To keep things simple for the new year and perhaps also to get a good kick start on the yearly book, Moby Dick by Herman Melville was chosen and was the sole focus of this first meeting.
The meeting was held at The Griffin in Atwater, a perfect place for a event without a specific host and also easier for new people to check us out without feeling threatened by going to a stranger's house. The Griffin isn't too crowded on weeknights and has lots of good nooks to set up a group of people.
I'm proud to say that I arrived with the best copy of the book there, though since it's from the library, I daresay I wont be flashing it about at our twelfth meeting. It was hard cover embossed with gold lettering and a picture of the whale and with gold edged pages made of paper like that used at the time of the book's original publication, according to a note in an early page. I guess they didn't want the effort to go unobserved. The condition leads me to believe I may be the first person to check it out. I forget who it was, but someone said they had a similar copy from the library and it was marked inside as having belonged to Leonard Nimoy! May the force be with you! Oh wait...
In attendance at this meeting was Chris R, Emily, Randy, Mike, Summer, Lisa, Jason, Tom and myself. It seemed that more than half the group had read Moby Dick before, but from what I could tell it was always commissioned by a school curriculum. While Lisa seemed a little weary of it from having examined it that way, as had another friend of mine who I talked about it with, it was still enjoyed and revered by others, while complete Moby Dick novices like Summer and myself were revelling in it in ways we never expected to.
We only had to read the first 15 chapters which came in at 50 - 70 pages depending on which edition you were reading. As I had not read the book before, I tried to reign in discussion of later plot points as I am very much anti-spoiler, especially as I am thoroughly enjoying the book. Lisa says it's common knowledge how it ends, but I don't know, so I asked not to be told. This sounds like a futile goal, but I am going to do my best to survive the year without finding out! Tom and Lisa tried to point out that it's about the journey, not the ending, so I'll try and recover from my neurosis.
Melville's approach to writing the book was briefly discussed as it seemed he was a guy with a regular job who found the time to write and set out to write a novel which resulted in the now classic Moby Dick. Apparently the book was not so well regarded in Melville's lifetime and received its infamy much later on. I also learned that the etymology contained at the beginning of the book that I skipped over was actually written by Melville and is part of the book. If you are yet to start, do read that too! I have to go back to it now.
We discussed for a time the apparently gay relationship between Ishmael, the narrator of the story and his curious islander bosom friend, Queequeg. From sharing a bed, engaging in pillow talk and embracing in bed, it takes platonic male relationships to a whole new level if that is in fact what it is supposed to be. What seems overtly gay to us now, may have just been an honest friendship between two lonely seamen over 150 years ago. It may also be that people did not see it as gay because they just avoided thinking about such things at that time.
For next month we are to read through to chapter 27, just before the chapter entitled "Ahab" which seemed like a good opening for the March meeting.
Next month will be hosted by Emily and Andrea in Little Tokyo on February 8th. The book will be Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground 1981 - 1991 by Michael Azzerad.
