Latest news with #Moby-Dick
Washington Post
6 days ago
- Health
- Washington Post
A playfully inventive novel set in Ukraine asks serious questions
Upon an initial reading, Maria Reva's remarkable debut novel, 'Endling,' might be categorized several different ways: a war novel about modern-day Ukraine; a metafictional tale that examines the ethics of writing about conflict and violence; a satirical send-up of the mail-order bride industry in Ukraine; a biologist's quest to save the last remaining snail of a species. Amazingly, 'Endling' is all these things. Reva was born in Ukraine, moved as a child with her family to Canada, and was raised in Vancouver, British Columbia. In 2020, she published a linked story collection, 'Good Citizens Need Not Fear,' about the disparate residents of a decaying building block in the small Ukrainian town of Kirovka in the 1980s. Instead of looking back a few decades, much of 'Endling' animates the devastation of present-day Ukraine since the Russian invasion on Feb. 24, 2022. At the novel's onset, the reader meets Yeva, a renegade biologist who is trying to save a snail named Lefty (hence 'Endling,' a term used to describe the last survivor of a dying species). Not surprisingly, Yeva prefers snails to the company of humans. She lives in a battered RV, which also doubles as her mobile lab. Reva writes: 'Snails! There'd been a time when she would tell anyone who'd listen how amazing these creatures were. How the many gastropod species have evolved to live anywhere on the planet, from deserts to deep ocean trenches. How they have gills to live in water, or have lungs to live on land — some, like the apple snail, possess one of each, to withstand both monsoons and droughts.' Yeva meets Nastia and Sol, sisters who are working for the same 'romance tour' (a euphemism for a mail-order bridal business), and moonlights for them to fund her ongoing snail research. The young women are looking for their mother, a radical activist who used to fight 'against many evils, particularly the international bridal industry.' As part of this effort, Nastia hatches a plan to kidnap a band of bachelors, hoping that potential media coverage of the exploit will attract their mother's attention. Invoking the spirit of Herman Melville's 'Moby-Dick,' Reva writes about Nastia's feelings for Yeva's RV: 'Every time she saw the thing — lumbering, white, speckled with rust — she felt a tinge of relief mixed with excitement. It seemed to grow larger every time she saw it, a great whale about to swallow a hundred men whole. It was the key to her plan.' This is one of the reader's first hints that this narrative is tipping toward epic proportions and has no intentions of staying constrained within traditional narrative conventions. Soon, Russia invades — and the novel we've been reading up to this point is interrupted. In Part II, the reader is introduced to the first-person voice of author Maria Reva. She is struggling to write her first novel in her parents' attic in Canada, and her agent, Rufus Redpen (ha!), is touching base about the manuscript, which is well past overdue. 'My words drag along, on the verge of falling apart, but isn't this precarious place where true Art lives?' Reva writes. After she attempts to describe the novel, Redpen responds that the project sounds like merely 'a bunch of yurts,' or 'hobbled nubs of narrative, barely connected.' Then, 'Endling' swerves into an interview between an 'Unfamous Author' and 'Yurt Makers.' 'What right do I have to write about the war from my armchair?' the author says. 'And to keep writing about the mail-order bride industry seems even worse. Dredge up that cliché? In these times? Anyway, am I even a real Ukrainian?' Throughout these meta forays, the author raises more and more questions. Though Reva doesn't answer all these questions, she tests the boundaries of storytelling with freshness and humor despite the bleak subject matter. A variety of voices, forms and ideas spring forth with a playful inventiveness: a correspondence between a magazine editor and the author, a completed grant application, more interviews, meeting minutes. In another author's hands, these departures might be experienced as digressions, draining suspense and power from the story, but Reva they alchemizes them into something between imagination and reality, an original way to investigate the artifice of the novel — its limitations but also its expansiveness. There may have been a few moments when this reader stumbled over the disparate narrative strategies, but ultimately it's easy to be won over by a novel that includes writing from a snail's point of view. 'Endling,' original as it is, did evoke other reading experiences: the survivalist adventure of Octavia Butler's classic 'The Parable of the Sower,' the sly satire of Percival Everett's 'Erasure,' the poetic inventions of Dana Spiotta's 'Stone Arabia' and 'Wayward.' Reva places her metaphorical arms around all of it — with the intention of using language to express the inexpressible: senseless violence, loneliness, extreme suffering and grief. Near the beginning of 'Endling,' Reva writes about the bond between Yeva and a fellow conservationist: 'For comfort, for reassurance that, despite setbacks, their labs still offered the snails a higher chance of survival than the wild. They needed each other to bear witness, because the rest of the world didn't.' In the end, this may be the fulfilled purpose of Reva's wildly inventive novel: to bear witness. S. Kirk Walsh is a book critic whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the Los Angeles Review of Books, among other places, and the author of the novel 'The Elephant of Belfast.' By Maria Reva Doubleday. 338 pp. $28
