recommended reading

Yes, I'm still alive. And boy, have I got some stories to tell you.

But first let me tell you about the stories I read while I was gone.

First, I've finished Moby-Dick.

Thank you, thank you. I'll be here all week.

One-hundred and thirty-five days have passed in this fourth and ultimately successful attempt. I started January 5th. I concluded May 20th. I resisted, a hundred times, the temptation to forge ahead and finish early. Some days, I admit, I read retroactively, making up for days I missed...or intentionally slacked off. (Hey, with my week devoted to the General Atomics MQ-1 Predator and my weekends reserved for my lovely girlfriend, Herman Melville takes a distant third.) I marked my schedule clearly on my World War II airplanes calendar (I'm a complete sucker for vintage warbirds), and read diligently on a near-daily basis. And it's done. I've finished. I've conquered it. I've done something that a satisfyingly large amount of people have never done: read Moby-Dick from cover-to-cover.

Feel free to bask in my awesomeness.

Two important literary objectives completed in one stroke: I've (a) added another classic novel to my "have-read" list, and (b) found out how much different the Gregory Peck movie is from Melville's original vision.

It's a lot different, as it turns out.

Disinterested types and dilettantes may wish to read ahead to my actual review of Moby-Dick. I am about to embark upon an axiomatic rant about the omnipresent ineptitude of the film industry in adequately, faithfully translating fiction from the printed page to the silver screen.

Ready? Here we go:

I'm going to list two suggestions for the Hollywood producers here. If followed, they will ensure that the writer's original vision is left intact, the debilitating cancer of adaptation decay will not blight the project, and the resultant film will not be a total, blatant, festering pile of shit.

Item One: Quit cutting out the supporting characters. The Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings franchises are the worst offenders. I understand that the series have an insane amount of minor characters and not all of them could make it into the films. But some of these guys had really important roles: Tom Bombadil was the deux ex machina responsible for saving the hobbits from the Barrow-wights, and giving them the daggers they used in battle; the Potter films eliminated the character of Peeves the Poltergeist, who, though by no means a driving force behind the plot, nonetheless serves as a catalyst for many pivotal events.

The 1956 film adaptation of Moby-Dick (starring Gregory Peck, Richard Basehart and Orson Welles) is likewise guilty. Some rather vital characters were cut out of the screenplay. The most notable of these is Fedallah, Ahab's Parsee harpooneer. His mere presence on the ship causes unease among the crew, for Fedallah seems more demon than human: he sleeps standing up, stares unblinkingly, and speaks in a low hiss. I'm no book critic, but as near as I can tell, Fedallah's character represents the dark side of ambition, the ruthlessness and bestiality that inhabits the mind bent on revenge, the evil core of the human soul that will cross any boundary, commit any sin, destroy any foe to accomplish a goal.

Predictably, he is the first of Ahab's crew to die. Well, unless you count the poor sap who fell overboard in the typhoon in the middle of the book.

Fedallah's a central figure to the plot, theme and deeper meaning. And just as importantly, he adds color and variety to the cast. Why cut him out? Surely the film could've snuck him in somewhere (like maybe the prow of Ahab's boat?).

A great many other characters had their roles drastically reduced, or downright mutated. Stubb, the second mate, lightens the mood of every somber scene in the novel. In the movie he basically smokes and grinds out one-liners in whatever faux New England dialect Harry Andrews thought would fit the bill. Third mate Flask's role is almost nonexistent. Starbuck's Big Dilemma is a mere afterthought. Perth, the blacksmith, who spends most of the book toadying about the ship acting like Ahab's page, is rendered down to a shadow. The film consists of Ahab acting all portentous and crazy and vengeful, Starbuck vacillating between conspiracy and cowardice, Stubb and Flask being wiseacres, Queequeg a friggin' mystic, and Ishmael blissfully ignorant of everything until the very end.

Me no like.

Item Two: Let's talk this out. The dialogue was written the way it was for a reason. Quit mucking it up, switching it around, slashing and burning it, Hollywood. I'm sickened by how much of Melville's wordage didn't make it into the film's script. Dialogue which provided important characterization and foreshadowing was excised. Most of Ahab's soliloquies, which sinisterly document his descent into utter madness, were either drastically shortened or eliminated. And description...oh, Melville's description. It makes the book. He can take an ordinary situation (or an extraordinary one) and describe it so poetically and so realistically that I feel like my head has been dipped into a bucket of paint and used to smear the scene onto canvas.

