tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8935942607987614770.post3389262389612412855..comments2023-08-06T10:20:26.565-04:00Comments on Retired Pastor Ruminates: Ruminations on “Moby Dick” as TheologyRichard L. Floydhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12113908222186199761noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8935942607987614770.post-57563840297230170972010-05-13T21:21:50.802-04:002010-05-13T21:21:50.802-04:00I'm catching up with this belatedly and can ad...I'm catching up with this belatedly and can add some tidbits. <br /><br />First, I think I recall that Hershel Parker in his great two-volume biography of Melville mentions a few interactions of Melville with the Episcopal church in Pittsfield, where he may have set foot now and then.<br /><br />But Melville apparently did know John Todd, as just about anybody in town would have, and used him as the model for the main character in his story, "The Lighting-Rod Man", in which a manic salesman of lightning rods preaches to the narrator on the perils of inhabiting a house not equipped with a proper set of lightning rods.<br /><br />More recently, Todd's influence on the moral education of several generations of Americans was explored in some depth by G. J. Barker-Benfield, in The horrors of the half-known life: Male attitudes toward women and sexuality in the 19th century (New York: Routledge, 2000), which pretty much blames Todd (a prolific author of youth-oriented tracts) for the whole idea that masturbation is at the root of all kinds of moral downfall (and points out the various pre-Freudian phallic references Melville managed to weave into the lightning rod story).Martin Langeveldhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05745134335677178737noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8935942607987614770.post-1908191662849089382010-03-07T18:44:50.323-05:002010-03-07T18:44:50.323-05:00Thanks, Ben, and thanks for inspiring the post in ...Thanks, Ben, and thanks for inspiring the post in the first place. I want to write someday (not a book) about why Hawthorne “got” Moby Dick when nobody else did. The reason is, I think, that both Hawthorne and Melville (in their own different ways) were trying through their fiction to come to terms with the major themes and issues of Puritanism, which was the faith of their fathers and grandfathers, but by their time was gone (leaving some wonderful cultural afterglow, but also dark secular versions of election like Manifest Destiny in the 19th century and American Exceptionalism in ours.)Richard L. Floydhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12113908222186199761noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8935942607987614770.post-3689507440637132392010-03-07T06:48:00.561-05:002010-03-07T06:48:00.561-05:00Thanks for this lovely post — and I envy your geog...Thanks for this lovely post — and I envy your geographical connections to Melville!Ben Myershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03800127501735910966noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8935942607987614770.post-87046912672668485012010-03-05T23:36:54.227-05:002010-03-05T23:36:54.227-05:00Jim,
I regret that I don't recall the convers...Jim,<br /><br />I regret that I don't recall the conversation, but you put some of it in an article in Colleague back in the day. Are you having as much fun as I am reading Edwards?<br /><br />Best, <br /><br />RickRichard L. Floydhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12113908222186199761noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8935942607987614770.post-78601141231886213492010-03-05T23:32:40.105-05:002010-03-05T23:32:40.105-05:00Dear Student,
Thank you for your kind words. I r...Dear Student,<br /><br />Thank you for your kind words. I read your comments on Ben's blog and thought you must have driven right by here.<br /><br />The Berkshires are indeed a lovely place to live, with a rich cultural heritage, and a theological one, too. J<br /><br />Jonathan Edwards wrote Freedom of the Will just down the road from here in Stockbridge, where Reinhold Niebuhr lived out the final years of his life, and where Max Stackhouse if now retired. And then there is Melville, who is something else altogether. I wish I could read Moby Dick for the first time again. Enjoy.<br /><br />Blessings,<br /><br />RickRichard L. Floydhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12113908222186199761noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8935942607987614770.post-12216767930364964452010-03-05T22:47:49.807-05:002010-03-05T22:47:49.807-05:00Dear Roger,
This is "Student" from Ben&...Dear Roger, <br />This is "Student" from Ben's blog. Thanks a bunch for this writing. Thanks to you an others I've realized in the last day I never read Moby-Dick, and now what a delicious treat to discover it anew, while I'm traveling around Melville's area. I'm also fairly new to an academic study of theology.<br /><br />Moby-Dick was perhaps too mystical for me when I saw it in my youth; or perhaps I didn't appreciate how dark and melancholy it is, or may have thought it not "christian" in my fundamentalist teen years. I missed quite a bit of theologically useful culture back then.<br /><br />I drove through the Berkshires for the first time early this week, not realizing I was so near Melville. I'm considering visiting Pittsville, or even moving there as I look for a place to be near the New England theo libraries that is quiet enough for study.<br /><br />Your blog is wonderful, and a great find for me at a time of transition. I now sort of know a fellow theologian in this new place. You are so interesting!<br /><br />Blessings to ya from Cape Cod.Studentnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8935942607987614770.post-74511929347732559172010-03-05T21:51:32.567-05:002010-03-05T21:51:32.567-05:00Hey, Rick! I remember that conversation that led ...Hey, Rick! I remember that conversation that led to these marvelous ruminations. I was obsessed with the "dark side" of American literature in those days. Melville and Hawthorne versus Horatio Alger (also of Mass. but rightly of Unitarian descent).<br /><br />I think our conversation was about my, then recent, discovery of that touching moment when Melville handed somewhat tenuously his manuscript of Moby Dick to Hawthorne and asked him to read it. I imagined Melville holding his breath while doing that.<br /><br />This is such good stuff, my friend.<br /><br />JimJim Gormanhttp://www.uccwaukesha.orgnoreply@blogger.com