Channel 17 is the NBCA  Educational Channel, and will from time to time be filming NBWM lectures and educational programs for broadcast.  We will share segments on the blog as they become available to us. Subscribe to the blog from the column on the right and keep up with educational programing at the New Bedford Whaling Museum.

The 14th edition of the annual “Moby-Dick” marathon, now a winter tradition at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, got under way at noon Saturday.

The nonstop reading of Herman Melville’s epic tale drew an enthusiastic crowd that included many who were coming to New Bedford for the first time, as well as the serious Melville fans who would not miss the 25-hour marathon. For many, to quote Ishmael himself at the outset of the whaling voyage, opening the book allows “the great flood-gates of the wonder-world” to swing open.

Photo by David W. Oliveira, Standard-Times, Rev. Edward Dufresne has the crowd's attention during “Moby-Dick Marathon”

Dana Westover has read at every marathon. “I became a huge fan of Melville and Conrad as a kid. It was a world that no longer existed, but the language was so delicious you could roll it off your tongue,” he said. “‘Moby-Dick’ is a lovely book, but you have to be patient with it. I’m surprised more people don’t get the humor. Some of it is very funny.”

Over the years, the marathon’s reputation has spread far beyond New Bedford and has attracted international media attention, such as last year’s feature in London’s Financial Times.

Read the full article here:  For the curious, the fans and the scholars, ‘Moby-Dick’ redux

Admission is free.

A young bearded sailor will appear at noon Saturday, January 9, in the 19th-century garb of a whaleman and say, “Call me Ishmael.”

Thus begins the Museum’s 14th annual Moby-Dick Marathon, a nonstop reading of the great American classic commemorating the anniversary of the departure from the whaling port of New Bedford of the Fairhaven ship Acushnet with 21-year-old Herman Melville aboard.

From the moment those words are uttered to approximately 25 hours later when Ishmael is rescued from the Pacific by the Rachel, about 150 readers each will have read a short passage from this novel. Some will have read in Portuguese, Japanese, Italian, Danish, Spanish, or French, followed by that same passage in English. Traditional whaleship fare will have been consumed, washed down by coffee and cider. And a few hardy souls will have stayed for the whole adventure.

Readers will include descendants of Herman Melville and their families, professors, fishermen, schoolteachers, selectmen, students, journalists, legislators, physicians, clergy, and other lovers of Melville and Moby-Dick. Spectators are welcome at any time. Admission for the entire event is free.

4 nooks

for use at the Moby-Dick Marathon

1/9/10 – 1/10/10

This event, which is free and open to the public, will take place from 4-5:30 at the New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park’s new education center, the Corson Maritime Learning Center.  The discussion will be followed by a dinner at 6:00 ($12; call ahead, 508-997-0046) and a free lecture by Melville Society President, T. Walter Herbert at 7:30, both at the New Bedford Whaling Museum.  The Marathon–a continuous reading of Moby-Dick–will begin at noon on Saturday, January 9th, and finish up around noon on Sunday, January 10th.

From his “One Drawing Every Page of Moby-Dick” project and blog.

Moby-Dick, page 110

Title: “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.”

Matt Kish, Dec 20, 2009, 8.5" by 11", colored pencil & ink on found paper

Call me upstart.

When I show up every year to read in the annual Moby-Dick Marathon, I’m listed as a “Melville Aficionado,” for lack of anything more concrete, I guess. Not that I mind: it’s a classy moniker. Full disclosure? I’m a transplanted New Bedford-er, living in Manhattan (Melville’s adopted home), also a writer (often as dispirited as himself), bouncing back and forth as often as I can to my home in South Dartmouth. Even as a kid I was a frequent visitor to the New Bedford Whaling Museum, back in the 1950s when it was little more than a local rainy-day stop, and not a spectacular, world-class educational destination. I have made the four-hundred mile journey each year for the honor of having ten minutes to read from America’s greatest novel. This Saturday I’ll be wearing my scrimshaw whistle and my watchman’s cap, as usual, but I won’t be perusing my 22 different editions in my Moby-Dick collection beforehand, making the tortured decision of which one will get the nod to accompany me to the podium.

This year I’m going electronic. Call me nook.

For those of you who have missed the numerous Holiday Must-Have Lists, the Ellen DeGeneres Show, the ads and the publishing industry scuttlebutt, the e-reader – a device that downloads books electronically – has got a hot new contender in the category, and its name is nook. The remainder of my above full disclosure is that I work part-time as a Barnes & Noble bookseller – or, for the last couple of months, primarily, a nookseller. And I am a true believer.

I’ve spent more than three decades around the publishing industry. I’ve authored nearly twenty volumes myself. One way or another, I’ve spent my life making books. I thought that I would be the last holdout, e-readerwise. But I’m tired of lugging three tomes on the bus to New Bedford. I don’t want to carry a bigger backpack on the subway. I can’t afford to check in an extra bag at the airport. So I gave nook a try. And I love it.

