Call Me Ishmael
I did notice this. Melville saw the Pacific as the natural next step to the U. Melville read the history of the U. Dec 14, John Pistelli rated it liked it Shelves: I read this alongside my first reading of Moby-Dick when I was a teenager, and read it again for old times' sake as I re-read the novel recently. Though Olson's pioneering account of what Melville took from Shakespeare remains instructive, I found his book as a whole less remarkable the second time around.
Olson writes of Moby-Dick as a kind of unmediated black-magic myth, missing the novel's crucial dimension of Romantic irony and parody; Olson is too in the shadow of Pound and Lawrence, writin I read this alongside my first reading of Moby-Dick when I was a teenager, and read it again for old times' sake as I re-read the novel recently. Olson writes of Moby-Dick as a kind of unmediated black-magic myth, missing the novel's crucial dimension of Romantic irony and parody; Olson is too in the shadow of Pound and Lawrence, writing in that showily telegraphic modernist style that now seems to me more dated than Victorian fustian.
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Call Me Ishmael is worth reading, however, for a marker of how a certain aesthetic critique of American society generally held by reactionaries in the early twentieth century the aforementioned Pound and Lawrence, as well as Eliot, Heidegger, etc. Also, the excerpts Olson provides from Melville's Shakespeare marginalia and his journal of his travels in the Middle East are wonderful, though the footnotes in the Norton Critical Moby-Dick leads me to believe that Olson's scholarship, though groundbreaking, has been superseded.
In general, I judge this more a historical curio than a living work of criticism. Mar 02, Joe added it. Want to reread in conversation with Craig Santos Perez' work. Americas, aircraft destroyers, the Pacific. I spell it large because it comes large here. May 10, Esteban del Mal rated it it was amazing Shelves: This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers.
To view it, click here. From the concluding chapter, page Porphyry wrote that the generation of images in the mind is from water.
Ishmael is a fictional character in Herman Melville's Moby-Dick (). Ishmael, the only . Though the novel famously begins with the words "Call me Ishmael," only once in the whole book is the narrator called Ishmael, self-address aside. Call me Ishmael. —Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (). 2. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in.
The son of the father of Ocean was a prophet Proteus, of the changing shape, who, to evade philistine Aristaeus worried about bees, became first a fire, then a flood, and last a wild sea beast. Sep 01, Michael rated it really liked it. Criticism with an actually interesting writing style. Jul 15, Lou rated it liked it. Lawrence's Studies in American Literature.
I call it a gloss, because Olsen just doesn't analyze Moby Dick but also considers Melville's symbolism, life and earlier and later writings. Olsen's theories were controversial for the time, in that he proposed that there was an earlier draft of Moby Dick which among other things did not include a whale. However, this was Charles Olsen's first book and is written like a long prose poem on Melville, religion, the Pacific Ocean and is worth reading if one has read Melville's novel.
This is the second time I've read it, and while it was occasionally a good read, it made me want to reread Moby Dick again. In that respect I assume Olsen achieved his purpose. May 12, Aveugle Vogel rated it liked it. Jan 30, dimwig rated it really liked it Shelves: This is what scholarship should be but so rarely is.
If blame can be laid for one's own actions, I hereby blame my early-age readings of Olson for my lack of education. This can crush a person.
His reading of Melville is deep. The man was impossibly well read and well reasoned, but also a true poet. It never smacks of intellectual posturing. He tells you what he knows to be true. It comes from his bones. His own messy relationship This is what scholarship should be but so rarely is. His own messy relationship with Dahlberg adds a lot to the story of Hawthorne and Melville, as well as to the stories of patricide.
Just the image of him standing on the rocks of Mass. In my case, the lowest and dustiest shelves filled with books not checked out since Jul 17, Sandi rated it it was amazing. I don't usually like academic essays with nontraditional formats, but this one, I felt, was MORE readable, and more clarifying than most academic essays with the added benefit of making some very interesting and bold assertions about the construction of Moby Dick.
This essay particularly discusses the theory of two Moby Dicks, that Melville revised Moby Dick extensively after reading Shakespeare to include Ahab as a King Lear figure. This discussion is paralleled by two tracks--one of America's I don't usually like academic essays with nontraditional formats, but this one, I felt, was MORE readable, and more clarifying than most academic essays with the added benefit of making some very interesting and bold assertions about the construction of Moby Dick. This discussion is paralleled by two tracks--one of America's relation to the vastness of space and time, and the other to do with cannibalism--and yes, surprisingly, they do relate.
Dec 07, Jason rated it really liked it. This is another great early book of criticism of Herman Melville's magnum opus, Moby-Dick. The author, an accomplished poet himself, gets neck-deep into Melville's universe.
Call Me Ishmael
It's all here, though in brief: Evidently Melville read his complete works and sketch Moby-Dick's plot in the margins. There is a goo This is another great early book of criticism of Herman Melville's magnum opus, Moby-Dick. There is a good discussion of "Ahab's pride" and the undercurrents of his flawed tragedy. The book is short but dense.
Ishmael (Moby-Dick) - Wikipedia
A must read for any Melville fans. Sep 01, Stephen rated it it was amazing Shelves: I've previously read Moby-Dick twice and am preparing for the third reading now.
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Suffice it to say that I'll not find the novel the same after reading Olson's brilliant examination of its inspirations, its structure, its import. I think Eliot Weinberger wrote somewhere of great works of literary criticism penned by poets: I don't remember it exactly, but I hope Call Me Ishmael was on that list. I'll find the source shortly.
