"One hand for the ship, one hand for yourself."

"We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads,our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects."
Herman Melville


Thank you, BB, for the kind words.

I have been more frugal lately as I have been grappling with the black dog. I have that old familiar feeling of the baseball bat across the shoulder blades, accompanied by the radiating pain down the arm; signs of a blockage. I have 3 stents in me, one for each heart attack. I know the signs. Tomorrow I see the sawbones: he will look at me like a Schnauzer that has heard a funny noise, and maybe run some tests. Tired of that. Tired of being tired.

"Tho' much is taken, much abides;"....so I try to have the guppy's outlook: each day is a new trip 'round the bowl for me. Inspired by my exchange with BB, today I picked up a new-to-me author, a good reason to get out of bed. Alexander Kent, a pseudonym of Douglas Reeman. I have passed over his work many a time, and thought I would take the plunge. By the time I get underway, The Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea ( acquired for $7.98 instead of the SRP of $41.00, my Yankee ancestors would be proud) will have arrived, and it will help this 'lubber suss out the nomenclature. I enjoy that. BB mentions the theme of class as a possible block to my reading O'Brian's tales. Perhaps; it will need mulling over.

"I cannot rest from travel:"..... Missus RR loves to travel, she has been to more places than I. She lived in Iran, working at the American School, pre-Ayatollahs. She has seen Persepolis,a city dreamt of in my youth. Cleared to fly by my cardiologist last year, the Missus and I went to Italy. I would like to see France, not just Paris. I read an interesting book this spring about how France was assembled, sometimes unwillingly. Burgundy springs to mind. BB stayed in the land of, literally, the language of Oc: Languedoc. The very name trips lightly off the tongue. Cassoulet? Too heavy for this time of year, hot, by his report; perhaps some decent seafood a la languedocienne? French regional cooking, filtered through Canada and New England via my mother is truly my mother cuisine.I do not know of classmates in Weymouth MA who had boudin noir or pissenlit too. Lord knows where mother ever found the sausage in those days of the A&P. She got the dandelions right outside our door.

I have other,mistier, travel plans: to follow the Kidnapped trail of David Balfour and Alan Breck would be an adventure; to see Greek temples in Sicily; to see fiords and,oddly, to visit the North German coast ( I blame Buddenbrooks). And yes, after learning to sail, to sail the wine dark sea, even if it is just for a day:"that which we are, we are." It will do.

"From Hell's heart I stab at thee......"

I told Alan Cheuse, and now I'm telling you. Thomas Pynchon's lit'ry destiny is to become the Herman Melville of the 20th century. Melville was never a best seller, though he attracted attention with his "wicked book", Moby Dick. His publisher did not sell all 3,000 copies of the first printing. All of his work was out of print by 1876; Melville died in 1891.

Biographies of this obscure author began to appear in the 1920's. The "Melville Revival" was on. Even Lewis Mumford, an American historian of technology, penned a decent bio. Moby Dick contains a great deal of technical detail on whales, the hunting of them, and all aspects of whaler life, so I can see Mumford's attraction. I enjoy them as well.

This level of detail makesMoby Dick an 'encyclopedic' novel, just like Gravity's Rainbow, The Recognitions, Cryptonomicon (A 3-page essay on the proper way to eat Cap'n Crunch cereal,gotta love it!), and Soul Mountain. This style of novel is tricky to pull off, as too many tangents will lose the novel's forward motion. The success(or not)of the novel depends on the reader; if they throw it against the wall at p.26, it may be deemed a failure. Encyclopedic novels generally are not experimental; they just have a great deal of interesting (or not) information in them.

I have recently seen T Pynchon's latest novel, Against the Day, on the bargain/remainder pile at the local big box bookstore. It is the start of Pynchon's fade. Don't worry: his rep will enjoy a resurgence in the 2020's. You heard it here first.