More Moby
Contrary to what Slog commenters will have you believe, the 32nd chapter of Moby-Dick, Herman Melville's 1851 portentous comic novel, is not "one of the most boring passages in American literature." The chapter is called "Cetology," and according to Slog commenter Comte, it is "full of pseudoscientific information" and "general misinformation" and "it just brings the plot to a grinding halt." He goes on, "I say, if you're going to read Moby-Dick, skip that chapter altogether; you won't be missing anything."
This comment was posted to The Stranger's blog more than a month ago, but it has been eating at me ever since. I'll be doing something else, like trying to sleep, and will suddenly bolt upright and think, "God damn that Comte! Telling people to skip the best chapter in Moby-Dick!"
It is the funniest chapter I've read so far (93 chapters to go). The pseudoscience of it is the joke, the whole point. The narrator describes this chapter as a "classification of the constituents of a chaos," because at this point in history no one knows much about whales, but his "classification" begins with dissing a whale (on the grounds that, compared to his beloved sperm whale, it's "almost unworthy mentioning"); then "waiving all argument" from anyone who disagrees that whales are fish (he calls on "holy Jonah" to "back" him); then presenting "passports to quit the Kingdom of Cetology" to a kind of whale he describes as less of a whale and more of a "pig-fish" (harsh!); then trashing natural history itself ("repellingly intricate"). Then he calls one kind of whale a hater (the whale is "a whale-hater, as some men are man-haters"); and then he describes a bunch of whales who are of "middling magnitude," including one whose horn would make "reading pamphlets" easier; and then he says there is a rabble of "fugitive, half-fabulous whales" that he knows nothing about, for example the "Junk Whale" and the "Pudding-Headed whale."
Is this a serious but failed attempt at a scientific survey, as Comte insists?
Melville could not be reached for comment.
Jew on Jew
Myla Goldberg, who is the author of the 2000 novel Bee Season ("portraying the breakdown of a family and the spiritual explorations of its two children amid a series of spelling bees"—Wikipedia) and is the subject of a pretty catchy Decemberists song (the one that starts: "Myla Goldberg sets a steady hand upon her brow") will be interviewed Wednesday, May 9, at the Tractor Tavern by Stranger staff writer Eli Sanders. As of press time, Sanders isn't sure what he'll ask, but the questions are sure to be good and Jewish: Sanders recently wrote about Jewish history in Washington State, both he and Goldberg grew up in Jewish households, the family in Bee Season is Jewish, and the event is produced by Nextbook, the Jewish literature organization. Tickets are $6—$8. 
