The Ultimate Semester at Sea (Moby-Dick, Part 1)

 In the first of our two-part episodes on Moby-Dick, editor Jeffrey Insko highlights the (sometimes-polarizing) delights of Herman Melville's outlandish nautical epic and describes how this iconic American novel was born from from the author's early adventures on the high seas. 

Jeffrey Insko is Professor of English at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, where he teaches courses in nineteenth-century American Literature and Culture and the Environmental Humanities. He is the editor of the Norton Library edition of Moby-Dick and the author of History, Abolition, and the Ever-Present Now in Antebellum American Writing (2018). 

To learn more or purchase a copy of the Norton Library edition of Moby-Dick, go to https://seagull.wwnorton.com/moby-dick.

Learn more about the Norton Library series at https://wwnorton.com/norton-library.

Listen to our Spotify playlist inspired by Moby Dick: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/219UwEXN1UxNUmKpu2A8Vl?si=0473970620f34686.

Have questions or suggestions for the podcast? Email us at nortonlibrary@wwnorton.com or find us on Twitter @TNL_WWN.

Episode transcript at: https://seagull.wwnorton.com/mobydick/part1/transcript.

Transcript

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[Mark:] You are listening to the Norton Library Podcast, where we explore classic works of literature and philosophy with the leading scholars of the Norton Library, a new series from W. W. Norton that introduces influential texts to a new generation of readers. I'm your host Mark Cirino with Michael Von Cannon producing, and today we present part one of our two episodes devoted to Herman Melville's masterpiece, Moby-Dick, as we interview its editor, Jeffrey Insko. In this first episode, we discuss Herman Melville and how he came to write this novel, the Melville revival, this novel's difficulties, and its magnificent characters, including the White Whale itself. Jeffrey Insko is professor of English at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. He is the author of “History, Abolition, and the Ever-Present Now in Antebellum American Writing.” Welcome to the Norton Library Podcast, Jeffrey Insko! 

[Jeffrey:] It is a great pleasure to be here.  

[Mark:] Well, it's a great pleasure to have you on and to talk about Herman Melville's Moby-Dick. And so, why don't we start by talking about the author? Moby-Dick was published in 1851. What was Herman Melville doing in 1851? Where does this novel land in terms of his life and career? 

[Jeffrey:] Well, I’ll start with a slightly longer version, which is that Melville was born in New York, uh, in 1819, um, to a man named Alan Melville and his wife Maria Gansevoort. Both of his grandfathers – um, so Melville's maternal and paternal grandfathers – um, were both Revolutionary War heroes, um, men of prominence and wealth. So, he comes from a kind of venerable lineage of sorts, uh. Except that his father was a failed businessman and kind of sank the family fortune into the ground, uh, died when Melville was 12 years old and kind of left him and his siblings with their mother, who moved them back to Albany, New York, um, when Melville was young. And so much of his schooling days took place in Albany. Um, but I think, because of the family's financial difficulties, uh, he was not able to attend college. So, one of the things that's a little bit unique about Melville in relation to some of the other well-known 19th-century American writers – Hawthorne and Emerson and Thoreau – is that he didn't go to college. Um, as Ishmael and Moby-Dick says at one point “the whale ship was his Yale and his Harvard.” Um, so instead, he tried various jobs. He taught school for a little bit, he was a clerk in a bank, um, and, uh, like many young men of dreams and ambitions, he was seeking something else. Uh, and one of those avenues, uh, for a young man of dreamy romantic ambition is to go a-whaling. Uh, so, um, in 1841, he signed aboard a whale ship, and he went off, uh, and had some years of adventure, um, on whale ships in the South Pacific. He was a deserter, at one time. He was – on another ship where he took part in a mutiny – was arrested briefly. Uh, he, uh, spent some time as a beachcomber on a South Pacific island. 

[Mark:] And he really used those experiences as the source of his early fiction, didn't he? 

