

A Smart Dude Reads Moby-Dick: Episode 1



I have never read Moby Dick.






I imagine Ishmael’s artfully-distressed woodcuts/instagram feed.




Jake Bartolone: Exactly that type of person.


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  1. Excellent questions. Mansplaining, probs not, since he’s all about incompletion, fragmentation, not knowing shit while trying to know it. Strategic mancompetence?–he does disappear a lot, true. But given all the really cool shit about himself he *doesn’t* tell us about–like the fact that hipster Ishmael has full sleeve tattoos even as he’s all pretending to be freaked out by Queequeg’s tattoos, like what’s up with the lounging boys from Lima, etc. etc. we may need a new term. Fauxhemian distance?

  2. Hm. I did throw “mansplaining” in there without thinking about it too hard, and maybe you’re right. He does tend to get pretty explainy in the first handful of chapters, which is what I had in mind. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he frequently goes off on a mangent.

  3. this whole mansplain/mancompetence/mangent discussion is so great, and it really makes me wish I were still teaching moby-dick ( Teny) because it would be the most awesome way to start a discussion about gender and Ishmael’s language. TAKE NOTE, Jake Bartolone, because this is actually going to be helpful as you get further in to the book.

  4. Two linguistic thoughts/questions, actually. First, maybe aimed at Hester: we’ve established that dick meant dick back in the day. Did Moby have a meaning back then? Because I’m pretty sure that little bald DJ guy wasn’t around back then. Second, more of a comment: I thought it was pretty interesting that we don’t see Queequeg talk for the first several chapters, it’s just Ishmael describing what he said. When he finally does have dialog on the page, it’s brief but jarring.

  5. Jake, the point about Queequeg not actually talking is a really good one. One good way to think through that: how is melville staging the difference between ishamel/queequeg’s ways of learning/knowing? Ishmael generates reams and reams of text; Queequeg IS text (that’s a little glib, but, you know). Though, per hester’s point, what we know about the difference between them changes throughout the text (cf IShmael’s tattoos; SHHH, Hester, Spoiler!!)

  6. I think it is an actually really revealing thing about this book, and what’s at stake in it, that “HOLY SHIT ISHMAEL HAS TATTOOOS!!” is actually a really meaningful spoiler. like, that CHANGES THE WHOLE THING. also, Peter Coviello and Sarah Blackwood, i know you’re busy, like, teaching moby-dick today to your actual students, but I am fairly desperate for you to weigh in on this conversation. If i were teaching moby-dick today, I would totally make the point about the tattoo spoiler.

    • Where does it reveal that Ishmael has tattoos? I missed that part (which isn’t too surprising, I think, in such a massive book).

      Also, how did you think that was revealing? It doesn’t really change anything for me.

      • Two things, quickly. First, as hinted above, Ishmael’s tattoos make the difference between Ishmael and Queequeg–his description of Queequeg’s tattoos make it seem as if he finds the tattoos barbaric, and then you learn that he’s right in there, with that barbarism. Second, they tell you something about what Ishamel does after the voyage of the Pequod. Instead of being all, “whoah, sailors be crazy,” he continued into the sailor-crazy himself.

        • Ah, interesting point, although I’m not sure I agree that alters the central themes of the book all that much. After all, Ismael quickly gets over Queequeg;s appearance and acknowledges that he is human and his equal.

          Sorry if I’m being dense, but I still can’t find where it mentions that Ismael has tattoos. Were you serious about that, or only joking?

  7. I just got back from taking my students on a walking tour down to the battery where I made them listen to me read from Moby-Dick and expound on landlessness and inlanders. I made them FEEL the WILD WIND down there and THINK ABOUT THEIR CHAINED DESKS back at campus and then at the end I paused and said, “Okay, we can leave it there. You can stay here ocean gazing, or you can go back to your chains and desks” and every single one of them turned on their heel in a second and left.

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