Who do I blame for this? Ray Bradbury. The novelist. Yeah, him. He was the screenwriter. I know, right? The guy who wrote Fahrenheit 451 is responsible for the truncated, hollow imitation of Moby-Dick which appears on TCM every month or two. Seems Bradbury isn't that good at channeling Melville. But I suppose I should thank him, really. It could've been a lot worse. He actually did a pretty good job, all things considered. Did you ever hear about the 2010 remake?

Oh well. I guess I'll get on with the review.

(I wrote that in big white letters so you could find it quickly if you decided to skip the rant.)

Let's talk about description. It was one of Melville's greatest strengths. His style may be heavy, his plot meandering, his diction chock full of arcana, but Melville's powers of description were second to none. Not only could he capture a scene in vivid detail and florid prose, but he had the unique ability to encapsulate the vagaries of human perception. And he encapsulated them perfectly. In the course of documenting his avatar Ishmael's ongoing assessment of Ahab's madness, Moby-Dick's ferocity, and whaling life in general, Melville constantly captured the most vague and nebulous mental impression out of thin air, gave it form and substance, and presented it to the reader clearly and irrefutably. This had an extraordinary effect on me as I read. Melville would write one or two assertive, graphic sentences, compelling some inchoate analogy or amorphous opinion to condense in my brain; and lo and behold, in the very next breath Melville would come out with that very same analogy or opinion, made whole and healthy and credible, ten times better than I could've said it myself. It instilled in me the belief that, while Melville likes digressions even more than Jules Verne, he can still write a damn good story—but most importantly, an approachable story.

The other thing that made the book so enjoyable was the author's wit. Melville was a lighthearted writer, even when discussing such dark and doughty matters as death, vengeance, hate, and insanity. He punctuated these topics with a whimsical comment about puffy clouds or blue skies or puppies. But he seldom joked. When the rare joke did show up, it caught me off guard, so much so that I found myself second-guessing my interpretation of it and dismissing it. Take this gem from Chapter 53, page 255, in which Melville hotly defends whaling as the noblest of the seafaring professions.

Why is it that all Merchant-seamen, and also all Pirates and Man-of-War's men, and Slave-ship sailors, cherish such a scornful feeling towards Whale-ships; that is a question it would be hard to answer [sic]. Because, in the case of pirates, I say, I should like to know whether that profession of theirs has any peculiar glory about it. It sometimes ends in uncommon elevation, indeed; but only at the gallows. And besides, when a man is elevated in that odd fashion, he has no proper foundation for his superior altitude. Hence, I conclude, that in boasting himself to be high lifted above a whaleman, in that assertion a pirate has no solid basis to stand on.

I didn't even catch that the first time around. Pirates have a "lofty" attitude toward whalemen because they get hung far above 'em. And of course pirates, when in that "elevated position," have no foundation under them. The hangman has yanked the lever and the trapdoor has fallen out. Nice double entendre, Herman. And "superior altitude" is a nice pun on "superior attitude" (though I suspect Melville didn't intend it that way).

So, to summarize, I found Moby-Dick a challenging (and on occasion, wearying) read, but nonetheless rewarding, entertaining and stimulating. The adventure is high and swashbuckling, whenever Melville takes a break from teaching American Whaling 101. The morals are tangible, pragmatic and provocative. The characters are lifelike and endearing, and the whale suitably anonymous. Melville, thankfully, refrains from anthropomorphizing his antagonist, and leaves him to be what he is: a wild animal, a nonsentient entity, and Mother Nature's savage representative. The book is more than worthy to be classified as a "Great American Novel" and has earned its position in the cadre of literary classics...especially since it was reviled after its inception.

To summarize the summary, Moby-Dick: good book.

You won't believe this, but I've completed (not started, completed) two other works in the meantime: At the Earth's Core by Edgar Rice Burroughs and Night by Elie Wiesel. I sort of cheated with Burroughs, though: I started working on him before I finished with Melville. (I'll have to go out and buy Melville some flowers later and apologize.) But both new books are done, and I must needs review them. This review has gone on so long, though, that I think I'll let it slide until next time.