Chicago Tribune
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Column: Thar she blows! Chicago artist and writer Dmitry Samarov brings ‘Moby-Dick' back to life
Moby Dick was a whale, a very big whale. It is also a book, a very big book, written by Herman Melville and published in 1851. It was initially a commercial failure, this tale of Captain Ahab on a whaling ship named the Pequod on his mad quest for vengeance on the giant white sperm whale of the title that had chomped off Ahab's leg on a previous encounter. The story's narrator, a seaman along for the journey, opens with what is arguably the most famous first line in English literary history, 'Call me Ishmael.' 'Moby-Dick,' the book, entered the life of artist and writer Dmitry Samarov two decades ago when he was 33. 'I was going through a divorce and came upon a cheap paperback copy of the book,' he says. 'It was a crazy time for me and I was grasping at anything that might help me. This novel was a life raft and I felt lucky to be among the few who had not been assigned to read it in high school, so I wasn't spoiled by having to do it for homework.' And so he was helped and life moved on. But in the days following the bloody events of Nov. 4, 2024, in Gaza that rattled this world, Samarov was particularly affected. He set about trying to 'forget the news.' He canceled his subscriptions to newspapers. Never a tech aficionado, he severed his remaining internet ties so there was 'no headline-blaring app (following) me out the door.' Samarov came to the United States from his native Russia in 1978 when he was 7. He lived first in Boston and then came here. He went to the School of the Art Institute. He started driving a cab. He wrote. He made art. In 2006, he started writing an illustrated blog about his behind-the-wheel experiences. This attracted the folks at the University of Chicago Press, and that led to 'Hack: Stories from a Chicago Cab' (2011) and 'Where To? A Hack Memoir' (2014). His next book arrived in 2019, 'Music to My Eyes,' a gathering of drawings and writing handsomely published by the local Tortoise Books. 'For more than 30 years, I have been bringing my sketchbook to concerts and drawing the performers on stage,' he said. I wrote of it: 'His writing has matured over the years and in wonderfully compelling ways his new book can be read as a memoir, for in it he shares stories that help explain why and how music has, as he put it, 'haunted my entire life.'' He lives in Bridgeport and makes his living by working some fill-in bar shifts at the Rainbo Club and a couple of shifts at Tangible Books, near his apartment. 'My life is all freelance and flexible,' he told me some time ago. 'The goal is total unemployment.' Now, on to the latest book, seeded by an article Samarov read about, as he puts it, 'tech hucksters claiming to make millions publishing new versions of classics from the public domain.' He was not at all interested in 'tricking anyone into paying me $15.99 for a cut-and-paste reprint of some dusty tome.' He discovered Project Gutenberg, the internet site that allows people to download books or read them online at no cost. It offers some of the world's great literature, focused on older works for which U.S. copyright has expired. Near the top of its most-downloaded list, Samarov found his old friend, 'Moby-Dick.' And so he got to work. In his short but lively 'Designers Note' at the book's end, he gives some of the details, and he tells me one of his goals with this project is 'to introduce it to younger people.' He writes that he feels the novel is 'as relevant as any news story.' The book is handsomely published by Samarov's friends at local publisher Maudlin House and is available there and elsewhere for $25, not at all bad for a 650-page book. Melville dedicated 'Moby-Dick' to his great friend, novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne. Samarov dedicates this new edition to Harry Synder, the late manager of a theater in Boston about whom Samarov writes elsewhere, 'Harry and I didn't talk much about art over the 35-plus years of our friendship but he showed me how to carry myself in the world without neurotically making sure anyone who crossed my path knew of my 'true calling.' He was a fully-rounded person first but an artist to the core.' The whale is on the cover of this new edition, striking in black and white, though to me, he appears to be smiling. 'I was inspired by scrimshaw art,' says Samarov, then explaining that art form that is created by engraving or carving on such whale parts as bones and teeth. There are nearly 100 drawings of people, boats, buildings, implements, ropes in knots and other items. There is a Samarov self-portrait and a drawing of Melville, accompanied by Samarov's writing, 'I wonder what (Melville) would make of there now being over 7,000 versions of his masterpiece. … I'd like to believe he'd judge the version you hold in your hands worthwhile and not a cheap cash grab.' Far be it from me to dip into Melville's mind, but I think Samarov's right.
