competing theories: the Tide of
History, and the Great Man. The Tide of History Theory is often
described as the Marxist approach, and was expressed by Robert
A. Heinlein (of all people!) as "when it is time to railroad, you
railroad." That is (to take a more familiar example than
railroads), if the Wright Brothers had not built an airplane,
someone else would have very shortly thereafter.
The Great Man Theory (promoted by Thomas Carlyle) is that key
events in history are driven by exceptional individuals, and if
they were not present, history would take a very different course.
Had there been no Julius Caesar, this theory claims, world history
would be very different. No one else would have subdued Gaul for
Rome, or brought about the political situation that resulted in the
rise of Augustus and the Roman Empire.
What struck me is that to some extent they may be connected.
Consider the Civil War--without Lincoln as President and Grant as
general, would the Union have survived? Or World War II--without
Churchill and King George VI, could Britain have survived?
But what was Lincoln? One much-circulated mini-biography says in
part:
- 1816 His family was forced out of their home.
- 1831 Failed in business.
- 1832 Ran for state legislature - lost.
- l832 Lost his job
- l832 Wanted to go to law school but couldn't get in.
- 1833 Borrowed some money to start a business and went bankrupt.
- 1834 Ran for state legislature again - won.
- 1835 Was engaged to be married, but his fiancee died.
- 1836 Had a total nervous breakdown and was in bed for six months.
- 1838 Sought to become speaker of the state legislature -
defeated.
- 1840 Sought to become elector - defeated.
- 1843 Ran for Congress - lost.
- 1846 Ran for Congress again - won.
- 1848 Ran for re-election to Congress - lost.
- 1849 Sought the job of land officer in his home state - rejected.
- 1854 Ran for Senate of the United States - lost.
- 1856 Sought the Vice-Presidential nomination - lost.
- 1858 Ran for U.S. Senate again - lost.
- 1860 Elected president of the United States.
There is not much there to hint at what Lincoln would become as
President.
Grant started his military career with his name incorrectly listed
on the West Point roster. (Or did he take someone else's slot?)
He graduated 21st out of 39. Though moderately successful in the
Mexican War, after the war he lost money in all his attempted
business ventures, and started drinking when he was transferred to
Fort Vancouver. Eventually, he resigned. He tried farming, and
failed. He tried business, and failed. He ended up as a clerk in
his father's leather goods shop. When the Civil War broke out, he
had to try to enlist several times before the Army would even take
him back. Truly one can understand his friend saying, "No one
could be more surprised than I at Grant's amazing success."
Churchill began with a speech impediment. He was successful as a
journalist during the Boer War (back when journalism was print
rather than radio or television). But during his time as First
Lord of the Admiralty in World War I, he was responsible for the
disastrous Gallipoli Campaign, and was forced to resign. After
World War I, he served as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1924 to
1929, and generated more controversy by returning Britain to the
gold standard, and considered by most to be washed up in politics.
When he became Prime Minister in 1940, I suspect many thought he
would be barely understood over the radio, let alone instill
Britain with the fighting spirit needed to lead it to victory.
King George VI had a severe stammer, and the current film THE
KING'S SPEECH covers this. While no one really wanted to keep King
Edward IV on the throne, everyone was terrified that the King's
stammer would make him, and the Royal Family, and Britain at best
ineffectual, and at worst a laughingstock. Yet when the time came,
he too managed to pull it together and rise to the occasion.
So while Carlyle can say that a Great Man is needed, he does not
address the possibility that the Tide of History will create that
Great Man. [-ecl]
[Perhaps it takes the fires of misfortune and failure to forge a
man of real strength. -mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: It's The End of the World as We Know It! (film/book reviews
of FLOOD, ARK, and 2012 by Dale L. Skran, Jr.)
Recently I watched the DVD version of 2012 (2009), and also just
finished reading FLOOD by Stephen Baxter (2008), now out in a ROC
paperback, and ARK, also by Baxter (2010), available in hardback
from ROC. I plan on nominating ARK for the Hugo this time around,
and I recommend both books. All three tales are related in that
they concern the destruction of the Earth by an immense flood and
associated disasters, and the subsequent struggle of a few humans
to survive. They are the modern inheritors of the mantle of Wylie's
well known WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE and the lessor known EXIT EARTH by
Martin Caiden.
