{"id":483,"date":"2007-02-09T00:06:08","date_gmt":"2007-02-09T00:06:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/?p=483"},"modified":"2007-02-09T00:06:08","modified_gmt":"2007-02-09T00:06:08","slug":"moby-dick-vs-moby-dick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/?p=483","title":{"rendered":"Moby Dick vs. Moby Dick"},"content":{"rendered":"

I once received two separate gifts of the novel Moby Dick. These two editions of the novel sat happily on my shelf for a number of years before I finally picked one of them up to read for the first time. I selected as my reading copy the Oxford World’s Classics edition<\/a>, a hardback with the nice dustjacket and the prestigious imprimatur of the Oxford University Press.
\nThe less-prestigious paperback Wordsworth Classics edition<\/a> sat on the shelf.
\nSo I read Moby Dick, and I enjoyed it a great deal, and when I came to the end I thought, well, what an ending! And then I thought – hang on, what about Ishmael? Moby Dick’s opening, Call me Ishmael, is among the most renowned in literature. Surely the novel couldn’t end with Ishmael from the first line going unmentioned for the last hundred pages!
\nLuckily, I had my Wordsworth Classics edition to hand, and I pulled it out and found that the prestigious OUP had somehow managed to omit the last part of the book. They forgot to put the ending in. Whoops.
\nAll of which demonstrates two valuable lessons which we can henceforth generalise into everyday life and apply to our every endeavour:
\n(1) you can<\/i> judge a book by its cover (the Wordsworth said ‘complete and unabridged’ on the front, and the OUP did not)
\n(2) sometimes insignificant differences turn out to be quite significant after all.
\nFor those also in possession of the OUP edition, I reproduce the omitted section below the jump.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\nEPILOGUE
\nAnd I only am escaped alone to tell thee. – JOB<\/i>
\nThe Drama’s Done. Why then here does any one step forth? – Because one did survive the wreck.
\nIt so chanced, that after the Parsee’s disappearance, I was he whom the Fates ordained to take the place of Ahab’s bowsman, when that bowsman assumed the vacant post; the same, who, when on the last day the three men were tossed from out the rocking boat, was dropped astern. So. floating on the margin of the ensuing scene, and in full sight of it, when the half-spent suction of the sunk ship reached me, I was then, but slowly, drawn towards the closing vortex. When I reached it, it had subsided to a creamy pool. Round and round, then, and ever contracting towards the button-like black bubble at the axis of that slowly wheeling circle, like another ixion I did revolve. till gaining that vital centre, the black bubble upward burst; and now, liberated by reason of its cunning spring, and owing to its great buoyancy, rising with great force, the coffin like-buoy shot lengthwise from the sea, fell over, and floated by my side. Buoyed up by that coffin, for almost one whole day and night, I floated on a soft and dirge-like main. The unharming sharks, they glided by as if with padlocks on their mouths; the savage sea-hawks sailed with sheathed beaks. On the second day, a sail drew near, nearer, and picked me up at last. It was the devious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing children, only found another orphan.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I once received two separate gifts of the novel Moby Dick. These two editions of the novel sat happily on my shelf for a number of years before I finally picked one of them up to read for the first time. I selected as my reading copy the Oxford World’s Classics edition, a hardback with … Continue reading Moby Dick vs. Moby Dick<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8D9ZE-7N","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=483"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}