[Jeffrey:] He did. He came home and he had all these stories to tell, and his friends and family members encouraged him to tell them. And so, he did. And he wrote them down, and his, uh, and he published his first book, which was called “Typee,” which is based upon, um, the beginning of those adventures. And it was kind of a smash hit! Uh, and Melville suddenly found himself kind of famous and a little bit notorious. Um, he published another book very quickly afterwards, um, that continued, uh, a fiction – loosely fictionalized version of those adventures. It was called “Omoo.” Um, it, too, was pretty well received. Um, and so suddenly he found himself launched as a professional writer. And he knocked out three more books really fast. Um, within three years, he had, uh, published three more novels, um, none of which capitalized on the success that he had with the first two. 

[Mark:] So, why, Jeff, if we have read one Herman Melville novel or heard of one novel, is it Moby-Dick? What is it about the novel we're discussing today that separates it from those early efforts? 

[Jeffrey:] Gosh, um, that's a great question. Uh, and I think there are a whole bunch of, um, ways of answering it. But I think the key one is that, the novel is big and epic and outlandish and preposterous and weird and, um, massive in its scope and its ambition, um, and its attempts to, um, be a great work of art. Uh, and so, um, what happened to Melville, I think, by 1851, is that he got a sense of his power. He'd got a sense of what it meant to be a great artist. And so, he's increasingly kind of feeling the weight, uh, and the ambition and the frustration, um, of being an artist. Uh, and so Moby-Dick is a book that he kind of throws everything into, but at the same time, it's also, um – it has this simple plot. Um, a simple plot that's also sort of a silly plot. I mean, it's a book about a guy that's got a grudge against a fish. [Laughter] Um, which is so, um – But at the same time, the simplicity of that, um, kind of echoes lots of other, you know, sort of epic tales of heroism and, you know, the men chasing demons or fighting dragons and so forth. So, so it's also a book, um, that is familiar in that way, in terms of its plot, um, of a hero who wants to, um, slay a monster. 

[Mark:] So, Jeff, in 1851, when the book is published, the – a novel of the kind that you're describing, that is epic in scope in which a man who's trying to kill a fish is viewed in these sort of mythic or metaphysical terms: was the American reading public ready for that in 1851? How was it received upon publication? 

[Jeffrey:] I certainly think that the American reading public was ready for an adventurous novel that takes place in exotic locations, um, that echoes various kinds of familiar mythic quests. What they weren't ready for is all the other stuff in the book, um, that Melville does. The, um, apparatus that he builds around that simple plot. Uh, and so, um, readers weren't quite sure what to make of it. Um, it received pretty mixed reviews. Some people recognized its, uh, greatness. Um, they also recog— in lots of ways, the responses in 1851 mirror responses to it today. I mean, reviewers called the book, like, “wantonly eccentric,” um, and meant that in good ways, and thought it was full of power and poetry. On the other hand, um, people thought it was, um, a mess full of bad rhetoric and involved syntax. And, um, one reviewer said “stilted sentiment and incoherent English.” Because it's a bombastic novel, and Melville’s flexing his rhetorical muscles and showing off and taking advantage of all kinds of opportunities to digress and engage in various other intellectual currents of the time. Uh, and so a lot of readers just didn't quite know what to make of that.  

[Mark:] So, if Melville thought that he had written his masterpiece after several more minor efforts and he got this kind of mixed reviews and less book sales, correct, than “Typee,” for instance? How did he react to that? He was still a young man. What was his post Moby-Dick authorship like? 