So stay tuned, and keep your nose in.

recommended reading

This is going to be a long one. To save you time and money, I've installed the first-ever table of contents in this blog post. See below.

I. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
II. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
III. current reading list, including such gems as The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky (historical fiction), The Old Patagonian Express by Paul Theroux (nonfiction, travel), Transgalactic by A.E. Van Vogt (science fiction), and The Great Shark Hunt by Hunter S. Thompson (????) 

PART I : A CLOCKWORK ORANGE
I'm finished with Anthony Burgess's masterwork of dystopia and ultra-violence. And whew, what a ride it was. I'd heard some disturbing things about A Clockwork Orange before I even picked it up. The work has a rap sheet a mile long; street cred similar to Jack the Ripper's. The only visual clue I'd gotten regarding its subject matter was a random glimpse of a movie poster, which showed some young, pale, dapper delinquent with a bowler, eye makeup, and a disquieting smile on his face.

The copy I picked up at the used bookshop bore this review from Time magazine on the back cover:

"Anthony Burgess has written what looks like a nasty little shocker, but is really that rare thing in English letters: a philosophical novel."

Well, huh. What am I to think?

So I read it. Ostensibly the novella concerns a gang of young punks with too much time on their hands, high on drugs, who rob, punch and rape their way through the streets of a futuristic English city on a nightly basis. But A Clockwork Orange turned out to be much more than that. It was as the reviewer suggested: on the surface the book was a gut-wrenching investigation of the depths of depravity (and downright evil). The protagonist, "Alex," (our first-person narrator) and his three "droogs" venture forth from their homes, drink drug-laced milk, and beat up whatever hapless victim they come across. Occasionally they'll steal a car, drive into the countryside, break into someone's home and have their way with its tenants. They destroy, steal, smash, and desecrate, all for the sake of the act itself: a pastime Alex calls "ultra-violence."

That's only the first part of the book, though. After a home invasion goes terribly wrong, Alex is arrested and imprisoned for murder. This is all very shocking for a young man, not even fifteen, living with his parents and with a peculiar liking for Beethoven and other classical composers. The worst is yet to come. Alex's less-than-model behavior in prison lands him a job—as the first test subject for a brutal new rehabilitation method, the Ludovico Technique. Alex, injected with nausea-inducing drugs, strapped to a chair, head and limbs restrained, eyeballs pried open, is forced to watch graphically violent films for hours on end, without interruption or respite. As much as he formerly enjoyed viewing and engaging in acts of sadism and brutality, the drugs eventually condition him to feel sick at the mere thought. During a public exhibition just prior to his release, Alex is goaded by a belligerent man and tempted by a femme fatale, both of which reduce him to a quivering, groveling, nauseous heap on the floor.

And so the novella's title is thus vindicated. "Clockwork orange" is a term which author Burgess explained thus:

"...an organic entity, full of juice and sweetness and agreeable odour, being turned into an automaton."

Not a pleasant prospect, is it?
I won't spoil the rest. Needless to say, Alex's troubles are far from over. But this is no tale of triumph and redemption, nor a cold, impartial philippic of social justice; suffice it to say that though Alex is not out of the woods (not one malenky bit, my droogs), his fate is not beyond hope.

The point, as far as I can see, is best framed by the question which the prison chaplain, who attempts to mentor young Alex shortly before the latter's Ludovico baptism, contemplates aloud:

Is forced goodness truly superior to chosen evil?

Which is better: a life lived poorly but freely, marked by willful corruption? Or a life spent in preconditioned sanctity, involuntary virtue, unadulterated moral slavery, as it were? The life of a clockwork orange?

Burgess reports, you decide.

A Clockwork Orange is a disturbing and yet wickedly fun read, made all the more so by Burgess's experimental use of a fictitious dialect, Nadsat. Described in the book as an amalgamation of gypsy talk, Cockney rhyming slang, and Slavic lexicon (ostensibly gleaned from Soviet propaganda), Nadsat is a herky-jerky, nigh-incomprehensible mélange of anglicized Russian and teenage argot. It's tricky to get into at first, but if you stick with it and pay close attention to context, you'll puzzle it out. It took me a while to understand "gulliver" (head), but I got "litso" (face), "malenky" (little), "rooker" (hand), "viddy," (see), and "droog" (friend) reasonably soon. The more esoteric terms like "cutter" (money) Burgess allows Alex to explain to his audience. My personal favorites were "chelloveck" (man), "govoreet" (talk), "groodies" (the part of the female anatomy below the neck and above the stomach), and "horrorshow" (a sort of catch-all term meaning "good" or "awesome").

