****: the narrator, Kim Kardashian and Lolita

Still reading Matthew Selwyn's ****, or, The Anatomy of Melancholy. 
Look at this passage: 

“Shoes off, I climb the stairs and drop down onto my bed, covers still falling into the inviting pool of my carpet where I left them this morning. Reaching up, I hit the power button on my laptop, which sits on my desk. Kim Kardashian appears briefly, then the familiar loading screen. Longest 2 minutes of the day. 
I lie back on my bed; close my eyes and rest, wishing away the seconds until I have something to open my lids for once more. The computer’s fan whizzes, the CD drive begins to spin—the familiar routine, the comforting commotion only inches from my ears. 
[…]
The computer lets loose another chime, a double-take. I look up, concerned, but see Kardashian’s famous bust right where it should be, the cursor spinning over her right nipple—teasing me and her at the same time. […]
The chimes fire across my thoughts again and I sit up a little, pulling the laptop onto my belly. The icons scatter across Kim’s perfect body before my eyes, the cursor still spinning but more slowly now, easing off, preparing to draw the world into my bedroom. All looks fine, my heartbeat slows, and I rest back on my elbows as the final few programs load. Admiring those perfect caramel tits, hidden now by the mess of files dropped on top of them, I relax—but then the chime goes again. Shit. Maybe the sound card is busted; not the end of the world, but fuck scenes are less animal without the groans. And I certainly don’t want any lovely to be competing with that dull chime, orgasmic screams being beaten out by the repetitive drone.”

Here the phone rings. 

“My eyes focus, I look down at it: ‘Josie’, it tells me, ‘Josie’ is trying to connect with me.” 

Who’s Josie? we wonder. The narrator picks up the phone—Josie turns out to be his mother, telling him to open the door, “knobhead”. 

“The chimes start again, insistent. I blink at Kim’s boobs before they disappear into another loading screen, brother to the one from 5 minutes past…” 

Selwyn gets points for the bit about Josie—an element of surprise (though I’d probably write “I glance at it. Josie.”—that is enough). Here we have a young man who has spent pages boasting of his size, performance and experience, of his conquests, of his independence and nonconformity—despite occasional hints that the narrator isn’t who he says he is, everything has led the reader to expect Josie to be anyone but his mother. When the narrator introduces himself to us, he appears to dominate, to be in control of everything, to understand “the system” and exploit it for his own use, to see through all falsehoods and pretences, to know everything of which everyone else is ignorant. All of a sudden we realise that he’s unemployed. Then it turns out that he lives with his mother and his father left a while ago. Later, we see him with a psychoanalyst. And so on. Slowly, slowly, the character’s revealed to us. 
My chief problem with **** is the prose. If you like it, or don’t mind it, **** might interest you as a book about a loner, a loser, a misanthrope, a kind of sociopath. Now and then I’m not very convinced—for instance, look back at the passage quoted above, does that sound like someone that likes Kim Kardashian? I don’t think so. Clearly, the author doesn’t like Kim Kardashian, and only tries to slip into the mind of someone who does. But in general, Selwyn does depict the character’s misanthropy and cynicism, as well as the insecurities beneath it.  
Another thing that might interest you is the picture of modern society—(if you think) this is an age of the screen, of porn, of plastics and virtual worlds, of sex prioritised over love and hook-ups preferred to relationships, etc. 
On my part, I’m not much of an aesthete, compared to some readers (I’ll pick Tolstoy over Flaubert any time), but I like poetic and rhythmic prose, original and striking metaphors, and have always valued artistic genius over ideas. It’s not that I like elaborate prose (not always), nor that I mind a colloquial style, nor that I have issues with the harshness and vulgarity of the narrator’s language, I simply find it clumsy and clunky. Should we think it’s the character rather than the author that writes clunky prose? Should we think the clichés are his rather than Selwyn’s? 
Let’s talk about another scene. The narrator yells “Where the fuck is Lolita?”. That doesn’t refer to a girl named Lolita, but to the Nabokov book that he has misplaced somewhere and now has to find. What’s the purpose of the scene? 1, he reads Lolita (earlier in the book, we’re told that he reads Kierkegaard and Sartre and Flaubert, knows about Auden and Kingsley Amis, and is familiar with Freud’s ideas). 2, his mother is a philistine, who doesn’t care about books and doesn’t know the difference between Fight Club and Lolita. 3, as a result, the mother and the son are too different to be close—to be precise, he sees her as an ignoramus.
He closes the door and blocks her out. 
This is the passage that follows: 

“Looking around, there’s no sign of Lo. Not that there’s too many hiding places. My single bed, covers thrown all over the place: signs of a good night. My desk, leaning unsteadily against my bed and covered with a few used bowls, the odd piece of discarded toast, and my laptop. A swinging chair, the back broken clean off—this is where Lo should be, it’s where my books live. My wardrobe, cheap and tiny, doesn’t even hold my clothes, which spill out from the open doors and onto the grey-brown carpet, mixing with the normal cocktail of crumbs, dust, and condom wrappers. Shit. There’s nowhere for Lo to hide. Even nymphets won’t lower themselves to hang about in a place like this. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got everything I need. But fuck, life in a box isn’t much to shout about. It’s nothing but a holding pen for the inevitable, for the final box. State-sponsored housing? State-sponsored euthanasia.” 

(The last line reveals the 4th significance of the scene). 
The better passages of the book are when the narrator’s talking—when all we have is his voice, with his remarks and ideas. Once he starts to describe (I shall not type the scene where he talks to his girlfriend Lexi over the screen), it doesn’t work very well. 
What do you think? 

****: on the narrator/ main character

On Matthew Selwyn's ****, or, The Anatomy of Melancholy. 


Swearwords, swearwords, swearwords. Rants. Ravings. Violence, tits, cocks, violence, tits, drugs, fucking, cocks, tits, power, freedom, dicks… A seemingly endless monologue made up of profanities, boasting about size and performance, and cynical, misanthropic comments on everything.
Isn’t it tiresome? 
Then I noticed something interesting in ****. 
There’s a discrepancy between what the narrator says he’s like and what he’s really like. In his own words, he’s confident, free, powerful, independent and marvellous—alienated from others but indifferent because he’s nonconformist and superior. The illusion is unbroken for pages, until we see him with Chloe when she’s late, and before the man at Job Centre Plus. Does he put on an act before the people around him, or does he lie to us? All of his boasting, with all the bombastic rhetoric about life and love and sex and power and everything, is but a mask, a disguise, a cover, a shelter for a lonely, broken young man—underneath all that confidence, arrogance and disdain is deep insecurity. 
I shall not just call him an unreliable narrator. I’m afraid he doesn’t lie to the readers as much as he lies to himself. 




______________________________________

Going around, I came across this review: 
http://www.thecosydragon.com/2015/07/review-matthew-selwyn-or-the-anatomy-of-melancholy.html
“The protagonist came through as a man stroking his own ego and penis and that was certainly some solid characterisation – but in the wrong way. Bombarded by constant reminders of his penis’ superiority, it was difficult to get beyond those thoughts.” 
Disagree. As I wrote above, there’s something more to it. 

11/6

Today's my birthday. 
Older, hopefully a bit wiser. 

****: 1st impression

On Matthew Selwyn's ****, or, The Anatomy of Melancholy. 

“The chemist was closed, so I went to the movies instead; fat lot of good that did me.” 

Is that a good start? I’m not sure. 
Let’s go on. To open a book with the thought “Try not to be so critical” is, I think, rather disrespectful to the author. 

“This wind tonight; cutting across my face, bringing reluctant tears to my eyes.” 

I don’t like that semicolon very much. 
Nor the one in this sentence: “The street lamps light the way; 2 more streets and I’m there.” 

“My soles kiss the pavement—a gentle smack as plastic meets concrete and I propel myself forward, avoiding jutting paving slabs, broken glass; the debris of life as we know it. 
[…]
I breathe heavy, rattling breaths, and drive forward.” 

Am I alone in thinking that it clinks?
Perhaps it’s not a good idea to jump straight to the 21st century after several years of 19th century literature (with a few 20th century exceptions). But look at this passage: 

“A blonde with high cheek bones and Nordic looks smiles up at me.
[…]
Running her hand faintly across my face and down my shoulder, Lexi glides straight past me and pulls the pocket Barbie away. Wrapping her slim arms around the blonde, Lexi presses herself close—her breasts squashing against the bony shoulder blades of her partner. The 2 writhe together, Lexi driving blondie’s hips and running 1 of her hands through the mass of bleached hair in front of her. Blondie’s eyes close as she rocks her head back into her partner, but Lexi looks only at me. 
I breathe heavy, the air thick with sweat and sex. Lexi pulls away from Barbie and, giving her a small pat on the bum, pushes her back into the heaving crowd. I look on as the whip of blonde hair disappears into the mass that surrounds us, and then there is only Lex.
Her rich breath, still thick with tobacco, engulfs me as she presses me close. Grabbing her wrist, I pull her to the back of the club, to our only chance of privacy. 
Slamming the door to the disabled toilet behind us, I throw my tiny nymph against the wall, and press up against her—the weight of my body reminding her of the eternal truth of our relationship, of every relationship. Lifting her legs so they’re wrapped around me, I press against her, trapping her in the embrace. Pushing my hot lips away, she pauses—places her forefinger against my mouth and reaches into her the left cup of her over-full bra. 
She pulls out a tiny packet of blow; the soft whiteness of the powder highlighting the grime of the surfaces around us. I step back and release Lex, let her cut the stuff. 
Rolling a loose bill, she stoops and inhales a line. Then another. 
Don’t worry, I get my share. 
The fresh, raw feeling overwhelms. The blood flows, and we fuck, right there among the grime.” 

No, it’s not because I’m used to 19th century style. This is simply not what I see as good prose. 
However, I’ve got an idea: I’ll choose another approach. **** doesn’t seem to have a plot. It’s a mind, a consciousness, no, a voice, a monologue, a one-man show—the narrator’s talking, talking, talking; he doesn’t care if anybody listens; his mind wanders and his interest shifts from 1 thing to another. Slow reading is not the way. I’ll let him talk—I’ll read quickly, without lingering, without pausing after a sentence or a paragraph to think, without rereading often; I’ll let go, and go with the flow. 

****

I've just started reading ****, or, The Anatomy of Melancholy by Matthew Selwyn. 
Unless I decide to put it down to get back to Melville or move onto The Sympathiser (because I'm depressed at the moment and the book doesn't look like something that goes well with depression), I'll (try to) write about it, and readers of this blog should keep these facts in mind: 
Matthew Selwyn has a few things against him: I generally don't read contemporary novels and over the past few years I've mostly read books that have stood the test of time; I read Moby Dick just a short while ago and it's likely to affect my standards and expectations (see what happened when I read Doctor Zhivago right after Anna Karenina and Lady Chatterley's Lover right after War and Peace?); I generally don't like books with colloquial, slangy style as though the narrator's speaking (The Catcher in the Rye is 1 of the few exceptions). 
There is 1 thing against me: I know Matthew- we haven't met, but we may, he's a blogger friend and the person that sent me the book (signed, last year). You know what that implies. 
Why do I make a public announcement? Because that would make it harder for me to break my promise. Not that I've never made a fool of myself on this blog before, but still...  

"Benito Cereno"

In "The Topicality of Depravity in "Benito Cereno"" (included in the Norton Critical Edition of Melville's Short Novels), Allan Moore Emery remarks that commentators of the story fall into 2 camps:

"(1) those who read the tale as a powerful portrait of human depravity, with a sadistic Babo as the prime embodiment of evil, an obtuse Delano as Melville's figure of naive optimism, and a doomed Cereno as his contrasting symbol of moral awareness, and (2) those who view the tale as a stern indictment of American slavery, complete with an amply prejudiced Delano, a guilt-ridden Cereno, and a sympathetic (or even heroic) Babo, driven to violence by an insufferable bondage."

I belong to the 3rd, or the middle camp- both interpretations are right. The colour grey on the 1st page of "Benito Cereno" isn't only a foreshadowing device for the gloom to come, but also a reminder that things are not black and white, between them are 254 shades of grey.  
A more important theme is perception. Whether Babo is seen as heroic, because he does everything for freedom, or evil, because he kills most officers, controls Cereno and plans to take over another ship, the focus is still the fact that Amasa Delano misunderstands and misinterprets everything, and he does because of his racism. Delano's perception is distorted partly because he has a sunny outlook on life, incapable of recognising evil, but more because he thinks in stereotypes and attaches certain attributes to certain groups of people and doesn't think blacks are capable of cunning. He fails to see people as individuals. In "Benito Cereno", the actions of different characters show that evil can be found in everyone, white or black, male or female, and Babo is neither purely this nor purely that- to put a definite label on him would be reductive. 
"Benito Cereno", I think, is ultimately about perception and racism.

Write about "Benito Cereno" without discussing race and slavery

1/ Here is something I noticed- Melville's or the narrator's fondness for double negatives:
- "With no small interest, Captain Delano continued to watch her—a proceeding not much facilitated by the vapors partly mantling the hull, through which the far matin light from her cabin streamed equivocally enough; much like the sun—by this time hemisphered on the rim of the horizon, and, apparently, in company with the strange ship entering the harbor—which, wimpled by the same low, creeping clouds, showed not unlike a Lima intriguante's one sinister eye peering across the Plaza from the Indian loop-hole of her dusk saya-y-manta."
- "But as if not unwilling to let nature make known her own case among his suffering charge, or else in despair of restraining it for the time, the Spanish captain, a gentlemanly, reserved-looking, and rather young man to a stranger's eye, dressed with singular richness, but bearing plain traces of recent sleepless cares and disquietudes, stood passively by, leaning against the main-mast, at one moment casting a dreary, spiritless look upon his excited people, at the next an unhappy glance toward his visitor."
- "Still, Captain Delano was not without the idea, that had Benito Cereno been a man of greater energy, misrule would hardly have come to the present pass." 
- "His manner upon such occasions was, in its degree, not unlike that which might be supposed to have been his imperial countryman's, Charles V., just previous to the anchoritish retirement of that monarch from the throne."
- "That strange ceremoniousness, too, at other times evinced, seemed not uncharacteristic of one playing a part above his real level."
- "One, too, at that period, not unknown, in the surname, to super-cargoes and sea captains trading along the Spanish Main, as belonging to one of the most enterprising and extensive mercantile families in all those provinces; several members of it having titles; a sort of Castilian Rothschild, with a noble brother, or cousin, in every great trading town of South America."
- "Here Babo, changing his previous grin of mere animal humor into an intelligent smile, not ungratefully eyed his master."
- "And among the Malay pirates, it was no unusual thing to lure ships after them into their treacherous harbors, or entice boarders from a declared enemy at sea, by the spectacle of thinly manned or vacant decks, beneath which prowled a hundred spears with yellow arms ready to upthrust them through the mats."
- "Not unbewildered, again he gazed off for his boat."
- "Not unlikely, perhaps."
- "Captain Delano crossed over to him, and stood in silence surveying the knot; his mind, by a not uncongenial transition, passing from its own entanglements to those of the hemp."
- "Not uninfluenced by the peculiar good-humor at present prevailing, and for the time oblivious of any but benevolent thoughts, Captain Delano, who, from recent indications, counted upon a breeze within an hour or two at furthest, dispatched the boat back to the sealer, with orders for all the hands that could be spared immediately to set about rafting casks to the watering-place and filling them."
- "... said Captain Delano, not unpleased with this sociable plan..."
- "There is, too, a smooth tact about them in this employment, with a marvelous, noiseless, gliding briskness, not ungraceful in its way, singularly pleasing to behold, and still more so to be the manipulated subject of."
- "But to his great satisfaction, Don Benito, as if he began to feel the weight of that treatment with which his slighted guest had, not indecorously, retaliated upon him, now supported by his servant, rose to his feet, and grasping Captain Delano's hand, stood tremulous; too much agitated to speak." 
- "After a moment's pause, he assured his guest that the black's remaining with them could be of no disservice; because since losing his officers he had made Babo (whose original office, it now appeared, had been captain of the slaves) not only his constant attendant and companion, but in all things his confidant."
- "Not unaffected by the close sight of the gleaming steel, Don Benito nervously shuddered; his usual ghastliness was heightened by the lather, which lather, again, was intensified in its hue by the contrasting sootiness of the negro's body."
- "On their way thither, the two captains were preceded by the mulatto, who, turning round as he advanced, with continual smiles and bows, ushered them on, a display of elegance which quite completed the insignificance of the small bare-headed Babo, who, as if not unconscious of inferiority, eyed askance the graceful steward."
- "Not unaffected, Captain Delano would now have lingered; but catching the meekly admonitory eye of the servant, with a hasty farewell he descended into his boat, followed by the continual adieus of Don Benito, standing rooted in the gangway."
- "The tribunal inclined to the opinion that the deponent, not undisturbed in his mind by recent events, raved of some things which could never have happened."
And so on. 
(my emphasis)
Melville does use double negatives in other works too, but not as noticeably as in this short story (or novella).
If you pay attention, you can also see that there are lots of Nos and Nots.
What does it mean? That Delano, in his optimism and naivete, is in denial (of evil), which makes him incapable of seeing things as they are? Or does Melville want to focus on the complexity, the nuances of life, by constantly making us think of the subtle difference between a double negative and a positive? Or does the "no/not+ a negative word" structure point to the fact that Delano is never opposing, because he's always affirmative, in the sense that he holds all the stereotypes in his culture/ race of others, without questioning? Or there's no further meaning in it- Melville only aims for precision?


 2/ "Benito Cereno" isn't called a mystery story, but it has a mystery. All the details are there, laid out before us, but we're led onto the wrong track because we see them through the subjective eyes of a naive, unperceptive, prejudiced person, and this is achieved through the use of 3rd person limited/ subjective. Then we go back and can't understand how we could have missed it in the 1st reading.
Reminds me of another novel also from the 19th century that does the same thing: Jane Austen's Emma.

New photos- fish- Untitled set

Click here for full set. 
Photos taken and edited by me.


If the link isn't available, that means I have deactivated my fb account. Wait until I'm back. 

Melville vs James, or Writers and taste buds

Over the past few days, besides "Cock-A-Doodle-Doo", "The Lightning-Rod Man" and "The Encantadas, or Enchanted Isles", I also read but didn't write about "The Fiddler", "The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids", and a few hours ago, finished reading "I and My Chimney".
My collection is from Oxford World's Classics. 
Look at these lines about "I and My Chimney" from Robert Milder's introduction: 

"The remarkable thing about 'I and My Chimney', at any rate, is how wonderfully comic it is, how little it is given to bitterness, self-pity or despair. 1 of the last of Melville's tales, it is also 1 of the most genial, the work of a man who has come to take a virtuoso's pleasure in his craft and thereby, without ever solving the problems that troubled him, slowly to find his way back to the living." 

I like that. So now I decide to let go, enjoying "I and My Chimney" for what it is and what it does and what it's like without worrying much about what it means and what it represents. As with Kafka. And Gogol. 
Anyway, I've been thinking about Melville and Henry James, idly wondering if I'd have enjoyed The Portrait of a Lady if I'd read it a short time after Moby Dick. Probably not. I remember seeing a few years ago someone comparing Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte using the analogy of taste, likening the former to sushi and the latter to barbecue, which means that both are good, but if you eat sushi right after something as strong and rich as barbecue, you can't taste anything at all, it's just raw fish, and as a result, you'll find it bad. I don't know if it's true- haven't tried. Perhaps not, as I like Jane Austen terribly much, with all of her humour, irony and sarcasm, and her stabs at people, whereas Charlotte Bronte I have some reservations against. Perhaps it would work if you replaced Charlotte with Emily, my favourite of the Brontes. In any case, it's a useful, or at least an interesting, concept. The refined, controlled, subtle James would be sushi, and Melville, with his exuberance and intensity, would be barbecue. In James, at least in The Portrait of a Lady and the short works I've read, much is hidden or left out, much is just hinted or suggested, and his greatness is in noticing and capturing the subtleties that easily escape people. I imagine that after reading Melville and enjoying his intensity, his striking images and complex layers of symbols and metaphors, his larger-than-life characters, his rhythmic style mixed with dramatic, hyperbolic or mock-heroic language, one would find James rather dull, as though the strong flavour of Melville kills some of one's taste buds. One would find James limiting, and limited, in his obsession with a perfect form, with harmony and completeness, when Melville tests the possibilities of literature and tries to expand the form of the novel, to make it encompass a lot more, do a lot more. 
Luckily, I read The Portrait of a Lady 1st. 

Interesting whale facts

From Leviathan or, The Whale by Philip Hoare:
1/ “The beluga is the most vocal of all whales, known by sailors as the canary of the sea...”
2/ “No one really knows why whales leap. Almost every species does it—from the smallest dolphin to the greatest blue whale—in their own style: backward breaches, belly-flops, half-hearted lunges or full-blown somersaults.”
“It seems likely that their aerobatics are an energetic means of communication—advertisements of physical power and presence, telling other whales ‘Here I am’ and ‘Aren’t I splendid?’. But when you see a whale leap out of the water like a giant penguin, your 1st thought is that it looks fun. The fact that calves and young whales are more prone to breach reinforces this idea.”
Reminds of this line from Moby Dick about the whale:

“…as a general thing, he enjoys such high health; taking abundance of exercise; always out of doors; though, it is true, seldom in the open air…”

3/ Cetaceans—from the Greek ketos for sea monster—fall neatly into 2 suborders. The toothed odontocetes—71 species of porpoises, river and ocean dolphins, beaked whales, orcas and sperm whales—feed on fish and squid. The mysticetes or moustached whales—of which there are at least 14 species—filter their diet of plankton and smaller fish through their baleen.”
4/ “Although mysticetes foetuses have teeth buds, these are resorbed into their jaws before being born, to be replaced by sprouts of fibrous protein called keratin, the same material that furnishes humans with their fingernails.”
5/ Whales “have bad breath, and shit reddish water.”
6/ Humpbacks eat a ton of fish a day, “mostly sand eels which, with their salt-excreting glands, are full of fresh water and therefore sate the animals’ thirst. Whales might live in the world’s greatest bodies of water, but they can never drink.”
Later in the book, Hoare says Malcom Clarke tells him about “how the contents of sperm whales’ stomachs would yield dozens of unidentified species: in one he found no fewer than 18000 beaks”. 
7/ “Their nearest relation on land is the hippopotamus…”
8/ Food found in sperm whales’ bellies seldom shows tooth marks; juveniles eat squid and fish long before developing teeth and females don’t develop teeth till late in maturity, if at all; their teeth aren’t necessary for sustenance. Their function is obscure.
“This great predator does not chew its prey; rather, it sucks it in like a giant vacuum cleaner, as the presence of ventral pleats on its throat indicates.”
Reminds of Captain Boomer in Moby Dick:

“…I'm thinking Moby Dick doesn't bite so much as he swallows.”

9/ Male sperm whales may be twice the size of females.
10/ Female sperm whales produce single calves only once every 4-6 years.
11/ Their heart beats 10 times/ minute.

12/ “At the surface, the sperm whale is slower, less agile and has less time and energy than other whales—and is therefore less able to flee such an unnatural predator as man.” Philip Hoare calls it “an inexplicable and potentially fatal evolutionary flaw” and mentions that John Fowles wonders why the sperm whale “has never acquired—as it easily could in physical terms—an efficient flight behavior when faced with man. At times, it will almost queue up to be gunned… The poor brutes just never learnt.”
13/ “Not only did [the right whale] boast plentiful blubber, but its particularly long baleen, when heated, could be moulded into shape for umbrellas, corset stays and venetian blinds, or used as bristles for brushes.”
14/ Male right whales “assert their supremacy by multiple matings rather than fighting for favours” and females “will even permit more than 1 partner to enter them at the same time, after sessions of delicate foreplay in which the courting animals use their flippers to stroke each other with inordinate gentleness; like all whales, their skin is incredibly sensitive, and the pressure of a human finger can send their entire body quivering”.
15/ Hoare describes the right whale’s smell as “a deep insupportable smell, somewhere between a cow’s fart and a fishy wharf, a pungent reminder of its function as a processing plant for plankton”. 

