Test Your Wits: A Literary Trivia Contest

How well do you know your literary trivia?

It's intriguing how popular the game Trivial Pursuit became. Here's a bit of trivia you may not have known: the game has sold over 100 million units in 26 countries and 17 languages. What year was it created? I would never have guessed. Answer: 1981. It seems like it has been around forever.

I've always enjoyed creating games. Trivia is indeed fun to play with. During Duluth's Dylan Fest I've usually been the one to create the Dylan Trivia Contest each year. So while cleaning my garage a couple weeks ago I assembled this trivial excursion.

HERE ARE THE RULES
1. Take a piece of paper and number it from 1 to 15. 

2. Here's the challenge. For each name in the list below, name the book this character appeared in and the author who wrote it. (A few are plays, but I read them in book form.) 

3. To the right of the title and author, write the name of the actor who played this character in a movie version of the book or play.

Do not scroll below the photos until you fill out your answers.

CALCULATING YOUR SCORE
A) Score one point for each correct Book Title. (In one instance the movie has a different title but is based on the book.)
B) Score one point for each book author that you name correctly.
C) Score one point for identifying the actor who played that character in the movie version of the book.
D) If you correctly identify all fifteen book titles WITHOUT LOOKING AT THE CLUES give yourself a bonus of 5 points. The same goes for identifying all fifteen authors and the fifteen actors. TOTAL POSSIBLE SCORE is 60. 

EdNote: The Clues are below the two photos at the end of this list. For the Extra Points, don't look till you have given up.

* * * * * 

1. Atticus Finch

2. Rhett Butler

3. Stella Kowalski

4. Kurtz

5. Ishmael

6. Alden Pyle

7. Harry Lime

8. Ann Sullivan

9. Robert Jordan

10. Daisy

11. Winston

12. Billy Pilgrim

13. Henry Wilcox

14. Tom Hagen

15. R.P. McMurphy

EdNote: Some of these titles are red herrings.

CHOOSE TITLES FROM THIS LIST
Moby Dick, For Whom The Bell Tolls, 1984, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, The Godfather, The Quiet American, The Last Tycoon, Chinatown, Slaughterhouse-Five, The Great Gatsby, Gone with the Wind, Howard's End, Heart of Darkness, The Miracle Worker, To Kill A Mockingbird, Bugsy, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Third Man

EdNote: Some of these actors are also misleading.

CHOOSE ACTORS FROM THIS LIST
Anthony Hopkins, Jack Nicholson, Gregory Peck, Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall, Jimmy Stewart, Clark Gable, Kim Hunter, Vivien Leigh,  Richard Basehart, Mia Farrow, Michael Sachs, Brendan Fraser, John Hurt, Louise Fletcher, Holly Hunter, Faye Dunaway, Orson Welles, Gary Cooper

ANSWERS ARE BENEATH THE PHOTO BELOW

"We're just waitin' here for ya to finish. Take your time. We'll wait."

ANSWERS
1. To Kill A Mockingbird--Harper Lee/Gregory Peck
2. Gone with the Wind--Margaret Mitchell/Clark Gable
3. A Streetcar Named Desire--Tennessee Williams/Kim Hunter
4. Heart of Darkness--Joseph Conrad/Marlon Brando (Apocalypse Now)
5. Moby Dick--Herman Melville/Richard Basehart,
6. The Quiet American--Graham Greene/Brendan Fraser
7. The Third Man--Graham Greene/Orson Welles
8. The Miracle Worker--William Gibson/Ann Bancroft
9. For Whom The Bell Tolls--Ernest Hemingway/Gary Cooper
10. The Great Gatsby--F. Scott Fitzgerald/Mia Farrow 
11. 1984--George Orwell/John Hurt
12. Slaughterhouse-Five--Kurt Vonnegut/Michael Sachs
13. Howard's End--E.M. Forster/Anthony Hopkins
14. The Godfather--Mario Puzo/Robert Duvall
15. One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest--Ken Kesey/Jack Nicholson

Please leave your score in the comments, either anonymously or publicly. Was this too easy? Too hard? Or just right?

Photos on this page courtesy Gary Firstenberg

The Old Man and the Sea: Anthony Quinn Version of the Film Is Worthwhile

"He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish."

--Ernest Hemingway

I first read The Old Man and the Sea in high school English class. I recall the teacher drawing attention to the symbolism, hoping to teach that there's more to a story than simply a good read.

