Look at the closing words of the first chapter of Moby-Dick. To Ishmael, the whale was “like a snow hill in the air.” If you visit (in Pittsfield, MA) Arrowhead, the farm where Melville wrote (or rewrote) Moby-Dick, you can see the desk where he worked. Look out the window. North, in the far distance, you will see Mount Greylock. It is the tallest mountain in Massachusetts. I like to imagine the author sitting there, restlessly seeking a socko image for the chapter, staring out the window and spotting Greylock’s snow-capped top. Aha! his mind says, just the simile for the whale: “like a snow hill in the air.”
Greylock is important to Melville. His next major work of fiction, Pierre, bears the dedication, “To Greylock’s Most Excellent Majesty.”
Melville wrote most of MD in his barn–I was there–a lone Iris grew among the dry stalks along the wall marking the spot where he wrote. A ferret’s laser eye gleamed at me from under the broken boards of the floor where his desk and chair once stood. He finished it off in an empty warehouse in NYC.
A friend of mine recently visited.
There are pictures!
http://thesocietybookclub.wordpress.com/2009/09/07/arrowhead/
Ooh…love the photos and the description of Arrowhead. I need to go there. This makes me want to drink hard cider. Too bad I’m at work
As this is my first run at Moby Dick I just have to say how much I am enjoying it…it is CRAZY dense and I have to take breaks to digest it all.
Brilliant I say, simply brilliant.
Am delighted to be a part of this online club!
Thanks for the “snow hill in the air” Mt. Greylock connection and the photos of Arrowhead. I look forward to visiting there this summer.
A friend who has never read Moby Dick before just told me that she was struck even after the first couple of chapters by Melville’s powers of description. I have always been constantly amazed at Melville’s command of metaphor, simile, and analogy!
I also love his use of alliterations.
Melville’s breadth of knowledge (not only of whaling, but of literature, religion, history, geography, science) is incredible.
A common seaman would hardly have the verbal skills to tell the tale (think of Tashtego, Daggoo, or Queequeg), but Ishmael, my friend reminds me, is a former schoolmaster:
“And more than all, if just previous to putting your hand into the tar-pot, you have been lording it as a country schoolmaster, making the tallest boys stand in awe of you. The transition is a keen one, I assure you, from a schoolmaster to a sailor.” (ch.1)