[Jeffrey:] Yeah. I mean, you know, he reacted to it even before the novel was finished. He was already kind of reacting to the anticipation of failure and a reading public that he was – that was sort of out of step with the kind of things that he was interested in achieving. And, you know, he was prone to kind of whining about, um, his lack of appreciation, and wrote a bunch of wonderful letters to Nathaniel Hawthorne and others kind of bemoaning the fact that, um, he can't get an audience and he's not making any money. And, you know, he's got a new house and he's got two young boys and he's can't make ends meet and he's, uh, you know the – his father-in-law is helping to pay the mortgage, and so there's a lot of frustration in that regard. And, um, after Melville does – or after Moby-Dick, um, doesn't rectify that situation, either the financial side or the, um, appreciation side from the reading public, um, he takes a couple of more shots in ways that he thinks might, uh, at least the novel that he publishes after Moby-Dick, called “Pierre; or, The Ambiguities,” uh, that starts out a kind of attempt, um, to capture and write in a genre that is popular. But Melville finds that he simply can't do it. If he can't, uh, he can't allow himself to work within, uh, conventional bounds, since the novel – that novel winds up sort of consuming itself in this weird way. And one review of “Pierre,” the headline of the review was “Herman Melville crazy?” because people just didn't know what he was doing. So, he publishes one more novel after that, um, called “The Confidence Man.” Um, maybe his most difficult novel, but also brilliant. Uh, and after that he finds that there are other avenues for him at least to make some money. So he publishes a bunch of magazine fiction. Um, and he wrote some of his greatest work. Um, “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” and “Benito Cereno,” um, are real masterpieces. And those are paying a little bit better. Um, but then he also turns away from fiction and he starts writing poetry. And by the – It's important to remember that, um, you know, he wrote Moby-Dick – Moby-Dick is the novel that he's best known for, but really that's early Melville. I mean, he had a, he had a fifty, a 40-year writing life after Moby-Dick. Um, he wrote a book of poems during the Civil War, he published a long epic, he wrote a long epic poem later. Um, so he had a long and productive, uh, career post-Moby-Dick, even if it wasn't a famous one. 

[Mark:] So, when he died, or as his career was going on, he had no idea that Moby-Dick was going to take on this second life. So, maybe you can describe for us what you refer to in your introduction as “the Melville Revival?”  

[Jeffrey:] Yeah, so the Melville Revival was a renewed interest, uh, in Melville's works that kind of coincides with the centenary of his birth. Um, and Melville didn't exactly die in complete obscurity. Um, but he certainly wasn't, uh – His death was not met with the kind of recognition that a, that a great American writer had passed. That really wasn't his reputation. Um, and – but it wasn't until the centenary of his birth that, um, there was kind of some new, renewed interest. He had – and the Melville Revival is really a kind of transatlantic affair. There was some interest in Melville circulating in the late part of the 19th century in England, um, but it's really a couple of Columbia professors in the United States, Carl Van Doren and his student, Raymond Weaver. Van Doren suggests to Weaver that he, that he take up Melville. And so, Weaver, in 1921, um, publishes a biography of Melville. Um, and this kind of sparks a flurry of interest on Melville. The, um – bringing back into print Moby-Dick and other of his works – that happens, actually, interestingly in England first before the U.S. Um, uh, but then, sort of continuation of scholars who were taking up, uh, Melville and kind of fashioning him into the Great American author. And it bears noting, too, that, um, this kind of resuscitation or revival of Melville's reputation coincides with the, um, attempt to establish the study of American literature itself as a, um, vital and legitimate, uh, pursuit. The first episode of – or, sorry, the first issue of the journal “American Literature” is 1929. So, that decade of the 20s is both Melville and American Literature coming into their own. 

[Mark:] So, you mentioned some of the excesses of this novel. And readers who are new to this, uh, book, Moby-Dick, will be encountering problems of structure and voice. What problems or challenges do you think that this novel poses to new readers? 

[Jeffrey:] I think there are two primary ones. The first one is simply that it thwarts readerly expectations of a narrative. Um, that it has this simple and compelling plot. Um, maybe you're interested in whether or not the Mad Captain catches the fish that he holds the grudge against, but if that's what you're interested in, you're going to have to wait a long time. Uh, because, um, uh, the narrator Ishmael, um, digresses and veers away from that plot for [Laughter] astonishingly long stretches at times. Um, and so, he delivers, instead, chapters that feel like scientific treatises, or essays, or sometimes merely set pieces so that he can tell a joke. And so, the novel's doing a whole bunch of other things, um, that delays and defers the kind of satisfaction one might otherwise derive in the quest and the chase, and the ultimate conclusion of the plot. Uh – in fact, those digressions take up far more pages of the novel than do the chapters that are about the plot itself. 

