Moby-Dick: “like a true child of fire, I breathe it back to thee”

1/ Moby-Dick is full of symbolism. I must thank Tom of Wuthering Expectations for pointing out that Ishmael is identified with water, and Ahab, with fire. 

“Were Niagara but a cataract of sand, would you travel your thousand miles to see it? Why did the poor poet of Tennessee, upon suddenly receiving two handfuls of silver, deliberate whether to buy him a coat, which he sadly needed, or invest his money in a pedestrian trip to Rockaway Beach? Why is almost every robust healthy boy with a robust healthy soul in him, at some time or other crazy to go to sea? Why upon your first voyage as a passenger, did you yourself feel such a mystical vibration, when first told that you and your ship were now out of sight of land? Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother of Jove?” (ch.1)

Ahab’s shadow and his closest companion—his Mephistopheles?—is Fedallah, a Parsee, a fire worshipper. The fire imagery—the association of Ahab with fire—is most obvious in Chapter 96 “The Try-Works”, and the rest of the book is filled with fire imagery. 

“I do deem it now a most meaning thing, that that old Greek, Prometheus, who made men, they say, should have been a blacksmith, and animated them with fire; for what’s made in fire must properly belong to fire; and so hell’s probable.” (ch.108)

To kill Moby Dick, Ahab wants a new harpoon. To destroy what he sees as the embodiment of all evil, he turns to witchcraft. 

“… “No, no—no water for that; I want it of the true death-temper. Ahoy, there! Tashtego, Queequeg, Daggoo! What say ye, pagans! Will ye give me as much blood as will cover this barb?” holding it high up. A cluster of dark nods replied, Yes. Three punctures were made in the heathen flesh, and the White Whale’s barbs were then tempered.

“Ego non baptizo te in nomine patris, sed in nomine diaboli!” deliriously howled Ahab, as the malignant iron scorchingly devoured the baptismal blood.” (ch.113) 

This is something I didn’t notice in my first reading: Ahab rejects water; he’s later killed by water. 

The quote in the headline comes from chapter 119. 

2/ This is a rather odd passage:  

“It was a clear steel-blue day. The firmaments of air and sea were hardly separable in that all-pervading azure; only, the pensive air was transparently pure and soft, with a woman’s look, and the robust and man-like sea heaved with long, strong, lingering swells, as Samson’s chest in his sleep.

Hither, and thither, on high, glided the snow-white wings of small, unspeckled birds; these were the gentle thoughts of the feminine air; but to and fro in the deeps, far down in the bottomless blue, rushed mighty leviathans, sword-fish, and sharks; and these were the strong, troubled, murderous thinkings of the masculine sea.

But though thus contrasting within, the contrast was only in shades and shadows without; those two seemed one; it was only the sex, as it were, that distinguished them.” (ch.132) 

Moby-Dick is a very strange book. 

3/ I don’t know what it means, but I’ve noticed the bird motif in the last chapters of the novel. 

“… But already the sable wing was before the old man’s eyes; the long hooked bill at his head: with a scream, the black hawk darted away with his prize.

An eagle flew thrice round Tarquin’s head, removing his cap to replace it, and thereupon Tanaquil, his wife, declared that Tarquin would be king of Rome. But only by the replacing of the cap was that omen accounted good. Ahab’s hat was never restored; the wild hawk flew on and on with it; far in advance of the prow: and at last disappeared; while from the point of that disappearance, a minute black spot was dimly discerned, falling from that vast height into the sea.” (ch.130) 

And when the ship goes down, a hawk goes down with it: 

“A sky-hawk that tauntingly had followed the main-truck downwards from its natural home among the stars, pecking at the flag, and incommoding Tashtego there; this bird now chanced to intercept its broad fluttering wing between the hammer and the wood; and simultaneously feeling that etherial thrill, the submerged savage beneath, in his death-gasp, kept his hammer frozen there; and so the bird of heaven, with archangelic shrieks, and his imperial beak thrust upwards, and his whole captive form folded in the flag of Ahab, went down with his ship, which, like Satan, would not sink to hell till she had dragged a living part of heaven along with her, and helmeted herself with it.

Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf; a sullen white surf beat against its steep sides; then all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago.” (ch.135) 

I finished rereading the book yesterday, after over 7 weeks. Shakespeare took possession of Melville, and created Moby-Dick.  

Moby-Dick: “That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate”

“Dissect him how I may, then, I but go skin deep; I know him not, and never will.” (ch.86) 

It often puzzles me that lots of readers don’t seem to notice that there are two quests in Moby-Dick: a physical quest (Ahab’s pursuit of Moby Dick) and a metaphysical quest (Ishmael’s search for meaning). Ahab is not the only obsessive: he’s obsessed with a whale; Ishmael is obsessed with the whale. 

For what is the whale? Leviathan? A sea monster? A personification of all that maddens and torments? A dumb brute? A dish? A poor animal murdered to light the gay bridals and other merry-makings of men? Some inscrutable, unknowable thing? 

“‘All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event—in the living act, the undoubted deed—there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me. Sometimes I think there’s naught beyond. But ’tis enough. He tasks me; he heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him.’” (ch.36) 

Even Ahab does not know—the whale is beyond his reach. 

Thus Ishmael seeks to know the whale, to learn everything he can—from head to tail, from blubber to skeleton—so as to grasp the meaning of Moby Dick, of the chase, of his own survival. Ahab is mad, but is Ishmael not, too, a madman? 

“Here, then, was this grey-headed, ungodly old man, chasing with curses a Job’s whale round the world, at the head of a crew, too, chiefly made up of mongrel renegades, and castaways, and cannibals—morally enfeebled also, by the incompetence of mere unaided virtue or right-mindedness in Starbuck, the invulnerable jollity of indifference and recklessness in Stubb, and the pervading mediocrity in Flask. Such a crew, so officered, seemed specially picked and packed by some infernal fatality to help him to his monomaniac revenge. How it was that they so aboundingly responded to the old man’s ire—by what evil magic their souls were possessed, that at times his hate seemed almost theirs; the White Whale as much their insufferable foe as his; how all this came to be—what the White Whale was to them, or how to their unconscious understandings, also, in some dim, unsuspected way, he might have seemed the gliding great demon of the seas of life,—all this to explain, would be to dive deeper than Ishmael can go.” (ch.41) 

What’s the White Whale to them, indeed? But Ishmael too was part of the chase. Ishmael too went down with the Pequod—and yet he survives. What’s the meaning of that fatal chase? And his own madness? And what does it mean that he alone lives? 

But Ishmael isn’t free; his soul continues to be possessed by the madness of the old man. 

“Almost invariably it is all over obliquely crossed and re-crossed with numberless straight marks in thick array, something like those in the finest Italian line engravings. […] These are hieroglyphical; that is, if you call those mysterious cyphers on the walls of pyramids hieroglyphics, then that is the proper word to use in the present connexion. By my retentive memory of the hieroglyphics upon one Sperm Whale in particular, I was much struck with a plate representing the old Indian characters chiselled on the famous hieroglyphic palisades on the banks of the Upper Mississippi. Like those mystic rocks, too, the mystic-marked whale remains undecipherable.” (ch.68) 

It was only when I got to the chapter “The Doubloon” that I realised that Ishmael’s obsession with meaning—with signs and wonders—came from Ahab. 

"But one morning, turning to pass the doubloon, he seemed to be newly attracted by the strange figures and inscriptions stamped on it, as though now for the first time beginning to interpret for himself in some monomaniac way whatever significance might lurk in them." (ch.99) 

Ahab seeks meaning in a doubloon; Ishmael sees hieroglyphics on the skin of a whale. 

“‘There’s another rendering now; but still one text. All sorts of men in one kind of world, you see. Dodge again! here comes Queequeg—all tattooing—looks like the signs of the Zodiac himself. What says the Cannibal? As I live he’s comparing notes; looking at his thigh bone; thinks the sun is in the thigh, or in the calf, or in the bowels, I suppose, as the old women talk Surgeon’s Astronomy in the back country…’” (ibid.) 

