Saturday, September 21, 2013

Science Writing in Moby Dick

I spent about five hours yesterday reading through chapter 96 in Moby Dick. I didn’t mind the scientific bits much last week but during yesterday’s marathon I started moaning every time Ishmael said something like, “Let us, then, look at this matter…” (page 331). I’m sure at least 90% of Melville’s readers agree.

A Discover Magazine science writer, Carl Zimmer, however, doesn’t. In fact he asks “How many students have missed the fine passages of “Cetology”? He briefly looks at Melville’s science writing in scientific and historical contexts and calls it science writing “of the highest order, before there was science writing.” It’s really worth reading.

Frankly, if you do look at those pesky encyclopedic and elegiac (“I celebrate a tail”? Really?) passages, there is much at which to be awed. Never mind why Melville included it; could you do as well to describe everything? If he wrote an article in a modern journal, it would still stand out through the quality of his writing.

By the way, Zimmer also muses that “It would be quite something if student could be co-taught Moby Dick by English professors and biologists.” I think the team teaching of our Eng 326 class is going well, and I like our professors’ different perspectives. A biologist-humanities professor duo actually sounds perfect for this novel!

So this is not an idle suggestion: Maybe next semester a biologist could come in as a guest/recurring guest lecturer? I bet he or she would love it.
 
 

2 comments:

  1. Nice entry. We'll be talking a bit about these scientific passages on Monday, less as ends in themselves (though we'll do some of that too) than in posing the question of what they're doing in Melville's text.

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  2. I think it interesting how we talked about in class that in these chapters Melville usually ends up talking about something else other than his designated topic. It seemed to me like this usually happened toward the end of the chapter. You'd be bored and trying to get through it, and then "hey wait a minute you're not talking about a part of whale; you're talking about orthodoxy and tradition." I do really enjoy Ishmael's insights into life. I like your suggestion for having a biology and English professor teach about Moby Dick. Both professors could add some life to those chapters in different ways.

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