The
tsunami of fiction—long tale to long tail—on the market today is
staggering, and with it come ever more inventive attempts at being
original. One area rich for mining is the usage of popular
characters of the past. Sherlock Holmes, Frankenstein, James Bond,
Jane Eyre—these and others are finding second, third, and fourth
lives under the guiding hand of new authors. Hit or miss,
undoubtedly there is some grave-turning happening. While first flush
may make the reader believe Jeffrey Ford has caused Herman Melville
to take a turn or two, deeper examination reveals his 2018 Ahab’s
Return: or, The Last Voyage has legs of its own to stand on (har
har—har?), and is certainly worth looking deeper into.
George
Harrow is an early pulp writer living in New York City in 1853. The
oddest of visitors showing up at his tabloid’s offices one day, the
one and only Captain Ahab complete with whalebone leg comes clumping
through the door. Ishmael a former copy editor for the tabloid,
Harrow immediately recognizes the haggard sea captain from the novel,
and sets to questioning him how he survived the white whale. Ahab
spinning his tale, Harrow’s editor recognizes fictional gold when
he hears it, and gives Harrow a stipend to help the returned captain
find his wife and son on the condition Ahab allow Harrow to turn his
recollections into stories for the tabloid. The search and stories
going smoothly, things take a turn, however, when the unlikely pair
learn that Ahab’s son is in the clutches of a street gang known for
peddling opium, beatings, and outright murder. The plot, as they
say, thickens as the gang’s nefarious leader comes into the light.
What
at first feels like historical fiction, Ahab’s Return slowly
but very surely evolves into full on, fully aware pulp adventure.
Thus for those interested in reading the novel purely for fictional
pleasure, the possibility is there; Ford tells a finely balanced
adventure of street gangs, heroes, and the opium trade on a
researched, mid-19th century New York City that feels real—besides,
of course the fantastical monsters, coincidences, acts of heroism,
and the other meat of pulp adventure…
For
those so inclined, there is also the possibility to peel back the
surface and dig a little deeper. In so digging, one will find
multiple layers. There is, naturally, the relation of Ahab’s
Return to Moby Dick. No knowledge of Melville’s novel
is required to understand the story, but if one takes into account
certain interpretations of Moby Dick, particularly its
refutation of Emerson et al’s Transcendentalism, then Ford would
seem to refute the refuter in ways that are best discovered by the
reader. On the contemporary scene, there is a strong political edge
to Ahab’s Return that cuts satirically into America today.
It doesn’t take too much imagination to understand who the Pale
Toad King really is. The representation of discrimination is a bit
heavy-handed, but for what is superficially a pulp novel, such
subtleties may not have been an option.
And
lastly are the metafictional possibilities for the novel. Harrow a
writer spinning tales based on tales which is based on a tale which,
if the scholars are to be believed, is based on Melville’s real
life experiences as a whaler, then we’ve gone deep-deep into the
strata of fiction. Ford reflecting on this through the manner in
which his writer characters (more than Harrow) interact with and
‘create’ their world, Ford, as is evident in some of his short
stories, is using fiction as a form of interrogating how we
understand and interpret reality. To say Ahab’s Return is a
full-blown exploration of this idea would be an overstatement, rather
that Ford takes advantage of the novel’s premise to do some light
prodding and poking in the area for some breezy, intellectual fun.
To
be clear, Ahab’s Return is not an extension of Moby Dick.
To say it is reactive I think is also incorrect (though there are
certainly legitimate opportunities to view it so). It would be most
correct to say Ahab’s Return uses Moby Dick as a
platform. From metafiction to politics, Ford utilizes Melville’s
famous novel to tell his own mid-19th century tale, all the while
commenting on American politics circa 2018 in both enjoyable and
relatively substantive form. Recommended.
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