Moby Blackberry
My students know that I collect references to Moby-Dick. So here’s the latest:
No, I’m not switching from my iPhone.
Moby-Dick
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Call Me Cyrus
Here’s how the opening Iftar dinner was described in the cover article of The Review, the Abu Dhabi National‘s Friday magazine:
Besides, if the students seemed slightly starry-eyed during the introductory portion of that Iftar welcome banquet, they got the chance to demonstrate their analytical grit later in the evening. Before their arrival they were asked to read Kwame Anthony Appiah’s Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers, an essay on the complexities of life between cultures. The book recommends a conversational attitude of openness to persuasion, a recognition of one’s own fallibility, and a willingness to keep improving one’s ideas about the world. This all makes sense as a regulatory ideal for a university which takes students from all over the globe and asks them to live together in a single building. It’s perhaps more surprising that practically tile first thing NYU Abu Dhabi should have done with its new arrivals was ask them to take that ideal to pieces. Yet as the dinner wore on and jetlag took its toll, Cyrus Patel [sic], a star literature professor from NYU New York, did just that, gliding between the tables armed with microphone and steely, talk-show affability.
“Call me Cyrus,” he insisted, before explaining that he would forego the advertised question and answer session in favour of an open discussion. A few hands shot up. One student suggested that cosmopolitanism was just American liberalism by another name. “I would like just to comment on the concept of truth,” another began ominously. Someone embarked on a learned but tangential piece of Quranic interpretation. Amid the wreckage of their meals , the students’ earlier keenness seemed dulled. Some rested their heads on the backs of their chairs. One diverted himself by throwing food and catching it in his mouth. A girl at my table had just travelled from Oklahoma, a journey of 25 hours. How, an excitable young man demanded, could cosmopolitanism be an adequate response when confronted with people who don’t want to talk, who don’t want to change their minds, who refuse to compromise? Wasn’t force ever justified? “That is a problem we are not going to solve tonight,” said call-me-Cyrus smoothly. The session was over.
Several of my NYUAD colleagues on the appropriately Melvillean nickname conferred on me by the author of the piece, Ed Lake, who is deputy editor of The Review. (And I’m only slightly bitter about the misspelling of my surname.)
The article as a whole is pleasingly quirky: Lake has a nose for the odd little incident that can give life to a feature piece, and he manages to capture the slightly giddy flavor of those first few days. [Click here to read the entire article.]
I wonder if the members of that budding a capella group, which Lake mentions in the final paragraph of the article, know that the opening number of the new season of Glee was “Empire State of Mind”?
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Thar She Blows: The Sound of Animals Fighting
I was investigating The Sound of Animals Fighting, a band that Chani suggested in response to my Globalize My Playlist post, and I came across their song “Ahab” from their 2008 album The Ocean and the Sun. At least, I think it’s a song. It’s definitely an acquired taste. Sample it for yourself:
I tried to make out the lyrics, but I couldn’t. So I googled the song and came up with this:
In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said, “Is it good, friend?”
“It is bitter – bitter”, he answered,
“But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart.”
Interestingly, these words were not written buy members of the band. Nor were they written by Herman Melville.
These “lyrics” are in fact Stephen Crane’s poem “In the Desert,” which was included in his collection The Black Riders and Other Lines (1895). The novelist Joyce Carol Oates read the poem in college and later used its final lines as the title of her 1995 novel about a working-class city in upstate New York. In an interview with the journalist Don Swaim, Oates said that she understood the poem as “an allegory of the human condition,” in which bitterness and pleasure are intermixed, and also as an allegory of the writer’s relation to her subject. (You can listen to the interview here.)
Crane’s poem, translated into Farsi, also serves as the spoken word “Intro” to The Ocean and the Sun. The album as a whole is lousy with literary references.