In summary, I've never read anything quite like A Clockwork Orange. It's graphic, violent, dark, and ominous; but Alex's brash, sardonic narrative and the aural hilarity of Nadsat temper this darkness effectively. The book is not without its judgment or morals, but it passes them along barehanded and unvarnished, without allowing itself to become preachy or pretentious; and the ending (make sure you get the version with the long-lost 21st chapter) lifts the book out of shocker status and propels it into the realm of speculative fiction and psychosocial analysis. It's deeper than it appears to be. Keep that in mind, droogies.

And now for the big one:

PART II : MOBY-DICK
It ain't just about a whale.

That much has become apparent, now that I'm halfway through this tome. (I'm up to Chapter 77 or something.) This is much farther in than I've ever penetrated into Melville's opus before.
The action's shaping up well. There've been a few tantalizing tales of the white whale bandied among the whale-ships sailing off the Cape; Ahab's clumping about and muttering darkly; Stubb is eating whale-steak, ordering the cook to proselytize to the sharks; Ishmael is on lookout duty, basking in tropical sunshine and musing on the wider issues of life; at least two self-styled prophets have laid odds against the Pequod; and Gregory Peck still can't even begin to portray just how determined, ominous, and downright crazy Ahab is.

I'm not into sinister books with sinister characters, honestly. It strikes me that I went from one book with a scary anti-hero to another, even longer book with a scary anti-hero. Coincidence, I assure you.
What I've noticed so far is this: Melville, perhaps in keeping with other 19th-century authors like Jules Verne, likes to digress. Scientifically digress, mind. The Pequod will be sailing along, Ahab will be angrily pacing the deck, Ishmael will be in the crow's nest or the poop deck or the scuppers or whatever, and all of a sudden, WHAM! Didactic interlude. Take five, guys, let's break for Whaling 101. Melville, through his mouthpiece Ishmael, will go off on a tangent: factoids about the whaling industry, mostly. The percentage of the GNP based on whale-oil; that the corsets of queens and the lamp-light of civilization have been wrought from whale-bone and spermaceti; the demographics of your typical whaling crew; and zoological points of interest, like what whales eat, what eats whales, which parts of the whale are good for eating, which parts of the whale will kill you, and so on and so on and so on. You can tell that, if Melville were alive today, he'd be working with the guys at The Guinness Book of World Records. He loves to wow his audience. It's his privilege as well as his prerogative; most of the American public was (and undoubtedly still is) horrifically ignorant about sailing, whaling, and cetology in general. Melville knew it. And in Moby-Dick, he took it upon himself to throw off the veil, dismantle the rumors and half-truths and display his subject in its truest form. Therefore, he is constantly breaking off from the plot to discourse about the differences between sperm whales and right whales; the complete form and function of a whale-boat, including all the ropes, oars, harpoons and fitments found on board; and a few choice matters applying to krill, baleen, and giant squid. I'm impressed with the amount of knowledge Melville exhibits regarding cetology, a primitive science in those days. Many of the theories he puts forth on the behavior, morphology and habits of whales are dead-on. Melville confirms what marine biologists would discover centuries later. Sperm whales are bad-ass. They do, in fact, dive insanely deep, battle it out with giant squid, use their heads like battering-rams, employ spermaceti like a fish's dive-bladder, keep warm with blubber, and travel vast distances in short spans of time.

Now on the one hand, these diversions do round out the picture. They give the novel a grandiose sort of air, a subtle majesty, realism and truthfulness both refreshing and satisfying. Whaling is an arcane sort of business, and a lot of the jargon and technical whiz-bang has to be set aside and explained at length. I get that. But on the other hand, these digressions do the same thing to Melville's epic that they do to Verne's science fiction: they break up the story. They interrupt the action. They take what would otherwise be a fast-moving adventure (with metaphysical and philosophical implications) and turn it into an awkward, choppy hunk of academia.

To lecture, or not to lecture? That is the question.

