Literature of the Quest: Melville and Pynchon

I’d like to open with a few words about the fact that I’m here addressing you today. When Vladimir Nabokov immigrated to the United States, before his fame from writing Lolita reached full swing, there was discussion of his becoming a professor at Harvard. Nabokov’s supporters included Harry Levin, who pushed fervently for the novelist’s appointment, but the linguist Roman Jakobson stood in opposition. “Even if one allows that he is an important writer,” he said, “are we next to invite an elephant to be a professor of zoology?” In other words, as a writer Nabokov should be studied by scholars, not admitted to their ranks.

I realize that I stand here before you today in the same capacity. What should a writer like me have to tell scholars like you? The elephant does not think about its own elephant-ness. Nor does it compare itself to the rhino or the tiger. That’s the work of scholars. The elephant simply thinks of itself as being itself.

And yet here I am, talking about Herman Melville, and specifically Moby-Dick. In a conversation about whales, I consider myself a mackerel or a sardine. I was worried I would have little more to offer than “ Yes, I love Moby-Dick; it’s a wonderful book; I’ve read it many times.”

Then I reflected that there are no doubt pearls hidden in Moby-Dick that an author might find valuable. I began to wonder how I as a writer might be able to put Melville to good use. What veins are there for me to mine?

With that in mind, today’s talk will be about form in novels. I will refrain from commenting on the theological or metaphysical meanings of the white whale. Then in the latter part of my remarks I will spend some time looking at Pynchon in the same way I consider Melville.

Let’s begin with the idea of the quest. Less a strictly defined literary term, the quest is something of a conventional idea. But while it may begin as a conventional concept, it can also be used to depart from the commonplace and restructure convention into something larger. Melville and Pynchon both achieve this, and it’s worth considering how.

Most young Japanese people are familiar with the word “quest” from the games they play on video game systems, computers, and smartphones. One of the bestselling game series of all time in Japan is Dragon Quest, known to fans more familiarly as Dra-Queh.

Before videogames, the notion of the quest likely became mainstream with the Star Wars movies. In developing his ideas about the films, George Lucas took cues from the mythologist Joseph Campbell’s book The Hero with a Thousand Faces. It no doubt helped that Lucas was a student of Campbell’s and was able to put his conversations with his teacher to good use in making his hit movies.

At its root, the quest is a pattern of myth that conveys a structured process of initiation. Campbell collected and analyzed myths from all over the world, isolated common elements, and organized his findings into his book-length study. The progression can be summed up with the following elements: calling, commitment, threshold, guardian, demons, transformation, completion of the task, return home.

The story centers on an innocent, naïve protagonist, usually a young man, though of course it can be a young woman, as well as any number of other variations. A task falls to this main character, requiring that he set out on a journey. At a certain point, he crosses the threshold between the everyday world and another, elevated world, thus beginning the adventure proper. Along the way he receives guidance from a guardian, a sage mentor. At times demons appear to frustrate his progress. Through his journey the protagonist grows and changes as he pushes onward, until he finally fulfills his task. In the end, he returns home from his adventure through a world wholly apart from his own, having achieved something significant. This is the basic pattern...