Downloaded from YTS.MX
VICKI: God speaks to Hagar about her son Ishmael.
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX
And God says to her,
"He will be called a wild man,
"and the world's hand will be against him."
Yeah? You want me to run through that one one more time for you?
The point is that in that, Melville starts with
"Call me Ishmael."
So what do know about our narrator from three words?
That he's...
BOY: Wild.
That he is... He's considered a wild man.
Kendall?
[KENDALL SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY]
That he feels like the whole world is against him.
Yipes. Three words.
Really, Hebert? Is the rest of this book gonna be this way?
Yeah. Okay.
"Though I cannot tell
"why it was exactly that those stage managers,
"the Fates, put me down
"for this shabby part of a whaling voyage yet,
"now that I recall the circumstances,
"I think I can see a little into the springs and motives,
"which, being cunningly presented to me
"under various disguises,
"induced me to set about performing the part that I did
"besides cajoling me into the delusion that it was a choice
"resulting from my own unbiased free will and discriminating judgment."
BOY: That's a long sentence.
That is one long sentence.
Do you understand what he just said?
Yeah, you missed me with that.
VICKI: Pshew, pshew!
So Melville is saying,
"Now that I look back on it,
"all these choices I thought I was making
"are actually not choices at all!
"I thought I was choosing, but now that I look at it,
"No.
"I wasn't choosing at all.
"I'm fated."
He's just sitting around, whispering in our ears,
[WHISPERS] "We're fated. We're fated. We're fated."
We think we have a choice,
but we don't really have a choice.
What we're doing in this life
is because that's what we're supposed to do.
Right?
Okay. Yeah?
Darlings, we're so fated
that this book is told in flashback.
Everything that we read
has already happened.
We can't change it.
And, darlings,
there's also that wink and that nudge from Melville.
Because no matter when in time we pick up this book...
Ishmael is always about to go
to sea...
and so are we.
MARK: So I wanted to tell you a little bit
about why I came upon doing this project.
I happened to be readingMoby-Dick,
and I felt like I need to contact Janet Werner,
not for a sentimental reason,
but I realized I also had this thing like Ahab did.
He's got this thing in his past that he has to reencounter.
JANET: Hi! How ya doin'? Boy, you look great!
You really do! Come on in!
MARK: And then I read the book, and I felt like
it had sort of opened up something for me.
Like it was some kind of a... Like a weird transformation.
Yeah.
MARK: And so, I wanted to encounter you
because I didn't know what would happen
if I talked to you again about it.
Oh! [LAUGHS] Okay.
MARK: I kinda wanna go through that process of figuring out
what the teacher-student relationship is around literature...
Okay.
MARK: ...um, because I think you understand it really well.
I had had a very good experience with your older sister,
you know, and some... How you're...
And I'm not saying that,
you know, a bad experience with an older sibling would...
-[CELL PHONE RINGS] -Oh.
This is... This is... This is my cell phone.
-CALEB: Oh, watch out! -[THUDS]
JANET: Shit! CALEB: Sorry there.
JANET: Did I break that? MARK: No, it's okay.
JANET: I don't even know where it is... Oh, here.
♪ I see earthquakes and lightnin' ♪
JANET: You know what? This isn't even...
It's okay. She'll call me...
I hope she doesn't call me back.
But a lot... Did I break this?
MARK: No, it's okay. JANET: I fell... Shit.
CALEB: Let me see. Can I hear you talk now?
No? Still going.
JANET: You think it's all right? Okay.
CALEB: It's metal as can be. JANET: Sorry.
You know, you feel a certain regret
when you can't, um, help people
to create a path that's workable,
at least temporarily for them. [CHUCKLES]
CALEB: High school's a difficult time, man.
Yeah, it is. Don't you think?
CALEB: I can only imagine as a teacher trying to...
JANET: Yes, but he did come back,
and he did share with me
that he felt it was a good experience
not doing well in the class.
Because he said he felt it woke him up.
But I just hate to see that having to happen to anyone.
-[PIANO MUSIC PLAYING] -EDWIN: I have another opener downstairs
if this doesn't work.
MARTA: Why are you all dressed up?
-EDWIN: Okay. -I'm always dressed like this.
EDWIN: Well, Happy New Year.
ALL: Happy New Year!
Like, all the papers came back filled with notes.
ALISSA: Oh, wow. RENATA: I have them.
I even have the letter of recommendation
that she wrote for me when I was going to college.
MARK: She didn't write one for me.
[ALL LAUGH]
But now, we're friends,
so now I get to hang out with her all the time.
How many years later?
Fifteen years.
And then, I decided that I needed the Norton Critical Edition.
-MARK: Mm-hmm. -Because this has like...
Like loads of stuff in it. All kinds of stuff.
MARK: You've gotta have the letters to Hawthorne.
-That's... That's pretty important. -Yeah, yeah.
MARK: But, has anyone read a really good book
that they feel has changed their lives?
EDWIN: It's not like, you know, you read a book,
and then, suddenly you go in a different direction.
Well, that happens for Mark.
MARK: I probably had a huge act to follow
with my sister going along this course.
Aw, so I should have heard what you were saying and said,
"Take a little more time to do what you have to do."
MARK: No, I think you were giving me time.
[CHUCKLING] Oh, okay. Okay, all right. Okay.
MARK: You gave me time, and, no, you were very liberal with me because...
Maybe that wasn't good.
-Maybe I should have been more... -[MARK CHUCKLES]
More authoritarian. Like my dad.
MARK: But do you remember these scenes that we had in the hallway
before class sometimes and I like...
I didn't want to talk to you
'cause I still didn't have this paper yet.
And then you'd stop me before coming in...
Do you remember those?
God, those I don't remember.
I must've blocked them out.
RENATA: Where's that, um, binder that I gave you
of all the letters you wrote to me?
'Cause I think there might be some about Mark. [LAUGHS]
Because I was in Paris, then. Studying abroad.
MARTA: Oop, this is it.
"I would absolutely love to see you
"but I have a big problem with Mark."
They were gonna come visit me in France. In Paris.
-But, because of him... -ALISSA: Oh, you ruined the trip.
"His grades have sunk in two important subjects,
"and he has lied, claiming that he is studying
"and just can't do the tests.
"He is on probation for acting so stupidly,
"and I am upset beyond comprehension.
"He needs some common sense not beat into him." [LAUGHS]
Do you have any other specific memories of me
from that... from that year?
My biggest memory
was after the last grades were handed in.
And you came in... Meaning the end of the school year.
The grades had already been handed in.
And you came in with some papers
that you wanted to get credit for,
for the marking period, maybe fourth marking period.
It might've made a difference in whether ya...
Whether you, um, passed for the year or not.
And I couldn't accept them,
because the grades had already been handed in.
And I felt terrible about that.
RENATA: Here's Mom's letter that I had from her.
JANET: So, to me, like, even a grade in my stupid...
Well, not my "stupid class," but my class,
is not the most important thing
because look, you know,
you're living proof of that, in my view.
You know, I consider you to be,
you know, kind of an intellectual.
[INDISTINCT CONVERSATION]
Oh, hi, Janet?
JANET: [OVER PHONE] Yes?[LAUGHS]
I just wanted to call and thank you
for having us over yesterday. It was really great.
JANET: [OVER PHONE] Oh, thank you. That's very nice.
I hope I can be helpful in whatever it is that you're doing.
I went to breakfast with some of my friends today
and they were all asking me about it
because they knew we had that appointment.
And I told them how well you...
You turned out so well!
[LAUGHS] In my view.
Like, you know?
You know, you're serious, you're dedicated.
You're the complete package. So that's great.[LAUGHS]
Well, thanks. I like being called a "complete package."
JANET: [OVER PHONE] Okay.
I hope the rest of your research goes well.
-MARK: [OVER PHONE] I hope so, too. -JANET: [OVER PHONE] Yes.
MARK: [OVER PHONE] Anyway, I guess what would be...
What would be helpful for me to think of, at least,
is as I sort of continue doing this research
that this is somehow,
uh, the book report or presentation
that I should've done for you.
JANET: [OVER PHONE] Oh, yes. And don't even...
Don't even be thinking about that.
- Because I'm thinking... -No, I wanna think about it. That's what I'm telling you.
I'm not gonna lie to you, sweethearts.
This is not an easy read.
If you took it to the beach to read it,
the only purpose for doing that
is because you wanted a really bad sunburn.
It's partly a book about whales,
it's partly a theological meditation,
only tied to characters in certain places.
Getting through Moby-Dick gives readers membership
in a kind of cohort, or club.
One finds a little disturbing as well as exhilarating
the sense, for many readers,
that the book was written for them.
[BELL DINGS]
MAN: Welcome to the 21st Annual Moby-DickMarathon.
-Welcome, everybody. -[APPLAUSE]
MAN: Marathoners must read aloud an average of 141.8 words per minute
to complete the book on time.
Good luck!
VICKI: We've got tough vocabulary,
tough sentence structure,
and sweetie-pies, tough ideas.
How many of you can ride a skateboard?
Oh, my.
This is going to get you where you can go voop
and flip it and go back down
and come back up and flip it again.
Okay? This is tougher reading.
MAN: Now, we welcome to the stage
the great-great-grandson of Herman Melville.
No pressure, Peter!
[CLEARS THROAT] Excuse us.
"Call me Ishmael."
MARK: Your great-grandfather said he wrote the gospels of his century.
And he wrote a wicked book and felt spotless as a lamb.
And so I'm... I'm caught up on this idea
that he's seen the annihilating force behind everything.
What if Ahab experienced that
when he had his first encounter with Moby-Dick?
'Cause he talks about whiteness too,
as a kind of like, clean-slate kind of blankness
that's kind of scary, right?
'Cause it's like you're letting go of everything.
It's one of my mottos in life
that people are secretly extremely afraid of freedom.
-They are? -Yeah.
Can you explain that a little bit? What do you mean?
A lot of this is going to be me, Peter Gansevoort Whittemore,
talking about my family lineage.
And there's a lot of DNA that I feel akin to Melville with.
Sometimes I read Moby-Dick and I say,
"Nobody else would understand me like he would."
-Right. -'Cause I think the same things.
So I stand here talking to you about my family,
but there's a Peter inside me watching me do this.
-Uh-huh. -That says...
I'm not just a product of my family.
I'm also this independent spark of consciousness
-that we all are. -Right.
But if you were to let go of all your, what...
-"My family keeps me together." -Uh-huh.
What happens when you don't have any family anymore?
Who are you then?
"Well, my history keeps me together.
"My culture keeps me together."
What if you could really stand free of all that?
And say, "Who am I really?"
-[PIANO MUSIC PLAYING] -PETER: "A stove boat will make me an immortal,
my brethren.
"Yes, there is death in this business of whaling,
"a speechlessly quick, chaotic bundling of a man into eternity.
"But what then?
"Methinks we have hugely mistaken
"this matter of life and death.
"Methinks that what they call my shadow here on Earth
"is my true substance.
"Methinks that in looking at things spiritual,
"we are too much like oysters,
"observing the sun through the water,
"and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air.
"Methinks my body is but the lees of my better being.
"In fact, take my body who will, take it, I say, it is not me."
In some way he's trying to say, you know, "Take my body, please!
"'Cause that's not who I am."
That paragraph is unbelievable metaphysics
about what's the nature of who it is
that's even asking the question, "Who am I?"
-Right. -Who wants to know?
[LAUGHS]
Well, damn, ain't that a question, too?
The story is a story of waking up...
-Right. -...to, um,
an essential nature of who we are
that Melville was really struggling with all his life.
BOY: Were you looking at that as a foreshadow quote?
No, I was just trying to figure out what it meant.
What about, "Finally I always go to sea as a sailor,
"because... [MUMBLES]." Right?
VICKI: No help? Need no help?
-Not yet. -VICKI: Not yet? That's fabulous.
GIRL: Um, then it says,
"Methinks that in looking at things spiritual,
"we are too much like oysters,
"observing the sun through the water
"and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air."
"Since it is but well to be on friendly terms
"with all the inmates of the place one lodges in."
So he's saying that he wants to be friendly
with people who, like, don't want the friendliness
and he's social, and he's ready for an adventure.
ELIZABETH: Place the right foot in between your two hands.
Release the hands as you continue to lift the legs.
Beautiful.
And then from here, we'll see if we can roll back
onto your shoulder blades.
It's like a super-late book report, film-form,
um, for his high school English teacher
because he didn't read it in high school
-and failed the class. -Shut up!
-He failed? -Yeah, he failed American Lit.
Okay, take a second. Lift your ribs for just a second.
See if you can come back up.
So you know that Herman Melville
was my great-great-great-grandfather?
What? [LAUGHS]
And then in school, everybody hated Moby-Dick,
so I... You know, you really didn't want to tell your classmates that,
"Oh, yeah, well, my great-great-grandfather wrote that thing."
"Shut up!"
I wrote this play based on Herman Melville,
also called Poor Herman that's, um...
Yeah, that I've been working on.
That's so weird!
He has to meet you. This is...
-Yeah, I would really like to meet him. -Oh, my God.
ELIZABETH: I also made the play about Herman Melville's wife and daughters
and I wrote my gender,
yeah, into the... into the family.
Do you, like, resemble Melville at all?
Um, well, some people say in my family,
this, like, cheekbone-eye thing.
Um, I think...
He's like, broad through the chest and sort of high cheeks.
Everybody said he was handsome.
[ALISSA LAUGHS]
-So I like to think I resemble him. -[ALL LAUGH]
I don't know, if I have a big beard...
Or you know, I'm not... I'm not so large.
But in my heart, I'm like a big man.
BERGMAN: Melville was ill at the time. He had a form of the flu.
And when he was found by a local tribe,
he was near death, and they nursed him back to life.
They offered him a membership in the tribe.
Sadly, it would mean
for him being tattooed from head to foot.
[CHUCKLES]
So he said "No, thank you."
And they said "It's not a problem.
"We understand. But we're so fond of you,
"we're going to offer you the other option.
"We're going to elevate you to the top of the menu."
They were a cannibal tribe.
He ran off again.
He decided to visit old family friends, the Shaws.
Lemuel Shaw was by now the Chief Justice
of the Massachusetts Judicial Supreme Court,
and he had sons, and he had a daughter named Elizabeth.
Elizabeth fell in love with Herman.
ELIZABETH: Lizzie could have married any doctor,
any lawyer, any judge,
but Herman came back from being overseas,
and he was like hot, and tan, and built.
So she's like, "That guy."
BERGMAN: He was a very handsome man.
Five-foot-ten, sturdy, broad-shouldered with a tan,
and apparently, a beautiful speaking voice.
Very mesmerizing.
She told her father she was going to marry him,
and her father said, "Absolutely not.
"This is a man with no money, no education.
"He's been a sailor for five years
"and you know what they do."
And he said, "This is not a possible marriage.
"How is he going to support you?"
She said, "Well, he's going to be a writer."
And her father said, "Exactly, how is he going to support you?"
[CHUCKLES]
So the play finds Herman ready to move to Pittsfield,
frustrated by his lack of success,
and he's gonna, um... He's gonna write Moby-Dick.
So this is sort of like... Almost like a prologue scene.
MARK: You should be Poor Herman.
ELIZABETH: Yeah, we should do that.
I never have really gotten to act in it before. That would be fun.
MARK: And, Alissa you should be, uh, Herman's wife.
She's also never really acted before.
ALISSA: I acted when I was a kid.
I just, you know, got stage fright once
and then never did it again.
I just had a dream with the answer in it.
We must move to the country!
-[WINDOW OPENS] -[CARS HONK]
Oh, too many people here making god-awful noise!
Spewing nonsense from their blowholes
such that I cannot think straight!
Without stimulation, what will you write about?
On this island, my writing lies stuck inside me.
I can't see my inner forest through the smog of the city.
Like a corseted woman at a banquet,
I am starved and squished,
and bound too tight to even taste a morsel.
If the Harper Brothers forget you,
who will publish you then?
The field mice, and the summer squash?
Nathaniel Hawthorne does fine for himself
without pounding this Manhattan pavement
like a draft horse at death's door.
Oh.
You wish to be Nathaniel Hawthorne?
Would you still love me?
ALISSA: We just left Boston.
Everyone will think you can't hack it here.
Why, I was born on this island,
and I'll come and go from it as I please.
[SIGHS] Just as soon as I take root,
you pluck me up.
Far better it is to cover ground than be buried in it!
Why, I've sailed and swum and searched this Earth
to its antipodes!
My dear Lizzie, we may share a bed and a roof,
but as you put down roots,
-I put up sails! -[THUNDER RUMBLING]
If we are to make do, you must make ends meet.
We can't go now!
I've already borrowed the money from your father
as a loan against your inheritance.
I'm writing a light-hearted take on the whaling industry.
How can it not sell?
How much do you already owe the Harpers
for advances never recouped?
Here, I write in great haste, dizzied by distraction.
In the country, I will write in slow-motion.
There, my dear Lizzie,
I will write something worthy of your struggle.
With his last words, I am ousted from the argument
before I can tell him.
He'll soon need to write for three.
Initially, there was a little unrest.
His wife was not happy with the physical layout of the house.
She wanted to take out the central chimney,
which is mammoth,
um, and replace it with a grand front hall and staircase.
Melville immortalized that battle in his work,
1856 work, I And My Chimney.
This is the singular most important sentence,
and it's how Melville saw his future.
"I and my chimney are settling together."
He saw himself as an old man,
sitting here in front of the fireplace,
enjoying all that he had brought together in this place.
And that sadly never happened.
MARK: Was manic-depressiveness in the Melville lineage?
It would seem so.
His father certainly went through very heavy depressive phases.
Brought him to his early death.
His son, Malcolm, ultimately committed suicide,
shooting himself in the head with his service revolver.
-MARK: Oh, dear. -Yeah, not the...
Not the action of a happy man.
Does that still continue?
Do your cousins still have, like, issues with up and down?
I wasn't gonna bring up my mother, but now that you mention it.
Um, you can see it.
-Yeah? -Yeah.
Yeah, they're a dark family.
They're a very dark family.
We should move on into the... Um, the guest parlor.
The north parlor.
Let's do that.
Wonderful.
BERGMAN: Thank you for that home's information.
PETER: Yeah, it's an interesting way to...
[WIND HOWLING]
MAN: [SINGING] ♪ And we'll have one of those fine whales
♪ Hand boys over hand
♪ So be cheery, me lads!
♪ May your hearts never fail!
♪ While the bold harpooner is striking the whale! ♪
MARK: Do I need to do anything special to log in?
Well, don't sign up now. Wait 'til later
'cause it will just confuse everything.
-Okay, okay and is... -That's too far ahead.
MARK: We're gonna go grab something to eat and come back.
-And then I think I'll... -WOMAN: Okay, well then decide to do it then.
MARK: Okay, cool. RICARDO: As a teacher
of language and literature and acting,
you have to lift that language off the page,
put it in the air, and put an electric charge into it.
I had always kind of had that approach,
but Moby-Dickgave me a chance to take it to another level.
MARK: How late are you staying?
-All night! -You're all night?
[WOMEN LAUGH]
MARK: All right, well, we'll be back.
[UPBEAT MUSIC PLAYING]
[INDISTINCT CONVERSATIONS]
Good evening, everyone.
My name is Ricardo Pitts-Wiley
and in 2007,
I took on a project of adapting Moby-Dick for the stage.
...stop my singing in this world,
but to cut my throat!
And in this matter of the whale be the front of thy face to me
as the palm of this hand!
There was an upper deck that was the Pequod.
MARK: Ricardo, can I stop you right there?
Can you address the camera?
I absolutely can.
-Okay, I'm so used to speaking. -[LAUGHTER]
-WOMAN: Actor! -Yeah, an actor!
-You know. All right. -[LAUGHTER]
It was necessary to create two different environments.
An environment that actually did Melville's work,
which was on the upper deck.
But then I had to create a parallel world,
a young crew, a gang,
on a vengeance quest of their own.
-[TAMBOURINE PLAYING] -[ALL CHANTING]
♪ Amazing grace
MAN: This is for my homies.
♪ How sweet the sound
MAN: This is for my homies.
[TAMBOURINE, CHANTING SLOWS]
RICARDO: I didn't change much of Melville.
Melville had written beautifully.
So, just put the words in the character's mouths.
MAN: Mm-hmm.
But the young crew, we had to...
I had to adjust the language to tell that story.
But then I had to... They had to add their own flavor to it.
After the read-through, Ricardo looks at us and he goes,
"Young people, just to let y'all know, I'm old!"
[ALL LAUGH]
"If there's any of the language in here that's...
"That's out of date or doesn't match,
"you let me know, and we'll adjust it and fix it."
And I joke on him, because it was one part
where I told him he made us sound like...
villains on Shaft,like...
[LAUGHTER]
I thought we was goin' to talk about jive turkeys and all this!
So I joke on him
and he tells a great story about...
He'd get excited whenever one of them was like,
"All right. You good on that one. You good on that one."
-He's like, "Yes, I'm cool!" -[LAUGHTER]
RUDY: You know what I admired about Ricardo?
Was that his hands were strong when I dapped him up.
Because it made me feel like, if something pops off,
Ricardo could probably knock somebody out.
That was what I admired about him!
I was like, "Yo, his hands are mad strong!"
Like, he was probably fighting.
He's cool! He's cool! Like, he understands.
You know what I mean? So it was like...
Which is stupid, in retrospect, but that was...
That was where my head was at that time.
RICARDO: When I met Rudy,
a teacher of his called the theater one day
and said, "I've got this student.
"I think he's got something, but he's not doing well in school.
"Can you come talk to him?"
RUDY: He was like... He gave me an assignment.
He said, "Get a copy of Taming of the Shrew.
"Read it. And when you're done, call me."
RICARDO: See, this is when you know you've got something.
About a week later, he called me and said,
"Man, I'm struggling with this.
"I'm only about halfway through it."
But he called me.
So I said, "Well, come on in.
"You'll be my assistant director."
No, I was the assistant stage manager.
Assistant stage manager!
-RUDY: Don't put me that high up! -Yeah.
But he literally made up a job for me,
so that I could just be there. He just wanted me there,
and I remember the first reading,
just sitting there and listening to everybody read through the script,
and I remember something in the back of my mind
just telling me, like, "Yo, Rudy, don't mess this up.
"Something's here. I don't know what it is.
"But there's something here. Don't mess it up."
So every once in a while, an actor wouldn't be there,
and he'd have to read his part.
So I'm listening, I'm going, "He can read!"
"The lights rise on Ishmael."
RUDY: "So me and my crew, we call ourselves "The One."
"We are young and tough,
"well-organized and well-armed.
"Everything was cool until Pip,
"the crew leader's little brother,
"decided to take some of our product
"and sell it himself."
I never followed, like, the punctuation rules.
I would kinda read too fast
'cause I just wanna get it over with.
This will be a lesson for all future project directors.
When you get too big to pick up the hammer,
you're too small to work in the theatre.
[LAUGHTER]
"We try not to get too close to anybody but each other.
"Which is all we have, most of the time."
I always knew how to read the words. I just...
It was comprehending the text that I always had a problem with.