As background, you should know that I have long been a fan of 'end
of the world' SF, but have taken a particular dislike to
propagandistic tales like LEVEL 7 and ON THE BEACH. I have no
problem with the destruction of the world, or with every human
dying, as long as the author sticks to real science, and as long as
the full range of human response to the disaster is shown. I am
pleased to report that all three of these recent efforts pass the
human response bar, and Baxter's books pass the science bar as
well.
In 2012, a spectacular movie designed to take advantage of popular
fears associated with ancient Mayan predictions of the end of the
world in 2012, starts with *terrible* science. In some
unfathomable way, neutrinos from the sun change into something else
and start to boil the earth from the inside out. The two main
characters are a scientist involved in the discovery of the
oncoming disaster who becomes a leader in the effort to save some
remnant of the human race, and a minor writer (Jackson Curtis,
played by John Cusack) who by accident discovers that [a] the world
is ending and [b] someone is building an ark of some sort.
The scientist, Adrian Helmsley, is played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, who
I first noticed in the role of an invincible assassin in SERENTITY.
He is fun to watch and brings a kind of strange earnest intensity
to his roles that make him both striking and oddly believable.
Helmsley ends up working for the White House Chief of Staff, Carl
Anheuser, played by Oliver Platt channeling Dick Cheney, and in
this role becomes part of a secret project to build a series of
gigantic submarine arks on a high plateau in China to which key
personnel and everyone who has kicked in $1 billion Euros will
retire when the end comes.
Jackson Curtis is a writer going on a camping trip to try to
reconnect with his children following a divorce. I am a big fan of
Cusack, and his understated reactions provide an appropriate
counterpoint to the big-screen destruction going on all around him.
I won't make any effort to recount the unlikely path by which
Cusack brings his family to the arks in China, or how he finally
gets on an ark, or how he finally survives the flood, except to say
that he is the one of a few out of 6 BILLION that survive, and
almost by definition any such people will have great skills,
powerful determination, and fabulous luck. Nothing that happens to
Curtis is physically impossible, so it's best just to enjoy the
ride.
In the best Hollywood tradition, a moral tale is told, with various
not so good characters meeting horrible fates, as the survivors
traveling to China gradually narrow to just Cusack's family. At
the final moment, Helmsley and Anheuser come into an ethical
conflict that results in the 'right' decision. On a deeper level,
it is obvious that although Anheuser may not be a nice guy, his
program of assassinations to keep the arks secret was almost
certainly necessary to allow anyone to survive, and his sale of
tickets to raise money to pay for the secret ark program may also
have been equally necessary.
The end result is a beautiful movie that is not always well thought
out and that at times seems overly elaborated in search of an
amazing vista, but still ends as a celebration of the human spirit-
-good and bad. Some give in to fate, but others do not--and this
is their story.
Everything that is good in 2012 is much better in FLOOD and ARK,
and the two books have none of the flaws of the movie. FLOOD/ARK
is hard SF at its best, with real science used everywhere, and one
assumption/idea per book. In FLOOD the idea is that gigantic
underground seas exist and erupt into the oceans, causing a
Noachian flood. Although clearly unproven, Baxter provides
reference to the papers on which this idea is based. In ARK the
idea is the Alcubierre warp drive, also buttressed by references to
the scientific papers by Alcubierre.
I have seen some reviews on the web that find this too big a
stretch, but it is the single assumption in the entire book [well,
maybe there are two--the other being that you can mine Jupiter for
anti-matter]. I refer the reader to FRONTIERS OF PROPULSION
SCIENCE - PROGRESS IN ASTRONAUTICS AND AERONAUTICS VOLUME 227 by
Millis and Davis, with an introduction by Burt Rutan and published
by the AIAA. It is the single best and most up-to-date work
available on the state-of-the art in warp drives and faster that
light travel, and along with a lot of other ideas it covers the
Alcubierrie warp drive. It is at least plausible that if the best
minds in the world faced a do-or-die deadline and had nothing--
literally nothing - else to do--they might make one idea from the
736 pages of the Millis/Davis book work!
ARK stands alone as a story, but it is worthwhile to read FLOOD
first. FLOOD tells the story the actual flooding of the Earth, and
the final fate of Ark 3--a replica of the Queen Elizabeth, which by
odd coincidence I toured last summer. ARK follows Ark 1 on its
journey to the stars, and in the end brings the reader back to
Earth where you learn the answer to the question--what was Ark 2
anyway? These are big books [480 pages and 530 pages] with lots of
characters that span generations.