New York Times
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Ed Helms Read ‘Moby-Dick' on His Phone. On the New York Subway.
In an email interview, the actor ('The Office') explained why working in comedy drew him to exploring big mistakes, in a podcast that led to the book. SCOTT HELLER What books are on your night stand? 'The History of Sound,' by Ben Shattuck, and 'The Library Book,' by Susan Orlean. How do you organize your books? I don't. Books migrate between dignified shelves, unruly coffee tables and chaotic piles that sprout around my office like mushrooms. Describe your ideal reading experience (when, where, what, how). This might sound strange, but one of my favorite reading experiences was standing on the New York City subway, clinging to a pole with one hand and reading 'Moby-Dick' on my phone with the other. Sometimes I was so engrossed I'd get off the train and just plop down on a bench to finish a chapter. But honestly, nothing beats reading aloud to my kids in our little reading nook at home. What's the last great book you read? I've read a lot of good books, but the last truly great book I read was 'The Overstory,' by Richard Powers. What books are you embarrassed not to have read yet? 'Anna Karenina,' by Tolstoy. In my defense, someone gave me a Russian-language edition and I literally can't read it. Disappointing, overrated, just not good: What book did you feel as if you were supposed to like, and didn't? 'A Walk in the Woods,' by Bill Bryson. I signed up for soulful reflections on a grueling 2,000-mile trek along the Appalachian Trail. What I got were some chipper musings about a leisurely stroll to a diner. Bryson is hilarious, but I still felt betrayed. Who is your favorite fictional hero or heroine? The Lorax. Were you a 'Captain Underpants' fan before playing the title role in the movie version? I was only dimly aware of the series before I signed on, but I immediately fell in love with its anarchic spirit. There's a wonderful undercurrent of pure childhood mischief in those books. What's your favorite book no one else has heard of? 'Longitude,' by Dava Sobel. It's a gripping, soulful history of the race to determine one's longitude at sea, which, I promise, is way more exciting than it sounds. In 'Snafu,' you ask readers to think of you as their 'unofficial history teacher.' Is there one who made a difference to you? My brother is a middle school history teacher, and one of the smartest, funniest people I know. He's my go-to for fact-checking and/or spirited debates. What is it about your personality that makes you fascinated by foul-ups? I think because comedy is rooted in pain and suffering, I've spent my whole life instinctively tuning in to moments when things go wrong. At this point, it's not so much a fascination as it is a reflex. Who's the most foolish figure unearthed in the research for the book, and why? One strong contender is the U.S. military engineer who, during the Cold War, proposed nuking the moon just to show the Soviets how tough we were. Not land on it. Not colonize it. Just … detonate it. The most heroic? Jimmy Carter. In 1952, long before he became president, he helped lead a dangerous cleanup of a partial nuclear meltdown at Canada's Chalk River reactor. He and his men risked their lives to contain the disaster, a quiet act of heroism that almost no one talks about today. Is there a recent event that seems likely to make it into a sequel to this book? DOGE. Have you ever gotten in trouble for reading a book? In fifth grade, I got caught carting around 'The Joy of Sex' at school. It made me wildly popular with my friends and significantly less popular with my teachers and parents. What's the last book you recommended to a member of your family? A.D.H.D. has touched my life in a lot of ways, so I've recommended 'Scattered Minds,' by Gabor Maté, to friends and family who've been curious about it. It's a moving, compassionate window into what living with A.D.H.D. actually feels like. What's the most interesting thing you learned from a book recently? In David Byrne's 'How Music Works,' I learned how profoundly music is shaped by the spaces it's performed in. Cathedrals, dive bars, stadiums: They don't just host music, they transform how we experience it. As a musician, this was a thrilling revelation, something I'd always felt on some level but had never consciously reflected on before. 'Humanity has demonstrated an uncanny ability to bounce back' from snafus, you write. Still feeling that way? Yes. But to your point, we also have a nasty habit of bouncing backward just as quickly. Sadly, human progress is not a straight line. It's more like a cosmic game of Chutes and Ladders. You're organizing a literary dinner party. Which three writers, dead or alive, do you invite? Oscar Wilde, Marcus Aurelius and Anne Lamott. That should make for a good mix of profound insight and hard laughs.
