White Whales and Fuzzy Caterpillars
The scenic drive north through the “All American Valley” of western Connecticut should have focused my energies on Simon Lynxx’s journey back to his ancestral Queens manor, not to mention his efforts to produce the film Jesus 2001. Why did I pack a copy of Moby Dick, as well?
For whatever reason, Melville is on my mind. Perhaps as a procrastination trick for not facing the Mano. On Sunday we drove through the Berkshires and past the farm where Moby was hatched. Yes, the author of "I am in the habit of going to sea whenever I begin to grow hazy about the eyes" was a landlubber, for a period, in western Massachusetts.
Is this D. Keith Mano?
Where was D. Keith when he wrote Take Five? On the pampas? In a strip club? In the break room of a post office on South Hero Island? Driving northward I spy many Meno who I suspect are reposing incognito. Could the redhead staring into mid-distance from a Burlington sandwich shop (above) be our guy? Or maybe the cable access dude up top lecturing on wiring and insulation according to Vermont specs? One can only ponder.
Reaching Montreal we stroll the boulevards and stare into Quebecois bookstores. I'm distracted both by the copy of M.D. I stole from the bookstore, and a critical biography published by Grove in the 1960s. It is written by a cranky Frenchman and translated into English by John Ashbery. He suggests that Hermie likes to eroticize sailors and Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Suitably procrastinated, I finally I settle in to read more T.K. at a cafe on the Rue St. Denis. Opening up the book, a caterpillar parachutes onto my head and slips to the open page. Is his appearance not foreordained? You judge for yourself. As the photo to the left shows, he has underlined a passage.
breast: plane'sll: --she got a: attendants: the jolly: yourself (p.559)
Since this seems propitious to me, I pause to evaluate before reading further. Maybe I need to finish more Melville before I tackle Mr. D. Keith. Later in the week we head deeper into Quebec and up the St. Lawrence. There are whales there I hear...
--Peter Miller