The original novel by Ernest Hemingway was compact, a novella rather than an epic like War and Peace or Moby Dick. Since the description of the film already gives away everything, there is no "spoiler alert" on this brief review.

The Hemingway novel won accolades for its author, Ernest Hemingway. Written in 1951 and published in 1952, it's probably one of his most famous novels and certified his selection as Nobel Laureate in 1954 "for his mastery of the art of narrative." The book also garnered for Hemingway a Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

Seeking to capitalize on Hemingway's fame at the time, Hollywood released a film starring Spencer Tracy as Santiago in 1958. The old Cuban fisherman has been going through a slump lately. Believing his luck can change, he decides to launch out into deeper waters in search of larger game, and the hope of redemption. In typical Hemingway style, he only experiences more bad luck. Ah yes, he catches the biggest fish anyone has ever seen, but the sharks have their way with it and by the time he is home, all that's left are the bones.

In 1990, a made-for-TV version of the story was released, this time starring Anthony Quinn. Quinn is perfectly cast as Santiago, the old Cuban fisherman. 

There are actually six characters in this film. There is the old man, Santiago. And there is the youth who cares about him, brings him food, admires and looks up to him. Their touching friendship is noticed by a writer who is taking notes and finding the relationship between the boy and the old man to be curious, if not fascinating. The writer has a wife who has become bored with the mundane lives of Caribbean fisherman. The fifth character is the marlin. The sharks would be the sixth and final character in the story.

There are books and films with too many characters to give definition to. There are also films with characters introduced too quickly for the viewer to car about and embrace. This Anthony Quinn film gives us three characters you really care about: Santiago, Manolin (his devoted adolescent assistant), and the fish, which is more than a fish, much the same as Moby Dick was more than a whale.  

The writer and his wife were not in the book, nor were they in the Spencer Tracy version of the movie. Their dialogue is somewhat stilted and people who prefer the 1958 version point to their insertion into the story as a muddying of the storyline. 

The earlier version received a 7.0 rating from on Imdb.com viewers. This one has a 6.7 rating. Nevertheless, nearly everyone agrees that Anthony Quinn became a more authentic Santiago.

The old man's battle with the marlin brought back memories of deep sea fishing with my father off the coast of Miami. When Anthony Quinn first hooks the big fish, it reminded me of my father when he hooked the Grouper, which was the largest fish caught that day. (I think everyone put in $5.00 or some amount, and whoever caught the biggest fish took the prize.) My dad, who grew up in Ohio where we fished in ponds, lakes and streams, said that it felt like getting hooked on an underwater log.  Out on the ocean, our hooks were a long ways from the bottom, however.

A second scene from the film brought to mind my own battle with a Bonita. My line got all tangled so that I was unable to reel it in. We were trolling at the time. I began pulling in the fish with my hands, the line cutting my fingers. In the film, Santiago likewise has to pull in the fish with his hands, which also were bleeding. He wrapped rags around his hands like bandages, but what I remember most is the sting of the saltwater.

The cinematography is effective, especially when the Marlin breaks the surface for the first time. It really would be an awesome thing to see or, even better, to experience. 

I also have a third memory from our deep sea fishing excursion. When we disembarked on the dock, the boat alongside us had a 1,000-pound Hammerhead Shark cinched and hanging from a mast. That was one impressive fish as well.

The story ends with a thoroughly defeated hero. This blog post will end with a pair of quotes from the book.

--Every day above earth is a good day.

--Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is.

* * * 

Scott Warmuth Weighs In On Dylan's Latest Appropriations

Early example of Dylanesque obfuscation.

When accusations of plagiarism began emerging after Dylan's Nobel Prize lecture was released two weeks ago, I headed to Scott Warmuth's Goon Talk blog to see whether he had published anything yet. Nothing. That is, nothing on this topic. A few years back I began following his Pinterest page devoted to revealing the sources of lines and word imagery appropriated into Chronicles: Volume 1, Masked and Anonymous, Time Out of Mind, Modern Times, Together Through Life, Tempest and "Love and Theft" and what an interesting undertaking he's immersed himself in, noteworthy enough to have received inclusion in David Kinney's The Dylanologists.

In a Spin.com article by Marc Hogan, Kinney calls Warmuth the Internet sleuth "who deciphered Dylan’s own Da Vinci Code." Rather than wait however long before getting his take I took the initiative and was rewarded with the following interview.

EN: The initial response to Dylan's speech, most writers took it as straightforward, calling it "Extraordinary", revealing and a work of art. But a few days went by and the questions began, focusing primarily on the Moby Dick section. You would add that this (Moby Dick) is only the beginning. What are some of the other sources you've observed so far in this speech?

SW: The Charlie Poole verse from "You Ain't Talkin' to Me" that doesn’t appear in Poole’s version was a topic of discussion and news articles. bobschool on expectingrain.com suggests that it is likely a contemporary verse written by a fellow named Jim Krause.

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article155018229.html

http://www.expectingrain.com/discussions/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=90732&p=1756185&hilit=poole#p1756185

There’s material that appears to be crafted from the CliffsNotes to All Quiet on The Western Front and The Odyssey. Below are a couple of examples.

Dylan: This is a book where you lose your childhood, your faith in a meaningful world, and your concern for individuals.

https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/a/all-quiet-on-the-western-front/summary-and-analysis/chapter-7    This generation is one that has lost its childhood, its dreams, its faith in a meaningful world, and its concern for the individual.

Dylan: All around you, your comrades are dying. Dying from abdominal wounds, double amputations, shattered hipbones, and you think, "I'm only twenty years old, but I'm capable of killing anybody. Even my father if he came at me."

https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/a/all-quiet-on-the-western-front/summary-and-analysis/chapter-6   Only twenty years old, he is already a grim mercenary capable of killing all adversaries, even if his "own father came over with them."

EN: What was the first trigger event that inspired you to dig this deeply into Dylan's appropriations?

SW: During that awful September of 2001 I tossed Dylan's "Love And Theft" in my cart on a whim while shopping at a big box store, not expecting anything. It became my favorite album of all time, and I am a record collector with thousands of albums. I became captivated by it, and with thoughts of Dylan’s writing process.

A trigger event beyond just loving the record was an article in The Wall Street Journal in 2003 that discussed how a fellow named Chris Johnson discovered some parallels between some of the lyrics on "Love And Theft" and an oral history of a Japanese gangster. I was fascinated with that story, but not because it was a case of “gotcha” or anything like that. It was the serendipity strikes component tied with learning about some of the moving parts of a work that I love that captivated me.

In 2006 I appeared on NPR's All Things Considered and I told Robert Siegel that I wanted to know what was on Bob Dylan's bookshelf (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6076801). I had some basic questions: I wonder what Bob Dylan reads? I wonder what’s in his record collection? I also had questions about his creative process. I tried to create fortunate happenstance and look in the right places. The works I was initially most interested in were “Love And Theft,” Chronicles: Volume One and the Masked And Anonymous script. More recently I’ve been spending time considering his paintings. I've learned that he reads a lot of books and listens to a lot of records.

EN: Dylan has always played cat and mouse with the media, hasn't he? What do you surmise with regard to this latest set of appropriations? He seems too smart for this to be just a faux pas. He has to know "people are paying attention." What's your take on Dylan's motivations? And since nothing ever remains the same, how have your views changed over the two decades you've been doing this?

SW: In the lecture Dylan states, “If a song moves you, that's all that's important. I don't have to know what a song means. I've written all kinds of things into my songs. And I'm not going to worry about it – what it all means. When Melville put all his old testament, biblical references, scientific theories, Protestant doctrines, and all that knowledge of the sea and sailing ships and whales into one story, I don't think he would have worried about it either – what it all means.”

So, there’s that aspect, which I get – just enjoy it for what it is. There is another side to that as well. In my essay “Vive le Vol: Bob Dylan and the Importance of Being Ernest Hemingway” I suggest that Dylan aligns himself with German music critic Eduard Hanslick (1825 – 1904), who argued for the active listener, one who listens to music with the intent of discovering the method of composition, over the passive listener, for whom music is merely sound to float in. I argue that Dylan does this via the use of bits from Hanslick’s 1854 book On the Musically Beautiful in Chronicles: Volume One.

If Dylan has written all kinds of things into his songs, as he states, it is incumbent on the dedicated student to consider these things.

I’m not interested in the “Bob Dylan is a plagiarist” angle at all. There’s nothing more boring. I am taken with the notion of Dylan positioning himself as outlaw appropriation artist. Dylan writes about meeting "Robyn Whitlaw, the outlaw artist" - a fictional character - in Chronicles: Volume One. His interactions with Richard Prince play into this as well.

