more Melville

Prof. Hugh Crawford of Georgia Tech (you’ll know him if you listened to the OOO SYMPOSIUM RECORDINGS) writes to say that he’s about to give a lecture at Tianjin University, China, entitled “Melville and Flat Ontology.”

It’s a completely plausible title. There has probably never been a greater master of controlled digression than Melville. You get a long chapter of adventure, then a number of shorter ones on clam and cod chowder, the right way to store ropes in a barrel, the right way to cook a whale steak, and the right way to cut apart a whale carcass. Then another long adventure chapter, followed by meditations on whether a whale’s spout is water or merely vapor, the mystery of why whale bodies sometimes sink before being cut apart, the role of giant squids in the life of whales, the system of mail delivery and visitation between ships meeting at sea, and so forth. It’s as flat an ontology as you’re likely to find in literature.