I’ve drawn many comparisons before between Jane Eyre and Moby-Dick. Sometimes when reading a passage from one, I’m struck by a resonance to the other novel. Ahab is in pursuit of his enemy, Moby Dick. Rochester runs away from his enemy, Bertha Mason. Each of these wild men is obsessed with controlling or determining his Read More
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A Day Away
I planned my second annual escape from the amplified noise and crowds of the Tribeca street fair, packing food for three and books for a day away. Last year I’d brought Reverie of the Solitary Walker (Rousseau) and Wandering (Hesse). This year, I had in mind to take The Walk (Jeffrey Robinson), The Other Walk Read More
Melville’s Study
Even though I’ve built more than 200 miniatures, I’ve made only three in the last ten years, and all have to do with Melville. Reading Moby-Dick, I recreated the Spouter Inn facade, and the room where Ishmael and Queequeg stayed. Moby-Dick contains 135 short chapters, each like a miniature narrative, and so visually vivid, that Read More
Down with Technology when Technology is Down
Photo of Melville’s Writing Table at Arrowhead And in Miniature Utopia may be a mere idea, but who would argue against the actual existence of dystopia? I don’t believe for a minute that any previous era was “easier” than this one, but when one’s life-support-system, i.e., technology, fails, dystopia degrades into living hell, and I Read More
Weather or Not
Spent last evening at the windows of Linda and Arthur’s loft, transfixed by snow swirling over the invisible river, its lights extinguished by the blizzard, and the Gothic trees below lashing branches like swords. L&A invited me to spend the night, but I thought I should be home, three blocks south. When the brave-hearted dogs Read More
The Heroic Fugitive as Epic Archetype
Ginny Rowland: “A man of many cities. Don’t you ever get lonely? Unhappy? Lost?” Richard Kimble: “Quite often. It’s the human condition, isn’t it?” –The Fugitive, “Glass Tightrope” I grew up in the 1960’s, and wasn’t allowed to watch much TV, so I missed a whole generation of popular culture. I’d never even heard of Read More
Ear Redux
Kitchen Fireplace, Ear Inn Always before I’d gone to the Ear Inn–the 1817 pub on Spring Street near the Hudson–in the winter months; the transition from wintry dark to the bar’s inner gloom was not overly dramatic. However, my visit today was on a midsummer late afternoon. The sun was so strong it had forged Read More
