A THING by ROSALIND SHOOPMANN
I Don’t Smoke and I’m Not a Lumberjack, so Driving Is the Most Dangerous Thing I Do
When Moby-Dick first came out, readers complained that the narrative chapters were boring but they generally liked all the stuff about whale biology. Isn’t that funny? Take a right at the light. It’s the opposite of what people say about the book today. Personally, I love how it doubles as a cetology textbook—we’re turning at this stop sign—but I understand why most people don’t. You have to imagine being an 1850s person who has seen a whale and wants to convey what this was like in a time before photography, before encyclopedias became widely accessible. All people know is that it’s just a big-ass fish or some shit, but Melville wants you to know better. Get onto the 8 up here. Melville wants his readers to know how the whale’s brow alone makes “you feel the Deity and the dread powers more forcibly than in beholding any other object in living nature” not because the whale is immeasurable but for the opposite reason, yeah? Because the whale is endlessly measurable. We’ll get onto the 805 eventually, so keep an eye out for that. Measurement renders concrete the creature’s majesty, the terror and awe it inspires just by existing as it does, describing the base facts of its biology and behaviors to force his reader to confront that which study can only ever render less comprehensible. Merge up there. Only through the unthinkable scale of the whale in general can Melville guide us to the right response to Moby-Dick specifically, a whale that is intelligent and malign, even infernal. By illustrating this scale Melville shows us—and this is important; get onto the 805—show his reader the right response to Moby-Dick just as a whale! “So ignorant are most landsmen of some of the plainest and most palpable wonders of the world, that without some hints touching plain facts, historical and otherwise, of the fishery, they might scout at Moby-Dick as a monstrous fable, or still worse and more detestable, a hideous and intolerable allegory.” That’s a direct quotation. Moby-Dick doesn’t stand for anything but Moby-Dick. We’ll take exit 23 pretty soon.
Then we’ll just go straight for a while. Thanks again for the ride—sometimes driving makes me want to puke!
Do you ever think about how somebody in our lifetime will be the last person who ever sees a whale? I read an article about it last year; not much is going to make it through acidification. Whales won’t. They just aren’t gonna be around much longer. Left at the end of this block. Two centuries from now, people will have an even worse image than Melville’s contemporaries. Not many people picture dinosaurs with feathers, you know? Please let me out here. Goodnight.
Rosalind Shoopmann (she/her) lives in San Diego, where she is currently pursuing an MA in English and Comparative Literature at San Diego State. Her work has previously appeared in The Bicoastal Review, and at the Crisis Carnival Arts Festival.