I like outlaw appropriation art, especially if it pisses people off. I love that there aren’t any rules and that everything goes. The Cramps have a wonderful song that asks, "How far can too far go?" What matters is if an artist has anything to say. Bob Neuwirth makes this point in No Direction Home. He says, "Basically, the way people were rated you know, they'd say 'Have you seen Ornette Coleman? Does he have anything to say?' And it was the same with, like with Bob or anybody else. Do they have anything to say or not?"

Bob Dylan has plenty to say and I dig that he isn’t interested in articulating his subversiveness as doctrine. On an episode of Theme Time Radio Dylan stated, “I’ve always believed that the first rule of being subversive is not to let anybody know you’re being subversive.”

When Dylan’s outlaw appropriation artist persona is firing on all cylinders it is nuanced and fascinating. He combines language from a New Orleans travel guide and Hemingway to deliver a telescoped version of The Snows of Kilimanjaro, creating a subtext about his unattended, neglected muse that lies hidden behind a shaggy dog story about a hand injury in Chronicles: Volume One.

He crafted "Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum," using found lines and musical source material, to function as a response to the Grateful Dead's "Uncle John's Band."

Those things went unnoticed for years, and it's the type of outlaw appropriation art I can get behind. It takes time to recognize some of these things. Slow is the new fast. The Nobel lecture has only been around for a couple of days. You must consider the possibility there are things going in in that lecture that we don't recognize yet. All sorts of things could bubble up.

Perhaps it's not the type of work that some want from Bob Dylan, but it's the kind of work he's been doing and it's apropos to explore these themes and approaches.

There’s the push and pull between finding what is there (such as the low hanging fruit in the Nobel lecture) and considering why it is there. I argue that in his essay in The Beaten Path catalog Dylan has incorporated a bit from a John Greenleaf Whittier short story called “The Fish I Didn’t Catch.”

That story ends with, “When I hear people boasting of a work as yet undone, and trying to anticipate the credit which belongs only to actual achievement, I call to mind that scene by the brookside, and the wise caution of my uncle in that particular instance takes the form of a proverb universal application: ‘Never brag of your fish before you catch him.’”

Locating a few of the moving parts in the Nobel lecture is not catching the fish.

EN: You stated in one post that you were already delving into Together Through Life before it was released. How did you acquire your copy so you could be so quick on the draw?

SW: It was leaked on the Internet. Nothing special – a lot of people had the recordings before the release date.

EN: And since nothing ever remains the same, how have your views changed over the two decades you've been doing this?

SW: That small window into his artistic process has freed me in terms of making my own art. Learning about how Bob Dylan goes about creating some of his work has been liberating. I had great respect and admiration for his work before I ever started looking into with any type of real focus, and now I have even more respect and admiration.

Check out my Instagram feed if you haven't already.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BQ0d47GgFcM/

My 3rd Richard Prince/Bob Dylan book. 8x10" (20x25cm), matte hardcover, standard paper 60lb/90gr, 34 pages. Edition of 2. (2017) NFS. From The Richard Prince/Bob Dylan Series

https://www.instagram.com/p/BQEGXwfD9TL/

My 1st Richard Prince/Bob Dylan book. 8"x10" (20x25cm), matte hardcover, standard paper 90gr, 26 pages (2015) NFS. From The Richard

Prince/Bob Dylan Series

https://www.instagram.com/p/BPNUiEBhH7j/

https://www.instagram.com/p/BNFARs2B2Wj/

https://www.instagram.com/p/BFgZGvOre-6/

https://www.instagram.com/p/BFgbN2uLeyb/

* * * *

In Closing

For more on Love and Theft, check out the source material where some of the tunes themselves originated.

And finally, my previous blog post about Mr. Warmuth.

* * * *

Meantime, life goes on all around you. Open your eyes. 

A Few Comments in Response to Bob Dylan's Nobel Lecture

If you're a Dylan fan then you already know he fulfilled the requirements necessary to receive the prize he was awarded last December. He produced and delivered an acceptance speech within the designated six month time limit. In a statement, the Swedish Academy secretary Sara Danius called it "extraordinary" and "eloquent." Journalists around the world quickly offered commentary on the speech and the man who wrote it.

Breaking it apart there are several highlights. First, the manner in which it was delivered. Second, the substance of what was delivered.

