I have tried to read Moby Dick several times, and every time I do, I think, what a weird fricking book- which someone actually also says on the Studio 360 podcast. It is unlike anything else I have read.
Something I learned from the podcast is that artist Frank Stella got obsessed with Moby Dick in the late seventies and spent 12 years creating a series of pieces based on the chapters of the book. Though generally not a fan of Modern, angular and abstract art, I was intrigued by his idea: creating a piece of work to accompany every chapter of Melville's book. All of them.
The titles of the chapters are themselves so evocative and romantic they nearly eclipse the need for the book. And they can be misleading, as this McSweeney's bit points out. Maybe I should try it. I am, of course, no Frank Stella, and realistically I can commit no more than 5 minutes a day to any artistic endeavor. Moreover, I lose interest quickly.
Loomings.
In Belfast I once attended a sermon in a church with a high, high looming pulpit, dark stained wood, and a definite portent of doom. Below is the preaching scene from Moby Dick with Gregory Peck. (It's Orson Welles preaching, though.) This is not at all how I pictured the church when I read the description in the book. The church in my head, like the empty, draughty one in which I spent a boring two hours in Belfast, is dark, brooding, hopeless, damning, and threatening. It is a coffin ship.