[Mark:] So, why did Melville do that? Why – Surely Melville knew that he was frustrating readers’ expectations and leaving the narrative aside. Why – What was his goal in having all of these various dimensions to it? 

[Jeffrey:] I don't know that I can exactly answer what his goal was, although I can, I can, um, speculate on some of his ambitions. But maybe also just his impulses. For one thing, Melville likes to play with language. And, you know, the more opportunity there is for him to play, to mess around with sentences, to play around with verbal constructions, to make metaphors, um, that's what, I think, got Melville's juices flowing. Uh, and it is sometimes, you know, like, descriptive passages lend themselves to a kind of, um, verbal experimentation and play that sometimes the demands of narrative propulsion don't. Um, so I think partly that's a kind of impulse on the part of Melville, um, as a writer, as someone who just likes showing off, um, and playing around with language. But I guess the second, um, part of it is that Melville also had philosophical ambitions. Um, that he was interested in what he called elsewhere, “the great art of telling the truth.” And that was a difficult thing for him. He was pursuing that as much as he was pursuing, um, maybe more than he was pursuing the fulfillment of readerly desires and satisfaction. 

[Mark:] You say in your introduction, Jeff, that Melville is engaging with the problem of knowing or not knowing, and we have a kind of epistemological complication. And this can be very disorienting for modern readers, and maybe even readers in the 19th century. What about knowledge does this novel present? And how do we go about approaching it? 

[Jeffrey:] I think, to pick up on the the point that I was making about the about telling the truth, is I think for Melville, it was a truth, um, that there – that all of those things, systems that we devise that allow us to arrive at, uh, certainty, uh, and stable ways of knowing, um, he was uncomfortable with those. Um, and, um, the book is very much devoted to unsettling all the things, um, that provide, uh, that kind of certainty, whether that's, um, religion or philosophical systems or, uh, scientific – systems of scientific classification, or even, um, you know, the, uh, the ability of language itself to accurately, uh, name the external world. And so, um, starting from that point, um, the novel, I think, just of everywhere engaged in, uh, that tension, uh, between knowing and coming to grips with a world that constantly thwarts our knowledge.  

[Mark:] And maybe one of the best examples of this, and this seems to be kind of a famous moment in the text, is chapter 32, which, if readers will – once readers get to it, they will usually usually either frisbee their book across the room, or they'll say – at least they'll say, “What is going on here?” Um, this is the chapter titled “Cetology.” Jeff, could you describe what are the challenges of this particular chapter, and maybe we can make an argument for why Melville includes it? 

[Jeffrey:] I always say to my students that it's the chapter that separates the Moby-Dick lovers from the Moby-Dick haters. [Laughter] Um, so “Cetology,” uh, comes along 32 chapters in, not long after Ahab has arrived, and it disturbs the narrative momentum. Uh, and what it gives us instead, ostensibly, is a system of classifying whales. Citation. So, the zoological classification of citation includes dolphins and porpoises. And so, what it is, is a chapter that, um, that classifies and taxonomizes the various kinds of, uh, citations, uh, and so it, so it feels like, um, a dry scientific treatise, but, in fact, it's anything but. Uh, and I think it's part of the work of reading the novel is recognizing the extent to which Melville is playing. That he's, um, undermining systems of classification at the same time as he is offering one before his readers. And so, he actually classifies whales according to the sizes of books – the actual physical sizes of books. And so, there's a clever joke, um, at the heart of the cetology chapter that, um, lodges the authority of meaning-making not in. kind of, objective understanding of the external world, but in, uh, the knowledge-making that takes place in books, including the one that he is writing— [Mark:] Yeah. [Jeffrey:] —here at the moment. And I will say one other thing about the cetology chapter, um, that if one enters into that cetology chapter not, um, uh, finding themselves uninterested in whales and dolphins and porpoises, but enters it into the spirit of play that Melville enters into that exercise with, suddenly the whole novel kind of opens up. It seems to me that that the portraits of the whales that he provides in the chapter are all droll and playful and funny, and he gives them, uh, silly characteristics and quirky personalities, and it's full of jokes and playmaking – all of which are sort of devoted to, kind of, undermining the authority of scientific knowledge, which is kind of fundamental to the novel's project of undermining the authority of all kinds of systems of knowing. 