These are also grim books--and are in some large part an
exploration of what humans will do to survive. The full range of
human response to certain death is on display--courage, venality,
murder, greed, love, and hope--and a few people struggle on against
impossible odds to allow some tiny bit of the glory that was Earth
to survive. The books can also be viewed as an illustrated series
of lectures on what might be involved in surviving any kind of
major disaster, and in how fragile the Earth actually is.
There is an awful lot of good stuff in ARK, including a space
academy story of super-smart kids being trained for life on a
generation ship, engineers building an Orion ship, the final battle
to defend ground control against an ever growing mob of refugees,
the voyage of Ark 1 to Earth II, and on to Earth III, and the three
captains of Ark 1--Kelly Kenzie, Wilson Argent, and Holle
Groundwater. As is the case in real life, a lot goes right, and a
lot goes wrong. The characters are tested beyond any reasonable
limit, and then pushed further, as they slowly realize the
sacrifices that survival will entail.
Baxter is known for big-scope space based SF, and ARK gets you
there eventually, including some very interesting speculation on
the answer to the Fermi paradox. But there is really one message
in both books--the characters in the books would have been--and the
readers will be--a whole lot better off if they focused on getting
off the Earth a little bit earlier and less on thinking that
humanity has a long-term future on one planet.
In the northern part of New Jersey there is a park called Pyramid
Mountain. On the trails around the mountain there is a massive
stone block the size of a small truck called tripod rock. Tripod
rock rests on three smaller rocks, and a child can stand underneath
it. Evidence of aliens? No--glaciers dropped the big rock on the
little rocks in the last ice age--when New Jersey was covered with
an ice sheet a mile thick. That was about 15,000 years ago. Odds
are--sooner or later--New Jersey will again be covered with ice a
mile thick. In that world, 95% of the current human population
will be dead. Thinking that humans can live on the Earth in some
kind of long-term stability is a type of group insanity currently
being perpetuated by deep green environmentalists. From this
perspective global warming, if real, is just a blip, unless, of
course, it speeds up the timetable for the Earth becoming incapable
of sustaining a large scale human presence.
By creating a giant flood that rises exponentially, Baxter has
compressed time to tell a story over a humanly understandable
interval. The real story--whether flood or freeze--will take
longer, but the tale is not going to end any differently. So read
FLOOD and ARK, and start thinking about what you can do to help
humanity move into space. None of us are going to make it, so we
are really in the same position as most of Baxter's characters. But
us personally making it has never been the point ... ad astra per
aspera.
2012 is rated PG-13, and is too intense for young children. FLOOD
and ARK contain numerous violent and sexual elements that make them
appropriate only for older teens and up. However, I note that the
violence and sex in FLOOD/ARK are not in any way gratuitous, and
are not over-emphasized. Keep in mind that *most* of the people you
meet in both books die at some point. [-dls]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Raymond Burr and Other Stars (letter of comment by Sam Long)
In response to the MT VOID in general, Sam Long writes:
I was watching a Biography Channel story about Raymond Burr the
other evening, and it occurred to me: Could Perry Mason
successfully defend a person whom Ironside had apprehended? Then
it occurred to me that this is the sort of thought-provoking and/or
paradoxical question that you often start MT VOID with. Hence this
e-mail.
And it occurred to me too that, a propos of monsters stomping about
and the legal and other problems of such (i.e., the "superheroes
and the law" items in the last two or three issues of MT VOID),
Burr gained a certain amount of fame as an actor in the American
version of GODZILLA, as the Biography channel noted. A lot of
modern--and now aging--actors who went on to great fame in the
1960s, 1970s and beyond, started their careers in bit parts in
monster and SF/sci-fi movies in the 1950s. ["SF" movies are those
like FORBIDDEN PLANET, and "sci-fi" movies are those like TEENAGERS
FROM OUTER SPACE. "Sci-fi" movies have a very high cheesiness
factor.] Other examples of such actors: Clint Eastwood, Jack
Nicholson, Leonard Nimoy, William Shatner, etc. I'm sure, film
enthusiast that you are, you could name many more. [-sl]
Mark responds:
As for having conflicting roles across films, Burr is a piker to
people like James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, and Edward G. Robinson
who started their careers playing public enemy sorts of criminals.
