Specimens
Every so often, I'll be posting a piece of writing here -- essays, introductions, short short stories, etc.
*Here's a piece I wrote for my publisher about the book coming at the end of the summer.
Ahab’s Return, or The Last Voyage
If there’s one thing Ahab’s Return, or The Last Voyage isn’t, it’s a work of scholarship. One need not have even read Moby Dick to enjoy it. If a reader’s heard of Captain Ahab, merely heard of him, and knows he had a run in with a white whale, that’s plenty. This is not to say that the experience isn’t somewhat enhanced by the reading of what I once heard a wizened woman describe as “that wicked book.” Sure, I borrow some characters from Melville. I borrow one of his greatest characters, but it couldn’t be helped. The last time I read the tome, some three or four years ago, I came to the last line of the last paragraph of the last page, and realized Ahab wasn’t definitively dead. I had not seen him die in the novel. Granted his death is strongly suggested. The line of a harpoon hurled into the flesh of Moby Dick has just wrapped around the rabid captain’s throat. The white whale dives, and Ahab is pulled overboard.
I know the situation seems dire, but, well, he survived. What can I say? You can read about how he escapes and what becomes of him in my novel. Also, the authorship of Moby Dick, or The Whale is attributed to Ishmael in Ahab’s Return. Certainly, you’re not going to argue as to whether Ish is the real author or not. We find that his retelling of the hunt for the whale takes liberties with the truth. We have witnesses to the actual voyage, more even than Ahab and Ishmael. We find out what really happened. Another of Melville’s characters is also snatched up and dealt a real disservice in my story. I don’t want to give away too much. You’ll see for yourself. I’ll tell you this much, it’s not Queequeg or Starbuck, that’s another novel. In truth, the fellow of whom I hint isn’t even from Moby Dick.
Even though I claim this is not a work of scholarship, it is teeming with shards of history. Gleaming pieces of 1853 New York City that have been widely forgotten today. There is Seneca Village, a settlement on a piece of the land that is now Central Park, that was owned and farmed by predominantly black farmers. When the Irish and German immigrants, rejected as papists in the city proper, came looking for a place to be, Seneca Village took them in and all lived harmoniously. Or, did you know that at the northern end of Manhattan, where, in inane folk lore, the Lenape supposedly sold the island to the Dutch for 60 guilders beneath a giant tulip tree, lay the Indian caves? I’m pretty sure you’d not have heard that John Jacob Astor made his second fortune, after trapping, from the buying and transport of opium from Turkey to China. All this and more is revealed within.
I’ve established what Ahab’s Return, or The Last Voyage is not, but here’s what it is – a voyage back from the dead, the adventures of a character rent free from his pages, a mystery, a monster story, a book of assassins and friendships, a hunt for a fiercer Leviathan, a contemplation of Whiteness, an act of redemption, a tale of a father and son, an earlier incarnation of opioids, fake news, and racial oppression, all of it told by George Harrow, a scribe of the penny press, head writer for that speculative rag of outlandish creation, The Gorgon’s Mirror.
Ahab’s Return, or The Last Voyage
If there’s one thing Ahab’s Return, or The Last Voyage isn’t, it’s a work of scholarship. One need not have even read Moby Dick to enjoy it. If a reader’s heard of Captain Ahab, merely heard of him, and knows he had a run in with a white whale, that’s plenty. This is not to say that the experience isn’t somewhat enhanced by the reading of what I once heard a wizened woman describe as “that wicked book.” Sure, I borrow some characters from Melville. I borrow one of his greatest characters, but it couldn’t be helped. The last time I read the tome, some three or four years ago, I came to the last line of the last paragraph of the last page, and realized Ahab wasn’t definitively dead. I had not seen him die in the novel. Granted his death is strongly suggested. The line of a harpoon hurled into the flesh of Moby Dick has just wrapped around the rabid captain’s throat. The white whale dives, and Ahab is pulled overboard.
I know the situation seems dire, but, well, he survived. What can I say? You can read about how he escapes and what becomes of him in my novel. Also, the authorship of Moby Dick, or The Whale is attributed to Ishmael in Ahab’s Return. Certainly, you’re not going to argue as to whether Ish is the real author or not. We find that his retelling of the hunt for the whale takes liberties with the truth. We have witnesses to the actual voyage, more even than Ahab and Ishmael. We find out what really happened. Another of Melville’s characters is also snatched up and dealt a real disservice in my story. I don’t want to give away too much. You’ll see for yourself. I’ll tell you this much, it’s not Queequeg or Starbuck, that’s another novel. In truth, the fellow of whom I hint isn’t even from Moby Dick.
Even though I claim this is not a work of scholarship, it is teeming with shards of history. Gleaming pieces of 1853 New York City that have been widely forgotten today. There is Seneca Village, a settlement on a piece of the land that is now Central Park, that was owned and farmed by predominantly black farmers. When the Irish and German immigrants, rejected as papists in the city proper, came looking for a place to be, Seneca Village took them in and all lived harmoniously. Or, did you know that at the northern end of Manhattan, where, in inane folk lore, the Lenape supposedly sold the island to the Dutch for 60 guilders beneath a giant tulip tree, lay the Indian caves? I’m pretty sure you’d not have heard that John Jacob Astor made his second fortune, after trapping, from the buying and transport of opium from Turkey to China. All this and more is revealed within.
I’ve established what Ahab’s Return, or The Last Voyage is not, but here’s what it is – a voyage back from the dead, the adventures of a character rent free from his pages, a mystery, a monster story, a book of assassins and friendships, a hunt for a fiercer Leviathan, a contemplation of Whiteness, an act of redemption, a tale of a father and son, an earlier incarnation of opioids, fake news, and racial oppression, all of it told by George Harrow, a scribe of the penny press, head writer for that speculative rag of outlandish creation, The Gorgon’s Mirror.