Mar 07, Kent rated it it was amazing Shelves: Do I sometimes think that you and John Milton would be best buddies? Both you young men rummaging around in your intellectual vault for something that would make the world more significant. I guess, really, I'm just trying to understand how hungry I would have to be, how desperately thirsty, in order to drink a friend's blood, and leave his flesh up to be eaten like jerky. Mar 20, Kelly Neal rated it really liked it.
Makes me want to read Moby Dick. Love the history sections used to frame the analysis. Also found the peek into Melville's marginalia as insight into his composing process and the making of meaning in Moby to be fascinating.
Cool stuff, looking into the thinking of a amazing poet: Aug 21, Meg rated it it was amazing. Jun 24, Richard rated it it was amazing Shelves: Olson, whom I've learned a thing or two from in the past.
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Just read for the second time. It remains a great meditation of Melville, whaling, America, and the whale.
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Aug 01, Jake rated it liked it. He intersperses the lit crit with gruesome sea stories of murder and cannibalism. Aug 15, Katy Crighton added it. Great Buddy book to Moby Dick. Really opens your eyes to new aspects of Melville's writing. Jul 18, Todd rated it it was amazing Shelves: This is a great book.
Anyone who like MD should give it a read. Oct 02, Sarah rated it it was amazing Shelves: This is what literary criticism should be: Oct 14, Charlotte rated it it was amazing. I wish all literary criticism was like this--a poetical response to a great book. Read Moby Dick first. Jun 23, John steppling rated it it was amazing. May 11, Eric marked it as to-read. View all 4 comments. May 25, j rated it it was amazing. There are no discussion topics on this book yet. Consequently, many postmodern groups, such as the poets of the Language School, include Olson as a primary and precedent figure.
Right and left, the streets take you waterward. Its extreme downtown is the battery, where that noble mole is washed by waves, and cooled by breezes, which a few hours previous were out of sight of land.
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Look at the crowds of water-gazers there. Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. What do you see? Some leaning against the spiles; some seated upon the pier-heads; some looking over the bulwarks of ships from China; some high aloft in the rigging, as if striving to get a still better seaward peep. But these are all landsmen; of week days pent up in lath and plaster- tied to counters, nailed to benches, clinched to desks.
How then is this? Are the green fields gone? What do they here? Nothing will content them but the extremest limit of the land; loitering under the shady lee of yonder warehouses will not suffice. They must get just as nigh the water as they possibly can without falling And there they stand- miles of them- leagues.
Inlanders all, they come from lanes and alleys, streets avenues- north, east, south, and west. Yet here they all unite. Tell me, does the magnetic virtue of the needles of the compasses of all those ships attract them thither? Say you are in the country; in some high land of lakes. Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in it. Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries- stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region.
Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert, try this experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical professor. Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever. But here is an artist. He desires to paint you the dreamiest, shadiest, quietest, most enchanting bit of romantic landscape in all the valley of the Saco. What is the chief element he employs? There stand his trees, each with a hollow trunk, as if a hermit and a crucifix were within; and here sleeps his meadow, and there sleep his cattle; and up from yonder cottage goes a sleepy smoke.
Deep into distant woodlands winds a mazy way, reaching to overlapping spurs of mountains bathed in their hill-side blue. But though the picture lies thus tranced, and though this pine-tree shakes down its sighs like leaves upon this shepherd's head, yet all were vain, unless the shepherd's eye were fixed upon the magic stream before him. Go visit the Prairies in June, when for scores on scores of miles you wade knee-deep among Tiger-lilies- what is the one charm wanting?
Were Niagara but a cataract of sand, would you travel your thousand miles to see it? Why did the poor poet of Tennessee, upon suddenly receiving two handfuls of silver, deliberate whether to buy him a coat, which he sadly needed, or invest his money in a pedestrian trip to Rockaway Beach? Why is almost every robust healthy boy with a robust healthy soul in him, at some time or other crazy to go to sea?
Why upon your first voyage as a passenger, did you yourself feel such a mystical vibration, when first told that you and your ship were now out of sight of land? Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother of Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans.
It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all. Now, when I say that I am in the habit of going to sea whenever I begin to grow hazy about the eyes, and begin to be over conscious of my lungs, I do not mean to have it inferred that I ever go to sea as a passenger. For to go as a passenger you must needs have a purse, and a purse is but a rag unless you have something in it.
Like a lot of what I've read and seen of Olson, his riff on Melville is half genius and half wackadoodle. Ishmael is a fictional character in Herman Melville 's Moby-Dick He calculated, and cast Ahab. There is nothing surprising in this. Also, his suggestion that the Pacific was Melville's "source of power," which was lost after the writing of MD when he turned instead toward the search for religious certainty. Mar 20, Kelly Neal rated it really liked it.
Besides, passengers get sea-sick- grow quarrelsome- don't sleep of nights- do not enjoy themselves much, as a general thing;- no, I never go as a passenger; nor, though I am something of a salt, do I ever go to sea as a Commodore, or a Captain, or a Cook. I abandon the glory and distinction of such offices to those who like them. For my part, I abominate all honorable respectable toils, trials, and tribulations of every kind whatsoever.
It is quite as much as I can do to take care of myself, without taking care of ships, barques, brigs, schooners, and what not.