Indian Express
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
‘Call me Ishmael': How Herman Melville caught that elusive white whale – the perfect opening line
'Call me Ishmael.' – Moby-Dick, Herman Melville Many would-be authors, should-be bestsellers and wannabe novelists have perished chasing that 'white whale' – the perfect opening line. Fittingly, Herman Melville, the author who birthed the metaphor in his novel, Moby-Dick (1851), was one of the few to craft an opening line so legendary that immortalised him, holding generation after generation in its thrall. In just three words, Melville sets the tone for the novel, after all 'Call me Ishmael' is not quite the same as 'My name is Ishmael.' One wonders, who is Ishmael? A man? A myth? A voice in the oceanic wilderness? The genius of the line lies in its simplicity. It is both an introduction and a Biblical invocation, casting the reader into the confidant role. It asks to be heard, just as the Biblical Ishmael once was. There is a theatricality to his first words, a suggestion of persona rather than identity. He may be Ishmael, or he may only want us to think of him that way. It's an adopted name, a mask, and one loaded with biblical meaning. The name Ishmael is steeped in significance across Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In the Book of Genesis, Ishmael is Abraham's first son, born of Hagar, Sarah's Egyptian servant. Cast out into the wilderness with his mother, Ishmael is marked from birth by exclusion and exile. But in the desert, an angel tells Hagar: 'Thou shalt call his name Ishmael; because the Lord hath heard thy affliction.' To be named Ishmael is to be known by suffering, to be heard by God, but not necessarily to be comforted. Melville's Ishmael, too, begins his journey as a man afflicted—a self-confessed sufferer of a 'damp, drizzly November in my soul.' He heads to sea as a kind of therapy, to stave off 'methodically knocking people's hats off.' Melville knew the biblical Ishmael intimately—raised a strict Calvinist, he was fluent in the scriptural undercurrents he channels here. This is not a voyage of commerce or conquest, but of existential necessity. He boards the Pequod to save himself from depression, madness, and violence. And yet, by the novel's end, he is the sole survivor of a doomed mission driven by another man's (Ahab's) obsession. He drifts again, now quite literally, clinging to a coffin repurposed as a life buoy. That Ishmael survive is essential, after all someone must live to tell the tale. And yet, the tale itself is strange and fractured. Ishmael recounts episodes he could not have personally seen. He recounts Ahab's most private soliloquies, scenes where he is absent. His omniscience is suspect. His narrative, possibly mad, which just adds to the enduring myth. Published under the original title The Whale, Moby-Dick was Melville's sixth and least-popular novel during his lifetime. However, today it is widely considered a cornerstone of American literature. That first line—'Call me Ishmael'—has become cultural shorthand. It's quoted in films, parodied in cartoons, reimagined in novels, memes, and advertisements. Its biblical and literary gravitas make it instantly recognisable. Over time, the phrase has spawned a small library of titles, tributes, and transformations. Michael Gerard Bauer's Don't Call Me Ishmael (2006) uses the name to explore teenage awkwardness and resilience, while Charles Olson's 1947 Call Me Ishmael repurposes it as a lens into American myth and Melville's legacy. Logan Smalley's Call Me Ishmael Phone Book (2020) transforms the line into a crowdsourced celebration of books that changed lives. In poetry, the line—and the figure—has had a particularly enduring afterlife. Consider the poet Agha Shahid Ali, whose work often meditates on exile and longing. His recurring evocations of Ishmael in collections such as The Beloved Witness and The Half-Inch Himalayas cast the biblical outcast as a symbol of displaced identity and spiritual estrangement. In the poem, Tonight, he writes: And I, Shahid, only am escaped to tell thee—/God sobs in my arms. Call me Ishmael tonight.) ('Drawing a Line' is an eight-column weekly series exploring the stories behind literature's most iconic opening lines. Each column offers interpretation, not definitive analysis—because great lines, like great books, invite many readings.) Aishwarya Khosla is a journalist currently serving as Deputy Copy Editor at The Indian Express. Her writings examine the interplay of culture, identity, and politics. She began her career at the Hindustan Times, where she covered books, theatre, culture, and the Punjabi diaspora. Her editorial expertise spans the Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, Punjab and Online desks. She was the recipient of the The Nehru Fellowship in Politics and Elections, where she studied political campaigns, policy research, political strategy and communications for a year. She pens The Indian Express newsletter, Meanwhile, Back Home. Write to her at or You can follow her on Instagram: @ink_and_ideology, and X: @KhoslaAishwarya. ... Read More
