Moby Dick Chapter 2. The Carpet-Bag

lindad_amato · Tue Mar 06, 2012 11:35 am

DWill wrote:

Robert Tulip wrote:


	DWill wrote: New Bedford isn't in my native state of Connecticut

ouchiwawa. Thank you. Well at least Connecticut would be a connecting path, he pleads aimlessly? If I can share some personal history, in 1977 my father taught English at Yale University for a year, and we lived as a family in Hamden for 8 months. It is a beautiful part of the world. We drove to Mystic, and I confess in the weakness of my memory I had mixed up Mystic with New Bedford, so I gratefully stand corrected. The cup of clam chowder I had for lunch in Mystic has grown in the recollection into one of the most fantabulous pieces of sustenance a human being could dream of.

Maybe the clam chowder would be for you like Proust's madeleine cake, if you were to have it again. My family lived on Long Island Sound, in Guilford, where my father was a veterinarian. I went to Hopkins Grammar School in New haven for a year in eighth grade, before we moved inland to Storrs, where Dad got a job teaching at UConn. I took several school field trips to Mystic Seaport and can still recall especially the smells of the place.

Coffin is an old New England name, as in William Sloane Coffin the 60's minister at Yale. New England clam chowder (or Mystic) is truly the best. Also, I'll take Guilford over New Bedford any day. My family, the Parmelees, settled it in the 1600s.
Thanks to both of you for your input. I'm thoroughly enjoying this reading.

Penelope · Tue Mar 06, 2012 3:06 pm

Oh but Nantucket, Clam Chowder, New England.....all sounds so thrilling to my ears.

New England is the part of the US I would really most like to visit. Was it in the film 'Driving Miss Daisy'? I remember being entranced by the autumnal scenery. I hadn't imagined a bitterly cold night like the one described in Chapter 2. Now I know to bring my longjohns.

lindad_amato · Tue Mar 06, 2012 4:38 pm

Driving Miss Daisy was supposed to have taken place in the South, but I don't know where it was filmed.

Penelope · Tue Mar 06, 2012 6:45 pm

I'm rubbish at US Geography. I do a daily quiz on Facebook, called 'Are you as smart as a 5th Grader' and it is American so those Geography questions always let me down.

Still I have seen and heard a lot about Cape Cod and thereabouts. It looks amazing.

lindad_amato · Tue Mar 06, 2012 6:55 pm


	Penelope wrote: I'm rubbish at US Geography. I do a daily quiz on Facebook, called 'Are you as smart as a 5th Grader' and it is American so those Geography questions always let me down. Still I have seen and heard a lot about Cape Cod and thereabouts. It looks amazing.

Yes, New Bedford would look much more like what you've seen of Cape Cod and Nantucket is off the coast.

Saffron · Fri Mar 16, 2012 7:24 pm


	lindad_amato wrote: Driving Miss Daisy was supposed to have taken place in the South, but I don't know where it was filmed.

Filmed in Atlanta, Georgia - the deep south for sure.

Penelope · Sat Mar 17, 2012 6:47 am

Couldn't really be further away then, could I?

I remember there being a snow scene, at the daughter's house, which is why I wouldn't have associated it with the deep south.

Atlanta - that is always associated with 'Gone with the Wind' for me.

Robert Tulip · Sat Mar 17, 2012 8:53 am


	Penelope wrote: Couldn't really be further away then, could I?

And I thought Driving Miss Daisy was filmed in Alice Springs.

Not so much a pod of whales as an anti-pod o dees.

Were there sperm whales in Driving Miss Daisy? At least the director came from the real world.

Penelope · Sat Mar 17, 2012 11:53 am


	Quote: Robert Tulip wrote: And I thought Driving Miss Daisy was filmed in Alice Springs.

No you didn't!!! You're just trying to make me feel better.

But, I have to admit, you are a clever clogs.

giselle · Wed Mar 28, 2012 8:10 pm

"So, wherever you go, Ishmael, said I to myself,
as I stood in the middle of a
dreary street shouldering my bag, and comparing the
gloom towards the north with the darkness towards the
south—wherever in your wisdom you may conclude to
lodge for the night, my dear Ishmael, be sure to inquire
the price, and don’t be too particular."

I really like these lines .. they paint such a clear picture yet with a strangely shifting point of view.

Penelope · Thu Mar 29, 2012 3:43 am

I like the way he addresses himself: -

"So, wherever you go, Ishmael, said I to myself,

I give myself little lectures like this, do you? As though I were my own mentor?

E M Forster discusses this phenomenon in one of his books. (I think it might be 'Maurice').

Is it a sign of madness?

giselle · Mon Apr 02, 2012 11:53 am


	Penelope wrote: Is it a sign of madness?

You may be right Penny, it could be a sign of madness, but don't worry, a little madness is a good thing!

I find Melville's prose quite .. poetic ... perhaps Moby Dick can be considered a (rather lengthy) poem? It does not feel like a novel to me, more like a cross between poem and painting. Reading Melville is like wandering an art gallery and spending time to view and absorb paintings of interest.

Penelope · Mon Apr 02, 2012 12:19 pm


	Quote: giselle wrote; more like a cross between poem and painting.

Well, you can say things in poems and paintings, that you can't say in real-life prose.

Like, I know what that Jesus person was getting at.....about empathy, compassion...feeling for ones fellow man. But it is hard to put into words...because you feel as though you are sitting on a high wall looking down and pontificating. But get down off the wall and be beside your fellow man, understand why...THEN...you are a saviour....then you care.

It might all be rubbish...historically speaking....but philosophically....I bloody know what it's bloody well on about..

Robert Tulip · Mon Apr 02, 2012 1:11 pm

Ishmael may seem to mutter like a nutter, but really this self-talk is about seeing his life at a crossroads, and wanting to articulate his options, in this case falling asleep in the freezing gutter against having a warm bed, even a pricey one. An internal narrative is another name for a conscience, or a guardian angel.

Penelope · Mon Apr 02, 2012 1:26 pm


	Quote: Robert Tulip wrote: An internal narrative is another name for a conscience, or a guardian angel.

Well!!! I got it in spades...and it doesn't always make me popular.

_________________

Forum rules

Moby Dick Chapter 2. The Carpet-Bag Tweet This Topic

Who is online