Moby Dick: A Survival Guide to the Twenty First Century
This is my current project. It is barely started, and chances it will ever be finally fully finished are perhaps low. But I'm not sure that any book ever gets fully finished, and I intend to keep going regardless. It's a very gradual labour of love. "Life is like stepping onto a boat which is about to sail out to sea and sink." (Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, by Shunryu Suzuki)
Table of Contents
Introduction
I think Herman Melville's Moby Dick can be viewed as a survival guide to the twenty first century.
The two chapters we are going to focus on
I'm going to write about the final chapter the Chase: Final Day. Everyone writes about the final chapter, of course, but I'm also going to write about an earlier chapter: the Grand Armada.
Moby Dick is about capitalism
It is not a radical approach to understand Moby Dick as a novel about capitalism. But perhaps Moby Dick is just about capitalism.
Moby Dick is about gender
Moby Dick is famously a book about men. There are barely any female characters. Yet perhaps Moby Dick is all about gender.
Moby Dick is about ways of looking at the world
If Moby Dick isn't just about capitalism, or gender, or whales, what is it about?