I love these sorts of articles, where a writer uses a book you haven’t read in a few years to explain the world. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Melville feverishly scribbled a diagnosis, prognosis and prescription for the human condition. We are all Ishmael the ing\u00e9nue and Starbuck the pragmatist and Ahab the maniac, stuck on a ship driven by winds we cannot predict, helmed by a mind not fully comprehensible, whose compulsions we don\u2019t control. The world is an elusive whale; we might choose coexistence or destruction. And though we do not decide the outcome, the hands on those oars are ours; each stroke invites consequences. And lest we overlook the obvious: The men went equipped to do harm in their quest for \u2014 oil. If we are all Ishmael and Starbuck and Ahab, caught in our collective addiction, the whales exemplify a counterculture, a way of living weightlessly, of not draining the world that floats them.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Carl Safina, \u201cMelville\u2019s Whale Was a Warning We Failed to Heed,\u201d The New York Times<\/em>, May 2, 2020, sec. Books, https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2020\/05\/02\/books\/review\/herman-melville-moby-dick.html<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I love these sorts of articles, where a writer uses a book you haven’t read in a few years to explain the world. Melville feverishly scribbled a diagnosis, prognosis and prescription for the human condition. We are all Ishmael the ing\u00e9nue and Starbuck the pragmatist and Ahab the maniac, stuck on a ship driven by … Continue reading The White Whale<\/span>