Evening star., 1932-01-05
NEW BOOKS
AT RANDOM
I. G. NJ.

MOBY-DICK. Herman Melville. The
John c. Winston Company.
Certainly not a new book" save
only in the sense that a great work be-
comes progressively new, increasingly
vital
AS clearly also not book picked up
in casual random" outreaching. Here,
instead, definite tribute to the holi-
day dignity and beauty Of this particu-
lar issue Of "Moby-Dick." Tribute. as
well, to its sponsor, the John c. Win
ston Company.
A minute of fair advantage might
now pass into tracing the relation be-
tween high art in book making and
Sharpened zest in reading itself But
there is no minute for this No time
either for the arreSting book situation
that, within the year, has developed out
of the general malady, hard times.
Promises were not lacking from Cne
house and another for fewer books and
| better ones" Yet, hardly within recall,
has the open been so jammed and
| lostled with publications, cheap inside
and out, as in this period of frantic
| endeaYor and plainly questionable econ
omy. An absorbing and pertinent study
opens here on the nature and methods
| OF economy in every sort Of enterprise,
from running a house to running the
earth.
However, the pleasure and business
OF the moment lie with "Moby- Dick"
Il get very little out of it, Not half
so good, to my way of thinking, as Two
Years Before the Mast" And he passed
by the lovely Christmas "Moby-Dick."
Just talking, casually, the two men as
they fumbled the book shelves.
Interesting, though, for this passing
opinion served to draw up before us the
Two American authors who have written
great sea observation-disclosures Melville
and Richard Henry Dana. 1t reset the
TACT also that each of these writer's
commands his own following. And that
the two form separate camps. And
hardly the twain shall meet"
Here, on the one hand, is the clear
reallSt, Dana. On the other hand, Mel
vile, realist plus and an imaginative
reach that passes the bounds of ma
terial support and, over the line, roams
the domain of the spirit drawing near
10 many OF its mysteries, clearly pene-
tratlng some point at which the human
ever stands impOrtunate and pleading
From lifelong intimacy with New
England, sea and shore, these two Gre
ated and held in peTpetuity the whaler
and the whaling industry of the North
Atlantic Coast At its height, besides
but at a moment when the uplift of
enterprise was, unconsciously, facing
abasement and final disaster, through
the seeming inconSequence of oil wells
bubbllng through the ores of old Penn'S
State. Shutters to sperm candles were
already in the making
However bnrp thav tho +u,o
stories commemorative of a passing pc
riod, commemorative of human genius
besides.
A young Harvard graduate over
studied in the fashion of his day, Rich
ard Dana signed up for a tWo-year
cruise around the Cape to California,
which then was a Mexican province
About 1870 Out of that shipboard life
grew 1.-TWO Years Before the Mast" A
book of many printings in many lands.
A book that even yet is vigorous in its
own enduring simplicity and verify
One whose devoted appraisers liken to
the ways of De Foe, with words and with
the straight and clear path of that
immortal chronicler Of the heart of
man.
For the time being that whaling ship
was the world Upon it men who
worked and played, who fought and re-
pented, who were punished for short
comings and not praised for full meas
ur,j of oyerservice. Quite like the
world, that ship, you see. A travel
ing planet in itself. Over it the i'm
measurable sky, proud of its own out
spread universe Of sun and star and
winding courses. Beneath it the vast,
mysterious sea. And these, the ship,
the sky, the sea, the men, are trans
ferred to print in straight and simple
clarity that stands as a long life in
surance for 1.-TWO Years Before the
Mast" This writer's only notable boo';.
The experience back of it went deep,
turning Richard Dana to the pursuit CT
admiralty law and to the reform of
many hardship and injustice to sail
ors of the seven seas.
X
Out of the same New England, with
its stock of Puritans and QuakerS and
other hard-headed fighters against the
very obvious and most potent Satan
living in their midst, willy and never
sleeping-out of this same spot issued
the splendor of "Moby-Dick." AS with
Young Dana, the threads of this tale
were drawn from the daily life of the
Puritan, from the basic traits that built
the Yankee character and made the
Yankee famous the wide world around. |
New England and the whaling industry |
lust these, were, the initial literary lug |
gage Of this pair of writer's.
Here, too, as in the other case,
whaling ship became, for the time
being. the world itself And here also
the pursuit and capture OF the great
sea mammal to meet the ends OF
trade and commerce, became the prime
Einht there the like |
ness ends: the two literary creators
part company definitely.
Except-that some say it was Danas
book that caused young Melville to
choose the whaler's life. In that
case! One must not forget how
ever, that Herman Melville is of the
tribe about whose members everybody
saws everything. There are such peo-
pie. Clearly, he is one of them.
The human cargo of that ship and
the errand upon which it was bent
create a world of new outlook, OF mag
nificent, but errant, treatment, which
from its day of issue far out into
the future will cause wars and rumors
of wars among the literary clans upon
the true greatness of "MobyDick" and
upon what it is all about anyway.
grants, everybody who has
any dependable information upon the
subject, that this is a great story, his
toric in substance and effect, of the
whaling industry at its height. That
at no spot does it sacrifice items Of
fact in the interest Of imaginative
splendors and melodramatic events.
But here is a mad ship, commanded
by maniac, Capt. Ahab racing
toward the North Pole and back again
toward the South, ostensibly hunting
whales but really in pursuit of Moby-
Dick, the great white whale, that had
so neatly, yet so ferociously, bereft, at
a single bite, Capt Ahab Of one OF
his two legs. The driving force of
that particular whaler was revenge,
deep, unalterable, vindictive. Capt.
Ahab and Leviathan IN enmity. Man
and nature at odds. And under this
elemental sweep and clash of forces
the great adventure passes out Of the
l. tfxv nj Hn