The other thing I've noticed is that I like this book. I do. Honestly. I hated it the first few times I tried it. Found it as dry as a piece of ship's hardtack biscuit. This time around I'm truly engaged. I know next to nothing about whaling, so Melville's frequent lessons are informative and pleasant. As for the action, it's suitably intense, well-paced (considering), and told in an erudite yet passionate style, which (now that I'm old enough to understand what all the big words mean) I appreciate both for the fun of reading it and the obvious challenge. I'm having a grand time. Nearly 80 chapters in and still going strong. I'll have no trouble finishing, unless I hit a chapter that's 50 pages long or something. (Unlikely; most of 'em haven't even been two pages.) In fact, I think I'm still on schedule. I started January 5, and by that measure I should have precisely 77 chapters read by today. How about them apples?

PART III : READING LIST
Well, I could tell you what my reading list consists of, but (a) that would be rather ostentatious, (b) I've already mentioned the pertinent components in the table of contents, and (c) I added a reading list to the bottom right-hand side of this blog's home page last night. So go there if you want to see what I'll be reading next. Otherwise, you'll just have to stand the suspense. This post has gone on long enough.

Peace.

just so I don't get accused of blogging once a month...

...I'm writing this, a sort of throwaway post where I tell what I have (and have not) been up to during my long absence.

To summarize:

READING
I finished A Clockwork Orange and am actually somewhat ahead of schedule with my reading-one-chapter-of-Moby-Dick-per-day scheme. (In case you're wondering, I just finished Chapter 42, "The Whiteness of the Whale.") I was originally going to leap full-tilt into At the Earth's Core, but I've thought better of it. I think I'll persevere and finish with Melville's white whale before I tackle anything else. Ahab's duel with his mortal enemy makes for such engrossing reading that I'm concerned I might dilute the impact of the work if I committed adultery with Edgar Rice Burroughs in the meantime.

Now that I've implanted that lovely image in your head, let's move on to

WRITING
Nothing new on the nonfiction front, and the novel remains untouched somewhere in the closet, like a wooden idol some former pagan ashamedly hid from the missionary who converted him. On the short story front, however, I'm making inroads to success. I'm almost, almost done with "Aptitude." I just need to segue into the denouement. To do that, I need a meteor shower. Nothing's worse for a greenhorn mechanic on his first run to the Outer Planets than micrometeorites punching into his starship's hull at 20,000 miles per hour, particularly when he's at the center of a diabolical plot to steal military-grade technology and black-suited agents have been making attempts on his life the whole fraggin' voyage.

Moreover, I need to decide what I'm going to do with one of the characters. He deserves a more prominent role, but up to this point he's been an amalgamation of man-behind-the-curtain/deus ex machina, lurking behind the scenes and protecting the protagonist from above (literally at times) like some kind of fleshly guardian angel, only dropping down to the mortal plane when things get really hectic. I'd like him to be more of the prickly mentor type. Perhaps I can arrange for his fifteen minutes of fame during that meteor shower, huh?

WORKING
I'm done with the café. Seriously. My hours have been cut back to just eight per weekend, four on Saturday and four on Sunday. So I'm working two days for the price of one. Not cool. I feel my time would be better spent looking for (and getting) a bartender's position someplace, so I can start building experience for those pubs in Australia. So I handed in my two weeks' notice last Saturday. My final day will be the 26th of February. It was fun while it lasted, sort of. At least I got some freshly barbecued Sunday afternoon tri-tip out of the deal.

FLYING
Not happening as often as I'd like, but it'll do. I have over 150 hours now, well on my way to the 250 required for a commercial license. Unfortunately we've been working a lot of short weeks lately. The Air Guard has been doing proficiency checkrides since the New Year started, meaning we come in at 7:30 and get done at ten or twelve o'clock. Looks like things might pick up soon...rumors of chase contracts for Grey Eagles (and perhaps even Reapers) keep trickling down the grapevine. But even so, I've decided that there's no way I'll rack up enough hours (or cabbage) to get my instrument rating, let alone my commercial license, before Miss H and I leave to go overseas again. Oh well. I'll just rack up as many hours as I can and finish my flying education when I get back. At least I'm not sick of flying Mooneys yet. On the contrary, I like it more and more. A Mooney is the GTO of the air, with the added advantage of being fuel-efficient. Apparently Mooneys can be safely ditched, too, which is yet another point in their favor.

