ICA Reads Moby Dick

It was on this day, November 14, in 1851, Herman Melville's "Moby-Dick" was published in the US; it originally was a three-volume work called "The Whale" published in London a month earlier. Happy Birthday Moby! And, happy reading everyone!

OK, after a bit of a hiatus, I just finished Chapter 86. I was struck by Ishmael's comparison of the mist from a whale's spout to the smoke that might have come from the ears of a philosophical genius like Plato. In fact, he describes himself looking in the mirror and seeing a blurry vapor above his head after having been deep in thought. I guess I'm not a deep enough thinker to have ever had that phenomenon happen to me. I'll stick with the thought bubble emoji!

There are 50+ followers of this page. First of all: thank you! Second of all: why? I’d love to hear from all of you about what made you like a page about reading Moby Dick. Have you read it? Do you want to read it? Do you want to know what other people think about the novel? Did you hate it? Have you started and stopped over the years but never finished it? Do you love it? Has this inspired you to give it a shot for the first, second or third time? I will confess that so far, it’s a love/hate, or perhaps to be fair, a love/not love situation for me. But, I’m always up for the next chapter.

What a coincidence! Opera San Jose is presenting Moby Dick the opera in February 2019! So, now we are working on finding ways to collaborate on this whale tale!

After hearing all about whale lines in Chapter 59 , I was duly rewarded by a bloody whale massacre in Chapter 60. . It included some of the most vivid descriptions yet. Really woke me up and kept me listening intently!

Maybe it's just me, but it seems like whales abound in my world these days!