Of course, not everyone is onboard. Scores of people have said to me, with much disdain, “Not me. I love my books.” Listen, everybody in a bookstore loves their books. The customers, the booksellers, and — I’m sure not just in my store — also the security guards and the maintenance crew. Moby-Dick is free to download on nook. So are Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and hundreds of thousands of other books in the public domain. Does it mean that I won’t cuddle up in front of a fire or hop into bed with a hardcover book? Of course not. A book is a book is a book, no matter how you hold it.

You’ll ask: “What Would Melville Do?” Are you kidding? Herman Melville, one of the greatest writers in our nation’s history, died a clerk, underappreciated, underread, underpaid. Any author will tell you that money is nice (and the majority of us don’t make a lot), but knowing that someone, somewhere, right now is out there reading your book? Oh, now that’s the stuff dreams are made of. I think Melville would approve of any “delivery system” that puts a book in a reader’s hands. Imagine if he could have enjoyed, in his lifetime, the place Moby-Dick has earned in America’s literary firmament. It’s all about availability. It’s nook, it’s Random House’s gorgeous Rockwell Kent edition, it’s my original $0.95 Collier edition (Skidmore, junior year), it’s Sterling Publishing’s beautiful pop-up version, it’s every permutation of the white whale out there. Melville would say, I’m sure, “As long as it’s read.”

Every time someone walks into Dartmouth’s wonderful Baker Books or up to the nook counter at my Barnes & Noble on 86^th Street, or any other store in between, and buys a book instead of a video game, we win. Melville wins.

So, I realize I may be blackballed in the chowder line at the Whaling Museum on Saturday because I’m going rogue. But the truth is, the very best way to enjoy and breathe in Moby-Dick – and all its verbal nooks and crannies – is to hear it read aloud, where it takes on a whole new vivid, lovely, rich life of its own. And at the New Bedford Whaling Museum’s Moby-Dick Marathon, it comes complete with a real, live Ishmael, the tolling of the ship’s bell, the johnnycakes, the creaky organ in the Seaman’s Bethel, and all the wonderful surprises that the Museum adds every year.

So, I’m setting aside my beautiful Moby-Dick collection this year, and reading from my nook – and you’ll still be listening to Herman Melville. Call me what you want. But I’m just a “Melville Aficionado.”

• The “Reading Moby-Dick” blog
• The Johnson County Library website about this project
• Register for Johnson County Library’s special event with Dr. Elizabeth Schultz, rescheduled for 1/24/10.

Follow our 14th annual Moby Dick Marathon via twitter using the tag: #mdm14

Starting  this year our marathon will the held on the first non-holiday weekend in January. For more complete information visit our website program page for the marathon.

Posted by Elizabeth Schultz,
In 2003, WNYU Radio’s Studio 360 decided to launch a series on American Icons which continues to this day, with Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick chosen to be the first American Icon in the series. Not the Empire State Building, not the Golden Gate Bridge, not “The Star-Spangled Banner,” but Moby-Dick!

I was delighted by this news and was delighted to be invited by Studio 360’s executive producer, Julie Burstein to be invited to help their staff think about the diverse perspectives which might be used in a radio-presentation of Moby-Dick. Called to New York for a brain-storming session, I joined the staff in a day of brainstorming to discuss the novel’s characters and themes as well as the art, music, and cartoons inspired by the novel.

It was evident that the staff was concerned to create a program which would reflect a range of responses and to generate the excitement which readers of the novel experienced. They wanted to know why science fiction writer Ray Bradbury, artist Frank Stella, playwright Tony Kushner, or an academic like myself would be moved by Moby-Dick. They considered the contrasting sounds of Lori Anderson’s Moby-Dick music and a two-minute summary of the novel in the voice of teenage surfer alongside Melville’s wondrous words in the novel. In April, 2005, the Peabody board, gave Studio 360 its award for “illuminating and revitalizing a masterpiece,” further testifying, “This is great radio.” As Studio 360 continues in 2009 to run its program on Moby-Dick, I receive enthusiastic emails from all over the country, feeling, in Melville’s words, that “the mingled, mingling threads of life” continue to connect Moby-Dick readers everywhere.

Elizabeth Schultz’s grandfather was the youngest ship captain on the Great Lakes during his day. She herself grew up sailing Michigan’s inland waters and has subsequently spent summers sailing among many of the world’s archipelagos. Above all, however, she has sailed with Herman Melville in search of Moby Dick.  She wrote “Unpainted to the Last”: Moby-Dick and Twentieth-Century American Art, co-edited a collection of essays on Melville and women, and published essays on Melville and Moby-Dick in relation to illustration, popular fiction, popular culture, race, gender, and the environment. Retired from the English Department at the University of Kansas, she was a founding member of the Melville Society Cultural Project at the New Bedford Whaling Museum and involved in diverse cultural and education programs during her six years of service.

Join us  for the 14th annual Moby Dick Marathon Noon, Saturday, January 9, 201o .

The non-stop reading of the Melville Classic.