About The Author and The Pequod
Like the ship in Herman Melville's Moby Dick, The Pequod is a haphazard collection of parts, representing the various voyages in my intellectual and creative life.
"You never saw such a rare old craft as this same rare old Pequod. To all these her old antiquities, were added new and marvellous features, pertaining to the wild business that for more than half a century she had followed. She was a thing of trophies. A cannibal of a craft." (paraphrased from Moby Dick, Chapter 16)
As can be gauged from my blog, having completed a PhD in English Literature, I now teach and research part-time at a university in the UK. I am predominantly interested in contemporary literary fiction, especially in relation to the "two cultures" of science and the arts.
This site presents many of my essays and blog posts about literature, as well as about culture, travel and politics. I have also added examples of my creative writing, such as short stories and poetry.
Finally, if a picture speaks a thousand words, then the literary content of this site is minimal in comparison to that represented by my main hobby, distraction, and joy, which is photography.
I hope you enjoy browsing, and your comments are always very welcome.
Who is the Author?
For the time being, I try to keep my identity a partial secret. Although it would not be too difficult for you to find out who I really am, unless you are of a sleuth-like disposition for now you can call me Ishmael.
I try to maintain a degree of anonymity for three reasons. Firstly, as I teach at a university I don't want students to find my site and perhaps cause a conflict of interest. Secondly, many of the essays date from a while ago (from my time as an undergraduate in English Literature) whilst my more recent blog posts are written quickly and spontaneously. Because the work here is not entirely representative of the quality of my more polished academic writing, my anonymity allows me to control the profile I present to employers and other academics. Finally, the pseudonym reminds that the ideas and opinions contained here are wholly personal ones, and do not necessarily reflect those of any institutions or organisations to which I am affiliated.
Various blog posts muse on issues of online identity and anonymity for academics online, and help to justify and explain my reasoning further.
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Why the Link to Moby Dick?
The Pequod is the ship which features in Herman Melville's 1851 novel Moby Dick.
When I first read and wrote about Moby Dick as an English Literature undergraduate, I felt an immediate affinity with the experience of Ishmael, who feels swamped by information in his bibliographical attempt to uncover the myth of the white whale.
Just as Ishmael is a "sub-sub-librarian" for whom each new piece of learning spawns new libraries to explore, so to me it sometimes feels that even as I research and write more, I only reveal what is still to be known. Every critical work cites a hundred other possibilities, every art work seems to draw parallels with its predecesors of which I know little or nothing. Similarly, hyperlinks and web pages seem less to contain and deliver information, than to point to a thousand associations and bits of knowledge not yet followed.
So as the ship in Moby Dick is a "cannibal of a craft," apparelled with the antiquities and trophies from its many voyages, it seemed an appropriate model for this website, which collects the various experiences and writing I have achieved on the "voyages" of my learning, but which also represents a thousand other paths I have yet to travel in my intellectual researches.
The Meaning of The Pequod
According to my big brother over at Statcounter, a substantial number of vistors arrive here searching for the meaning and origin of The Pequod. In response to these questions, you may find the following information helpful:
- After registering the domain name for this site, I discovered that The Pequod was (still is?) a poetry journal which does not currently have a presence on the web. If you have arrived here searching for that organisation, I apologise. Please note that this website is a collection of my own work, and I therefore do not accept submissions, although naturally I am always happy to hear your comments about this site and its content.
- Melville's source for the name was the American Indian tribe - also spelled Pequot and Pequoit - which was destroyed by the Puritans. You can find out more about Melville's allusion to this tribe on How to Read Herman Melville's Moby Dick: A Reference Site for First Time Readers.
- Apparently, the word is also an an achronym for Pacific EQUatorial Ocean Dynamics. Whatever that means.
If you are one of the users who finds this page when searching for The Pequod, and you know more than I do about its origins, please send me Your Comments so I can add them here to help other people.
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Site Design and Support
The following free software was used in creation of this site:
- Many of the CSS and design characteristics of this site are taken from A List Apart.
- Initial pages were written using the powerful editor Chami XHTML Kit.
- Links were verified with Xenu Link Sleuth
- Filezilla is an excellent and simple FTP tool
The following websites have provided support and facilities:
- Web hosting is provided by Supanames from just £13.99 per year
- Visitor statistics are monitored by the excellent Statcounter
- A complete site search facility is available thanks to Freefind
- The Form to Email and other scripts used can be found at Scriptarchive
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Statistics (as of October 2006)
Visitors
- Hits (September 21, 2004 to May 5, 2009): 150 000
- View the most up-to-date stats at Statcounter
Content
- Number of pages: 1168
- Total word count: 250 000 (approximate)
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