Melville-Darwin Link

There is an interesting (to me) historic link between Charles Darwin and Herman Melville in that both visited and wrote about the Galapagos Islands.  Darwin of course featured them in his write-up of his trip on the The Beagle.  Melville wrote a series of 10 sketches called The Encantadas, or Enchanted Isles, which I just wrapped up.  I was not sure whether Melville had actually visited the Galapagos, but indeed he did visit them on his first whaling voyage.  It's less clear whether he himself hunted for tortoises (the text suggests he did unsuccessfully though this may be fictionalized) or simply helped load them on board.  I did think his vision of the ancient tortoise carrying the world on its back (as in some mythologies as well as Pratchett's Discworld) was pretty interesting and perhaps the highlight of The Encantadas.

I also wrapped up Billy Budd.  For the most part, it felt too abbreviated.  I did find the last few chapters showing how "broken telephone" led to a completely false version of events among the general public while a very different (and more broadly accurate) version was circulated among the crew as a sea chanty.  This seemed a bit reminiscent of what Faulkner was up to in A Fable, though I didn't like A Fable at all.

I had mixed feelings about Manu Joseph's Serious Men, particularly the well-worn trope (at least in novels written by middle aged men) of a beautiful young woman falling for a man old enough to be her father and then trying to destroy him after she was scorned.  I could have done without that for sure!

I didn't like the first one-third of DuPont's The American Fiancée, mostly because of some lazy magic realism where the grandmother dies but then hangs out at a funeral home (and later a convent) for many decades waiting her second death.  There just didn't seem to be any point to it.  I can't remember off the top of my head if the same sort of thing happens in Kroetsch's What the Crow Said, but I thought so.  (What may be more curious is that I am negatively comparing DuPont to Kroetsch, but at the time I wasn't all that crazy about What the Crow Said either, thinking it had too much pointless magic realism!)  But the later sections focusing on the great-children and what they get up to in Europe is much more interesting to me.  I have a bit under 200 pages to go, so I will likely finish this up as soon as I am back from NYC and DC.  After this, I have short stories by Lucia Berlin (A Manual for Cleaning Women) and Alice Munro.  I haven't completely given up on Munro, though I am certainly not rushing to get through her work.  I did get a few stories into The Love of a Good Woman, but I really need to read the 3 stories from Runaway that Almodovar used as the basis of Julieta, so I'll make sure I get to them soon.  And then I'll finally read Osipov's Kilometer 101 (NYRB).

Speaking of the NYC trip, FedEx did get me my ticket to McNeal, so I will be going to that.  (The poetry books haven't turned up at my friend's house, but there is another day or so, so I have some hope...)  I haven't 100% decided on whether I will try to get to the Jewish Museum or MoMA on this trip.  I'm leaning towards squeezing them in, but it just depends on how quickly I get through the Met and the Guggenheim on Wed.  I would like to try to see The Phillips Collection on Friday, but I don't think that will happen.  I will say I don't feel ready to make the trip, but it is just around the corner (tomorrow actually)!  So I had better drop off and start getting ready for the rest of the day.  Ciao!