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August 24, 2007

Melville Day, Hooray

After weeks of terrific heat, hardly relieved by epic thunderstorms (and even tornadoes, at least in Brooklyn), Saturday, August 11 dawned cool enough for a sweater, and humidity-free. Melville’s birthday is August 1, but the South Street Seaport celebrated its second annual Melville Day on the 11th. For me, it was a 12-minute walk up the river to Pier 45, at Christopher Street, where the tour began. Our guide, Jack Putnam, is an acknowledged Melville expert; I’d been impressed to hear him speak and read before at the Seaport. He has Melvillian charisma: a commanding bearing, full white beard and august features. I’d brought along my fluke-eared, curly copy of Moby-Dick, its margins inked with my notes, its pages stuffed with articles and pictures of ships and whales I'd cut from magazines. I’d chosen the Norton Critical Edition because that’s what my students at NYU use. Among its 300 supplementary pages of “Contexts” and “Criticism” is an elegant chapter titled “Whaling and Whalecraft: A Pictorial Account” by John B. Putnam. I hadn’t realized till that day that John B. and Jack are one and the same; and there he was, almost larger than life, our Melville host.

From the pier, Jack gestured northward to Gansevoort Street, named after Melville’s mother’s family, where by coincidence Herman had served for 19 years as a customs inspector. Quoting from memory the long rhapsodic beginning of Moby-Dick, Jack gestured to the approaching leisurely crowds as he intoned: “Right and left, the streets take you waterward. Its extreme downtown is the Battery…” and . . . “But look! here come more crowds, pacing straight for the water, and seemingly bound for a dive. Strange! Nothing will content them but the extremest limit of the land; loitering under the shady lee of yonder warehouses will not suffice…”

At 12:30 we clambered aboard a sun-yellow water taxi destined for the Seaport by way of the World Financial Center, Battery Park, Governors Island and Red Hook. I stood as far forward as I could, balancing euphorically, like a circus rider on a surf-white galloping horse. At Pier 17 we disembarked.

Along Fulton Street Jack indicated an unprepossessing five-story brick building, #112 at the corner of Dutch Street, where Melville had set Moby-Dick in type. We saw the original site of Harper and Bros., now a dismal courtyard behind a sneakers store, where the American version was first published. At Nassau St., (the center of the publishing world, 160 years ago), Jack pointed out a rare view of four buildings from, respectively, the 18th, 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries.

The rich day ended with a glass-of-wine-aboard-the-Peking (in lieu of the Pequod, perhaps), which I didn't stay for, as I had to get home to my patient dogs.

If you love Melville, do embark on Melville Day next year. It’s a thrill.

Posted by Jane on 11:59 AM | Comments (0)