Ahab sees signs and wonders on the surface of a doubloon, and on the skin of Queequeg. That remark on Queequeg might only be a passing thought for Ahab, but Ishmael later repeats it: 

“Many spare hours he spent, in carving the lid with all manner of grotesque figures and drawings; and it seemed that hereby he was striving, in his rude way, to copy parts of the twisted tattooing on his body. And this tattooing had been the work of a departed prophet and seer of his island, who, by those hieroglyphic marks, had written out on his body a complete theory of the heavens and the earth, and a mystical treatise on the art of attaining truth; so that Queequeg in his own proper person was a riddle to unfold; a wondrous work in one volume; but whose mysteries not even himself could read, though his own live heart beat against them; and these mysteries were therefore destined in the end to moulder away with the living parchment whereon they were inscribed, and so be unsolved to the last.” (ch.110) 

What are these mysteries in the tattoos of Queequeg, and on the skin of the whale? Do they contain answers? But Ishmael can never know, and the entire book is his quest for meaning, his attempt to strike through the mask. 

On Odissea (1968), an 8-part adaptation of the Odyssey

 

Over Christmas, my family and I watched Odissea, an Italian-language adaptation of the Odyssey in 8 episodes—not a Christmas series, I know—but what can be more Christmassy than returning home and reuniting with your family? 

According to Wikipedia, this is the most faithful version. It’s also my favourite adaptation so far, unlikely to get surpassed. Now some of you might think, is it going to be the most epic, spectacular version you’ve seen of Homer’s poem? The answer is no. But it is made by people who respect the text, and have a deep understanding of it. 

If we have to narrow down to the three main things that the Odyssey is about, I would say: the intelligence of Odysseus and his development as a character, the relationship between Odysseus and Penelope, and the education of Telemakhos. Odissea gets all three right. Most adaptations, because of time, tend to ignore the last one, but it is important in the Odyssey—why does Athena make Telemakhos travel if he learns no news of Odysseus and the trip doesn’t advance the plot?—it’s for his education, for him to learn about the father he has never known, and see how things work in a happy kingdom not torn apart by greedy suitors and disloyal servants. He also learns to be independent, away from his mother, away from home. Renaud Verley conveys well the helpless anger of Telemakhos at the beginning, and the confidence towards the end as Telemakhos fights the suitors next to his father. 

The development of Odysseus is also good, largely thanks to the performance of Bekim Fehmiu. At the beginning, he doesn’t express much on his face, making me afraid that he looks the part but isn’t quite right for the role, but this is a cautious Odysseus, a weary Odysseus, wanting nothing but to go home after 10 years of wandering and suffering. We see a different Odysseus in the flashbacks—more animated—especially in the episode of the Cyclops: a cunning Odysseus, a proud and impetuous Odysseus, causing his own downfall and the loss of his men. We see that cunning look again when he’s back in Ithake, as he watches his household and observes the enemies and calculates his moves. 

I also like Irene Papas (a Greek actress) as Penelope. Odissea makes more explicit Penelope’s recognition of Odysseus under disguise, and her test of him at the end—I slightly prefer the subtlety of Homer—but Irene Papas is so good in these scenes that it doesn’t matter. I especially like her anger as she comes to meet Odysseus after the killing of the suitors—this is something I have not considered—she has waited for 20 years, she has stayed true, but Odysseus saw her with distrust and hid from her his identity?

Among the supporting characters, I think the best cast are Constantin Nepo as Antinous and Karl-Otto Alberty as Eurymakhos. My only complaint, if anything, is that I don’t particularly like Scilla Gabel as Helen, and I wish they had done something to make Kalypso (Kyra Bester) look a bit “less human”, being a nymph, but this is trivial.  

I suspect that Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of the Odyssey is going to be similar to Bondarchuk’s adaption of War and Peace—spectacular and technically impressive, but hollow—and even worse, as it’s historically inaccurate. Odissea is similar to the 1972 War and Peace or the 1977 Anna Karenina—not the best production values perhaps, but an excellent adaptation. 

Odissea is available on Youtube (if you don’t mind the subtitles being imperfect). 

