Tag: Moby Dick

  • Just Over 500 Words About Dying

    Cormac McCarthy died today. He was old, and I can’t imagine it came as a surprise, except in the way death always is. At some point, all of us are going to end our time here, and if we’re lucky, we will be old when we do it. Coincidentally, I had read the first 15…

  • We Return to the Wretched Sea, at Last (“Moby Dick”)

    Last time we visited the Wretched Sea, I went on a lengthy side-notion about the idea of Moby Dick as a kind of drone-art novel. I then put the book down and didn’t pick it up for several months: a trip to Thailand, Mardi Gras, and other things interfered, and so when I resumed, it…

  • Series/”Otherland”/What I am Reading/Future Plans

    Let’s talk a little bit about series. I have a predilection for long works. I’m not sure what this says about me, but if you’ve written an 1,500 page novel, I kinda want to know it exists. If it’s some weird literary nonsense, I probably want to read it. But it doesn’t have to be…

  • What I am Reading

    I’m about 1/8th of the way through Hermoine Lee’s biography of Virginia Woolf; I honestly rarely read biographies, unless I develop some sort of obsession with their subject. I’ve read both biographies of John Cage, for example. It’s interesting, in the way that things are; it’s also slow, as it’s an attempt to be definitive.…

  • More “Moby Dick”/Ambient Novels/Sunn O)))/Drone Novels

    I. Apparently it’s “Moby Dick” season. I have learned through a friend that someone I follow on twitter (who’s work/twitter I admire) is also heeding the call of the wretched sea™ and like me is around halfway through. I finished “The Town-Ho’s Story”, and shortly after that “Moby Dick” turns heavy into encyclopedia mode, with…

  • Continuing on with “Moby Dick”/What I am Reading

    This week sees me returning to the wretched sea after a bit of a break; I note that my ‘reading partner’ also took a bit of a break as well. They’re a bit behind me. Of particular interest this week is “The Town-Ho’s Story” which is, I think, the longest chapter in Moby Dick. It’s…

  • “The Deep”/A Difficult Subject/”Moby Dick”/Storygraph/What I am Reading

    *This entry will contain some discussion of sexual abuse; if that’s something you don’t wish to read about, or are not in a place to deal with, I’m going to encourage you not to engage with it. You can scroll down to the first set of *** to skip that part, or not read at…

  • “Moby Dick”/”The Waves”/Choose my Next Adventure/Mortality

    The trip through the wretched ocean continues. We’ve journeyed through a few of the more famous chapters, including “Moby Dick” and “The Whiteness of the Whale”– Melville notes a few things here.. the whale isn’t supernatural, but it gains supernatural powers as the crew talk about him. “The Whiteness of the Whale” spends it’s time…

  • A Lull/”The Phantom Tollbooth”/What I am Reading

    Not a whole lot of reading going on this week. My band played its first two shows, so there was a lot of practicing and moving gear and drinking beers. I did a quick re-read of “The Phantom Tollbooth”, a book I first read as a child, which I think helped me develop what some…

  • “Moby Dick” and adaptations/What I am reading, what I have finished

    I’ve finally been well enough to do a little reading, which has been nice. I asked the good folks on Reddit for a fast moving horror novel to get me into the groove, and they obliged with a book called “Ghoul” which I will likely write about as soon as later this week. I’ve been…