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Thar She Blows: BP and the Ahab Parallax
The lead article in today’s “Week in Review” section of the New York Times is called “The Ahab Parallax,” and it begins this way:
A specially outfitted ship ventures into deep ocean waters in search of oil, increasingly difficult to find. Lines of authority aboard the ship become tangled. Ambition outstrips ability. The unpredictable forces of nature rear up, and death and destruction follow in their wake. “Some fell flat on their faces,” an eyewitness reported of the stricken crew. “Through the breach, they heard the waters pour.”
The words could well have been spoken by a survivor of the doomed oil rig Deepwater Horizon, which exploded in the Gulf of Mexico in April, killing 11 men and leading to the largest oil spill in United States history. But they come instead, of course, from that wordy, wayward Manhattanite we know as Ishmael, whose own doomed vessel, the whaler Pequod, sailed only through the pages of “Moby-Dick.”
The author of the piece, Randy Kennedy, goes on to note the “parallels between that disaster and the proto-Modernist one imagined by Melville.” Kennedy argues that “in the same way whalers had to sail farther and farther for their prey, oil companies are drilling deeper and deeper to tap the gulf’s oil, to levels made possible only by the most advanced technology, operating near its limits.”
Ric Burns ‘s documentary Into the Deep: America, Whaling & the World, recently broadcast as part of the PBS series American Experience, does a marvelous job of depicting that imperative “to sail farther and farther” into the deep, and the film is a cautionary tale about what happens to an industry that depends on the exploitation of a finite resource.
I’m putting Kennedy’s article not into the deep, but into the file for the book project that I’m calling “Why Moby-Dick Matters,” currently on the back burner — or perhaps, in the rear try pot.
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Thar She Blows: Pinky and the Brain
Many of you know that I collect references to Moby-Dick. My latest comes from the animated television series Pinky and the Brain, which was produced by Steven Spielberg and ran on Kids WB! network from 1995-2001. It was a spin-off of Spielberg’s earlier series Animaniacs (1993-98), which was his second collaboration with Warner Brothers (the first was Tiny Toon Adventures [1990-95]). Although I was a fan of Spielberg’s first foray into television, the anthology series Amazing Stories (1985-87), I never watched Animaniacs back in the day and never even heard of Pinky and the Brain until a friend of ours put it on for our kids to watch last weekend.
The premise of the show is that in each episode, two genetically altered laboratory mice — one smart, the other not (guess which one is which) — hatch a plan to take over the world during the night. (Well, one hatches it, and the other attempts to help to execute. Guess which does what.) The series is wonderfully intertextual and also draws on the slapstick style of classic Warner cartoons.
My kids love it. And so does their dad, particularly after catching this Moby-Dick allusion in the very first episode of the series, “Das Mouse,” which involves — natch — a submarine. And the Titanic. And some white crabs. All in the service of a plan for world domination. Here’s the dialogue:
Brain: From now on Pinky, call me Captain Brain.
Pink [laughs]: Aye, aye, Brain, um, Captain Brain. Oh, oh, can I be be Queequeg?
Brain [in Pinky's face]: Behave, Pinky, or you shall be jettisoned.
The scene takes place about 4 minutes and 20 seconds into the episode. The first season DVD, Pinky and the Brain, Vol. 1, is available from amazon.com. You can buy just the episode as a digital download. Sadly, no one has posted it to YouTube.
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Ahab by MC Lars
I promised my American Literature I class that I would post this video: “Ahab” by the post-punk laptop rapper MC Lars. I think it’s a very smart take on Melville’s novel and good for getting those final exam review juices flowing.
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Moby-Dick the Opera, Part 1
It was definitely worth the trip. The world premiere of Jake Heggie‘s Moby-Dick last night at the Dallas Opera was a stunning operatic experience that I will always remember.