I have a responsibility as an actor.
So I felt like it was my job to really understand it,
word for word.
[APPLAUSE]
KRIS: The typeface seem a little small forMoby-Dick .
MARK: What, you think because it'sMoby-Dick , it should be bigger?
KRIS: I didn't think it all. I don't...
I don't read, so I don't think.
MARK: Well, I think you should read Moby-Dick.
It's like all about the water.
KRIS: But I know what I know about the water.
I don't want another person's version of the water.
I just want the idea, and I wanna walk away from it.
I don't... I don't wanna get stuck in something.
MARK: But you knew what all the good comic books were,
-so at least you read those. -[LAUGHS]
I didn't ever really read the comic books.
[BOTH LAUGHING]
We were never born to read,
and that slender sentence holds an entire history within it.
Um, the reality is that most people believe that
reading is something that the brain has that unfolds
just like language of vision.
It is anything but true.
Reading is an unnatural act.
It's a gift for you. I bought it at Point Reyes Books...
-Thank you -...in Point Reyes.
Does it have a receipt in it?
So no, the brain was never meant to read,
and indeed, it is changing as we speak,
the brain is, uh, this amazing organ
that is capable of creating new circuits.
So reading is basically a brand-new circuit for the brain.
A little child has a very basic circuit
and can decode words.
But over time, the processes move
from basically perceiving print
to binding perception with cognition in ever more elaborate ways.
And all these processes change what is read to what is thought.
So really, the act of reading is the change from perception to cognition,
and that changes the circuitry over time.
It changes the reader itself.
We literally change with reading.
How did that make you feel?
That I wanted a coffee.
I was thinking about coffee the whole time
[CHUCKLES]
Okay, let's go get a coffee.
KRIS: I can't read out loud. I never read out loud.
-MARK: Well, do you usually read in your head? -KRIS: I don't...
MARK: 'Cause when you read in your head, you weren't very cooperative, Kris.
KRIS: 'Cause then when I read in my head, I don't read linear.
I skim.
MARK: What are you working on, Rory?
Um, I'm drawing Popo's kitchen.
CALEB: And who's Popo?
Popo's my bear that goes to Take Flight with me and has dyslexia.
CALEB: I love it. Can you put Popo somewhere in his house?
RORY: Mm-hm. Hm.
He can't really fit in there.
So every time we sat down with anything letter-related,
it was just like a whole new lesson every time.
Every time.
And so it was just the repetition of having to start over again from scratch
was our first sign.
And then as a teacher myself, and watching my other daughter learn to read,
just kind of the natural signs that you see
where they're trying to read what's in their environment
and trying to sound out things,
uh, Rory was really stuck with it at like, one level
for a very, very, very long time.
-Pass... -Pass...
-...en... -Pass-en...
-...ger. -Passenger
"Hurrying down to
"a tourist?"
"Ch... Ikens..."
GRANDMOTHER: "Church." RORY: "Church."
GRANDMOTHER: Are you on the next page?
Do you want to try one more page maybe by yourself?
RORY: Okay. GRANDMOTHER: Okay.
It looks all weird, and it's like the letters are like, doubling
and they're like jumping and like, flipping over and stuff.
And it gives me a headache,
and there's like all these big words that are, like, confusing.
And so, it's really annoying
and hard when I try to read.
One of the more amazing aspects of my work is to understand
that our individuals with dyslexia have a different brain organization.
One that's been with us for all the 50,000 years
that we have been on this Earth as homo sapiens
but one that organizes language differently.
Especially written language.
So when a dyslexic individual is reading,
they are going to actually activate areas
in the right hemisphere
and hold on to them in a way that makes a kind of delay
in how fast they process that word.
KRIS: [READING] "If your caravan happened to be supplied
"with a metaphysical professor.
"Yes, as everyone knows, Meditation and water are wedded forever."
"Meditation and water are wedded forever."
KRIS: I love going to stores and seeing letters backwards.
That makes it much more, you know, readable.
But you're not... you're not dyslexic.
-You never... -Oh, I am.
-You are? -Oh, yeah.
-Really? -Oh yeah, when I write... When I type my notes,
if I just type without thinking,
every other word will be backwards.
-Oh. -It's really interesting.
-Oh, so you are dyslexic. -Yeah.
No one ever told me anything.
They just bounced me from room to room.
And now, everyone's concerned about, you know, labels and stuff.
It's like, "Okay, if you want to call me dyslexic, call me..." you know...
-[LAUGHS] -That's fine. That doesn't help me.
Well, it could be different. I mean, I could probably find a backwards Moby-Dick
-for dyslexics or something. -Uh... It's too late.
The early circuit has to... has to form,
you know, the connections,
has to repurpose these neurons,
and then, has to become so automatic and fluent
by around third or fourth grade that the thinking stuff
-really can become hinged. -Mm-hmm.
And that becomes a new, thinking reader. Or not.
And that's another story that you may or may not want for this
but that fourth grade is what I call "the black hole of American education."
If the kids aren't fluent enough by then, if the circuit's not automatic enough by then,
the "deep reading" processes that are so important
to complex, sophisticated thinking, they don't get hooked together.
Okay, Rory, let's do Take Flight.
Let's put this away.
-"Wink," "pink," "pink." -"Think."
-"Pink," "thunk," "pink." -"Pink."
-Ready?
-RORY: "Hunk." -"Hank."
RORY: "Hank." "Sunk."
-"Skunk." -RORY: "Skunk."
-"Thunk." -"Trunk."
It's all right.
-"Trunk," "hunk" -"Hank."
"Hank," "Think."
-"Thank" -"Thank"
[WAVES SPLASHING]
SAMUEL: Across the book, you get characters looking in the water,
and you are told what they see.
That reveals something about the character.
Sometimes looking in the water is a mirror back to them.
Sometimes looking in the water is piercing to the depths.
Strikingly, toward the end of the book
and looking in the water
is seeing Moby-Dick rise up to the surface.
MARK :[ON PHONE] Well, we have to say hi to your daughter now.
There's pie inside.
PJ: [OVER PHONE] I mean she doesn't talk that much.
She's only, you know, five-and-a-half months.
Oh, does... does she gurgle?
PJ: [OVER PHONE] She can make a some gurgles.
She's kind of a little whiny right now, actually.
Okay, well, put her on speakerphone.
PJ: [OVER PHONE] All right, Annalise, say hi.
Say hi!
[BABY SQUEALING]
-Oh! Hi. -Hi, Annalise.
PJ: [OVER PHONE] Say something else.
Does she know "hi" through a phone? Hi.
PJ: [OVER PHONE] Hi!
[LAUGHS] Hi, PJ.
ALISSA : I mean, it just seems like the timing is right, and...
Yes, it's a dramatic and drastic change.
But I think we are a good partnership.
And I'm looking forward to see what we can do together.
It's like a new, like, experiment, adventure.
PJ: [OVER PHONE] She loves books.
She loves books? They got the pictures, they're hard.
Reading is kind of...
PJ: [OVER PHONE] But she likes...
-Well, there's pie inside. -MARK: Oh, there is pie?
-Yeah. There's pie, peach pie. -MARK: Oh.
PJ: [OVER PHONE] She's really not...
she's sometimes a little chattier.
Luck of the draw with the baby.
CALEB: Before you wanted to have a kid,
were there certain things you wanted to do with your life?
Um, sure. I mean, that's...
Maybe it's because I've decided
that you don't have to do all those things...
Cause that's part of my problem, is that there are all these things I...
I mean, even now, constantly decide I want to do.
Or regret not having done.
There are lots of things I regret not having done.
And you just can't continue to regret
the lives you could have had forever.
And... [CRYING SOFTLY]
yes, having a child puts a huge wrench in any...
in some plans I may have had.
But they are plans that I need to just let go because,
they weren't going to happen.
I haven't acted on them.