Later when the public became concerned that we were glamorizing
crime they were cast as heroic crime fighters.
Yes, it is true that science_fiction/horror/fantasy tends to be the
breeding ground not just for actors but people on both sides of the
camera. One producer/director who is especially known for this is,
of course, Roger Corman. He would make cheap films for companies
like American International Pictures. He paid tiny wages so could
only get new people starting out in the film business who could not
get work elsewhere. His best-known films are mostly science
fiction/horror/fantasy. The neophytes would not get rich, but they
would get experience on their resumes. Today a substantial number
of the most successful filmmakers were people who got their start
working for Corman.
See http://tinyurl.com/void-corman.
Yes, the puzzle I posed for Will Shortz and NPR was a difficult
one. I doubt if I would have been able to get it. I, of course,
got the answer by the back door. It is easier to make the
observation and pose the question than it is to answer it. I
submitted the question in May of 2009 and had forgotten that I had
even posed it. I got the answer by finding a copy of my old mail
to Shortz.
Thanks for writing. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Time-Spanning Characters (letter of comment by Jerry Ryan)
In response to the comments on time-spanning characters in the
01/14/11 issue of the MT VOID, Jerry Ryan asks, "Didn't the last
novel in Brin's 'Uplift' series take us to the End Of The
Universe??"
==================================================================
TOPIC: Myth (letter of comment by Frank Leisti)
In response to Mark's comments on myth in the 01/14/11 issue of the
MT VOID, Frank Leisti writes:
You have a wonderful way to illustrate the consequences of a
myth, however, you need to get to the myth beyond the myth.
Some wonderful person had the idea to make a lot of money the
easy way. He/she spread rumors about the myth of Charon (note
spelling, your version had the wrong myth.) So, now people placed
coins on their dead relative's eyes prior to burials. Now, all
this person had to do was after the funerals, dig up the gravesites
and collect the money. They were able to spend it amongst the
living. [-fl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: The Odyssey and the Argosy (letters of comment by Kip
Williams, David Goldfarb, and Tim Illingworth)
In response to Evelyn's comments about THE LOST BOOKS OF THE
ODYSSEY in the 01/14/11 issue of the MT VOID, Kip Williams writes:
Speaking of Graves, and lost books of the Odyssey, have you read MY
SHIPMATE HERCULES? It's a first-person retelling of the Odyssey,
with the mythical characters of the book generally (I'm hedging
here for reasons of imperfect recall) replaced with the versions
that Graves, in his view of mythology, believes they stood in for.
As I recall, centaurs were extraordinary horsemen, rather than
horse-men.
I read it right through, which is more than I've ever managed to do
with the original--or what stands in for the original today: the
version that was written down after I-don't-know-how-long of being
repeated by people with imperfect (but amazing) memories, etc. I
still mean to read it, of course. [-kw]
David Goldfarb responds:
Based solely on the title, I wonder if you're thinking about the
Voyage of the Argo rather than the Odyssey. (Odysseus was a
generation later than Hercules--sons and grandsons of Hercules
fought in the Trojan War, but Hercules was already dead.)
Tim Illingworth adds:
Seems to be. http://tinyurl.com/void-shipmate [-ti]
Kip Williams replies:
Argosy? Could be. Been a while. I remember enjoying it. [-kw]
==================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
When I tell people that MOBY DICK by Herman Melville (ISBN 978-0-
140-62062-7) is full of humor, they look at me like I'm crazy, so I
will just have to give some examples. (All page references are to
the "Penguin Popular Classics" edition.)
"Now, when I say that I am in the habit of going to sea whenever I
begin to grow hazy about the eyes, and begin to be over conscious
of my lungs, I do not mean to have it inferred that I ever go to
sea as a passenger. For to go as a passenger you must needs have a
purse, and a purse is but a rag unless you have something in it.
Besides, passengers get sea-sick--grow quarrelsome--don't sleep of
nights--do not enjoy themselves much, as a general thing;--no, I
never go as a passenger; nor, though I am something of a salt, do I
ever go to sea as a Commodore, or a Captain, or a Cook. I abandon
the glory and distinction of such offices to those who like them.
