this, i think, is one of the reasons i’m so intimidated by the idea of composing a “baggy monster.” i love reading them, but i suspect my mind would just shut down when confronted with those contradictions if i realized i’d created them myself.

on the other hand, i don’t think this justifies the move shepard pulls. i’m not absolutely married to the whole “singularity of effect” concept in short fiction, but i don’t think the scale justifies the move (not suggesting you’ve suggested otherwise). baggy microbe makes less sense.

makes me want to go read the shklovsky book that’s been sitting on my shelf for a few years now.

thanks again for the input.

This probably won’t be a very satisfying answer, but I’m reminded of something Viktor Shklovsky wrote about Don Quixote. Actually, it’s the first half of Chapter 5 of Theory of Prose (“The Making of Don Quixote”), “The Speeches of Don Quixote.” Shklovsky is trying to account for how DQ, the “brainless knight,” says so many smart things over the course of the novel. Shklovsky writes: “Don Quixote was originally conceived as a ‘brainless’ knight. But as the novel progressed, Cervantes found that he needed Don Quixote as a unifying thread of wise sayings.” So he gave DQ those wise sayings. (How did he know them? Eh, he read them in a book.)

Actually, Shklovsky has a very nice way of expressing what happened to DQ (the novel) as Cervantes wrote it: “We should, however, take into consideration the fact that the dimensions of his novel, which was laid out like a dining table, evidently far surpass Cervantes’ original intention.”

(These quotes are both from page 73 in the Dalkey edition of ToP.)

Shklovsky has more to say on this subject, including how the wise sayings are included. For instance, on page 77, he writes: “Cervantes leaves the wisdom of folklore to Sancho while reserving the worldly-bookish wisdom for Don Quixote.” And there’s much more!

So my guess is that Moby Dick evolved as Melville wrote it (what writing doesn’t?), and he found it necessary for Ishmael—who worked perfectly fine as a narrator in most circumstances—to be able to know things that he “shouldn’t” know. So Melville went ahead and just gave Ishmael that knowledge.

Which is what I think writers usually do. They often might justify it somehow, or try to justify it, but sometimes not. Cue Bakhtin’s description of novels as “baggy monsters.”

Like I said, probably not satisfying, but…

Cheers,
Adam

we used to skateboard together.

- spicher