What is it about New Bedford early January, despite the bitter cold, the hard-edged cobbled streets, that stirs the soul? Is it that Melville himself stepped aboard the Acushnet from this very harbor to sail around the world? Is it that over 2500 Melville freaks gathered this year, a record-breaker, to hear the words he painstakingly pressed to paper about a sea voyage gone terribly wrong? It’s about literary camaraderie, over quick breakfasts, or late night, lingering beers at a bar aptly named The Moby Dick Brewing Company. It’s hearing multiple perspectives on this magnificent American novel, or something like a novel, propounded by Melville scholars who elucidate the voyage with insight and humor. It’s celebrating literature among crowds of fans, kids crawling through the life-size model of a whale’s heart – their dad topped in a whale-shaped hat. It’s college students camping out in museum hallways overnight; retired professors toting the 50-year-old copy of the novel they read in college. It’s travelers from as far away as Australia and Brazil, and as near as the next town over who crew this round-the-clock, yet seemingly endless, public voyage that is Moby-Dick: or The Whale. See Kathryn’s wonderful pics. below.
Don’t miss our own Sag Harbor version of a Moby-Dick Marathon reading, this spring, over three days, at various village locations. Readers get ready! Sign-up and dates coming soon. Reserve your weekend late May/early June.
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