For my part, I abominate all honourable respectable toils, trials,
and tribulations of every kind whatsoever. It is quite as much as
I can do to take care of myself, without taking care of ships,
barques, brigs, schooners, and what not. And as for going as
cook,--though I confess there is considerable glory in that, a cook
being a sort of officer on ship-board--yet, somehow, I never
fancied broiling fowls;--though once broiled, judiciously buttered,
and judgmatically salted and peppered, there is no one who will
speak more respectfully, not to say reverentially, of a broiled
fowl than I will. It is out of the idolatrous dotings of the old
Egyptians upon broiled ibis and roasted river horse, that you see
the mummies of those creatures in their huge bake-houses the
pyramids." (page 23)
"He looked like a man who had never cringed and never had had a
creditor. Whether it was, too, that his head being shaved, his
forehead was drawn out in freer and brighter relief, and looked
more expansive than it otherwise would, this I will not venture to
decide; but certain it was his head was phrenologically an
excellent one. It may seem ridiculous, but it reminded me of
General Washington's head, as seen in the popular busts of him. It
had the same long regularly graded retreating slope from above the
brows, which were likewise very projecting, like two
long promontories thickly wooded on top. Queequeg was George
Washington cannibalistically developed." (page 65)
(I have a dozen more, but that would make this column much longer
than most people want, so if you're interested, go to
http://leepers.us/evelyn/moby_wit.htm.)
But people also say that Melville practically writes a textbook on
whales, without mentioning what he gets wrong. Or, to be fair,
what we know is wrong based on another 150 years of study.
For example, Melville writes: "Furthermore, as his windpipe solely
opens into the tube of his spouting canal, and as that long canal--
like the grand Erie Canal--is furnished with a sort of locks (that
open and shut) for the downward retention of air or the upward
exclusion of water, therefore the whale has no voice; unless you
insult him by saying, that when he so strangely rumbles, he talks
through his nose. But then again, what has the whale to say? Seldom
have I known any profound being that had anything to say to this
world, unless forced to stammer out something by way of getting a
living. Oh! happy that the world is such an excellent listener!"
(page 357)
But of course, whales do speak, or sing.
And later, Melville says: "Though so short a period ago--not a good
lifetime--the census of the buffalo in Illinois exceeded the census
of men now in London, and though at the present day not one horn or
hoof of them remains in all that region; and though the cause of
this wondrous extermination was the spear of man; yet the far
different nature of the whale-hunt peremptorily forbids so
inglorious an end to the Leviathan. Forty men in one ship hunting
the Sperm Whales for forty-eight months think they have done
extremely well, and thank God, if at last they carry home the oil
of forty fish. Whereas, in the days of the old Canadian and Indian
hunters and trappers of the West, when the far west (in whose
sunset suns still rise) was a wilderness and a virgin, the same
number of moccasined men, for the same number of months, mounted on
horse instead of sailing in ships, would have slain not forty, but
forty thousand and more buffaloes; a fact that, if need were, could
be statistically stated." (page 437)
Here, Melville seems to believe that whaling would never get any
more efficient than it was in 1851, or that more ships would go out
each year.
There's also an example of mixed metaphor, or at least confused
anatomy: "... when beholding the tranquil beauty and brilliancy of
the ocean's skin, one forgets the tiger heart that pants beneath
it; and would not willingly remember, that this velvet paw but
conceals a remorseless fang." (page 463)
And what sort of compasses does the Pequod have?: "Standing behind
him Starbuck looked, and lo! the two compasses pointed East, and
the Pequod was as infallibly going West." (page 485)
And apropros of nothing, when I was re-reading MOBY DICK, it was in
a somewhat beat-up "Penguin Popular Classics" edition that sold for
£2 in 1994 and has a notation that it was made from 100% recycled
newsprint and 50% recycled coverboard (which I take to mean the
pages are 100% recycled materials, the cover 50%). It seems to be
the equivalent of our "Dover Thrift Editions", though because it is
mass-market size rather than trade paperback size one is not
confronted with as intimidating a block of text as with the Dover
editions. The combination of the recycled materials and the fact
that it was already a bit dog-eared made it a very comfortable book
to read. The covers could be flexed without having a crease
cracked in them, the binding was loose enough that you could open
the book sufficiently to deal with the narrow margins, and there is
enough space between lines that the text doesn't look all crammed
together. All in all, a very comfortable book. [-ecl]
==================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
The greatest lesson in life is to know that
even fools are right sometimes.
--Winston Churchill