I said in Part 1 of this series that I would talk about Moby Dick and Gulliver’s Travels in relation to Walker Percy’s Lost in the Cosmos in Part 2. But either the conference itself or reading half of Lost in the Cosmos or something else has made me longwinded and rambling, more so than usual, and I am just now getting to the part in which we consider Melville and Swift and Percy and Kierkegaard and many other arcane and enigmatic writers and subjects.

Bear with me. This post may be even more disjointed and meandering than usual.

One panelist noted that Ishmael in the Bible was exiled to wander in the desert. He drew a parallel to Melville’s character Ishmael who chose self-exile to the sea and Walker Percy’s “self” who is lost in the cosmos. Then he also said that Melville’s detailed and scientific description of the whale does not encompass and define the whale completely. The meaning of Moby Dick is something more than the accurate and exhaustive minutia of whales and whale-hunting that Melville treats us to in his tome, which is really half-novel, half nonfiction treatise on whales and whaling, and half philosophical thought experiment similar to the ones Percy provides in Lost in the Cosmos. Similarly, Percy says that man is more than the sum of his scientific parts:

“The peculiar predicament of the present-day self surely came to pass as a consequence of the disappointment of the high expectations of the self as it entered the age of science and technology. Dazzled by the overwhelming credentials of science, the beauty and elegance of the scientific method, the triumph of modern medicine over physical ailments, and the technological transformation of the very world itself, the self finds itself in the end disappointed by the failure of science and technique in those very sectors of life which had been its main source of ordinary satisfaction in past ages.”

Next we move on to Percy and Swift. Did you know that Jonathan Swift, author of Gulliver’s Travels, was an Anglican clergyman? I didn’t. Swift and Percy were both fascinated with Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, another “lost in the cosmos” kind of guy. The book Lost in the Cosmos is a parody of self-help books in general, a satire of modern culture, and a portrayal of the predicament of man in his lostness. Gulliver’s Travels is a parody of the then-popular travel narrative, a satire on politics and politicians of the time, and a portrayal of the predicament of man in his lostness. My favorite quotation from Gulliver’s Travels (which was not quoted at the conference):

“I am not in the least provoked at the Sight of a Lawyer, a Pick-pocket, a Colonel, a Fool, a Lord, a Gamester, a Politician, a Whore-Master, a Physician, an Evidence, a Suborner, an Attorney, a Traitor, or the like: This is all according to the due Course of Things: But when I behold a Lump of Deformity, and Diseases both in Body and Mind, smitten with Pride, it immediately breaks all the Measures of my Patience.”

Percy’s goal, as with Swift, was to startle the complacent and present the reader with such dizzying changes in perspective that he is jolted into an awareness of his lost estate.

The presentations I’ve written about so far took place on Friday afternoon. Then, there was a reception and a keynote address by Paul Elie, “author of The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage, a biography of four American Catholic writers: Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day, Flannery O’Connor, and Walker Percy.” (Note the use of colons. Mr. Elie fit right into the overall “theme” of the conference.)

I can’t tell you much about Mr. Elie’s talk because I didn’t take notes, but I did enjoy it. And I would like to read his books, both the one referenced above and his new book called Reinventing Bach. It’s about how new technologies can enhance and even re-invent old art forms and works.

The reception itself was interesting, but I’ll save that, and the performance art that Eldest Daughter and I enacted on Saturday morning, for Part 5.