On Ulysses (1954), an Italian adaptation of the Odyssey

Filmmakers all have to make changes when adapting a literary work, which sometimes works very well, but in the case of Ulysses (1954), pretty much every single change makes the narrative worse. 

One big change is that they reduce the role of the gods. But instead of pushing it to the extreme, as in The Return (2024), removing the gods altogether and stripping the Odyssey of all mythology, Ulysses makes a half-arsed attempt: Circe (Kirke) is still there, combined with Calypso; Ulysses (Odysseus) still speaks to the dead; we still see the Cyclops; but we don’t see Athena and we don’t see Polyphemus cursing Ulysses and his men and calling for their destruction. The very thing that causes the 10 years of wandering and all the lives lost is cut; the curse instead comes from Cassandra during the war, when Ulysses destroys a statue of Poseidon. 

Another change is that Ulysses in the film is no longer a storyteller: the flashbacks are him recalling past events—regaining his memory—rather than telling King Alcinous about his adventures; and we don’t see him making up stories upon his return to Ithaca (Ithake). 

But the biggest and worst change is the way they handle the last few chapters of Homer’s poem: even if you don’t agree with my interpretation that Penelope long suspects the identity of the beggar, does a kind of double talk with him so as to keep the secret from her spying servants, and comes up with the test of the bow as a convenient way of placing a weapon in his hands, you would probably still find it disappointing that in the film, the idea of the bow comes from Ulysses—in his disguise as a beggar—rather than Penelope herself. Why is Homer’s Odysseus so desperate to return home, to reunite with Penelope? Why does he reject the power of Kirke and the promise of immortality from Kalypso and the youth of Nausicaa? Because Odysseus and Penelope are a perfect match, because they’re both intelligent and full of tricks—their like-mindedness is an important point in the Odyssey—the Penelope in the film has the loyalty and constancy of Homer’s character, but not her cleverness (except the weaving trick). The film cannot explain why he longs for her, especially when they have Penelope and Circe played by the same actress (Silvana Mangano).

Another important point is that in the Odyssey, Odysseus and Penelope test each other—Odysseus has to test her because of the warning from Agamemnon, but she also has to test him—all that is removed from the film. We don’t even see Ulysses quietly go around and observe who remains loyal and who has betrayed him in his household. 

The film seems to focus on the fun scenes, and in a way, it is fun. Kirk Douglas is a more energetic and charming Odysseus/ Ulysses than Ralph Fiennes—not because Ralph Fiennes lacks charm, but because he plays Odysseus as a weary man, haunted by war—the bow scene is especially fun. Another positive thing I can say is that, compared to the grey and drab look of Christopher Nolan’s upcoming film, the costumes here are more interesting, more colourful and imaginative.  

Oh well. I don’t expect Nolan’s film to be any better. 

Anyway. 

Reading and viewing plans for 2026

 

Two Pride and Prejudice series are coming up: a Netflix straight adaptation (top) and The Other Bennet Sister by the BBC (bottom). 

1/ I wrote in December 2024: 

“Even if there is little impact, I can’t help feeling an urge to fight against anti-intellectualism and inverted snobbery, against identity politics and Critical Race Theory, against philistinism and the School of Resentment. 

One of the ways to fight is reading and analysing and promoting classic books.

[…] Even if the philistines and authoritarians win, even if the public becomes increasingly ignorant of classic works because of tiktoks and a million other distractions, I will not lose—because these books I read are mine.” 

That still stands. 

Compare the reading ideas in that blog post and the recent post about my reading in 2025, I’ve done quite well, haven’t I? So for next year, I intend to: 

• Continue getting to know ancient Greek literature and culture. 
• Explore the ancient Rome. 
• Start on the King James Bible. 

These are the main reading projects. Why the Bible? some of you might ask. It’s one of the most important texts in the world, and one of the texts that shaped Western civilisation. I read Western literature not knowing any of the Biblical stories; I wander through the National Gallery not catching any of the religious references; that has to change. Shakespeare is going to look very different once I have read Ovid and the Bible.

As my interest in the Bible is literary rather than religious, I guess I don’t need to explain why I’m going for the King James version rather than something more modern.

