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?

manrope wrote:Hello,

I am in awe of “Moby Dick.” Shakespeare in prose.

I’m a Long Islander who lives not far from Sag Harbor. There is also a small, but excellent whaling museum about 5 minutes away in Cold
Spring Harbor (http://www.cshwhalingmuseum.org/index.html).
Unfortunately, the web site does not picture the authentic whale boat that is on display.

I grew up by Rockaway Beach where the mysterious “poor poet of Tennessee” deliberates visiting instead of buying a needed coat in the first chapter. A “pedestrian” trip? Was he planning to walk from Tennessee??

The Rockaway peninsula is the long seashore of the borough of Queens, NY. It was once filled with cabanas, beach clubs, amusement parks, boardwalk eateries, skee-ball establishments and the like. City dwellers from Brooklyn would rent inexpensive summer bungalows there. But that’s all a thing of the past. The bungalows were razed decades ago and were replaced with low income housing. The well known New York beaches are all on Long Island, well to the east of the Rockaways. The Rockaways still make the news on occasion. Infamous Bernie Madoff went to Far Rockaway High School. One reads each summer of some drownings from the very dangerous rip tides along the Rockaways. It was past the Rockaway Peninsula that all the immigrants (my grandparents included) came on their way to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. Woody Allen’s 1987 movie Radio Days was filmed on location in Rockaway Beach. And of course there’s the Ramones’ song “Rockaway Beach”. I’m not so sure whether Dire Straits (in “Tunnel of Love”) and Springsteen (in “Rockaway the Days”) are referring to Rockaway Beach.

Saffron wrote:I have read chapter 1 four times now - it is my favorite first chapter of any novel I've ever read. Here is the funny thing, I've only ever gotten to about a 1/3 of the way through the book and stopped. I am determined this time to make to the end!