And,
it would be... It could be a way of letting go.
When he moved here, he had written a book called, The Whale
which was based on the adventure of the whaleship Essex
which was capsized by a giant whale in the Pacific
-when Melville was only one year old. -MAR: Mm-hmm.
But after meeting Nathaniel Hawthorne,
basically scuttled the book and rewrote it as Moby-Dick.
[KNOCKING ON DOOR]
Oh, now what, Augusta?
Oh, you've come back.
HAWTHORNE: Yes.
Oh, my dear Hawthorne.
I had pretty much made up my mind to be annihilated,
but now, you're here.
I've always appreciated your enthusiastic greetings, Herman.
Oh it's you that titillates me till I'm a giddy schoolgirl! [CHUCKLES]
Shall I carry your books as we stroll?
HERMAN: Like that fated day we met in Berkshire.
Oh that fated day that brought me here
to live a stone's throw from you. And now,
only old Mount Greylock stands between our two abodes.
How I love to watch you come down that mountain.
But, today your descent eluded me.
And how I came day after day as you made for me one Moby-Dick.
That's why we reside here in Berkshire.
So we might write wicked books that need not be laced with rose petals.
You are my lifeboat as I've walked the plank.
Speak not another word until I...
light your pipe.
[INHALES]
The physical affair between Herman and Nathaniel
seems highly unlikely since Nathaniel hated to be touched.
And you can have a psychological affair with someone
but you can't touch them, you can't have a physical affair.
-So there's rumors out there that Nathaniel and Herman had... -A love affair.
-...a love affair? -Yeah.
PETER: It's so eloquently put into words by Melville.
You gotta say, "Well, who's kidding who?"
But whether or not they actually had a physical relationship,
I don't think anybody can verify it.
But Hawthorne was gorgeous.
He was when he was young.
He was everything Melville wasn't in a way.
But Melville was everything he wasn't.
Right. They were two total opposites.
-Which usually attract, right? -Often.
Yeah.
Monument Mountain where Melville...
uh, first met Nathaniel Hawthorne and became friends with him.
And when he met Nathaniel Hawthorne, they uh... they had a picnic,
and Hawthorne convinced him to take Moby-Dick
into like a very different direction than he ended up,
uh, when that... when he...
-[CORK POPS] -[SCREAMS]
And then they all recited poetry.
Hey.
-Oh! To Herman Melville. -To Herman Melville.
Took my last pill yes... Well, no. Yesterday,
should have been the last day.
But, I forgot. So, I'm off my pills.
I'm not ready to be a father. I'm not ready to have a child.
And financially, I'm not ready.
Emotionally, I'm not ready.
You're not ready.
We're never going to be ready, Mark.
I think you're kind of coming at it
for the wrong reasons.
I don't know what the right reasons are supposed to be, Mark.
What do you think the right reasons are, then?
I mean, isn't this enough?
Like, can't we just be a couple for a little bit?
We have been. I don't understand when the...
MARK: You're a creative person, but you don't let yourself be creative
because you're afraid,
and that, like, the path of least resistance is making a baby
which, you know, I think is every woman's right to do, but, like,
if you have other things you can do,
I think you should do them, too.
You know, really shitty for you to like... I mean...
[CRYING] You could try a little harder, Mark.
[SNIFFING] I'm sorry that was so mean.
[CRIES]
No, that's okay. If you're feeling it.
Look, I'm trying to tell you that you have the right
to be impatient and angry with me.
ALISSA: [CRYING] Really? Because I am.
Because I am impatient, and I am angry with you.
But I don't want... I don't want to get in the way
[SNIFFLES] of what you need to do.
I'm sorry.
Are you missing a button?
Yeah, but it's been missing since California. It's okay.
[CHIPMUNK SQUEAKS]
That was a chipmunk.
ALISSA: Oh my gosh...
-MARK: They're mating. -They're so cute.
This bed is a Melville bed.
It was purchased for us at an auction.
There were always at least three, if not five people
sleeping in this room.
Herman and Lizzie, and at least two or three of their children.
The children were always placed closer to the fireplace
for the additional warmth.
The difficulty of this room isn't having children in it.
It's the door behind me.
That door leads to three more bedrooms.
Two of his sisters were ensconced in the outer ones
and directly behind the head of the bed, was Herman's mother.
-MARK: Oh. -Yeah.
This is the only door into that suite of rooms.
So anytime anybody came in or went out,
they went by Herman in bed.
There's talk that there must have been an outhouse at one point.
But early on, everyone used chamber pots.
You woke up, you did what you needed to do,
and you carried your chamber pot through this room to take it outside.
Could not have been pleasant.
-MARK: [CHUCKLES SOFTLY] -PETER: Yeah, really. [LAUGHS]
Herman and Lizzie managed to conceive
and give birth to three more children in this room.
They're a very unfortunate quartet, really.
Malcolm, as I said, was subject to depressions and committed suicide.
The baby of the family, Frances, known as Fanny
is the only one who grew up, got married, had a family
and provided us with descendants like Peter.
Any questions about this room?
The floorboards are original to the house.
Nice.
SAMUEL: [READING] "A certain significance lurks in all things."
That seems to be a key sentence for the book.
Uh, the book presents the world as suffused,
as charged with meaning.
Um, everywhere the narrator looks,
He interprets, he manipulates, he speculates.
It's one of the pleasures of the book.
But to me the most interesting word in that sentence is "lurks."
It's not "a certain significance is in all things"
or "lies in all things"...
The world "lurks" with significance.
There's something unsettling.
There's something unsteady.
There's something ominous
about the acts of interpretation that the book provokes.
CALVIN: I got really frustrated because I didn't understand
any of the references or allusions to the Bible.
So I just started doing flips.
And that's kind of like an escape.
It gets my anger out, and it resets my mood.
I don't know. I don't get angry too often,
so it's like kind of a special occasion when I do.
but not like the good kind of special.
I was doing double front-flip, landed.
And I was just repeating those over and over again.
CALVIN'S MOTHER: He had fractured three of the vertebrae
in the top part of his thoracic area
and two other are very suspicious.
So now he's in a neck brace,
[CHUCKLES] for six weeks,
and he'll be restricted from movement for almost three months.
That's not good.
MARK: Is he supposed to be wearing the neck brace right now?
Yes, he is.
JESSIE: I did Queequeg.
Um, he's from Kokovoko. He's twenty-five years old.
He's a sailor of Pequod, and he's also Starbuck's harpooner.
He likes to smoke, practice his religion.
Um, he likes to protect Ishmael, and he's learning how to read.
[APPLAUSE]
VICKI: You know what I realize we forgot to talk about?
We forgot to talk about white. The whiteness of the whale.
Pretend you live in Michigan. What's white?
CLASS: Snow.
Snow. Right?
Snow is associated with...
CLASS: Cold.
And cold is associated with...
CLASS: Death.
-And so white is symbolic of... -CLASS: Death.
[YAWNS]
White looks like it's what?
CLASS: White?
COOPER: The absence of color.
It looks like the absence of color. Right?
But on the spectrum, what's the...
Thank you, sweetheart.
White is made up of all of the colors. Right?
It looks like no color. It's actually all color.
-Yeah? -[CLASS MURMUR IN AGREEMENT]
So it's everything.
-Yes? -COOPER: Weird.
It's everything.
And so, sweetie pies, you know what that means?
White is everything, right?
So it's nothing.
Point to everything for me.
You got it?
[SPOOKY ANGELIC MUSIC PLAYING]
-Daggoo's from where? -GIRL: Africa.
VICKI: [INDISTINCT] Tashtego's from...
COOPER: Look, you act like I've read this.
No, you've read... [LAUGHS]
Yeah, I do try to act like you've read this. Okay. So...
COOPER: Maybe it's just that nothing in this book truly interests me.
Like, I don't care about whaling. I mean, it's just...
VICKI: You don't care about whales?