Some other reading ideas scattering around: 

• Read more Dickens, possibly Our Mutual Friend. 
• Explore more of the 18th century. 
• Read some non-Western books (such as the Akutagawa book I recently bought on impulse in Jakarta). 
• Possibly reread Wuthering Heights.

2/ There are quite a few adaptations of classics that are currently out or soon appearing: 

• Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein: you don’t expect me to watch this one, do you? This is by one of the worst directors working today. 
• Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights: all the promos I have seen—the trailer especially—tell me that the writer-director has not read the novel. I might however watch it for a laugh. 
• Chloe Zhao’s Hamnet: no, I don’t intend to watch a film about Shakespeare when the director says she understands about a third of Shakespeare’s language and has to rely on the actor—not a Shakespearean actor and not an expert—for interpretation. 
• Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey: everything tells me I’m going to hate this film—why is Hollywood scared of colours?—but bring it on, I’m ready to yell at Nolan. 
• Euros Lyn’s Pride and Prejudice (Netflix): do we really need another version of Pride and Prejudice? The perfect version exists (1995). I don’t really like Jack Lowden and Emma Corrin as Mr Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet, and don’t have any positive feelings towards Netflix—the only appeal is Olivia Colman as Mrs Bennet. I might still see it though, unless it turns out to be like Netflix’s Persuasion. 
• Jennifer Sheridan’s The Other Bennet Sister (BBC): we have another Pride and Prejudice series coming up, but this one looks more interesting as it does something different—focuses on Mary Bennet—and seems to have more colours. 
• Georgia Oakley’s Sense and Sensibility: there isn’t much to say as I haven’t seen anything about this upcoming film except the cast. Would it be as good as the Ang Lee film? Most likely not. But I don’t think anyone’s going to disagree that, much as we love Emma Thompson, she’s a bit too old for Elinor. 
• Emma Frost’s The Age of Innocence (Netflix): look, can this possibly match the perfection that is the Martin Scorsese film? Daniel Day-Lewis? Michelle Pfeiffer? Winona Ryder? We don’t need another adaptation.   

What did I miss? 

3/ I don’t really have any plans for film watching, other than that I’d like to watch more films from the 1930s. 

Moby-Dick as my Bible

For a few years after I read Moby-Dick the first time, I often picked it up to reread certain chapters or passages. I stopped after a while—there were other books—but continued to carry some passages with me over the years. 

“Oh, man! admire and model thyself after the whale! Do thou, too, remain warm among ice. Do thou, too, live in this world without being of it. Be cool at the equator; keep thy blood fluid at the Pole. Like the great dome of St. Peter’s, and like the great whale, retain, O man! in all seasons a temperature of thine own.” (ch.68)

This for instance has long been part of the blog.

Moby-Dick is one of the books that mean the most to me partly because it’s three books in one: a novel about the obsessive pursuit of a whale, a whale and whaling encyclopaedia, and a philosophical book.

“All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick. He piled upon the whale’s white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart’s shell upon it.” (ch.41) 

O man, beware of becoming Ahab! 

“Look not too long in the face of the fire, O man! Never dream with thy hand on the helm! Turn not thy back to the compass; accept the first hint of the hitching tiller; believe not the artificial fire, when its redness makes all things look ghastly. To-morrow, in the natural sun, the skies will be bright; those who glared like devils in the forking flames, the morn will show in far other, at least gentler, relief; the glorious, golden, glad sun, the only true lamp—all others but liars!

[…] Give not thyself up, then, to fire, lest it invert thee, deaden thee; as for the time it did me. There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. And there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces. And even if he for ever flies within the gorge, that gorge is in the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle is still higher than other birds upon the plain, even though they soar.” (ch.96) 

Great works of art such as Moby-Dick should not be reduced to self-help, but we love some books more than others not just because of literary merit, but because they resonate with us, because they reach something in us, because for some reason they stay with us over the years. Moby-Dick speaks to me. 

PS: Speaking of the Bible, about last month or so, I bought the King James Bible. Going to have to read it at some point.

2025: an exciting year in reading, viewing, travelling

Me wearing a Thai traditional dress. 