In regards to the how of it, The New Yorker's Alexandra Schwartz offered a pretty good summary here in her article, "The Rambling Glory of Bob Dylan's Nobel Speech."

"Dylan made a recording of his text, speaking for twenty-seven minutes over a smoky, meditative jazz-piano arrangement. Not for him, the sombre pomp of the podium. He sounds like a lounge singer lost in contemplative patter, just letting the thoughts flow. Pour yourself a whiskey, honey, pull up a chair, and stay awhile." 

The feeling I got was something akin to Garrison Keillor's Guy Noir, the piano plinking, ice stirring in the gin glass.

As for the content, Justin Bariso does a breakout on paragraph one in this Inc. article, "It Took Bob Dylan Less Than 30 Seconds to Teach a Remarkable Lesson in Emotional Intelligence."

Paragraph two warmed the hearts of many locals here in Duluth as Dylan reiterated what he's noted before, that Buddy Holly's Winter Dance Party at the Duluth Armory was a spark that ignited something deep in the soul of young Robert Zimmerman. I find it interesting that this time around Bob states he was "six feet away" when Buddy Holly looked at him. Years ago Dylan said, "I was three feet away from him... and he looked at me." My take is that the literal meaning here is that Buddy Holly was right there in front of him with nothing in between, and it may have been seven feet or five, but for sure it made an impression.

Dylan summarizes three books which spoke to him on a deeper level and influenced some of his songwriting: Moby Dick, All Quiet On The Western Front and the Odyssey.

Of Moby Dick he states, "This book tells how different men react in different ways to the same experience. A lot of Old Testament, biblical allegory: Gabriel, Rachel, Jeroboam, Bildah, Elijah. Pagan names as well: Tashtego, Flask, Daggoo, Fleece, Starbuck, Stubb, Martha’s Vineyard. The Pagans are idol worshippers. Some worship little wax figures, some wooden figures. Some worship fire."

Of All Quiet he elaborates on the horrors of war. "Day after day, the hornets bite you and worms lap your blood. You’re a cornered animal. You don’t fit anywhere. The falling rain is monotonous. There’s endless assaults, poison gas, nerve gas, morphine, burning streams of gasoline, scavenging and scabbing for food, influenza, typhus, dysentery. Life is breaking down all around you, and the shells are whistling. This is the lower region of hell. Mud, barbed wire, rat-filled trenches, rats eating the intestines of dead men, trenches filled with filth and excrement. Someone shouts, 'Hey, you there. Stand and fight.'"

It (All Quiet on the Western Front) goes downhill from here... to the point that you despise the people who sent you to this hell hole. The book is a powerful indictment of the way wars are fought, including the exemptions of privilege and the other injustices that accompany this life.

Dylan begins his exposition of The Odyssey like this. "The Odyssey is a great book whose themes have worked its way into the ballads of a lot of songwriters: “Homeward Bound, “Green, Green Grass of Home,” “Home on the Range,” and my songs as well."

You can, and should, read the lecture in its entirety. It will provide insights on why he continued to sing Masters of War for five decades and where many of his other songs came from.

There were plenty of other assessments of this speech. You will find it a worthwhile read and you should take the time if you are able. Or just listen to it. A little like Bob's Theme Time Radio Hour.

Good stuff.

A Postmodern Perspective on Moby Dick

This morning I received an email from someone who had read my August 19, 2009 entry How Literature Elevates Us. In that piece I reference Moby Dick, among several other great classics of fiction. The writer here offers up a pointed review, from a post-modern point of view. I share his account here in its entirety.


Hi Ed,

It's been a while. I've moved on, perhaps in retrograde motion, but its movement nonetheless.

I recently read Moby Dick. I noticed that you almost had a piece about it on your blog
Wednesday, August 19, 2009 How Literature Elevates Us that really didn't materialize. I was kind of sad about that, because I think Melville still has quite a lot to say...

Here's what I thought--post it if you like. Or just reply. Or none of the above, but hopefully you'll enjoy ;)

Let My Boat be Stove: A Post-modern Perspective on Moby Dick

Spoiler warning: if you have never read Moby Dick, do not bother reading this piffle. It will only spoil the end of the book, and it probably isn’t worth reading anyway. But if you can’t help it, I can’t help you.

God is dead, so I’ve heard. What remains? How do we reconcile the notion of free will in a (probabilistically) deterministic universe? Is the distinction between free will and determinism illusory? Or worse, is it a red herring—or perhaps a white whale? What is the “good life”—how do we distinguish right and wrong, and if we are driven by “fate” or “destiny”, why even bother to ask the question?