I said I don't care about whaling.
They just like, go out to sea and it kinda,
like, there's no plot! Like there's no, like...
VICKI: Do you agree with him that there's too much descriptive stuff?
Kat.
KAT: It seems like we're reading way too much into things
more than I normally would.
We had the mutiny in class, and they were like,
"I just don't get this book!" "It doesn't speak to me!"
"It's so much harder than everything I've ever had to read".
There is always that "Why are you making us do this?" day.
-It's about revenge. -VICKI: Is it about revenge?
-Yes, partially. -VICKI: Partially, a little bit.
It's about a lot of things that I don't want to think about.
Too much sauce. Maybe if it was like, hey, read a chapter...
Actually I don't think it's the sauce that it's too much of, though.
-It is, actually there's a lot. -It's the stuff that you have to chew up.
It overloads your system.
Imagine a chicken nugget and dipping it in Chick-fil-A sauce
and then dipping it again and again. It's too much.
Guys, Cade's turn.
CADE: It's like what Cooper said.
You're just like, dipping a chicken nugget all over,
over and over again. And then you drop it in your Coke.
VICKI: They are not at all shy about telling me
what they think and telling me when
they don't think what I'm doing is what they need.
COOPER: The sauce is all the, like, repetitive,
transcendentalism, overstating, restating, dip again,
and then you dip again and then your chicken nugget becomes soggy, right?
-VICKI: [LAUGHS] -And it's just overfilled with sauce
and sauce and sauce...
and then you lose the chicken nugget, and it becomes all sauce!
Isn't that the point of the book?
Isn't that, like, what he's trying to get across
'cause he makes everything, like, confusing and descriptive,
and like, "Oh I don't want to read this
"because this is too much".
But doesn't he do that to like, develop the idea that, like,
finding your own free will and whatever, is, like, hard?
And like, confusing? Like doesn't it all...
Isn't there a point to how descriptive
and confusing he is?
[APPLAUSE]
[CLASS CHATTERING]
Okay. So sweetie pies...
[JESSIE CHUCKLES]
[SCHOOL BELL BUZZES]
I'll stand up here and you grab your papers as you go.
MARK: Cooper's comment about "too much sauce"
sounded a lot like the original critics of the novel.
[LAUGHS]
Cooper's smarter than he knows. [LAUGHS]
So I've got to figure out what I can do to make it
less saucy for them.
When the book came out, it got such poor notices.
It's filled with other stories, other tales.
Things that distract you from what's going on in the plot.
Melville's book went through that lack of appreciation
because you never find what's anticipated or expected.
It's always different.
I love that about all of his work.
It's as much about the reader as it is about Melville's creative mind.
Only true genius enjoys the privilege of misunderstanding.
[CHUCKLES]
Is that something you really believe?
Or is that just something we like to tell ourselves?
Oh, my dear Hawthorne.
I cannot write novels for the general public.
For the general public relies on general generalities.
So what if they can't stomach my Moby-Dick?
Their blasphemy is my poetry.
MARK: We should head up to the...
Yeah. We should head up to the study.
Come on into Melville's study.
Wow.
So this was the room that Melville chose for himself
as a work room.
He loved sitting here at the window
with its view of the field and Mount Greylock in the distance.
Greylock was a mountain of total fascination for Melville.
He looked at it through his study window
and used its shape as part of his inspiration for the whale, Moby-Dick.
He could look at Mount Greylock and see the dashing lights
that he assumed were fairies dancing on the hillside.
[CHUCKLES]
BERGMAN: He wanted to be as close to that fairy window as he could get,
and the vision of it that helped keep him going.
Reading Herman Melville and I know you've experienced it too.
You feel like he's in you in some way.
And you, probably more than I because of a genetic link.
BERGMAN: More than either of us. More than anyone. [LAUGHS]
In a way, but once you see what's going on,
you realize that it's deeper than blood.
-It's deeper than DNA. -BERGMAN: Oh, definitely.
Because there's something more true than
just the DNA would allow.
But the DNA comes with the curse at least,
so you have that to deal with.
Yeah.
I don't feel cursed by this.
My father died when I was nine years old.
[TEARFULLY] When I was 12, my favorite brother died.
Left my mother alone to take care of the three remaining kids
who were young teenagers.
And she had no basic income, really,
except to go to her mother and beg for money.
[SERENE MUSIC PLAYING]
So I grew up without my father, without my favorite brother...
No role model.
Who am I?
[ANGELIC MUSIC PLAYING]
Who am I?
Doesn't that question damn me?
But I'm the author that's gonna write the book
that allows the inner soul to surface.
Breach the surface like a whale.
I'm Herman Melville.
Conveyor of the beauty and the madness of life.
So, pumpkins,
I did not say anything because I was angry.
There's two things that happen when I get angry.
One of them is I speak injudiciously.
-That means that I skewer people. -[ALL LAUGH]
And I tend to do that with my Dallas accent.
[INDISTINCT CHATTER]
[IN A SOUTHERN ACCENT] I would suggest you not talk right now.
GIRL: Oh, my goodness. Okay.
[IN NORMAL ACCENT] So, if this is not the book of your dreams,
I really don't give a shit.
If it doesn't speak to you,
I think it's probably a lack of effort.
Damn, she roasted you right there.
[INDISTINCT CHATTER]
COOPER: Ms. Hebert, when I was talking about sauce,
I wasn't trying to make us not read the book.
I was just simply expressing my opinion.
I know, baby. I know.
But see, at the end... And that's why I let you talk.
-Do you want to read that one, Jonas? -JONAS: Oh, I'm sorry.
Never mind. I got it.
"To trail the genealogies of these high mortal miseries
"carries us at last among the sourceless primogenitures of the Gods."
So if we follow all of this angst
and all of this pain and all of this woe
and all of this misery
back to where it started,
it's gonna take us back to God.
[TRAMPOLINE THUMPS]
-In other words, Ahab thinks... -[STUDENT COUGHS]
...that people are miserable
because we are made in God's image and...
-ALL: God's miserable. -...God's miserable
[THUNDER RUMBLING AND RAIN PATTERING]
VICKI: "I own thy speechless placeless power."
"But to the last gasp of my earthquake life
"will dispute its unconditional,
"unintegral mastery in me."
Unintegral definition.
[THUNDER RUMBLING]
[AUTOMATED VOICE] As an adjective it means,
"necessary to make a whole complete.
"Essential or fundamental."
-Do you want to... -Okay, so that's "integral." Unintegral...
So it's not necessary to make complete. There's...
[THUNDER RUMBLING]
...prophets... [MUTTERS INDISTINCTLY] Ahab...
and Goddess of rain...
CADE: Ahab, he has this internal conflict and this just struggle.
And sometimes he's able to make it go away.
But just the next day, it comes back.
You know, I feel like everyone kind of has that.
You know, some days, like, you're on top of the world.
But there's that one thing that kind just really brings you down.
And some days you can bat it away,
but other days it's kind of
more prominent.
And kind of, you know, characterizes you.
And then...
MARK: Does it bring any experiences to mind?
Uh, I mean, not...
Not really, I guess.
But whenever I was younger, my uncle died and...
I had trouble coping with that. And that kind of...
You know, some days I'd be able to, you know, go,
do whatever, be a regular kindergarten, first grader.
And then other days, I would be
like nothing could make my day better.
I was just... I was a sad sack on some days.
And I think that I'm not really
affected as heavily as I would be,
whenever I was younger. And I feel that, kind of Ahab,
he's heavily affected, obviously.
I think one of the most exciting aspects,
whether we're a child or an adult,
is when we become so immersed in the reading act
that we pass over.
We pass out of our own consciousness
and we enter the consciousness of other.
Of other time, of another culture, another religion.
We develop in that process,
a capacity to leave ourselves.
[READING TO HIMSELF]
VICKI: Reading is far more intimate than any other media.
