Whale watching

Did Herman Melville read Jane Austen? Chronologically, he could have—he was born two years after Austen’s death—but temperamentally, it seems unlikely. Her female-centric social world, with its codes of propriety and its emotional repression, embodies everything Melville’s characters find constricting and oppressive.

So perhaps it’s not surprising—though irritating!--that a recent Guardian article about a quaint custom in the Melville fandom included a gratuitous Austen dis.

The article explains that devotees of the great American whale book come together multiple times a year, from Massachusetts to California, to read Moby Dick aloud at one 24-hour-plus sitting--sometimes outside, for that extra bit of freezing-cold verisimilitude.

I salute the Melvilleans (Hermaniacs?) for this. I love read-alouds, and I love crazily obsessive literary fandom. I also love Moby Dick, though probably not enough to listen to it in the rain.

Reporter Lois Beckett makes much of the supposed uniqueness of this kind of commemoration. “Other classic novelists may inspire larger fan events, but Jane Austen celebrations don’t typically include a live reading of all of Pride and Prejudice,” she opines. (Typically? No. But not never.)

And then comes the dis. “No offense to Jane Austen, but more happens,” says Dawn Coleman, a Tennessee English professor who is the executive secretary of the Melville Society. “It’s more exciting to hunt a whale than to hunt a husband.”

Despite Coleman's dutiful "no offense" disclaimer, her throwaway remark strikes me as another incarnation of an old canard: Jane Austen is kinda slow, because her novels are about Boring Girl Stuff and don’t mention Exciting Boy Things, like war and politics. Also harpooning.

Surely, an English professor should know better. As any Janeite can tell you, the relative degree of hunt-related excitement depends on the husband—or perhaps on the whale.