Blogging Moby Dick

[dreamshark]

The fun thing about reading a literary classic is noticing how familiar it all seems, and then realizing that you're reading the original source that all those other authors and auteurs were copying. After reading the chapter about the spooky (dare I say eldritch) painting in the Spouter Inn there is no doubt in my mind that H.P. Lovecraft was a Melville fan. Now I'm wondering if the Caine Mutiny would ever have been written if Moby Dick hadn't been. Both books are told through the eyes of a novice seaman who finds himself trapped in a nightmare voyage with an insane captain, torn between a sense of duty and the instinct for self-preservation. In both books the captain himself is both terrifying and pathetic: a man who has had a long and honorable career but has been driven around the bend by intolerable stress. Surely it's not a coincidence that the captain of the Caine has the peculiar name of "Queeg."