It's as close as we can get to sharing a mind
as there is any other experience on the planet.
"His vast mild head, overhung by a canopy of vapor,
engendered by his incommunicable contemplations in that vapor,
as you sometimes will see it,
glorified by a rainbow.
as if heaven itself had put its..."
MARK: So when you readMoby Dick,
-you're sharing in Herman's mind... -I share Melville's mind.
"For do you see,
"rainbows do not visit the clear air..."
"Rainbows do not visit the clear air..."
"They only irradiate vapor."
"And so, through all the thick mists and dim doubts of my mind,
"divine intuitions now and then shoot
enkindling my fog with a heavenly ray."
[SIGHS]
KRIS: I've never wanted to be changed.
And I've never wanted to be influenced.
Is this what you say on all your first dates?
-KRIS: Oh! -[LAUGHS]
-KRIS: First and last. -[BOTH LAUGHING]
MARK: "I don't want to be changed,
-"and I don't want to be influenced!" -KRIS: That's right.
MARK: [SARCASTICALLY] That probably goes over really well.
KRIS: Oh, that, yeah. That's why I'm single.
I thought... See?
'Cause you can't get past page five of Moby Dick?
KRIS: There's no compromise. For me.
And so,
going through this journey
is accepting a relationship.
Yeah, with Herman.
I... Yeah, I'm not dating him.
'Cause you really like your perspective on the world,
and you want to keep it, kind of like, fixed, right?
Like you don't want it to change?
Or maybe you feel like you're done changing? [LAUGHS]
I'm not changed.
No, no. What do you mean, "not changed?"
I'm the same me, who was in school.
In high school?
-Oh, yeah. -You're the same you?
Oh. Oh, yeah.
What does that mean?
I don't know what it means.
[RAIN FALLING]
It's raining. [LAUGHS]
MARK: It's like we're in the...
-We're in the moment. -KRIS: Why do we have to have it real?
-Why do I have to really get wet? -[MARK LAUGHS]
It's this annoying spit!
MARK: [LAUGHS] It's like the spray from the ocean. It's like the...
[WIND WHOOSHING]
MARK: "There is your law of precedence
"There is your utility of traditions.
"There's a story of your obstinate survival of old beliefs,
"never bottomed on the Earth."
[READING CONTINUES INDISTINCTLY]
-MARK: Alissa, are you asleep? -No.
-Are you comfy? -Yes.
What was the last read you had like?
[LAUGHS] Right. The last "read" I had?
Yeah.
ALISSA: Hmm. When did I last read?
Well, I just read aloud.
-You mean before that, though. -MARK: No, that's it!
Oh. [LAUGHS]
-What was the question? -[BOTH LAUGH]
Because it's in the middle of the night, and I'm tired.
It's like 3:00.
MARK: How do you read a book by sleeping?
[LAUGHS] You don't.
Sleeping is the opposite of reading.
MARK: "Sleeping is the opposite of reading."
-I think we're onto something there. -[BOTH LAUGH]
Actually, I wouldn't say they are the opposite.
I would tend to think that there would be aspects of reading
that elicit some of the kind of imagery,
some of the kind of...
Not wild associations,
but disparate associations
that reading can sometimes activate.
So I wouldn't put them as an opposite,
but where they are different is that sleep does not analyze.
After sleep,
we can take those reflective powers and...
fashion insight, fashion novel thought...
-that came out of dream. -[BABY COOS ON PHONE]
I'm crying again.
[SNIFFLES] Mark?
[SEAGULLS SQUAWKING]
[MOZART'S PIANO CONCERTO PLAYING]
CLEARY: Yeah, they call that the banking model of education.
Like, you deposit meaning into their heads,
it fills them up with meaning.
But the problem with that is,
how we find meaning,
is often constructed, not... not received.
The meaning that's found by the student is theirs.
You see, they have to possess it and make it theirs,
instead of just something that's served up.
Somebody says, "Well,
"you know, if you just remember this,
"you're gonna be so wise."
Being wise means that you're engaged in the interpretation of wisdom.
Wisdom isn't a thing. Right?
Wow! This is a really beautiful part of the river, right here.
Look at the water. Wow.
Beautiful.
We're gonna have some waves here.
[MOTORBOAT WHIRRING]
Just for safety's sake, Mark, we're just going to go into them, okay?
So it isn't just about yourself and your own thoughts, but,
sort of the kind of wild joy that comes with learning
more about yourself and the world by, um...
What is that off to the left there, Mark? Is that a ledge?
That looks like a ledge, doesn't it?
MARK: To Socrates,
-education was all about virtue. Right? -Yeah.
MARK: The whole purpose of gaining wisdom
was for the Gods to view you more kindly.
And if you were someone who was wise,
that wisdom doesn't belong to you. You had to give it back,
so that the Gods don't see you as someone who's
greedy with wisdom, right?
Um, Mark you see off to the left here?
You can't see it from here. There's a huge ledge
off to the left there. We gotta get all the way to the right.
MARK: Okay.
The reality is that Socrates
had some very interesting,
and I believe still legitimate concerns.
He felt that language is alive.
And that it's the exchange. It's the dialogue.
That, "I answer you, you answer me."
He felt that words,
these inert things, could not talk back.
He said, "These kinds of words are dead.
"They cannot talk back."
How can we speak about language
in a way that will make the Gods happy?
I don't know.
There's an old story.
How true it is I'm not sure.
In the Egyptian city of Naucratis,
there's an ancient God.
His name is Thoth. [ECHOES]
He was the inventor of many arts,
arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, dice.
But his greatest invention was the use of letters.
[BELL DINGS]
One day, Thoth came and showed his inventions off to the King of Egypt.
They discussed each one, but when it came to letters...
Oh, ingenious Thoth.
I am worried about this discovery of yours.
By externalizing memories,
you will create a forgetfulness in the learners' souls.
You're not offering truth, but the appearance of truth.
The people that follow this method
will be hearers of many things, but will have learned nothing.
They will be tiresome company,
having the show of wisdom, without the reality.
MARYANNE: He said, "It's not a recipe for memory.
"It's a recipe for forgetting,
"because you will depend on this"
Reading this radical technology, to him
would give people an illusion of knowledge
that they did not possess.
And, in our words today,
they wouldn't know what they didn't know.
Socrates is one of the best sources of questions...
Is that a rock? Yeah it is. Gee whiz.
...to us in a similarly radical transition.
His was the transition from oral-language culture
to a literacy-based culture.
And ours is a literacy-based culture
to a digital culture with similar issues
about memory and delusions of knowledge.
[INDISTINCT CHATTER]
[RATTLING]
[INDISTINCT CHATTER]
GIRL: I'd put it in for another, like, 30 seconds.
Yeah, you may not know
what you want to do yet. That is okay.
Don't create stress on yourself.
Life is stressful enough
without the stuff we manufacture
that we don't really need to worry about yet. Okay?
[BRACELETS JINGLING]
So this is, backwards from how it was before.
Yeah, it's set up differently today.
-So I used to be... My desk was over here. -Yes.
But it was facing this way, and so...
And you used to teach from... Yeah, you used to teach over there.
Yes, because the school was set up with
-the "green boards," as they used to call them... -Mm-hmm.
...on this side of the room as opposed to the other side.
It was an older desk,
but it had drawers on both sides,
which I always needed.
Plus, I always liked to stash extra books on these.
-Like here, there's space to put books... -Uh-huh.
Which I never have enough of. Okay?
But I had to retire when I did.
My husband said, "Janet, if you don't..."
He said...
"I don't know how much longer you're gonna live."
He said... he said, "You really have to,
-"you know, hang it up." Yeah. -Yeah.
I kind of felt bad because I still thought I had some time.
And I actually felt...
[STUTTERS] I wasn't necessarily getting better all the time,
-but I was hoping I was getting better. -Yeah.
