Filed under: Freakin' Cell Phones, Information Technology, Keith Olbermann, Literature, Moby Dick, Nicotine, The Tiffany Network, Things That are White, Tom Wolfe, Vogue
Anna Wintour writes: “Are you kidding me? He would have looked like Moby Dick in a white suit.”
Anna!
Baby! Darling! Sweetheart!
Just love your work!!!
Gorgeous boys and gorgeous girls wearing gorgeous fashion and living in gorgeous style. Who wouldn’t want to just absolutely drown in the waters of such physical beauty?
But — and I hope you don’t mind me saying so — your comment on Keith and the Melville classic is a tad superficial.
No, no, no! Don’t feel bad! Your life is about fashion; you haven’t had time for literature.
So glad you wrote. I was just discussing “Moby Dick” with the coffee table and the torchiere lamp. (Like, what else are we supposed to do when Keith is not here?) There is a lot going on beneath the surface, and I don’t mean just the whale. The book is just loaded with symbolism.
Par example: Queequeg’s coffin.
It’s a coffin, right? Right. He builds it because he is going to die, or someone else is going to die. You’ve got to be one soggy falafel to not know that somebody is going to bite the big one in this book. (I mean, let’s put it up in neon lights, for crying out loud.)
But it is more than a symbol of death. Did you read the book, or the Classics Illustrated version? The latter is good, but it does lack some of the nuance of the actual novel.
At any rate, do you recall what happens at the end? Moby takes Ahab for a swim in the deep end of the pool, the Pequod goes down, yada-yada-yada …. All very sad.
But! Ishmael survives. Yes! He survives by clinging to Queequeg’s coffin, which keeps him afloat until he is rescued. Thus the coffin represents not only death, but life, rebirth, renewal.
Tres Zen, n’est-ce pas?
Back to the White Whale — and may I add that the kitchen appliances are in complete agreement with you that Keith is awfully white, even for a white guy? A real haole boy. He would look better with a tan. All those carrot sticks aren’t really cutting it. I don’t understand why he can’t catch some rays when he’s up at Yankee Stadium.
At any rate …. Where was I? Oh, yes: symbolism.
Take a look at this. It’s a pretty good summary; emphasis is mine:
The White Whale is one of the best known symbols in American literature. What it represents depends entirely on who is noticing. To Starbuck, Moby Dick is just another whale, except that he is more dangerous. Early in the novel, Starbuck challenges Ahab’s motives for altering the ship’s mission, from accumulating oil to killing the White Whale. On the quarter-deck in Chapter 36, Starbuck calls it “blasphemous” to seek revenge on a “dumb brute … that simply smote thee from blindest instinct!” If Starbuck sees anything beyond that in the whale, it is that Moby Dick represents the captain’s madness and a very serious diversion from the ship’s proper mission. The Samuel Enderby’s captain, who has lost an arm to the White Whale, sees it as representing a great prize in both glory and sperm oil but seems very reasonable in his desire to leave the whale alone. He says to Ahab, “There would be great glory in killing him, I know that; and there is a ship-load of precious sperm in him, but, hark ye, he’s best let alone; don’t you think so, Captain?” (Chapter 100) Ahab points out that the “accursed thing is not always what least allures.”
To some, the White Whale is a myth. To others, he is immortal. But one significant question is, What is the White Whale to Ahab? Ishmael grants that Ahab views the whale as an embodiment of evil. Ishmael himself is not so sure. The narrator often sees both sides of a question, never more so than in Chapter 42, “The Whiteness of the Whale.” There he tells us that Moby Dick’s whiteness might represent good or evil, glory or damnation, all colors or the “visible absence of color.”
For Ahab’s interpretation, it is helpful to consider the captain’s comments in the pivotal Chapter 36. There, the captain says he sees Moby Dick as a “mask,” behind which lies a great power whose dominance Ahab refuses to accept.* Ahab sees that inscrutable power as evil. Some scholars argue that it is not the whale, or the force behind the whale, that is evil; the evil is in Ahab. Others see the captain as simply insane. Ahab is out of control as he rants about attacking the force behind the façade of Moby Dick. He wants to kill the whale in order to reach that force. Ahab seems to want to be a god.* As great and charismatic a man as he can be in his finest moments, the captain is destructively egocentric and mad for power. To Ahab, we might conclude, the White Whale represents that power which limits and controls man. Ahab sees it as evil incarnate. But perhaps it is just a big, smart fish.
[*Who knew Captain Ahab is a branch in the O'Reilly family tree?]
Thus, what you see in the Great Whale is determined by your perspective, your frame of reference. The sofa points out that this is another tidy example of Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity, i.e., how an observer’s point-of-view can skew what is seen. (Such a show-off! Just because he was a desk at MIT in a previous life.) It kills me to say this, but he does have a point: EinsteinLight. More specifically, the Inertial Frame of Reference
So, yes: Keith in white could represent Moby Dick. And he could also be evil/damnation, good/glory, an immortal myth, a very large soft-serve vanilla ice cream cone, or the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. He is a many-faceted fellow.
If you have the time, download “Moby Dick” from Project Gutenberg. There’s even an audio version.
May I ask a favor? You have many friends in the publishing business. Do you think you can get me an interview with the Times? I’d love to do the Sunday Book Review. If not that, then articles on baseball for The New Yorker once Angell retires.
Kiss-kiss, hug-hug.
Ciao, babe.
