Sober cannibals and drunken Christians

A while back, I vowed to blog about that (the) great American novel Moby-Dick and why you, Gentle Reader, should give it a try for the first or 50th time. As I've said before, one of the best reasons to read it is that it's laugh out loud funny.

Most of its humor is directed at Ishmael, its narrator, who may or may not be reliable. One great example of this occurs early in the book and involves a bit of a gender bender.

Much could be, and no doubt has been, written about homoerotic or at least sexually ambiguous themes in Melville's work. Not that there's anything wrong with that. One could argue that the first such episode in this classic occurs when Ishmael arrives in New Bedford, Massachusetts en route to a gig on a whaling ship. He learns to his dismay that he missed the boat to Nantucket and has to stay a few nights before the next one is available.

That raises just a bit of tension since our hero is a bit short of money. His tension rises more when he is told by Peter Coffin, proprietor of the Spouter Inn, that no more rooms are available and that he must share a bed with a harpooneer. I think it's fair to say that most guys would be just a bit weirded out to be told that they'd have to share a hotel room with a total stranger, much less a bed.

Ishmael gets even more weirded out the more he hears about his roommate, who is apparently out trying to sell shrunken heads--something he's even done on the sabbath! It gets worse when he hears that the stranger is a bit of a cannibal.

Ishmael then resolves not to sleep in said bed but to try to find some angle of repose on a bench in the dining room of the inn. When this doesn't work, and when it looks like the roommate may not return that night, he relents and tries to sleep. Mayhem very nearly ensues when the tattooed Queequeg returns and is startled by his bedmate.

In the end, all is well, and Ishmael claims never to have slept better in his life:

Upon waking next morning about daylight, I found Queequeg's arm thrown over me in the most loving and affectionate manner. You had almost thought I had been his wife.

A bit later on, Ishmael relates that after sharing a companionable smoke from Queequeg's tomahawk pipe,

he pressed his forehead against mine, clasped me round the waist, and said that henceforth we were married; meaning, in his country's phrase, that we were bosom friends; he would gladly die for me, if need should be. 

What's really going on here, methinks, really has more to do with overcoming prejudices than with sexual ambiguity. Queequeg turns out to be far more admirable than most of the Christian characters in the book and Melville himself in other works delighted in unfavorably contrasting missionaries with cannibals.

The book is saying that the prejudices we harbor, then as now, often turn out not to be just wrong, but even comically wrong. Which is another reason you should read it.

THE POWER OF NEGATIVE THINKING, or at least a critique of uncritical positive thinking, is discussed here.

THIS IS REALLY GROSS, but click here if you want to learn more about how maggots can heal wounds.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A cosmic ATM?

The last few days have been devoted, among other things, to giving a shout out to Barbara Ehrenreich's newest book, Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America.

While there's clearly nothing wrong with happiness, being cheerful and having a sense of one's ability to improve things, some versions of this kind of thinking view the universe or God as a kind of cosmic ATM or good fairy, one which has nothing more important to do than to grant the wisher a Hummer, MacMansion, or some other object of conspicuous consumption.

Further, this kind of thinking has permeated a corporate culture in which CEOs are viewed as charismatic visionaries who never allow themselves the luxury of a negative thought. In that climate, anyone a couple of years back, for example, who might have suggested that sub-prime mortgage securities might not be the ideal road to prosperity might well have been dismissed or discharged as a negative person.

Even worse is the kind of magical thinking which views the universe as a projection of one's own mental attitude. In that view, people who are wealthy and powerful are getting what they deserve. Those who are dying of poverty, drowned in a tsunami, languishing without health insurance, or are blown up as collateral damage in warfare are presumably only getting back from the universe the kind of energy they sent out.

I'll pass on that one.

On the other hand, one doesn't need delusional thinking to be grateful for the good things in life. So on that note, happy Thanksgiving!

NO LINKS TODAY. El Cabrero is on a long road trip so no links today other than this earlier post from one of Goat Rope Farm's talking animals, Self Help Guru Rooster.

If anything bad happens between the time this post is written and when it's posted, please accept my condolences.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: POSITIVELY ELEVATED

Shiny happy people

As I mentioned yesterday, Barbara Ehrenreich's latest book, How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America, is a real hoot. In it, she traces America's penchant for positive (and sometimes magical) thinking from roots in the 19th century, where it began as a reaction against the dour Calvinism that was such a strong ingredient of early American life.

In Calvinism, each soul has been predestined from the beginning of the world for either damnation or salvation, with most of us getting the former. There is nothing we can do about it, nor can one be totally sure one is among the elect. Believers were often urged to continually examine their consciences in fear and trembling.

That could be a bit of a downer. No wonder people sought for some kind of relief. One version that emerged in the late 1800s was called the "New Thought." According to this view, the universe was largely seen as a mental construct willing and waiting to come to our aid if we only got our minds right, to borrow a phrase from the classic movie Cool Hand Luke.

The first half of the twentieth century saw the popularity and commercial success of such enduring best-sellers as Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People and Norman Vincent Peale's The Power of Positive Thinking, which in turn inspired many similar efforts.

While the popularity of positivity is hardly new, modern Americans have consumed and have often been force fed a steady diet of motivational speeches, prosperity "theology," and magical thinking--even while living standards have gotten worse for millions.

Purveyors of this viewpoint sometimes promote the view that one's status and level of material success and health are primarily a matter of mental attitude, which means that people are getting pretty much what they deserve at any given time.

While clearly there's nothing wrong with having a cheerful outlook on the world, once an ideology dismisses other social factors that can hit us no matter how positive our attitude is, then it becomes just another justification for inequality.

If you buy all that, then the 10.2 percent of Americans who are jobless or the 47 million who lack health insurance or the 45,000 or so who die prematurely each year because they don't have it don't need better policies--they just need think positively.

As the saying goes, whatever.

FROM THE HORSE'S MOUTH, here's an interview with Ehrenreich about the book.

STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENTS are facing shortfalls which could compound the recession, reduce jobs, and cut vital services in the absence of additional aid.

SAVING THE PLANET. Here are some weird ideas about how to do that.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED