If Melville Had Ever Learned How to Write.
When Herman Melville began a novel about a sailor (that would be himself) on a whaling expedition led by a mad captain (that would be Ahab) in pursuit of a white whale (that would be the white whale), he was a hundred pages into the thing, and it was going nowhere, so he dropped into the Brooklyn Lyceum. It happened a writing teacher from a famous MFA program was going to give a lecture on how to write a novel. Might be a good thing to know, he thought. So he sharpened a pencil, grabbed a pad of paper, and sat himself in one of the cheap seats. This is what he learned.
She started the lecture by saying that on the first page the reader must meet the main character. Call him hero, protagonist, call him anything. “My protagonist would be this Captain Ahab,” Melville thought. And she said the reader must get an idea of the conflict, probably by giving a glimpse of the antagonist, the bad guy. “That would be the whale.” And, she said, the “point of view” must be established, first person, second person (rare) or third person, fourth person (no, he must have heard wrong on that).
“Shit,” Melville thought. “On the first page I introduce the most minor character in the novel, just a bystander, a real jerk, and you can’t call him hero, protagonist, anything really. I call this loser Ishmael. The reader will think this dud is going to do something exciting before long. Wrong. He’s just the narrator who has some bullshit ideas of his own that don’t do anything but slow down the plot.”
Melville began to panic. “The problem is the two main characters, Ahab and the White Whale, don’t show up for a hundred pages. They stand in the wings to make an appearance twiddling their thumbs or fins, that is Ahab his thumbs and the Whale, his fins.
“So Ahab has to show up on the first page, and the whale, too.”
And the reader has to be informed, Melville learned what kind of plot it is. Mystery, love story, humor/satire, Biblical historical, an animal story (which my story sort of is, but in an animal story the animals have to talk, so scratch that). And the clue should be in the title. “My book is really a thriller, a chase,” he thought, “where we know who is the chaser (Ahab) and who is the chasee (that goddam whale, and I wish I could get him out of the story, because animals in a story are supposed to be cute. And this whale looks like hell – hey, there’s an idea.)”
“This writing game is more complicate than I had thought. So maybe instead of calling it Moby Dick, which might get readers with disgusting diseases fetishes who will think ‘Moby Dick’ is a particularly grusome kind of STD, I should call it A High Seas Thriller: the Whale and the Whaler Man. Not bad, but as soon as you mention “seas” people expect pirates. And so I gotta get pirates on the first page. So maybe instead of ‘Call me Ishmael’ it could start ‘Beware a seafaring man with one leg, my boy, and watch out for the black spot.’ So the title could be A High Seas Thriller: A Whale, A Whaler Man and Some Pirates.
“That might confuse the conflict. Three’s a crowd. So maybe Ahab and the Whale become a pirate-fighting team. Maybe the Pirates have captured the Whale’s girlfriend. Ahab wants to help rescue her. Or the Pirates know there is a map to Captain Kidd’s buried treasure hidden in Ahab’s hollow peg leg.
“And if getting all that on the first page isn’t enough, I learned that you have to introduce the psychological theme, the plot theme, the character theme, the location theme, the weather theme, and the theme theme, all on the first page. So here goes:
Chapter 1.
Another almost sleepless night. Every time Ahab dozed off, his pillow changed into that goddamned whale lunging for his balls before ripping off his leg. THE WRONG LEG. Leaving him legless. And when he wasn’t dreaming about that white whale who didn’t know his right from his left – why doesn’t he tie a rubber band around his right fin – then there was that creep Ishmael who seemed to have queer crush on him. And some map, and pirates, and Captain Kidd. But which Whale was that? Not the new whale, who is a nice guy. I gotta get rid of the old whale, who won’t play nice. And maybe Mr. Nice Whale shows Ahab a picture of his (the Nice Whale’s) girlfriend. (Introducing the plot, main characters, and a hint that the main character has a couple screws loose upstairs. Psychological theme.)
And how did that loony Ishmael – I have him pegged (oh, no, not peg legs again) for a writer, he’s got that worthless shifty look – ever get the idea I wanted to join his crew of sailor boy perverts? Sure I let him suck my dick a few times, ok, more than a few times, and vice versa, but I explained to him that was only so I wouldn’t cheat on the soon-to-be Widow Arab with another girl.
There’s only one way for me to get to sleep for sure. I’ll start reading this Idiot’s Guide to Fishing for Whales I found in the pew of that YMCA sailors chapel I visited in Wichita. Run by the nicest looking young minister. Who taught me the funnest dance called “YMCA.” I dressed up like an Indian Chief . . . and he pretended to be a motorcycle cop . . .
Idiot’s Guide to Fishing for Whales
Section 1: How to row a whale boat. Step one. Insert the oar in the oar lock.
Why does that remind me of the last time I saw Ishmael and his cannibal buddy who sold me a shrunken head made of black tar opium? We listened to Steppenwolf and watched Ishmael’s guppies.
Lemme skip to
Section 2. Boiling blubber into whale oil.
God this is boring. How could anyone write this stuff let alone read it. But that reminds me of something my father told me, whenever you feel like criticizing someone, remember he might not have had all the advantages you had. In my case an old man who cut off my leg with a hedge trimmer during the Retreat from Caporetto. THE OTHER WRONG LEG. Or was that Napoleon’s Retreat. Or that beautiful Tennessee waltz.
I am feeling a little sleepy. Starting to dream of my pansexual hang-ups (Psychological theme), chasing whales (plot theme), out on the ocean (natch, location theme), conflicts with pirates (conflict theme), beautiful sunny days out on the South Pacific (weather theme, except when it gets stormy and I get seasick, but I guess that’s more the medical theme, which the girl didn’t mention) and finally the theme theme, which is about what I am really trying to do on these sailing trips besides make money and kill time – namely to figure out whether God exists and how much I’ll ahve to drop in the basket each week to get him off my back.
Maybe this next chapter will let me doze off.
Section 3: On Splicing Rope. Take the top strand and thread it through the splicing needle.
Snore. I’m dreaming of pirates. Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest . . .
Chapter 2
Son-to-be Widow Arab stood on the widow’s walk peering at the ship docking at the wharf. Yes. It was a China Clipper. Soon she would be drifting down to the dock with the rest of the New Bedford dope fiends to get her month’s supply of Back Tar. She held up her arms and they were once again beautiful and smooth, the needle tracks hardly visible since she had shifted to injecting on her inner thighs, where no one ever went except for Ahab . . . and Father Dimmesdale . . . and Reverend Elmer Gantry . . . and Annie Sullivan the Miracle Worker. And that schoolteacher Parson Weems. And then there were those one-legged and no-legged sailors she occasionally invited to her bed as a tribute to her husband, “Stumpy,” as she had affectionately nicknamed him.
Chapter 3:
I think I’ll just cut out chapters from the Idiot’s Guide to Fishing for Whales and stick them between the plot chapters, which are getting so exciting the reader needs a chance to slow down and examine his navel to see if God is in there (theme theme). That way it will but the writing job in half. I suppose that asshole college professors will call that padding, but who cares? Nobody’s going to read this thing anyway.
Chapter 4:
I’m on a roll. This book might turn out to be almost as good as Mardi.