"Why Read Moby-Dick?" by Nathaniel Philbrick

I was excited to come across this book a few weeks ago, which speaks to one of America’s most beloved novels. Perhaps it is age, but I find comfort in re-reading books I have enjoyed. Estimates are that between 500,000 and a million books are published each year through traditional publishers, which means that we can only read a small fraction of each year’s annual output. Yet there are authors that have stood the test of time – Shakespeare, Austen, the Brontë sisters, Dickens, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Trollope, Wharton, Wodehouse, E.B White, and Melville, just to name a few – that deserve a re-reading. Every year I try to re-read a few and am always glad I did. 

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Burrowing into Books

Why Read Moby-Dick? Nathaniel Philbrick

October 26, 2024

 

“‘Doubts of all things earthly, and intuitions of some things heavenly; this

combination makes neither believer nor infidel, but makes a man who regards

them both with equal eye.’ This redemptive mixture of skepticism and hope, this genial

stoicism in the face of a short, ridiculous, and irrational life, is why I read Moby-Dick.”

                                                                                        Why Read Moby-Dick?, Nathaniel Philbrick

 

Like many, I read Moby-Dick in my youth. I read it as a sea adventure about half-mad captain Ahab chasing the white whale that had cost him a leg. I read it again about ten years ago and found the story had improved with (my) age – what happens when man interferes with nature, and the harsh realities of a crazed person seeking redemption. In Nantucket about a month ago, my wife and I visited the Nantucket Shipwreck and Lifesaving Museum. There, I came across this short (127 pages) book by Nathaniel Philbrick, published in 2011.  Philbrick is the author of several histories, best known for In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex. 

 

The book is a tribute to Herman Melville’s classic. It is a series of essays, each independent, though collectively cohesive – a mixture of re-telling the story and biographical sketches. It begins with Melville in the Berkshires, his difficulty in putting on paper the story he wanted to tell, and his mentee-like friendship with Nathaniel Hawthorne, a man within whose stories expressed “…truths so profound and disturbing they ranked with anything written in the English language.” We are told of how Melville, ten years before the 1851 publication of his novel, shipped out on the whaler Acushnet from Fairhaven, Massachusetts; so had familiarity with his fictional whaling ship Pequod. He compares Ishmael, the narrator of Melville’s story, to Holden Caulfield, as an “engaging…vulnerable wiseass who invites us to join him on a quest…” We learn that Ahab’s search for Moby-Dick mimicked Melville’s search for an explanation of being.

 

As Philbrick writes, it took almost seventy years for Moby-Dick to be recognized as the classic it is. He reminds us of how, in the intervening years, the United States had changed: A Civil War had been fought to end slavery, the westward push altered the contours of the United States, and industrialization ended the nation’s rural origins. The story is part of our past. In the final chapter, “Neither Believer nor Infidel,” Philbrick quotes Hawthorne, from his 1856 journal, of Melville’s quest for eternal truth: “He can neither believe, nor be comfortable in his unbelief; and he is too honest and courageous not to try to do one or the other.” Moby-Dick is fiction, but it is also part autobiography.

 

Like the well-known opening sentences in Austen’s Pride & Prejudice, Tolstoy’ Anna Karenina, and Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, the three-word first sentence of Moby-Dick is one you will not forget: “Call Me Ishmael.” You will want to read the second, third, and fourth…until you finish the book.

 

……………………………………………………..

 

Reading Philbrick’s book has prompted me to read Moby-Dick once again. The copy I bought is a hard-cover from Sea Wolf Press, with the cover and illustrations by Mead Schaeffer taken from the 1923 Dodd, Mead & Co. edition.

"Travels with George," by Nathaniel Philbrick

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Burrowing into Book

Travels with George, Nathaniel Philbrick

November 14, 2021

 

“But as anyone who knew Washington understood, his only interest was in

establishing a federal government that was strong enough to survive without him.”