Don’t ask me—I haven’t the faintest idea. I’m lost at sea, as it were, merely living my life out to its “logical” end, lost in the awesomeness of horizon-less beauty, doing what I was made to do, piloting my body on its singular quest come hell or high water, or whatever alliterative phrase floats my boat. Or maybe that’s just a sorry excuse for all of the trouble I cause or am caused. Who knows? One way or another, at the end of it all, that great, insurmountable force that draws us ever onward in life will one day drag us down to the inconceivable depths and whatever lies beyond. Unless fate buoys you up, and then you can live on to share the good news.

Is that what Herman Melville means to tell us in Moby Dick? Just what is it about this one white whale that consumes Ahab, Ishmael, and the reader? “And only I am escaped alone to tell thee,” Ishmael quotes from Job.

Why did Ishmael escape, by the way? What did he ever do to deserve to live? After he boards the Pequod, our humble narrator becomes almost a non-person in terms of the dramatic action until the very end of the book. Why is he the sole survivor? Is it just happenstance?

And just what is it he wants to tell us, exactly? That depends, I suppose, on whether the primal force of Moby Dick is seen inherently good or evil, on whether Ahab is seen as moral or immoral for setting himself against it.

Melville perhaps gives us hints as to his disposition, using angelic imagery when describing the great WHITE whale, and overtly hinting at the dark nature of Ahab and his personal boat crew of Malays. The chief of them, the parsee Fedallah, is taken by second mate Stubb to be the devil himself. Snatches of some Faustian bargain between Ahab and Fedallah are sprinkled in the text, but this Mephistopheles seems even more to be some projection of Ahab’s own, darker nature. If the devil made him do it, it was the devil inside.

And yet…

Moby Dick himself is certainly no benevolent force in the novel. He simply is. He does not defend those who cannot defend themselves or otherwise do anything noble. He is Leviathan—that which was before the Great Flood, and that which will be when men are but a memory. (Not to be sexist, but the only feminine characters in the novel are: Queequeg (at the beginning of the novel), an innkeeper's wife, a doting Quaker woman who provisions the Pequod, half-forgotten wives whom Starbuck and Ahab recall, dancing Polynesian women on a passing whaler, and one boat—the Rachel, which goes in search of its lost children and ultimately rescues Ishmael). This Leviathan--this wild, ethereally white force--slays all who oppose it, strikes awe and fear in the hearts of men, defies all of the cunning and technology ranged against it by the Promethean Ahab, and rises again on the third day (get it?) to yet live on after the Pequod, her crew, and her very flag are sunk along with the bird who would dare carry it on.

Moby Dick may represent primal forces or the embodiment of what some may call “God”, as Gabriel (the Angel of Death!) does in the story. Even amongst the "pagans" in the novel, whale bones are used to build holy temples, are taken by Melville to be the dragons of “Here there be Dragons,” and imbued with mystical powers in order to explain stories such as that of Jonah. But whatever relationship the white whale has to the powers that be, those powers are not held to be wise, rational, or benevolent. No wonder Melville quotes from Job!

No, Moby Dick, the holy white whale, is the great force that defies Man, his technology, his logic, his pertinacity. Forever. And Ahab, in all his fieriness, with the Devil at his side, sets out to strike that foul force frontally, as Melville might like to say. Ahab, like Lucifer before him, sets out to take it out.

Is that not noble? Or just plain stupid? Pitiable?

As an aside, I think it’s interesting to note that Ahab dashes technology—his quadrant—against the deck of the Pequod while in pursuit of the whale. In short, he concludes that technology can only tell him the facts of now, not what will be. And what use is that against primal forces? How can one conquer the irrational with the rational?

To judge for the nobility of Ahab is to judge against the whale (and vice versa), and neither has much to recommend it in terms of social welfare: these forces act only in their own interests. Ahab certainly may think he has the means, the right, and the destiny to oppose the whale, but as Clint Eastwood once said “Deserve’s got nothing to do with it”. The book eschews Manichean perspectives a century before that was “cool”.

Still, maybe Ahab’s just tenacious, if not a little stupid for not turning back.

But could he actually turn back? Is that the kind of man Ahab is? Never! Like Caesar, like any man rooted to purpose, he’s as constant as the North star.