Literature 

In terms of reading, this has been a fantastic year. The main highlight was my discovery of ancient Greek literature: I read the Iliad and the Odyssey (and became a Homer obsessive), 4 plays by Aeschylus (5 if you count Prometheus Bound), 6 plays by Sophocles (1 left), 10 plays by Euripides, 5 by Aristophanes. Is there a more glorious period for theatre than 5th century BC in Athens? Elizabethan/ Jacobean England had Shakespeare, but here were four great writers working around the same time, and I was glad to discover that they did certain things that Shakespeare didn’t do. My favourite is Sophocles.

An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic by Daniel Mendelsohn is also a very good book, not only as a companion for Homer but as a memoir on its own. 

In 2025, I also discovered Molière (funnier than Shakespeare); read David Copperfield; explored more of the 18th century with Tom Jones and Gulliver’s Travels; had my first encounter with Goethe; read Elizabethan and Jacobean revenge plays; reread a few Shakespeare plays and read part of Shakespeare After All, an excellent book by Marjorie Garber; read 4 plays by Seneca (whom I did not like) and the Aeneid (which is nowhere near as great as the Iliad and the Odyssey, come on); read more Ibsen (cold and uncompromising) and Flannery O’Connor (cold and uncompromising); read Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, a living writer (shocking, I know). So many great books in a year! 

The highlight in nonfiction is The Drowned and the Saved—my favourite nonfiction writer might actually be Primo Levi. 

The main disappointment of this year—unless I forget anything else more disappointing—is about Oliver Sacks. 

Cinema and theatre 

Let’s start with Shakespeare. I saw 4 great productions: Coriolanus (2024, dir. Lyndsey Turner, with David Oyelowo in the main role), Othello (2013, dir. Nicholas Hytner, with Adrian Lester in the main role), Othello (onstage at Theatre Royal Haymarket, dir. Tom Morris, with David Harewood in the titular role), and Julius Caesar (2018, dir. Nicholas Hytner, with Ben Whishaw as Brutus). Watch them you must, especially the first three. David Harewood’s Othello is still at Theatre Royal Haymarket in London till some time in January. That one and Coriolanus make me glad that there are still great Shakespeare productions (just not at the Globe), that there are still brilliant directors who take Shakespeare seriously and understand the plays, that there are wonderful Shakespearean actors. 

I also saw King Lear (2018, with Ian McKellen), Hamlet (2009, with David Tennant), and Macbeth (the Roman Polanski film from 1971). Not great, but all have something interesting in them. 

Apart from Shakespeare, the main highlight of 2025 was the 1977 series Anna Karenina, the 7th and best adaptation I’ve seen of Tolstoy’s novel. Yes, I’ve seen 7—I’m insane—and would probably watch more though I don’t think anything can be as good as the 1977 series, as Nicola Pagett is the best Anna Karenina and the entire cast is perfect. If you don’t know what to watch for the Christmas and New Year season, go for this—it’s 10 episodes. 

Another highlight is that I watched more films from the 1930s, which I hadn’t known as well as the 40s-70s. 

The 10 best films of 2025 (in chronological order and not counting revisits): 

• Frankenstein (1931) 
• It Happened One Night (1934) 
• My Darling Clementine (1946) 
• Harakiri (1962) 
• Tom Jones (1963) 
• The Servant (1963) 
• Young Frankenstein (1974)
• Perfect Blue (1997) 
• Spirited Away (2001) 
• In Bruges (2008)

The list might be slightly different tomorrow (which I guess is the way things usually go with these lists). 

The best documentary I’ve seen this year is Groomed: A National Scandal (released earlier this year), which everyone should see. 

Travelling 

I’ve only just realised that I did 6 work trips this year: to Washington, DC (February); Geneva (March and July); Prague (November); Jakarta (November); Bangkok (November – December). No wonder I’m now burnt out and ill. 

More excitingly, my Washington, DC trip was my first time in the US; and my trips to Jakarta and Bangkok were my first return to Southeast Asia since I left Vietnam 16 years ago.  

This has been fun. 

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, everyone! 