16/ Belugas “are born grey, and only achieve pure white in late adulthood, becoming sinless with old age”. Narwhals also change colour over time.
17/ The name of narwhals comes from Old Norse “nar” and “hvalr”, meaning “corpse whale”, “because its smudges resemble the livid blemishes on a dead body”.
18/ The Latin name for the killer whale, or more correctly, whale-killer, Ornicus orca, has its root in orcus, which means “belonging to the kingdom of the dead”. Hoare adds, “a reflection of its reputation as the only non-human enemy of the great whales”.
19/ “The narwhal’s tusk is actually an overgrown, living tooth which erupts to pierce its owner’s lip on the left-hand side and spirals up to 9 feet long, sometimes even longer”. “Unlike other teeth, its surface has open tubules connected to inner nerves; it is, in effect, a giant sense organ, lined with 10 million nerve endings to enable the animal to detect subtle changes in temperature and pressure. […] Other research indicates that the tusk is not only a sensory probe, but may also be a transmitter or receiver of sound, and even of electricity.” 

20/ Discovery of stone or ivory harpoons in whales suggests that they can live longer than we think they can. Dr. Jeffrey L. Bada of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California, using “a technique for dating animals from changes in the aspartic acid levels in their eyes”, “examined tissue from whales caught by the Inupiat hunters” and found that most were 20-60 years old when they died, but of 5 large male bowheads, 1 was 90 years old, 4 were between 135 and 180 years old, and 1 was 211 years old.
21/ “While I read illicit American comics under my bedclothes, fantasizing about a world of sleek-suited superheroes, new processes—sulphurization, saponification, distillation—extended and rationalized the use of whales in lubricants, paint, varnish, ink, detergent, leather and food: hydrogenation made whale oil palatable, sanitizing its taste. Efficiency ruled, in place of the early whalers’ waste. Whale liver yielded vitamin A, and whale glands were used to make insulin for diabetics and corticotrophin to treat arthritis. 19th century trains had run on whale oil; now streamlined cars with sleek chrome fins used brake fluids made from the same stuff. Victorian New Englanders had relished doughnuts fried in whale oil; now children with crew-cuts and stripy T-shirts licked ice cream made from it. Their bright shiny faces were washed with whale soap, and having tied their shoelaces of whale skin, they marched off to school, past gardens nurtured on whale fertilizer, to draw with whale crayons while Mum sewed their clothes on a machine lubricated with whale oil, and fed the family cat on whale meat. In her office, big sister transcribed memos on typewriter ribbon charged with whale ink, pausing to apply her whale lipstick. Later that afternoon, she would play a game of tennis with a whale-strung racquet. Back home, Daddy lined up the family to take their photograph on film glazed with whale gelatine.”
Later in the book: “… whale meat was ground into flour for use as animal food. European cattle fed on whales. Nothing was wasted. […] The whale’s liver produced vitamin extracts. The teeth were used to create scrimshaw, destined to gather dust on tourist’ shelves at home.” 
22/ “Research on humpback brains has also discovered the presence of spindle neurons, otherwise confined only to primates and dolphins. These cells—important in learning, memory and recognizing the world around and, perhaps, one’s self—first appeared in man’s ancestors 15 million years ago. In cetaceans, they may have evolved 30 million years ago.”
23/ Whales may have culture. Research “suggests entire communities of whales, ocean-wide clans moving in distinctive patterns and ‘speaking’ in distinctive repertoire of clicks, like humans sharing the same language. Separate groups of the same species will act in different ways, foraging for food in different manners—methods learned maternally, passed on from generation to generation.”
Dr Hal Whitehead organises the sperm whale’s clicks into: “usual clicks, about 2 a second, made by foraging whales; creaks, a regular, more rapid succession of clicks which he describes as sounding like the rusty hinge on an opening door, and which indicate a whale homing in on its prey, or scanning other whales at the surface; the communicative sequence of codas—such as click-click-click-pause-click—a kind of cetacean Morse code which suggests ‘conversations’, although ‘we do not know what information is being transmitted’. Most mysterious of all are the slow clicks or clangs made by mature males and which Whitehead compares to ‘a jailhouse door being slammed every 7 seconds’.” 

24/ “Although Ishmael declares that it was whale oil that was rubbed on the British sovereign’s head in the coronation service, this was in fact an ambergris-infused concoction…” The new monarch “is marked on the head, heart, shoulders, hands and elbows with this oil”. 
25/ Hoare says that ambergris is actually whale shit. 
“Light-giving wax, lubricating oil, scented faeces: sometimes it seems as though the whales are cetacean Magi, bringing offerings that presage their own sacrifice.”