Is it wrong to fix oneself quixotically to what one sees as a “great” purpose? Should we pity anyone who does?

Whether Ahab is pitiable or not depends on whether you think he’s doomed, and Melville certainly makes no bones about that: the dude is doomed, early on. And so he’s a tragic character, his fatal flaw being the figment (still channeling Melville here… go with me on this) that he can fight and fell his famous foe (see?). He even manages to fix an iron in the great beast, as Fedallah promised. Shouldn’t the underdog think he can win, sometimes? Otherwise there wouldn’t be a movie… I mean book… I mean, life.

For, at the end of the day, what is life? We range the forces we can muster against that which is beyond our ken has ranged against us and fare as best as we can. Sometimes we are up, sometimes we are down. Sometimes we are master of the seas whom all hold in awe. And sometimes, our boat is dashed to pieces.

So let my boat be stove through and through. I sail on to my purpose, and I’ll take it down or be taken down by it, damn it all.

Can I help it? Can’t I save myself and others?

I am. And that’s the devil of things.

RJB 2010

Here's At Least One Facet Of Finding Your Own Voice

“It’s better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.” ~ Herman Melville

The novel is a classic of American literature. The high seas, Moby Dick and Ahab’s quest… and a narrator named Ishmael. Interesting name. Ishmael was Abraham’s son, the one birthed when he attempted to produce an offspring without faith in God. A son conceived with his servant woman. A son conceived illegitimately.

And years later when Isaac, the true product of faith, was born, the animosity between the descendants of Isaac and of Ishmael became a perpetual conflict, still unrelenting.

As for this story, what is the meaning behind Ishmael’s name? Is it a commentary on the futility of Captain Ahab’s insane quest? The pursuit of this great white whale destroys not only Ahab but the lives of nearly everyone involved in the mad mission. So it is that in the wake of Abraham’s actions, finding a means to father a son without God’s aid results in massive suffering and loss of life.

Abraham, according to the book of Genesis, was asked to attempt something impossible. Only God could do this impossible thing. How does that translate into Moby Dick and Captain Ahab? Should Ahab have quit the pursuit and trusted God to beach this great white whale somewhere on an island? Or have it go up a river and get stuck somewhere that it could not turn around as the whale two years ago that got itself in a mess near Sacramento?

If you have not read Moby Dick, it would make a worthy addition to your list sometime. I plowed through it when a literary friend insisted it was the greatest American novel and one of the top twenty of all time. It turned out to be a worthwhile read indeed. (In the past several days this phrase Great American Novel has already been applied to The Grapes of Wrath and The Great Gatsby in The Big Read series I’ve been listening to, so take it with a grain of salt.)

Woody Allen pays tribute to Melville’s masterpiece in the film Zelig. The film is a sparkling demonstration of Allen’s genius. When the main character, Zelig, is undergoing therapy, he confides that he has never ready Melville’s classic, but covered it up in order to “fit in,” the film’s theme (our chameleon nature) and Zelig’s root problem.

In literature and the arts, originality is the great quest. In mathematics and science, the great men are likewise driven by the quest for an original idea. Einstein’s theory of relativity reverberated throughout the culture, the power of an original idea. John Nash, in A Beautiful Mind, is mad with the passion to find and capture his own White Whale without which a Nobel prize is surely out of reach.

Back to Mr. Allen… His film making career is a perfect example of the Melville quote that opened this stream of conscious exploration. His films have repeatedly shown a fluid originality that is uniquely his own. Yet he wasn’t afraid to take chances. Sometimes the comic elements didn’t pan out, and sometimes the medium got the best of him, but when you look at the range of things he attempted, you can see he never settled for imitation or formulaic devices. He made the movies he wished to make and many have been gems with real takeaway value.

The key is finding your own voice, whether as a writer, film maker, economist or just a human being. Who are you and what is your life message?

I used to think that it was the young who need to be dedicated to originality, that youth was a time of exploration. But why limit yourself? As long as you are breathing the mind should be in inquiry mode. Life itself is a creative act. When it ceases to be so, you have ceased from really being alive.

Maybe this was Ahab's fear: To stop pursuing the dream would be to cease from living. He decided not to be a boring old hack story teller at a port town pub reliving the life he once lived. Instead, he mustered all he had and gave it another shot. Winston Churchill put it this way:

“Success is going from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”

If the dream is worthy, go for it.