Moby Dick and the Crossword Puzzle

Everything old is new again

Tonight I was working a crossword puzzle, and this clue came up: “Blubber stripper.” Immediately, without even making sure the number of letters was right, I penned in “flenser.”* You want to know how I knew? I read Moby Dick in college. Twice.

I’ve been going through some writing files, looking for pieces of memoir to send to a friend who will be leading a memoir writing group, and I found a folder of blog posts from a blog I started in 2006 and stopped keeping about 9 years ago. I came across some pieces about books and reading, and since I’ve been struggling to get back to writing posts here, I decided to ease my way back in with some old posts, which most of you haven’t read or, like me, have completely forgotten.

flense | flens | (also flench | flenCH | )
verb [with object]
slice the skin or fat from (a carcass, especially that of a whale): I flensed and butchered the whale | (as adjective flensing) : flensing knives.
• strip (skin or fat) from a carcass: the skin had been flensed off.

---

Post dated February 1, 2012

This appeared in my in-box today in my Public Radio Market newsletter:

I read it and immediately felt compelled to raise a loud HELLO-O-O-O-O!!! Did the blurb-writer actually read Moby Dick? I think not. I, however, have read it twice - because it was required reading in two college Lit classes - and I am here to tell you that if you want a "gripping adventure narrative," you'd best read only the first 10 pages and the last 5.

Moby Dick opens with the now famous line, "Call me Ishmael." I love the narrator and the ship; I love Ishmael's bunk-mate Queequeg. The opening is compelling - and then we wade through hundreds of pages of details about whale blubber. We don't get to the whale until the very last few pages. Yes, I agree that the story is told in "an uncanny and unforgettable fashion," but only because I'll never forget having to read it twice, both times wondering how the heck it came to be known as a "classic American novel."

An aside:

I just went upstairs to find my copy of Moby Dick and make sure of the details. All of my old text books are in one area of my shelves (unlike all my other books, which are tucked in anywhere, Harry Potter keeping company with A.S. Byatt who is next to the Dalai Lama), and I couldn't find it. I scanned the shelves again, looking for that big fat book among all my other big fat books that no one wants to read but has to read in English classes. Nope. Moby Dick is not next to a (relatively) slim volume of Melville's shorter works. It's not stashed in with the wordy Victorians or the wordy Russians. As I scanned the shelves for the third time, I cracked myself up with this thought: Maybe I lent it to someone. Right. Someone borrowed my copy of Moby Dick. For a doorstop, maybe! Then I wondered if maybe I had used it for a doorstop, but no - I use my two-volume set of the Oxford English Dictionary to keep my bedroom door from swinging shut.

I was an English major through two college degrees, and I've read a lot of books that - trust me - most of us would never pick up and read just for fun. And I loved every one of those big fat difficult complex fascinating enlightening life-changing books. Except for Moby Dick. Maybe I would have loved it if it hadn't been pitched to me as a "great American classic." Maybe I would have loved it in an editing class: trim all the fat and you've got a wonderful, engrossing 15-page story. I just never understood - and still don't - why it is considered "great."

So if you also get the Public Radio Market in your in-box and you read this lovely blurb and decide you've been missing something in your life because you haven't read Moby Dick, by all means buy it and read it. Enjoy the story of the whale hunt (of course, by the time you get to the end of the book, you will have forgotten the set-up for the hunt in the beginning and will have to read that part again). Enjoy the details of being on the open sea in a creaky old ship with creaky old shipmates. Enjoy the fascinating (I'm serious here) details of how to render whale fat. Learn everything you could possibly want to know about amber. Recognize where the name "Starbuck" came from in the TV series "Starship Gallactica." If you know anything about projection, note how Ahab characterizes the whale and ask yourself if the pot is calling the kettle black. In fact, I'm now feeling disappointed that I seem to no longer have my college copy of this enthralling story. Hmmm. Guess I'll have to run out to my local independent bookstore and get a copy - you know - to replace the one I lent to a friend.

---

Thank you for reading. If you’re new to The Silent Reader and would like to subscribe, please do. This is a free newsletter, so if you see any link that asks you how much you want to pay me, just ignore it. I haven’t figured out how to turn off that option, and Substack—like so many things these days (don’t get me started!)—seems to want to think for me. I turned 78 this year and so far—god willing the creek don’t rise—I can still think for myself.