Time Out
05-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Out
This new cocktail bar in FiDi is an ode to 'Moby-Dick'
You may not be familiar with the name Bryan Schneider, but if you've knocked back a pepperoncini martini at Bad Roman or a handful of Bangkok screwdrivers at Twin Tails, he's certainly treated you to a drink. Tending bar since 2005, Schneider has shaken and stirred at some of New York's most beloved drinking establishments starting with Daniel, eventually overseeing the aforementioned bars while working as the beverage director of Quality Branded. Like many in the industry (and really, most of us out there), Schnieder always envisioned owning his own bar. But for him, it wasn't a lofty, unobtainable thing. Instead, his vision was a modern, maritime meeting place, ripped from the pages of Herman Leville's classic novel, Moby-Dick. 'While reading the novel a decade ago, I took about ten pages of notes for a Moby-Dick -inspired bar,' Schnieder told Time Out New York, also describing how he was taken by the book's ties to New York and the vivid description of the smoke-laden, whaling tavern in chapter three, named The Spouter Inn. Ten years passed before Schneider serendipitously came upon his prized find, a bar space near the waters of the Hudson River. And so he decided to harpoon his own catch. Last Friday, Quick Eternity opened its doors at the South Street Seaport in the Financial District, bringing forward Schneider's interpretation of a seaside whaling tavern through a modern lens. The name of the drinking den is drawn directly from chapter 41 of Moby-Dick: '...to chase and point lance at such an apparition as the Sperm Whale was not for mortal man. That to attempt it, would be inevitably to be torn into a quick eternity.' Less of a dive for weary souls and more of a modern revue to raise spirits, the two-level bar features heavy brick walls, leather-backed chairs and cherry wood tables etched with ivory-like accents. Above sits The Gam, a private event space that also houses Idler Books, an independent bookstore offering a thoughtfully curated selection of new and used titles—including a collection of vintage editions of the obviously inspiring seafaring classic. Owner Rachel Leal, Schneider's wife, plans to develop literary programming as well, including a reading club that will take a deep dive into, you guessed it, Moby-Dick. The most eye-catching sight is found behind the bar on the first floor. Beyond the marble counter sits a darkened mural of the whale from the novel. Breaching from the murky sea, the picture is framed by weathered bones seemingly pulled from the beast itself. The maritime mural was commissioned by Tribeca-based artist Azikiwe Mohammed, whom Schneider met while studying art in college. 'For the mural, I gave Azikiwe a particular passage in chapter 3 that describes an oil painting in the entrance to the inn,' said Schneider. 'Azikiwe created his own version of the painting described in that passage.' Mohammed's touch is felt elsewhere as well. The bar has partnered with New Davonhaime Food Bank, an organization conceived and operated by Mohammed that provides fresh produce and pantry staples to New Yorkers experiencing food insecurity. As you contemplate your own white whale, you can sip on a menu of cocktails that pull from references and excerpts from the book. The namesake drink of the bar, the Quick Eternity, is a play on a Corpse Reviver #2, made with Perry's Tot Navy-Strength Gin, passionfruit, Lillet, lemon and absinthe. The Rachel (made with Michter's bourbon, Saveiro madeira, lemon and a float Three Valleys red wine) has a double meaning here: it's named after the whaler ship that eventually pulls Ishmael from the water in the novel and Schneider's own wife. Upgraded tavern fare comes courtesy of chef Antonio Mora. A personal friend of Schneider's, chef Mora (previously of Daniel, Morandi and Quality Meats) has created a New England-accented menu. The chilled Manhattan clam chowder eats more like a ceviche spun with classic chowder flavors, while the Captain's Crunch is reminiscent of a Frito-Pie that swaps out chips for prawn crisps, yours to shake up with Du Breton pork chili. Filling meals from the gallows include the Gam Burger with charred onions and a 'chaos' sauce, plus corndog-battered lobster tails. As for desserts, the sticky toffee pudding is drizzled with a Navy-Strength Jamaican rum caramel is a go-to.