And the secret's out, so I might as well tell you what I'm planning to do with Miss H on the day we've allotted to celebrate Valentine's Day, the 21st of February (she had both class and babysitting to do on the 14th, so we decided to pick a different day for our private celebration). I'm flying her to Big Bear City for breakfast. It's less than an hour away by plane and not even that far by car. I've been up there quite a few times. Sounds like there's a marvelous little restaurant at the Big Bear Airport (for those aviators hearty enough to brave the approach over tall pine trees, and the departure over the lake). We're going to try it out. I've taken Miss H flying before, but we didn't actually go anyplace. We just sort of flapped about like a dirty great albatross. Now we have a destination in mind, you see. And a delicious breakfast waiting for us there. It's going to be grand. One of the many advantages to being a pilot is well, not to brag or anything, but your date ideas knock all the other schmucks' out of the ballpark.

And on that note, things with Miss H and I are going very well. We had a ball for her birthday (the 13th): I helped her out with her babysitting, then we went to her house and baked some chocolate-chip cookies. We prepared some finger food and had a picnic dinner at the park. We listened to oldies on the radio and watched the sun set over the San Gabriel Mountains. She gave me an extremely romantic gift and a card that nearly brought tears to my manly eyes. Then we went to see The King's Speech (magnificent film). We laughed at Geoffrey Rush's take on Caliban, listened gravely to King George's war address, and then went home all fulfilled and satisfied and romantic and whatnot.

"Anyone who can shout vowels out an open window can learn to deliver a speech."

JOB-HUNTING/DAYDREAMING
Also not progressing as far as I'd like. Case in point, I'm sitting here blogging at you when, by rights, I should be out pounding the pavement. I'm trying to (a) find a place to tend bar in the High Desert, as I mentioned earlier; (b) locate an ESL teaching position overseas, possibly Spain or Poland, or even Chile; and (c) finally, not to any particular point or purpose, I'm looking at aviation jobs in Alaska and Australia. Just fantasizing, you know. Lately I've become hooked on the Discovery Channel's new show Flying Wild Alaska. It's a drug. What Jim Tweto and the Era crew do is exactly what I've been hoping to do when I finally get up there. That is, fly any kind of cargo anywhere in Alaska, anytime of day in any kind of weather in every kind of airplane. I've gotten confirmation that my dream can be made real, now. I'd had some notion about what I wanted to do when I got to the Great North, but I'd never actually known whether it was feasible, or even possible. Now I have proof-positive. Jim Tweto started out with one plane and a lot of dreams. Now he's the owner of a multimillion-dollar aviation enterprise, a linchpin of the Alaskan economy, upon whom hundreds of people in the bush depend on for their very survival.

It's like Bob Dylan sang: "And every one o' them words rang true and glowed like burnin' coals/a-pourin' offa every page like it was written on my soul." Somebody took the dreams I had bound up in my head, feverishly imagined, fervently clung to, desperately feared for, and stuck 'em on the boob tube in documentary format. If I wasn't so joyous at having my life's ambitions reaffirmed I'd probably sue for copyright.

Well, now I know I can do what I want to do. It's a nice feeling.

I don't believe in horoscopes. But I get a kick out of them regardless. Sometimes they can be just about spot-on. The old philosophers have decreed that February is a lucky month for those born in the Year of the Tiger, like yours truly. It's certainly seemed that way. My fantasies became materially possible; the Jeep's been fixed after two months' downtime; the weather's still blessedly cool; I'm racking up flight-hours hand over fist; I have a girl with whom things seem to be working out pretty well; and everything in the world seems new and shiny and potential, somehow. I haven't seen things from this angle in a long while.

It's a pleasure to do so again.

someone owes me three weeks of my life

Greetings, sportsfans!

Yes, as you may have noticed, I've been out recently. I intended to keep up a more frequent blog in 2011, but working six days a week caused my entries to fall off sharply in late 2010. And I've sort of spaced out these last few weeks.

Why?

I've been sick.

For nearly three weeks, yes.

First they thought it was mono. Then they didn't. Then they thought it was again. Then, apparently, they thought it was "some sort of viral infection that will probably go away by itself."

Unquote.

Great. That's lucid.