Moments after the chandelier at the Winspear Opera House has retracted into the ceiling to produce the illusion of a starry night, the orchestra begins the opera’s overture. Picking up the starlight motif, projections on the scrim create the illusion of traveling through space, but also suggest navigating by the stars, as lines join the points of light together to suggest constellations. These lines suddenly become dense, rotating and mutating to depict a whaleship at sea. The scrim rises, the projection zooms in to suggest rigging, and there we are among the sleeping sailors below decks on the Pequod. The projections, by Elaine McCarthy, combine brilliantly with Robert Brill‘s striking set design throughout the opera.
Out comes the tattooed harpooner Queequeg (bass-baritone Jonathan Lemalu), who begins to pray, much to the disgruntlement of a green sailor known only as “Greenhorn” (tenor Stephen Costello), who turns out to be the man who will become “Ishmael.” There is an ominous banging of wood against wood, suggesting Ahab’s pacing the deck of the Pequod.
The set design is marvelous, as the bleached wood of the stage curves backward and up to become a rear wall with three sets of handholds. Through the use of projections, this rear wall is used to suggest, at different times, the aft portions of the ship, the side of the ship, and the three whaleboats that are used when Ahab finally allows the crew to lower and hunt. After the hunt, about three-quarters of the way through the first act, the center of the wall opens up to reveal the tryworks, above which a portion of the whale’s carcass is hanging.
Heggie and his librettist Gene Scheer have done a superb job of streamlining the novel’s plot while remaining true to Melville’s story and central thematic interests. The opera focuses on the characters of Ahab (tenor Ben Heppner), Starbuck (baritone Morgan Smith), Greenhorn, Queequeg, and Pip (soprano Talise Trevigne), with Ahab and Starbuck, and Greenhorn and Queequeg, emerging as paired characters, much as they do in the novel. The parallel between Ahab and Starbuck — each of whom has a wife and a young son back on Nantucket — is emphasized more in the opera, and Ahab interacts with Greenhorn in a way that Melville never dramatizes in the novel. The character of Pip is also made more central. His near-drowning is dramatized in a mesmerizing coup de theatre in which he is suspended in the air while blue projections on the scrim behind suggest the vastness of the ocean. Two episodes are compressed so that Pip’s rescue is effected by Queequeg during a rescue mission manned also by Starbuck and Greenhorn. Later it is an injured Pip’s blood that Ahab uses to temper his harpoon and baptize it “in nomine diaboli.”
One casualty of the stripping down of the narrative is Fedallah, and with him the Zoroastrian motif that has been the subject of much of my recent thinking about the novel. I didn’t mind, however, because the effect of his excision is the intensification of the relationship between Ahab and Starbuck: with no Fedallah present, Ahab has only Starbuck to serve as confidante and foil. Within the context of the opera, it works brilliantly.
The opera is structured around scenes of conversation and public ritual: Ishmael’s meeting with Queequeg at the Spouter Inn is transferred to the opening scene below decks, and it is followed almost immediately by a dramatization of the rituals of nailing the doubloon to the mast and the crew’s oath to seek Ahab’s vengeance on Moby Dick. Some of my favorite scenes from the novel become the scenes that structure the opera: in addition to “The Quarter-Deck,” Scheer draws powerfully on “The Try-Works,” “The Musket,” “The Candles,” and “The Symphony.” Many of my favorite lines and speeches from the novel find their way into the libretto, and Scheer’s additions blend seamlessly with Melville’s prose.
The conversation between Ahab and Starbuck (“But come closer, Starbuck; thou requirest a little lower layer …”) is extracted from the scene and made to follow the drinking of the grog, which has the effect of rendering highlighting the conversation and making it more intimate, establishing the strange bond that will link the two men. Three days into the voyage, Ahab will threaten to kill Starbuck and Starbuck will contemplate murdering his captain in a powerful aria that concludes Act 1. (The two musket scenes are moved up in the voyage so that they occur near the beginning rather than the end.) Later, in a compressed sequence in which Queequeg is helped down from a masthead after falling ill, Greenhorn requests permission to leave his watch and accompany his friend downstairs. Ahab at first refuses, but relents after each of the mates volunteers to take Greenhorn’s place. Instead, Starbuck is ordered to raise Ahab to the masthead so that the captain will be the one to see Moby Dick and win the doubloon. When Starbuck reacts with surprise, Ahab asks him, “Who else would I trust with my life?”
