A Nabokovian Reading of Ishmael « The Ambiguities
So, to summarize. We are to believe that Ishmael the composer of Moby-Dick, the lone lucky survivor of the Pequod disaster, is not traumatized by this experience into sticking to the land at all, but instead goes back to the sea constantly, taking many more trips not only on merchant vessels, but on whalers. He becomes just as obsessed with whales and the white whale especially as much as Ahab ever was; he is a very old, very weathered and wizened sailor, covered in tattoos as surely startling as Queequeg’s once were to him. The book is written on his body, perhaps, just as Queequeg’s understanding of the universe is written on his. The book is as much an exorcism of his whaling demons as it is a chapter of his life recollected in tranquility.
All of which is not necessarily Nabokovian, except for the ending. Provocative statement for discussion and debate: Moby-Dick has the craziest, most ludicrous ending of any great book. As the ship sinks rapidly in its awful vortex, Tashtego, drowning, all but his arms underwater, still manages to continue hammering a red flag to the mast, and catches the wing of a “sky-hawk” in between his hammer and the mast, bringing it down with the ship. In “The Trying-Out of Moby-Dick”, Howard Vincent somewhat hilariously tries to defend this as “perhaps [Melville’s] masterpiece of style.” Um, yeah. Style does not change the fact that this scene is bat-shit insane, and always has been, even by Romantic standards.
I tried—I really tried—to keep at distance Willie’s reviews and rereading of “Moby Dick” and “The Trying-Out of Moby Dick”. Then Willie had to expound on Ishmael as a Nabokovian trickster narrator. Damnit. Where did I hide my copy from myself?