I was prepared to ride it out. All I had was a fever and some aches. No sniffles, no sinus problems, no cough, nothing. I was living large, not going to work, mooning around the house in my bathrobe all day, Moby-Dick in one hand and a mug of hot chocolate in the other. (But please don't ask me how much writing I've done during this sudden unexpected vacation. You're better off not knowing.)

Heck, I thought I was on the road to recovery. I was feeling pretty good. I even went back to work. It sure was grand to be back in the Mooney and flying 6,000 feet above the desert floor. My right ear refused to pop coming back down again, but I shrugged it off.

Then the sore throat began.

It came out of nowhere that very evening. All of a sudden I was wincing as I swallowed. A stabbing whack of pain bolted from my palate to my tonsils every time I did.

Certain people near and dear to me insisted that I go back to the doctor. (Thanks, Ma. Still looking out for me.)

So, one doctor's appointment and a gag-inducing throat swab later, it became apparent that, not only do I have strep throat, but also an ear infection.

Now that's just mah-veluss.

What we figure is that the ear infection came on first, which explains the fever and aches I had for the first two weeks. Then the strep throat bacteria just saw its opportunity (my immune system already compromised) and dove right in.

Oh well. At least I have a definite diagnosis now (and drugs, huzzah!).

I'm kind of glad it wasn't mono. That means I stand to recover from it sooner. Mono would've created an extremely awkward situation, given that my girlfriend doesn't have it.

Speaking of my girlfriend, she's been an absolute angel throughout all this. Despite long days babysitting five rambunctious children and giving her friends rides down to lesser Los Angeles, she's never missed the chance to come up here and look after me. I still get hugs and kisses even though I'm sick and greasy and disgusting. I feel at once fortunate and extremely humbled. Thanks, Miss H. You're a doll. When this is over, you and I are heading out on the town. I'll treat you to the evening of your life.

There's just one last thing left to settle before I can do that, though.

I want those three frickin' weeks of my life back.

Somebody owes me big for this, and I'm collecting.

The hammer-headed cross-eyed lame-brained weevil who gave me this ear infection is dead. I'm going to string him up by his thumbs and burn the epithet "WAX-MEISTER" onto his stomach with a branding iron. He's cheated me out of a fortnight's pay.

And as for the scene-stealing four-flushing irredeemable ass-hat who transmitted the rest of this bacteria unto me...well, if you're there when I catch up to him, I just hope you turn away. Just look in the other direction. You've been given fair warning. It'll put you off your lunch for the next 10 years. It'll make the Spanish Inquisition look like a pillow fight.

Anyway, that's why I've been out. More and better posts should be coming within the next few days. There's exciting news in the offing, on all fronts. Stay tuned...

P.S. Oh yeah, I have a question to ask you guys. Does anybody know how to change the color of your blog title with this new blog editor thingy? I want to make it lighter. Can't hardly see the dark blue print against the control cabin of that B-17...

recommended reading

Call me Ishmael.

Never mind. That's a horrible name. Who cooked that up, anyway?

I realize it's been a long, long while since I did one of these. Last time I was talking about, what, Vonnegut? No, that's right, it was Robert F. Scott and Antarctica and all that jazz.

So, I finished The Escape Orbit. You know, James White's obscure science fiction novel, found in a used bookstore in Lucerne Valley. (Finished it a looooong time ago, in fact. Just didn't have time to blog about it.) Awesome read, really grand. Good sci-fi authors never cease to amaze me with their ability to present a problem (or minor annoyance) whose cause turns out to be so much grander and more sinister than initially suspected. The Escape Orbit, as I've mentioned, concerns a group of human soldiers marooned on a tropical prison planet by their insect-like enemies. The planet is inhabited by monstrous creatures (somewhere between sharks and elephants) who won't hesitate to gore, trample or chomp the unwary. The book's protagonist, Sector Marshal Warren (the planet's highest-ranking officer and newest inmate) arrives and assesses the situation. There are two groups vying for influence among the new arrivals: the settlers, who consist of former military personnel who have abandoned their uniforms and now live peaceful civilian lives in communal villages; and the Escape Committee, a much smaller group of devoted officers who have retained (or manufactured) uniforms, military discipline, and protocol, and who are tirelessly working to effect an escape. Tensions between the two groups are extremely high, nearing open war at several points in the book.

Warren, after some consideration, joins the Escape Committee, along with his staff.