Update on 22/12: I forgot that in 2025, I also read Judi Dench’s Shakespeare, a delightful book that not only tells behind-the-scenes stories but also offers lots of interesting insight into Shakespeare’s plays and characters; I also discovered Hayao Miyazaki. 

Jane Austen’s 250

16/12/2025 is the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth. 

Over the years, I have written about her characters, ethics, and technique, and she has such a firmly established place in the Western Canon that there’s no need to praise, so I’d like to write a bit about what Jane Austen means to me.

Two recurring themes in Austen’s novels that particularly resonate with me are balance, and the difference between appearance and reality (also a major theme throughout Shakespeare’s plays)—over and over again, Jane Austen writes about misperception and misunderstanding and hypocrisy and deceit… Mansfield Park is my favourite of her novels because it explores these ideas so well, because it’s the most complex and visual of her novels, and because it also conveys the sense of displacement, akin to the experience of an immigrant: Fanny Price doesn’t quite feel at home at Mansfield Park, but also doesn’t feel at home back at her parents’ house in Portsmouth.

But lately I have realised that there have been moments when I felt something like embarrassment, or defensiveness, about Austen because she is narrow, because she doesn’t write about death, because she doesn’t write about Big Ideas—that’s so foolish—is not love a serious theme? Is not courtship? Marriage? Coming to understand yourself, and grow, through love? Picking the right husband? Resisting the pressure to accept a man you know would make you miserable? Living and having feelings again at a time when you feel you have lost your chance of happiness? There is nothing trivial about any of this. Screen adaptations and (some part of) the fandom might turn Jane Austen into romance or chicklit, but she is subtle and serious, and I do think she is better than anyone at writing about love—about falling in love, about getting a better understanding of yourself thanks to love, about adapting and improving yourself for someone you love.

In her four masterpieces—Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Persuasion—Jane Austen explores different kinds of love, different aspects, different angles. She adopts different tones. She uses different techniques. Pride and Prejudice for example is light, bright, and sparkling, with lots of dialogue. Mansfield Park is sombre, and she uses more layers and metaphors. Emma is where she masters the free indirect speech, blending the voice of the third-person narrator with the voice of the protagonist, colouring your perspective of the scene. Persuasion is autumnal, her warmest and most romantic novel. I say Austen is narrow—and in some sense, she is—but these four novels are all quite different. She is wonderful. 

It is no wonder that 250 years since her birth, over 210 years since the publication of her novels, Jane Austen is still one of the most celebrated and beloved writers. 

On being back in Southeast Asia

 

Me doing the Mahanakhon skywalk. 

I have just returned from my work trips to Jakarta and Bangkok. 

It was strange, in a way, to be back in Southeast Asia for the first time since leaving Vietnam 16 years ago. Except for the February trip to Washington, DC, most of my travels had been within Europe. It almost felt like home—many things were familiar—and yet quite alien—as I couldn’t figure out the languages the way I can guess words in European languages. Many things reminded me of Vietnam: the crazy traffic and the mopeds and the insane electric poles and the vibrant street food culture, etc. Europeans probably don’t fully appreciate their walkable cities till they travel to Asia, or America. Jakarta for instance has the worst roads I’ve ever seen: the pavements are full of gaping mouths ready to swallow up your foot if you just get distracted for a second. Bangkok is less dense, less dangerous, but still mad. There’s a constant thought that I might get hit and see my ancestors any moment. Did you know that Bangkok’s roughly the same size as London? I didn’t know either, till recently. The public transport system however is not the same; I figured out that the best way to travel around—if you’re a bit crazy like me—was to use a Grab bike (a ride on a moped), or if the distance is too great and there’s heavy traffic, to combine the skytrain with a Grab bike. 

The best part is the food. There’s food everywhere. I’m convinced that Southeast and East Asia have the best food, especially if you consider everything—starters, main courses, desserts, snacks, fruits. I barely saw anything in Jakarta, being there for only a couple of days for a conference and having a lot to handle, but I enjoyed the food (to my own surprise). 

It was even better in Bangkok. After nearly two weeks there, my feelings are mixed. For a tourist, the city has a lot to offer: there’s so much to see, to eat, to experience. I ate pad thai and green curry and grilled meat and tom yum and jackfruit and Korean fried chicken. I got addicted to Thai milk tea and mango sticky rice. I tried Bangkok’s highest skywalk—78th floor, 310m high. I visited the Grand Palace (with its temple Wat Phra Kaew), and two other breathtaking temples (Wat Arun and Wat Pho). I took boat rides and tried tuk-tuks. I explored markets and shopping malls. It’s fun, for many reasons (and perhaps the closest to being in Vietnam now that I’m no longer able to return). 

But for someone interested in human rights, it is impossible to fully embrace Thailand because of the appalling behaviour of the government, because of the way they treat refugees, because of the way they collaborate with repressive regimes in the region and abet their transnational repression. I had been writing about the IDCs (Immigration Detention Centres) in Thailand. I was in Bangkok immediately after Thailand’s extradition of Y Quynh Bdap, a Montagnard human rights activist and UNHCR-recognised refugee, back to Vietnam. I visited Vietnamese refugees in Thailand, including some currently detained in the IDC. Most people don’t know about these things, and don’t care—even China’s atrocities don’t stop people from visiting and spending money there, how could I expect people to boycott Thailand “merely” for detaining refugees and allowing them to be beaten up by other detainees, or deporting human rights activists, or assisting Vietnamese authorities’ abductions of dissidents on their soil?—so I feel conflicted about “promoting” the fun stuff in Thailand. 

Oh well. Good experience though. 

Rereading Moby-Dick: “so noble and so sparkling”

Not a comforting thought to an ignorant and slow reader like me, but Tom (Wuthering Expectations) was right when he said there’s no reading deeply without reading widely. Moby-Dick feels different—and even better—now that I have read (and immersed myself in) Shakespeare. The influence is obvious: the language, the madness and grandeur of Ahab (in whom we find the rage of Lear and Timon), the play-like chapters, the references, and so on. 

I forgot, for example, that there’s a Shakespeare quote in the “Extracts”: 

“Very like a whale.”—Hamlet. 

References abound, like the chapter titled “Queen Mab”, or: 

“… But I omit them as altogether obsolete; and can hardly help suspecting them for mere sounds, full of Leviathanism, but signifying nothing.” (ch.32)

And plenty of others. 

Sometimes it’s less obvious: 

“Men may seem detestable as joint stock-companies and nations; knaves, fools, and murderers there may be; men may have mean and meagre faces; but man, in the ideal, is so noble and so sparkling, such a grand and glowing creature, that over any ignominious blemish in him all his fellows should run to throw their costliest robes.” (ch.26)

Does that not make you think of Hamlet?

“HAMLET […] What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god: the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals; and yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust?” (Act 2 scene 2)

Both are about the contradiction in man, but Ishmael’s quote is the inverse of Hamlet’s. 

He goes on: 

“That immaculate manliness we feel within ourselves, so far within us, that it remains intact though all the outer character seem gone; bleeds with keenest anguish at the undraped spectacle of a valor-ruined man. Nor can piety itself, at such a shameful sight, completely stifle her upbraidings against the permitting stars. But this august dignity I treat of, is not the dignity of kings and robes, but that abounding dignity which has no robed investiture. Thou shalt see it shining in the arm that wields a pick or drives a spike; that democratic dignity which, on all hands, radiates without end from God; Himself! The great God absolute! The centre and circumference of all democracy! His omnipresence, our divine equality!” (ibid.) 

That makes me think of that moment in King Lear when Lear asks “Is man no more than this?” and realises the shared humanity between himself and a beggar, and wants to take off his lendings. But Melville—shall I say Ishmael?—isn’t just talking about shared humanity; he talks about the dignity of each individual and all humanity. He makes a stronger, more emphatic point about equality. 

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I still don’t understand why there’s a hyphen in the title. 

Anyway, reading Moby-Dick, I get that bliss from every line as I get reading Shakespeare. One doesn’t experience that with every writer. Dickens is another one, Bleak House most of all. Nabokov. But especially Shakespeare and Melville. Much as I love Tolstoy, Chekhov, or Cervantes, there’s some barrier, some distance as I read them in translation and don’t have their exact words.