To be continued …
[Photo: Ben Heppner as Ahab; Associated Press/LM Otero]
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Whaling in Dallas
I’m feeling very twenty-first century at the moment, even though part of my mind is firmly rooted in the nineteenth. That’s because I’m typing this post on an iPad at an altitude of about 32,000 feet, connected to wi-fi on an American Airlines flight to Dallas, where I’ll be attending the world premiere of Jake Heggie‘s opera adaptation of Moby-Dick.
I just received an e-mail from my sister who writes that she recently read about the production in American Airlines’ in-flight magazine. Apparently not this month, however, because there’s no article about it in the copy of the magazine that’s in the seatback pocket in front of me.
Wait. Hold on. I’m connected. Googling …
Here it is. It was in last month’s issue. And if your interest is now piqued, you can read more about the opera at the Dallas Opera’s website.
Heggie won a Guggenheim five years ago and is the composer of four other operas: Dead Man Walking (premiered in 2000, libretto: Terrence McNally), The End of the Affair (2003, rev. 2004-2005, libretto: Heather McDonald), To Hell and Back (2006, libretto: Gene Scheer), and Three Decembers (2008, libretto: Scheer).
Moby-Dick, which was commissioned by The Dallas Opera together with San Francisco Opera, San Diego Opera, Calgary Opera and State Opera of South Australia, is an opera in two acts, with a libretto by Gene Scheer. It has eight major roles and a 40-voice men’s chorus. It is scored for an orchestra of 3 flutes, 3 oboes, 3 clarinets, 3 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani, 2 percussion, harp, strings). It’s premiering tonight at the Winspear Opera House in Dallas, TX, and here are the credits: Conductor: Patrick Summers. Director: Leonard Foglia. Set Designer: Robert Brill. Lighting Designer: Donald Holder. Costume Designer: Jane Greenwood. Film and Projections: Elaine McCarthy. CAST: Ben Heppner (Ahab), Stephen Costello (Greenhorn), Morgan Smith (Starbuck), Jonathan Lemalu (Queequeg), Talise Trevigne (Pip), Robert Orth (Stubb), Allan Glassman (Flask), Jonathan Beyer (Gardiner).
I’m particularly excited to hear Heppner whom I’ve heard before at the Met as Tristan. At the moment, I’m listening to a collection of Heggie’s songs, entitled The Faces of Love – The Songs of Jake Heggie, which features Renee Fleming, Sylvia McNair, Jennifer Larmore, Frederica von Stade, and Carol Vaness among others. At first hearing, the songs (which are settings of poems by a variety of poets, mostly contemporary) are stylistically varied, but strike me overall as lush, lyrical, and witty. I particularly like the jazzy “Eve Song; Snake,” which imagines Eve’s response to the serpent’s proposition in the Garden of Eden and is sung by McNair.
It bodes well for tonight.
[Photo: Tenor Ben Heppner as Ahab; credit: Karen Almond, Dallas Opera.]
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Into the Deep
In the summer of 2008, I had the opportunity to meet the documentary filmmaker Ric Burns and to serve as a consultant for his film on the American whaling industry, Into the Deep: America, Whaling & the World.
I’ve been a fan of Burns’s work since watching The Civil War, the documentary series on which he collaborated with his brother Ken Burns, serving as co-producer and co-writer (with Geoffrey C. Ward). Ric is best known for the eight-part series New York: A Documentary Film, which offers a compelling portrait of the city and its cultural history. Burns’s New York remains a touchstone for the Writing New York lecture course that I teach every year with Bryan Waterman: it’s recommended viewing for the course and we show several clips from it in the course of the term. The film’s use of visual materials helps to make the history of New York more vivid for our students, and Burns’s stress on the city’s cosmopolitanism resonates with one of our course’s major themes. In addition, though, our use of the film clips enables the students to meditate on the documentary imperative, to think about the ways in which documentaries use devices such as music and experts to help persuade and about the ways in which fictions (whether on the page or on the screen) can also serve a documentary function.