Why?

Because he sees a deeper necessity for escape, aside from returning much-needed personnel to the front lines of the war. If the Escape Committee is not taken off the planet, and tensions between them and the settlers are allowed to mount...

Well, I'll let you read the book and see what a brilliant premise White has laid down.

I'd give The Escape Orbit 9/10. I hardly ever give anything a perfect rating, you see. Ordinarily it'd be 10/10. The ending felt a tad rushed. Nah, that's nitpicking. It didn't really. I just don't want to give this thing a perfect 10 in case another novel comes along that really deserves it.

So, on to Herman Melville's galumphing behemoth of a seagoing adventure story: Moby-Dick.

How far have I progressed across this vast ocean of maritime literature since last we spoke?

Not very.

I read the foreword, the etymology section, and got started on the extracts (Melville saw fit to collect a hundred or so quotes regarding whales or great fishes and stuck 'em in the front of the book; pretty neat idea if you have the patience for it).

Then I promptly fell asleep.

Haven't trucked much with the book since then.

Come on. It's huge. Daunting, somehow. It's only fitting that a book about a leviathan would be leviathan-sized, isn't it? Poetic justice, I think they call it. Moby-Dick is just a little bit intimidating, like a literary black hole sitting on my beside table, sucking all thoughts of lighter reading out of my head.

I was unsure how to proceed. Should I knock the smaller items off my "to-read" list, and then tackle the monstrous Moby-Dick? Or should I wrestle with that one first and put the rest of my library on hold? I was perplexed. Neither choice seemed pleasant. Especially since I had attempted to read Moby-Dick before and found it drier than a year-old soda cracker.

But since I finished up with The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Vol. IIA, which has occupied most of my reading time, I've had an epiphany.

Yes, yes, I know it's two days too early for an epiphany. The Epiphany happened on the sixth of January. But what's two days between you and me?

Here's the big idea.

Since it's the new year and all, and 2011 stretches out bright with promise for 360-plus days, and I've usually got about thirty minutes of free time in the evenings no matter what I'm doing, why don't I try this:

I'll read a chapter of Moby-Dick a day.

(No "dick-a-day" jokes, please.)

One chapter every day, until I finish the dang thing. It'll be quite a span, but it'll keep me from drooling and going all glassy-eyed from trying to read too much at once. I've always wanted to read a book one chapter at a time. You know, get into bed, put on my glasses, take out my bookmark, read a few pages, put the bookmark back in, take my glasses off, turn out the light and go to sleep with a big silly grin on my face. That would be a "novel" way to read books, wouldn't it? (Ho ho ho!) I usually just swallow them whole, gobbling up five chapters at a stretch. Call it an obsessive compulsion. I've never allowed myself time to sit back, relax, take the work one chunk at a time, and mull it over in a leisurely manner.

Well, I'll have plenty of time to mull this over. My edition of Moby-Dick (complete and unabridged, Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.) is 605 pages long and possesses 135 chapters. That means, then, that if I read the first chapter ("Loomings") tonight, and keep the regimen going without fail, then I'll be done sometime in late May.

As my brother so aptly asked, "Are you going to remember what happened at the beginning of the book by the time you get to the end?"  

We'll see, bro. We'll see. Only way to find out is to try it. There but for the grace of bookmarks go I.

And if it does work, then I'll do the same thing with Joyce's Ulysses.

If it happens that I tire of Melville's heavy hand and want to take the evening off, then I've got A Clockwork Orange to sustain me. I picked it up at the used bookstore a while back. Heard a lot about it and decided to see what all the fuss was about. Of course I read some background on the work and its author, Anthony Burgess, beforehand. I was...impressed, to say the least. By all accounts this is a controversial book. I was lucky and got my hands on one of the first versions to have the infamous final chapter put back in. (Previous publishers mysteriously decided that it wasn't necessary.) But beyond that, this book apparently has some rather graphic violence in it. Everywhere I researched A Clockwork Orange, the phrase "ultraviolent" kept jumping out at me—even the author's foreword. So I'll read, and probably wince a bit too. I'll update you lot when I finish. Maybe I'll see the movie if I'm feeling charitable towards Hollywood. (Don't hold your breath.)

And now, to finish up, please enjoy one of my very own de-motivational posters! Straight from the heart, folks: