John Wilkes: The Greatest Explorer Ever?

Well he is according to Cooper...and that has to count for something right? If old "Fenni" (to use a nickname gifted JFC by a girl I knew in college) thinks you are the greatest, what more could you possibly ask, wish, want or desire of fate?

I believe I'll let the man speak for himself:
"There are islands to the southward of Cape Horn, and a good many of them too, though none very near. It is now known, also, by means of the toils and courage of various seamen, including those of the persevering and laborious Wilkes, the most industrious and the least rewarded of all the navigators who have ever worked for the human race in this dangerous and exhausting occupation, that a continent is there also; but, at the period of which we are writing, the existence of the Shetlands and Palmer's Land was the extent of the later discoveries in that part of the ocean" (from Cooper's The Sea Lions (page number pending as I'm on campus and using the Project Gutenberg text)).

I read this a while ago (it's actually in the first volume of the meticulously proofread Kessinger reprint of the text. I'm really quite appreciative of the folks at Kessinger and all they do pour le monde du lettres , so I'm not complaining...just commenting. And it's not a snide comment. Well ok, it is. But it isn't meant to be taken as overtly so. I'm sorry Kessinger. I love you. Everyone head over there and buy rather overpriced sort of poorly proofed -- damn. I'll just stop now.

Anyway, Cooper's Sea Lions. What a book. It's seriously great in the vein of Pierre and Fanshawe...but all of Cooper's works are like that. It's like how ridiculous old people wearing way too much Elizabeth Taylor's White Diamonds go off about how pugs or some other god-awful-ugly breed of dog is just the "ccuuuutest wittle creatur' that ever walked the eaaaarth," only...less phony. And true. In this case. Yes, Fenni is a fabulous author. You learn to love him - you know? Even with all of his crazy patriotism and bizarre interludes...his science lessons for the audience he openly proclaims to be simpleminded...just everything really. Fenimore, you are "my reason for being" -- to quote a phrase from the Phillip Glass opera Einstein on the Beach (from Knee 5 -- my favorite! (They cut off the end...the best part! oh well...). If you haven't checked out Einstein on the Beach, definitely do so. At least the music. I'm not all too certain about the visuals. Something tells me that they were projected? I don't know. I should look this up.

But not right now. I'm on campus. So anyway, everyone go read The Sea Lions! Your life will by much improv'd by th' experience.

upon ever so pleasantly being (ahem! pardon.) absorbed into the bowels of the earth!!

I've made more progress in ATD despite all of the Symmes/Poe mania. Expect an ATD update in short order. But yes, Poe's Antarctic voyage narratives are so ravishingly gorgeous. "MS Found in a Bottle" served as a particularly absorbing hammock read last night. The physics in the story are so funky that I had to draw a little sketch in the bottom right hand corner of a page of my B&N Classics edition...and even with the visual representation, nothing made sense...

It' s a fantastic little story though. Very calmly told and, presumably, relatively neatly written, seeing as everyone seems to carefully ignoring the fact that they are soon to be...well...how might one put this politely...
ABSORBED INTO THE BOWELS OF THE EARTH!!!

(The tongue of ignorance!!!) (inside joke. read Nabokov's Transparent Things.)
(Oh, and Byron's Don Juan's "what...!!!") (other inside joke. look at the cover of the Penguin Don Juan.)

But yeah, the ocean is only, you know, rushing into four MOUTHS around them...and the Pole is likely, according to Poe's endnote, "represented by a black rock, towering to a prodigious height." But yes, if you, by any chance, are familiar with Poe's Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, you totally know how this goes...yeah. It's wild. Also, if you've read that book and love it anywhere near as much as I do, shoot me a comment and we'll schedule a rendezvous/wedding date in Vegas. I love AGP so much that I care not your gender.

"So let's do it, let's fall in love."

Oh yeah, I just thought of something funny for other AGP fans and/or Byron scholars. The Newfoundland on the ship, hilarious. When I first read the book, I got SO TERRIFIED! See (hah) I was convinced the dog was not real. Trippy, yes? Yes...moreso than you can possibly imagine. I was convinced he was going to wake up or something, or be rescued, and the dog was not going to be real, which is creepy because, as the formerly initiated are aware, the dog has that note about the mutiny...so that would make everything really strange.

Actually, maybe I'll write a PoMo adaptation of the book where the dog isn't real, the boat isn't real, the ocean isn't real and everything is a dream in the mind of...the white figure. Hey, that might be a really awesome (and awesomely unjustified) reading of the book. But that would be awesome.

Oh, but yes, the Byron/AGP thing. Boatswain!?! Whenever I first read a Byron bio (go down to Character) I laughed for like an hour. I mean, I know everyone was giving their Newfound novelties nautical names...but then Byron gave Boatswain a lavish burial...and the poem...it was absolutely hilarious. Definitely check it out (no Beastie Boys! no!) if you are previously uninitiated.

Well I'm off to read Poe, Borges, and Melville. So...super profundo on the eve of your day.

Oh, and this is so true!