1947 Oxford University Press Deluxe

This is a lovely volume, in size and shape. Good to hold in the hand, and the feel of the cover boards is substantial.

The type setting is clean, even, and elegant. It would be an awesome book to hold and read.

At some point Marty Matheson signed the inside fly leaf with her name and June '74. Clearly by the ware on the boards, she read some if not all of it.

In looking over this volume, I reread the first paragraph, where Ishmael puts down that when ever he gets out of sorts, especially in November, whenever his dark side begins to win the struggle, and when he is fighting the urge to step into the street, and methodically knock peoples' hats off, he then knows its "high time to get to sea"

He states that going to sea is his "substitute for pistol and ball."

In preventing his becoming a mass murderer, Ishmael chooses to leave a world of independence and solitude and chooses interdependence and involvement by here in this story signing up on a whaleship which by its own nature is a small concise world where it is impossible to be alone.

It is getting colder here in Albany, November is around the corner, and some days I want to step into the street and knock guys ball caps off.  

I am reminded that my dad and my grandads hats did not have ball teams logos on them. Those guys had style and were men of independence and solitude. That is my world too. Yet deep within the sea is calling me.