A Thinking Reed

"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed" – Blaise Pascal

Moby-Dick

  • Some Melvillian tidbits

    Yesterday was the 194th anniversary of Herman Melville’s birth, and to mark the occasion the Atlantic offered some excerpts from its archives–including two from W. Somerset Maugham–on what makes Moby-Dick great. The New York Daily News has some suggestions on how to celebrate Melville’s birthday, including an ode to Moby-Dick from experimental musician Laurie Anderson. Read more

  • Abandoned classics

    The book recommendations site Goodreads had an interesting feature on books readers start but don’t finish. Here are their top five “abandoned classics”: 1. Catch-22, Joseph Heller I have it on my shelf but have never read it. 2. Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien Read it for the first time the fall before the Read more

  • God and the White Whale

    Brandon points to this interesting piece by Reformed theologian R.C. Sproul on Moby-Dick, which Sproul correctly notes is the greatest American novel. Sproul argues for a Christian reading of Melville’s work–seeing Ahab as man in rebellion against God (symbolized by the White Whale). Melville experts and scholars come to different conclusions about the meaning of Read more

  • Friday links

    –Ta-Nehisi Coates on Moby-Dick. –Amy-Jill Levine: “A Critique of Recent Christian Statements on Israel” –From Jeremy at Don’t Be Hasty: Why the church can’t take the place of the welfare state. –A discussion of “summer spirituality” with Fr. James Martin, S.J., author of The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything. –A review of Keith Ward’s recent Read more

  • Now that’s a book I’d like to read

    Cover Author Working On Word-For-Word Remake Of ‘Moby-Dick’ LOS ANGELES—Cover author Gerald Putty told reporters Monday that he is about six months away from finishing a word-for-word rewrite of Herman Melville’s masterpiece Moby-Dick, saying that his version will be “utterly true in every way” to the original. “When you cover a novel like this, you’re Read more

  • Friday links

    –Augustinian and Pelagian software. –A John Polkinghorne lecture on science and religion. –Batman as plutocrat. –Korn and Limp Bizkit: the soundtrack to nihilism. –Martha Nussbaum on John Stuart Mill: between Bentham and Aristotle. –The disconnect between the science and economics of climate change. –Peter Berger, who describes himself as a political conservative and a theological Read more

  • Some links for the weekend

    – Peter Singer on balancing concern for the environment with efforts to lift people out of poverty. – Kevin Drum on the difference between liberals and libertarians. – Bob Herbert on Sargent Shriver: “one of America’s great good men.” – Peter Berger’s blog at The American Interest. (Here’s a piece on recent developments in American Read more

  • This will either be really terrible or kind of awesome (possibly both)

    This is news to me: 2010: Moby Dick is an upcoming film adaptation of the 1851 novel Moby-Dick by Herman Melville. The film is an Asylum production, and stars Barry Bostwick as Captain Ahab. The film takes place in the modern day, and follows Dr. Michelle Herman (Renée O’Connor), who has recently joined a submarine Read more

  • Spoiler alert!

    This trailer for the 1956 John Huston/Gregory Peck film version of Moby-Dick gives an awful lot away. Maybe they were assuming most people had read the book? I haven’t seen it yet, but the New York Times liked it quite a bit. Read more

  • Melville’s mythology

    In his book, A Reader’s Guide to Herman Melville, James E. Miller, Jr. convincingly rebuts the oft-made complaint about all the “boring whale stuff” interspersed with the narrative of Moby-Dick. The point of all this material, Miller argues, is to elevate the tale of Ahab and his mad quest for revenge to mythic heights: The Read more