Last week I spoke about Melville, and the impression that Moby Dick gave me. Following along with that, I want to explore a concept that will lead us from Melville to the true focus of this blog, which is to chronicle my reading and opinions of the complete works of Shakespeare in 2022. Expect to see lots of rankings, both of the plays themselves, and of works based on individual plays. In 2023, maybe we’ll blog the King James Bible.

For this winter morning, as I sit here breathing the scent of a lavender candle and feeling the gentle thrum of energy drink in my veins, I will explain something I’m calling “The Web.” Nearly every book ever written owes a debt to other books and authors which came before. So there is a linking between books across influences. But there is also a linking of books across subject matter. So, for example, Vanity Fair and War and Peace are connected through subject: the Napoleonic wars. Naturally, a writer’s own works are linked closely in this web.

Ideally, the more you read, the larger your web becomes, as you become interested in, say, who Garcia Marquez or Leslie Marmon Silko was reading. Or perhaps you see one book mentioned in another book and decide to read it. I won’t deny that reading within the canon makes your web grow much faster, because so many books have been written about those books or as spinoffs of those books. But regardless of what type of literature you decide to read, if you love books, this web is going to develop for you, and you will have to decide which strand to follow.

To return to last week’s blog, I finished Moby Dick. And despite a number of flaws it has–the plot just disappears in the middle, Ishmael as a narrator doesn’t make sense, the ending is abrupt–it didn’t matter; I fell in love. I felt a deep sympathy for Melville in his grave, and I was inspired by his personal story.

Melville had been a tremendous success writing exotic adventure stories. But his humanity and spirit and whatever else you want to call it couldn’t rest with just cashing in on the American–and human–desire to consume the exotic. He took more and more risks as his career continued, and Moby Dick was his biggest. (I’m really not trying to make dick jokes. I’m also not trying to edit them out.) It was–I’m not looking up facts here, I’m sticking to mythology–a financial disaster for Melville, and panned by critics. It was subversive, queer, and also just a fucking weird book, so I don’t blame them. Long story short, despite writing one of the best-loved and influential American novels, Melville died believing he was a failure. I wanted to give him a hug.

At the very least, I could get closer to the text, and I planned to do that by reading, finally, the Bible. Moby Dick is the American Bible, and it is full of allusions to the King James Version (Ahab is from the book of Kings. KIng Ahab plotted against, killed, and stole the vineyard of his neighbor, Naboth. There is a plausible reading that Captain Ahab, thus, is a metaphor for American expansionism and greed, and the sinking of the ship at the end was a prediction of the civil war, and also caused by an obsession with whiteness).

There are other allusions besides: the story of Dives (the rich man) and Lazarus appears in chapter 2, the story of the Ark of the covenant destroying a Philistine idol appears, and there is a heavy allusion to the book of Job throughout. It would take a whole post–and then some–to unpack Melville’s allusions to the Bible. Lucky for us, Ilana Parades has already written Melville’s Bibles, and if you’re curious there is plenty of reading for you there. And so, I followed my “web” from Melville, to the next obvious text: the King James Bible.

The other obvious thread coming from Moby Dick leads us to the works of Shakespeare. This is the true focus, for now, of The Smoking Lamp Is Lit. I have decided that we will start with Shakespeare because I already finished the KJV before I had the idea for this blog (and actually the Shakespeare blog was Jamie’s idea) and because I think blogging Shakey will be more fun than blogging the Bible anyway. Don’t think you’re getting off the hook yet, reader. In 2023, we will indeed be blogging the Bible on the Smoking Lamp Is Lit.

But for now, future posts will concern my reading of Shakespeare and related matters. I have decided to start with Antony and Cleopatra, and work my way chronologically from there. After each play, I will read five sonnets–or one of Shakespeare’s long narrative poems. The order of plays looks like this:

Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, Timon of Athens, Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, The Tempest, King Henry VIII, King Henry VI (parts 1, 2, 3), Richard III, Titus Andronicus, The Comedy of Errors, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, King John, The Taming of The Shrew, Richard II, The Merchant of Venice, Henry !V (1 and 2), Henry V, Much Ado about Nothing, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida, All’s Well that End’s Well, Measure for Measure, Othello, Macbeth, and, to cap the year off on a bleak note:

KING LEAR!

Much more to discuss here, readers, but it’s time I snuff out my candle, crack open another can of Rip-It, and ride off into the sunset until next week. Cheers.