That said, I've also been reading more than I do usually. Now is neither the time nor the place (well, actually it's both) for a recounting of titles, but let's say only that Moby Dick (by Edmund Welles) is one of them.
I last read the whale book in, like 2002, so I remember it only sparingly. And I'll tell you what--which you may not believe--it's #@$#@ amazing. I mean….it's like, this guy, Melville, he could write! Cetology!
I'm also transcribing a lot of passages, nowadays, thanks to the Kindle, which makes transcribing so easy. I'm coming more and more to believe that the rote copying of other people's words is the only way to learn to write. In the past, in Austen's time, e.g, such rote copying was widely accepted as a valid learning method. Nowadays, not so much. But it should be.
Anyway, here's a passage I bring forth to you all. It made me think vividly of Johannes, that criminal guitarist. The bit at the end is the bit of note, obviously.
It is upon the record, that three centuries ago the tongue
of the Right Whale was esteemed a great delicacy in France, and commanded large
prices there. Also, that in Henry
VIIIth's time, a certain cook of the court obtained a handsome reward for
inventing an admiarable sauce to be eaten with barbacqued porpoises, which, you
remember, are a speecies of whale.
Porpoises, indeed, are to this
day considered fine eating. The
meat is made into balls about the size of billiard balls, and being well
seasoned and spiced might be take for turtl-eballe or veal-balls. The old monks of Dunfermline were very
fond of them. They had a great
porpoise grant from the crown.