                                                                                                                                                Travels with George, 2021

                                                                                                                                                Nathaniel Philbrick (1956-)

 

In 1789, newly inaugurated as the country’s first President, George Washington recognized that for the nation to endure the individual states had to be united in a common bond, based on principles of self-government, individual liberty and the rule of law. He knew there were challenges. The industrialized north and the agrarian south were different. The country’s citizens had come from multiple European countries and spoke several languages. It was populated with men and women with differing dreams, aspirations and talents. And he knew that he was uniquely situated to help foster that unity.

 

As commanding officer of the army that had defeated the British empire, he had traveled to most parts of the country. Now, he felt it imperative, as President, that he visit each of the thirteen states that had ratified the Constitution and imbue the nation’s citizens with a sense of unity and national pride. 

 

Between October 1789 and July 1791, President Washington devoted 16 weeks to traveling as far north as Portsmouth, New Hampshire and as far south as Savannah, Georgia. Nathaniel Philbrick, in his informative and readable history, Travels with George, recounts those trips. In the fall of 2018, prompted by John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charlie, Mr. Philbrick, his wife Melissa and dog Dora started out on their own trip, following, as best he could, in the footsteps of George Washington. His purpose in writing this book: “More than ever before, Americans need to know what our first president did, at the very beginning, to bring this nation together.” We follow Washington along rutted dirt roads (with Philbrick in his air-conditioned Honda), to New England villages and factories, through longleaf pine forests in the Carolinas, to rice plantations in Georgia. As for security on Washington’s trip across unpopulated sections of the country, “…the affection of his fellow citizens was all the guard he wanted.”

 

Philbrick’s own journey, which he shares with the reader, followed Washington’s as closely as possible. In doing so, he makes us realize the tremendous growth the country has experienced. In a time of bifurcated political feelings, the author ponders as to whether Washington’s legacy is worth preserving. His conclusion is, yes. He writes as to how catastrophes are always around the corner, but this time it feels different: “The sinews of this country have been stretched to what feels like the breaking point,” but if the sinews should break, “it won’t be Washington’s and Jefferson’s fault…The fault will lie with ourselves.”

 

Mr. Philbrick devotes a lot of time to the subject of slavery, an evil practice, which was common at the time among land-owning southerners, while less common, though not unheard of, in the north. The practice bothered Washington who knew it was wrong, but felt trapped in its grip, as slaves represented a large portion of his wealth and were critical to the economics of his Virginia plantation. We follow Mr. Philbrick as he leads us through the evolution of Washington’s thoughts on slavery. According to the terms of his will, his slaves were set free after his death. 

 

In writing through the lens of today’s moral values, Mr. Philbrick comes across as a bit of a scold, more interested in flouting his woke credentials than in enlightening the reader as to values of yesterday. For example, he writes approvingly of crowds pulling down statues of Confederates: “History isn’t being lost when a statue is toppled to the ground. History is being made.” George Washington, in contrast, condemned those who destroyed a statue of King George III in New York in 1776. Who was the more magnanimous? 

 

Two hundred and thirty-two years have passed since George Washington took to the road to help unify the newly-free country. That this nation, against all odds, still stands as a beacon to the world that self-government can succeed among myriad peoples, we owe, in large part, to our first President. Washington was sensitive to regional differences and the wide diversity of the American people. Yet he recognized that united the nation would succeed; divided it would fall. Today, politicians and the media encourage polarization, sensing it brings out the vote and sells more ads. The people, in my opinion, are wiser. They recognize we will never settle all differences, but, so long as opinions can be freely expressed, we will be fine. In yesterday’s The Wall Street Journal, Christopher DeMuth wrote: “Citizens understand that their security and freedoms depend on their nation and its imperfect institutions – that their fortunes are linked for better or worse to those of their disparate compatriots.” What was true in Washington’s time is true today. We have differences. We are linked as Americans. United, we thrive. Divided, we fail.

 

This is a light but informative read. One finishes the story recognizing the importance of Washington’s trip, knowing more about our country then and now, and liking Nathaniel Philbrick, his wife and his dog.