The Great Floodgates of the Wonderworld Read Online Free PDF

Ishmael.
    BLOODY BATTLE IN AFGHANISTAN .”
    A lot is made of Melville’s “part of the bill” after the events of September 11, 2001—how uncanny and prophetic it was, coming after the most “grandly contested” election of our generation—Bush vs. Gore in 2000—and the beginning of our nation’s own night sea journey under the direction of Captain Bush. In post-9/11 America, the label of Captain Ahab is bandied about constantly. In his quest for vengeance against the West, Osama bin Laden is labeled an Ahab, as is George Bush, especially after he steers the country away from our own bloody battle in Afghanistan and into the dangerous waters of Iraq.
    As of my arrival in New York, we’re only a few months into this new war, and like the crew members of the Pequod , our country is in for a long dark voyage.

DELIVERY
    It touches one’s sense of honour … if just previous to putting your hand into the tar-pot, you have been lording it as a country schoolmaster.
    ∼ HERMAN MELVILLE, Moby-Dick
    A fter weeks of job searching, I finally land an interview with the president of a children’s book company, a friend of a friend. The night before our meeting, I draft a proposal for a nonfiction children’s book about skateboarding. It’s a good move, because it turns out there isn’t any freelance editing work available, but he likes the book idea. So much that he suggests I turn the one book into a series of six. He even offers me a small advance. The pay isn’t great, but it’s better than what I’m making for the skateboard anthology. And all combined, these writing gigs only scratch the surface of my rent, almost three times what I paid back in Colorado.
    So I need another job, something menial that will provide some cash but also plenty of time to finish editing the anthology and write six new books. Walking back from the subway after my interview, I see a Delivery Driver Needed sign in the window of a tiny Indian restaurant, just a few blocks from my apartment. Since I have a car and a valid driver’s license, they hire me on the spot.
    Not lost on me is the fact that I’m over thirty and have a master’s degree—and that I’d spent the last year as a university instructor—but now here I am delivering samosas and saag , the pungent smell of fried ghee seeping into my truck’s upholstery. I remind myself that it’s only temporary, plus I read and reread the section of Moby-Dick where Ishmael talks about making the transition from schoolmaster to sailor—“What does that indignity amount to, weighed, I mean, in the scales of the New Testament? Do you think the archangel Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I promptly and respectfully obey that old hunks in that particular instance? Who ain’t a slave? Tell me that.”
    One major perk of the job is that it allows me to stay in Brooklyn and avoid the subway into Manhattan—a five-minute ride that increasingly strikes dread into my pickup truck–driving, country-boy heart. The other bright spot is that I love Indian food, and the couple who run the place feed me plenty of it. The husband is a Bangladeshi Muslim; his wife is a Brooklyn-bred Catholic. They raise two sweet girls, Amy and Sabiya, who seem overscheduled with visits to both mosque and church, and who have to hang around the restaurant until ten nearly every night. I feel bad for them, so I help them with their homework between delivery runs.
    In October there’s a full lunar eclipse. Before we all go outside to watch the moon flicker out, I sit with Amy and Sabiya at a glass-top table and slide little tea candles around in slow circles to illustrate how an eclipse works, how every so often the earth orbits in between the sun and the moon, casting the lunar glow in shadow.
    “Does it go dark forever?” Sabiya, the younger sister, asks, holding her hand over the moon-candle flame—something for which her mother is always scolding her.
    “Not at all,” I say, taking the candle