-Uh, maybe not more efficient, but more knowledgeable. -Right.
And more knowledgeable about people.
-And that... that's big. -Yeah.
Becoming more knowledgeable about people
and what makes them tick.
MARK: One of the things that I remembered,
when I was driving away from your house last time, was,
I came in with that small stack of papers.
Remember this part?
And you came in with some papers
that you wanted to get credit for.
-MARK: The essays on, uh... -That was... That was at the very end of the year.
-The very end of the year. -I was cleaning up my room. Yes.
-MARK: Yeah, you were cleaning up this room and... -Yes. Yes.
and I remembered what you said to me.
Um. That it was too little, too late.
Did I really say that?
Oh, my goodness.
That was terrible, and I didn't try to mollify it at all.
No, you were mad at me, but...
No I wasn't. I wasn't. No.
Because I... It was very disheartening to have to...
[SIGHS]
MARK: It stuck there, but I didn't remember it consciously until I was driving.
Oh, I'm really sorry I put it that way.
I really am. I am. I am.
But you know what?
I-I probably also felt that
you have to like, just say,
-"That's it." -"That's it." Yeah.
You know? It's like, there are times in life,
when it is too late to do something.
I suppose.
So, we're going to have an essay on The Candles?
Mm-hmm. Over just those paragraphs.
Ain't it crazy?
It's gonna be all right. I promise.
MARK: It seems like, every lunch,
there's someone coming at you
for some sort of life advice or career advice.
Why do they come to you?
I'm old. [LAUGHS]
And I care about them.
They know that I will listen to them,
let them talk themselves into understanding
what they want for themselves.
For their lives.
It's... It's part of my job.
I'm a teacher.
[INDISTINCT CONVERSATION]
And letting them know that they're cared about.
And that there are things in their lives
that I know that are a whole lot more important
than anything that I bring to them.
[WHISPERING] That works very well. Excellent.
[STUDENTS WHISPERING QUESTIONS]
I think you're just panicking, okay?
So you should breathe.
[BREATHING DEEPLY]
[INDISTINCT WHISPERING]
I want them to be happy with who they are.
But I want them to be smart about the world
so they don't get eaten alive.
Or horribly disappointed.
[INHALES] Why is Moby-Dick so important to that?
[SERENE INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC PLAYING]
MAN: "'The ship! A hearse! The second hearse!'
"cried Ahab from the boat.
"'Its wood could only be American.'"
They've been chasing Moby for three days
because Ahab's a crazy man. And they're tired.
HALEY: L-A-A-K-E.
-You don't know how to spell my last name? -HALEY: I'm making sure!
I double checked his name.
Wow, Haley.
She's supposed to be my best friend. What is this?
VICKI: You see, you survived!
JESSIE: I survived.
-VICKI: How are you doing? -Better.
I'm not saying I don't like it.
I'm just saying that I'm better at math.
"Towards thee I roll,
"thou all-destroying but unconquering whale,
"to the last I grapple with thee
"from hell's heart I stab at thee..."
MAN: "A sullen white surf beat against its deep sides,
"then all collapsed.
"And the great shroud of the sea rolled on
"as it rolled 5,000 years ago."
I mean, it's glorious writing.
It really is.
VICKI: Ishmael survives on Queequeg's coffin.
He is picked up by The Rachel.
So you have that symbolic
"mother of the Jewish people" ship
picking up
Abraham's discarded son,
so that the family is reunited.
And it always makes me wonder,
is Melville just trying to say that,
maybe all of these great big things,
that we notice happening
are happening so the little connections can be made?
I mostly think of Herman and Lizzie as
-you and Elizabeth Doss... -[ALISSA CHUCKLES]
...being in bed together.
ALISSA: Well that's... that's a little weird.
MARK: It's a little weird, yeah. That was a weird scene.
He really wrote himself into this book.
So I don't really feel like he's actually
in the ground.
Even though he sure is.
-Hi! -JANET: Oh, don't you look nice.
I look the same I did before.
-Okay. Well, I like that look, Mark. -Hi, nice to see you!
[LAUGHS] Nice to see you too.
-Hi, Tom. -TOM: Hi.
-We finally meet! Yay! -[ALL LAUGH]
-JANET: Hi, I'm Janet! -ALISSA: Hi.
-JANET: Hi, Alex, right? -ALISSA: Alissa.
Alissa. Okay, all right.
Yeah, so this is my wife, Alissa.
This is my mom, Marta. You've met her before, probably.
MARTA: No, we tried to meet.
She tried to meet me through mail and e-mails.
-Yeah but I stopped it up until now. -[ALL LAUGH]
JANET: Yeah, and this is my husband, Tom. MARTA: Hi, Tom.
-ALISSA: Hi. -TOM: Hi.
JANET: [ON TV] And then,
I decided that I needed the Norton Critical Edition,
because this has like... like, loads of stuff in it.
All kinds of stuff.
MARK: [ON TV] You've gotta have the letters to Hawthorne,
That's... that's pretty important.
JANET: [ON TV] Yeah, yeah.
You didn't make me feel bad. I just did.
ALISSA: [ON TV] You know, really shitty for you to like,
I mean...[CRYING] You could try a little harder, Mark.[SNIFFLES]
SAMUEL: [ON TV] Across the book,
you get characters looking in the water,
and you are told what they see.
JANET: ...continue to regret the lives you could have had..."
SAMUEL: That reveals something about the character.
Sometimes looking into the water is a mirror back to them.
MARK: "Too little, too late."
JANET: Did I really say that?
Oh, I'm really sorry I put it that way.
I really am. I am.
BERGMAN: [ON TV] Strikingly, toward the end of the book,
looking in the water,
is seeing Moby Dick rise up to the surface.
JANET: Thereare times in life
when itis too late to do something.
So, Happy Father's Day, everybody!
[ALL LAUGHING]
TOM: And future fathers! KRIS: We'll throw you in there, too!
It's fish, because of Moby-Dick.
-[ALL LAUGHING] -How appropriate.
-RENATA: So aren't we supposed to be criticizing the movie? -[TABLEWARE CLINKING]
MARK: Yeah, what were the... What were the themes of the film?
-KRIS: Too many. -[ALL CHUCKLE]
-First it's you... -MARK: Mm-hmm.
KRIS: ...your relationship with your wife,
-and then relationship with your past. -MARK: Mm-hmm.
And more? Your relationship to Herman Melville.
That's too many.
-MARK: Too many relationships? -Yeah.
I mean, there's more than that.
You know, there's more the inner city you.
"What if I grew up where I had to worry about getting killed when I went to school?"
So there's so many themes. Like, you know...
MARTA: But documentaries are different. It's not a movie.
KRIS: You said it in the beginning.
"This is the book report that I never gave."
And that did not feel at all like a book report.
That felt like um, a search for the self.
You said the right thing to him, junior year. That was good.
There are times in life,
when it is too late to do something.
And then you have the Stanford professor
saying the same thing I'm saying...
The kids just get pushed along...
KRIS: It's too late for me.
I was programmed differently,
and you're still trying to make me learn a way
that some people know how to learn.
But yet I've never fit in that groove,
and you're forcing me back into that groove
that has scarred me away from that.
You know? And you're doing now that to yourself.
You're trying to go back into your past, like,
"Hey what happened to me that year in high school
"that I totally blacked out
"and did not participate in something
"that now I find fascinating?"
JANET: I thought the remark of the young woman in the teacher's class...
-MARTA: Yeah. The blonde girl. -JANET: Yeah, the blonde girl, who said...
Finding, like, your own free will, and whatever,
is, like hard, and like confusing?
That life is confusing and, you know,
finding meaning is like a super-big challenge
and so, the act of reading the book
is almost like the journey through life
-and attempting to find meaning. -But you don't have...
-KRIS: You don't need two hours of that! -Yeah.
[UPBEAT MUSIC PLAYING]