Moby Dick (Part 2)
Mark seemed discouraged by the news. He stared at the ground. I tried to rally him by saying there would be turnover at the Clinton Triangle Safe Rest Village; he still might get a spot. I also pointed out he was in the lottery for one of the thousand apartment units coming later in the fall, a new county program that was two years behind schedule.
Now it was time to talk about the White Whale. It occurred to me that Mark and I hadn't discussed books in a long time. I missed those talks. They were often the highlight of my week.
Mark had never read Moby Dick, which shocked me. He was about a hundred pages in and we discussed the famous opening scene where Melville basically gives away the ending of the novel (Ishmael survives!). It was a technique totally unheard of in American literature at the time of the book's publication in 1851.
I had read a biography of Melville and told Mark how Moby Dick bombed when it came out, and was only rescued from obscurity in the early 20th century by influential literary critics. Mark mentioned that Melville had dedicated Moby Dick to Nathaniel Hawthorne and I said I remembered that.
We moved on to the famous sermon/peroration on the story of Jonah by Father Mapple in a tiny chapel decorated with all manner of skeletal remains of sharks and whales. Mark quoted a line from the sermon but I no longer recall it.
Next we compared the cinematic versions of Moby Dick. I favored Gregory Peck as Ahab. Mark was partial to Patrick Stewart. I reminded Mark that in the Gregory Peck film, John Huston directed and Orson Welles (!) played Father Mapple and played it with Grade A Shakespearean ham. His sermon really is one for the Hollywood ages.
It was time to go. I told Mark to keep the faith and I'd see him soon to discuss the novel. A block away, it hit me like the leviathan ramming the Pequod: shit and hellfire! I was going to have read Moby Dick for the fourth time!