Preface and Introduction

(or Attentive and Lonely Masters)

A man named Charles Feidelson, Jr. edited my edition of The Whale (which I think is a very good way to refer to Moby Dick) and wrote the introduction. Here’s a NY Times article about his death, and life, evidently: Charles Feidelson, Jr I google-imaged the man and it gave me a picture of Michael Jackson.

–

From the preface, “… there are questions that arise, page by page, if one reads Moby Dick attentively, as Melville positively invites us to do.” Reading this book attentively is my goal. I think attentiveness is my worst weakness (arguable, I’m sure). But I’m trying to get better at it. I should be good at concentrating but I think I’m getting worse. Sometimes I blame it on my hearing loss–do I lose words in a conversation and then lose my concentration? Sometimes I blame it on multitasking on the internet. If that’s the case, I need to close all the chatters while I write. That’s not rocket science. It’s likely that the online conversations send my mind in several directions at once and that I will have to exercise some major discipline about those things when I’m trying to study or write. My mind is always full and spinning (and being brainwashed… hahaha). This is why I think Buddhist meditation has been a particularly appealing concept to me lately.

I must learn how to concentrate, which to me is the same as being “present,” because well, life without the ability sounds unbearable to me. I’ll miss everything. When I travel to a new place, I seem to have to force my mind to be “present.” Look! It’s a pretty waterfall (like the one P’George snapped and I stole for the heading of this blog…) Is that weird that I have to force my mind to notice things?

I’ve got a lot of reading to do but for The Whale, I want to pay attention.

–

From the Introduction: When he met Hawthorn, “he felt he had found an ally in the creation of an American literature that would not be popular entertainment but ‘The Art of Telling the Truth’”

And from the rest of this introduction, it seems to be the art of telling the dark, dark truth. Is truth always dark? Why are honesty and brutality usually associated together? Will there be honesty about beauty, too? Well, in 730 pages, there’s gotta be.

–

Melville had been “almost entirely forgotten as a writer when he died on September 28, 1891, at the age of 72.” He and Woody. We humans tend to let our masters die by the wayside, don’t we? Note to self + those secretly wishing to be masters: prepare for a lonely death.

–

Melville’s general method is described as “fictional enchancement of actual experiences.” Now that is interesting… I wonder if, after two years of trying to master the art of fiction, the weak line between fiction and non-fiction will be any less blurred. And I wonder, after two years of trying to master the art of fiction, if I will be forgotten, alone, and dead.

Is this book as dark as the introduction?