All Astir

All Astir [W]hat I wanted was not merely rest, but cheer; the making one of many pleased and pleasing human faces; the getting into a genial humane assembly of my kind . . . . “The Two Temples” M elville’s narrator in “The Two Temples,” when looking for fellowship and community, finds them in a theater. We might think of this “Extracts” as a stage whereon many players appear: John Bryant at the New Bedford Whaling Museum’s Moby-Dick Marathon (his lecture follows ); Mary K. Bercaw Edwards, Arthur Riss, and Laurie Robertson-Lorant on the boards of the Melville Lyceum in New Bedford; Hershel Parker delivering the keynote address at the Berkshire Historical Society’s gathering in Pittsfield; and Ricardo Pitts-Wiley and his talented cast in Moby-Dick: Then and Now in Pawtucket, RI. We also feature the debut performances of Mary K. Bercaw Edwards as Melville Society Secretary and John Matteson as Treasurer in the Officers’ Reports that deliver the finale to the issue. This year’s Melville lectures at the New Bedford Whaling Museum considered Melville’s texts in different editions and media. John Bryant’s talk, titled “Moby-Dick: Reading, Rewriting, and Editing,” framed the museum’s MobyDick Marathon and Melville Lyceum by showing how the differences between the first British and American editions can influence reading practices today. By unveiling editorial decisions enacted over a century and a half, he made a familiar text seem strange—thoroughly astonishing and delighting an audience who have been reading it at the Marathon for years and thought they knew the book intimately. The Melville Lyceum lectures acquired a new look this year, taking place in the museum’s beautiful library reading room in an intimate space where one feels the presence of the Melville Society Archive and its rare books nearby. Mary K. Bercaw Edwards, newly-tenured in the English Department at the University of Connecticut and current Melville Society Secretary, began the series on March 8 with, “The World in a Man-of-War: Master and Commander and White-Jacket.” Drawing on her deep knowledge of nautical history, as well as years of teaching Melville and Patrick O’Brian, Bercaw Edwards gave a fascinating reading of Peter Weir’s 2003 film as a text accurate in ways that Melville’s novel was for his time. Her clips gave particular insight into shipboard hierarchies and relationships between officers and crew, complicated matters of rigging and seamanship, and the violent chaos of storms at sea. Her C
2007 The Authors Journal compilation C
2007 The Melville Society and Blackwell Publishing Inc L E V I A T H A N A J O U R N A L O F M E L V I L L E S T U D I E S 79 E X T R A C T S Figure 1. Mary K. Bercaw-Edwards. lecture was also a reminder of the continuing appeal of White-Jacket, even as it tends to be overshadowed by Melville’s whaling novel. Moby-Dick surfaced dramatically, however, in the April 12 lecture, delivered by Arthur Riss from Salem State University, and titled, “The Final Frontier: Moby-Dick, Star Trek, and the Great American Epic.” Turning to material in the original Star Trek series and the later film, Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan (1982), Riss showed how deeply Melville’s creation of Ahab Figure 2. Arthur Riss. 80 L E V I A T H A N A L L A S T I R Figure 3. Laurie Robertson-Lorant. informed the character of Khan Noonien Singh and how, in one especially gothic clip, the discovery of a copy of Moby-Dick in a room frozen in time captured the enduring, spectral qualities of the book. Other scenes showed the “wrath of Khan” as an imaginative channeling of Ahab’s nervous lofty language. While reminding the audience of how literary Star Trek may have been, Riss also opened up the cosmic resonances of Moby-Dick, offering new ways to understand literary and popular epic. Laurie Robertson-Lorant, of the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth , spoke on May 10 on “Flashes of Inspiration, Blades of Light: Melville’s Benito...