[Mark:] One of the things we can talk about for at least the remaining parts of this episode is the series of major characters that Melville introduces us to. Because maybe one of the things that Moby-Dick has that Melville's previous novels didn't have are these really memorable characters: a memorable narrator, a memorable mad hero, and a memorable antagonist. So, maybe you can tell us just a little bit of what we need to know about some of these figures, and why don't we start with the whale itself? What do we know about Moby-Dick, and what do we need to know? 

[Jeffrey:] Well, first of all, Moby-Dick, in an earlier encounter, prior to the commencement of the narrative, we learn Ahab, on a different voyage, had had an encounter with Moby-Dick. Uh, and in trying to kill Moby-Dick, Moby-Dick reaped away Ahab's leg. Um, and this is the source of Ahab's, um, anger and re – and his desire for revenge. Um, but the novel builds Moby-Dick into, uh, you know, this mythical beast. Um, and – Around which, uh, swirls all sorts of legends that he can be in two places at once, that he is ageless, um, that he, uh, possesses a kind of deliberate, malicious, agency, um, as opposed to simply being a dumb brute. Um, and, uh, not least of his characteristics, uh, that lends him this kind of aura, um, of almost deity, is that he's white. There's a, there's a chapter of the novel that is simply titled “The Whiteness of the Whale” that explores the range of meanings, um, of, and cultural associations that we have with whiteness. And, um, Moby-Dick – this massive, mighty, uh, elusive whale is sort of infused with all of those qualities and characteristics.  

[Mark:] The character who hates Moby-Dick personally is Ahab. You've cited a personal vengeance that he has about this one particular whale, and what does that allow us to think about this character that we're going to be following around, that he holds the whale responsible for what happened? 

[Jeffrey:] Yeah, I mean, one answer to that is – and many readers have pointed out – is that it makes him crazy. Um, that, that, um, he is mentally disturbed because he is seeking revenge on an animal. Not a knowing, knowing agent, um, that treated him in the way that he treated him deliberately. Um, but what that really means though, is that, is that, um, Ahab sees Moby-Dick as a kind of figure for all sorts of other things. And among those other things, I would say, is that that he invests the whale, um, with, um, what the novel describes is all of his spiritual and intellectual exasperations. Um, so his sense of having been wronged, his sense of living in a world that is cruel and that has taken something important away from him, um, uh, whatever religious or spiritual desires and doubts that he might have, he heaps all of that upon, uh Moby-Dick. And so his quest for Moby-Dick, in that way, um, isn't, in fact, about a fish at all. It's about a fish that is just a stand-in for all of these things that, I think, are recognizable human frustrations. I mean, I think we all have spiritual and intellectual exasperations. Ahab simply wants to, um, put an end to those exasperations, or reach a point at which he understands where they come from and why. 

[Mark:] So, of course, Ahab doesn't tell his own story about this revenge plot. That's told by Ishmael, which is also an advancement over any of the previous novels. I think, Jeff, you'd agree. Um, what about Ishmael's performance as a narrator – you've alluded to a little bit of it – but how does he function as our guide? 