It was great fun to meet Burns and his team, and to get a glimpse of how Burns puts films like New York and Into the Deep together. And now the film is set to premiere. It’ll be shown on PBS stations on May 10 as part of the American Experience series. You can learn more about the film by visiting its page on the PBS website and by reading this press release. The website is itself an excellent education resource, with a photo gallery, historical timeline, and bibliography. The film is centered on two events in the history of American whaling: the famous sinking of the whaleship Essex by a whale and the attempt by its crew to reach the western coast of South America by sailing thousands of miles in their whaleboats, and the publication of Melville’s Moby-Dick.
I’ve been invited to a preview of Into the Deep next week at the Museum of Natural History next week. Stay tuned for a subsequent post about the film.
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The Athletic Sublime
I watch professional sports for the narratives they produce. In the pilot for the series Friday Night Lights, which is about big-time football in a small Texas town, the coach’s daughter, who is reading Moby-Dick in her English class, tells her father: “Moby-Dick is actually the perfect metaphor for this town. The cold black sea representing the season in all its uncertainties. The magical white whale is the Holy Grail.” Her dad gets the reference and realizes that if she’s right, then he’s Ahab.
I knew I would like the show once I heard those lines, not only because I love Moby-Dick, but also because I agree with Julie’s suggestion. A sports season is a narrative, sometimes dull, sometimes compelling, sometimes even sublime. The same is true for a single game or contest. And what I call is “the athletic sublime” is a climactic narrative moment when a player lives up to and exceeds all expectations.
Take today’s Olympic Gold Medal game, for example. If you’d been watching a film that dramatized its events, you’d have called it unbelievable, even corny. Team Canada, under tremendous pressure to win the gold medal at an Olympics held on Canadian soil, had lost to Team USA earlier in the tournament, forcing them to play an extra game in order to make the quarterfinals. They’d almost blown a 3-0 lead to Slovakia in the final seconds of its semifinal match, and tonight they did blow a 2-0 lead, as Zach Parise, the most dynamic U.S. player throughout the tournament, scored the equalizer with some 20 seconds left and the US goalie pulled for an extra skater.
I was due at an English Department event earlier in the evening, but stayed at home watching until the end of regulation. But, as I was walking along 14th Street, I noticed the game on a widescreen television in a nail salon and paused to watch. I’d told our babysitter that the four-on-four format for the overtime would favor Canada, which had some highly skilled skaters on its roster, most notably Sidney Crosby, the so-called “Next One,” the heir apparent to “the Great One,” Wayne Gretzky.
Crosby was mostly a non-factor during the tournament, perhaps due to the fact that Team Canada was built for an old-fashioned Canadian game that emphasized fierceness over than flair: this year, the tournament was being played on NHL-sized rinks which are smaller than the international rinks usually used in the Olympics. I always love watching the Olympic tournament precisely because the larger rinks bring out the artistry of the skilled player, with fleet passing and deft skating trumping crunching bodychecks. Not so this year, but as a result Crosby didn’t seem to find a way to shine.
Until, with seven minutes gone in the overtime, Crosby finds the puck on his stick after a quick cycle and pass from Jarome Iginla. Canada, as I suspected, had been dominating the overtime. A flash of Crosby’s stick, and the puck was behind goalie Ryan Miller. Canada had its goal. Miller would be named the tournament MVP, but it was Crosby who turned out to be larger-than-life.
The athletic sublime.
I would have preferred a U.S. win, which would have made Parise’s goal one of the most significant moments in the history of U.S. hockey, maybe even in U.S. international athletics.
But it’s a better story this way.
[Photo: Harry How/Getty Images from the account of the game posted at espn.com]