[Jeffrey:] Ishmael is a tricky figure in a lot of ways. Um, for one thing, he's both a character and a narrator. Um, for the first quarter of the book or so, we follow him closely, um, and his relationship with, uh, Queequeg, who we'll talk about, I think, in a minute, and it feels like Ishmael is going to be an important, if not *the* main character of the novel. Um, but once they get aboard the ship and once Ahab enters into the scene, Ishmael as a character in the narrative sort of fades into the background, and what we have instead is Ishmael as narrator. Um, and so, in that way, um, Ishmael, uh, is really the presiding consciousness of the novel. To know Ishmael the character, in some ways, is to begin to know Ishmael the narrator, because they share certain kinds of characteristics: a kind of intellectual flexibility, um, a playful wit, um, a a willingness, um, to not be settled in his ways of knowing. Um, but as – but as a narrator, um, Ishmael is as invested in capturing the whale as Ahab is, partly because he's part of the crew and agrees to go on this hunt for Moby-Dick, but also because Ishmael – and this is what all the digressive cetological chapters are about – they're all another kind of attempt to capture the whale. And by that I just mean to *know* the whale, um, as a creature. And he's fiercely devoted to that pursuit, in the same way that Ahab is devoted— [Mark:] Yes. [Jeffrey:] —to his pursuit, although Ishmael seems to recognize that he's not going to capture the whale. [Laughter] Uh, which is where his, um, quest for the whale differs very much from Ahab’s.  

[Mark:] Yep. Well, you mentioned his best friend Queequeg. What kind of character is Queequeg, and how do he and Ishmael meet and get along? 

[Jeffrey:] Queequeg, uh, is, I think, the novel in – the character in the novel to whom readers are most drawn emotionally. Ahab is compelling and powerful, and Ishmael is, in lots of ways, likable and funny. Um, but Queequeg is, uh, endearing and someone who inspires a tremendous amount of affection. He is a South Pacific Islander, um, when he, uh, he is referred to in the novel as a pagan cannibal. When Ishmael first meets him, um, at an inn, uh, in New Bedford, um, he's out – Queequeg is out pedaling New Zealand heads. Um, uh, and Ishmael is terrified of him. Terrified of the prospect of meeting him, and much less terrified of sharing a bed with him, uh, which is what they have to do because, um, the cramped quarters of the crowded inn, um, don't leave enough beds for all the sailors to sleep in. Uh, and so, so, um, Ishmael – uh the former school teacher, Presbyterian, white guy – uh, befriends this, uh, pagan cannibal. And they wind up having a delightfully affectionate, uh, intimate, uh, friendship and relationship. 

[Mark:] I would just want to ask, Jeff, about one other character. This is the character that I felt most for, and that's the character of Pip. And one of the reasons I'm drawn to this character is because it reminds me that this novel was published in 1851. So, can you tell us a little bit about him? 

[Jeffrey:] So, Pip, on the ship is a black cabin boy. Um, it was not unusual for, um, for whale ships and other maritime vessels to have African-Americans in their crew. But Pip, at one point while he is, um, out on one of the whaleboats, um, uh, gets frightened and he jumps off the whaleboat. Um, and he is told by another one of the mates, um, that if he does it again they're going to leave him behind. Um, and sure enough, at another point in the narrative, he jumps off a whaleboat and they do leave him behind. And he has, um, this kind of out-of-body experience that is born of his, um, fright at having been abandoned in the, kind of, empty immensity, um, of the ocean. And so Pip goes mad. And narratively, he, um, he winds up playing a kind of role, as lots of readers have pointed out, um, of a sort of fool, um, to Ahab's kind of King Lear-like, um, character. And so, Pip is able to – because his experience has granted him a kind of knowledge into the inner workings of the cosmos or the universe, um, he possesses a kind of wisdom and also a freedom to speak, um, that maybe no one else has. 

[Mark:] Jeff Insko, thank you so much for joining us on the Norton Library Podcast! This has been a great introduction to Herman Melville's Moby-Dick. 

[Jeffrey:] Thank you, it's been great. 

[Mark:] The Norton Library edition of “Moby-Dick, or The Whale,” edited by Jeffrey Insko is available now in paperback and ebook. Check out the links in the description of this episode for ordering options and more information about the Norton Library, including the full catalog of titles. 

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