Why reading IS fundamental
By Dave Read, Lenox, MA, May 1, 2026 – Herman Melville steps aside from the narration of the Pequod’s voyage from time to time to present commentary on a myriad of topics, each somehow incidental to Ahab’s monomania. Every time he does, we learn as much about the author as we do of whatever subject happens to be under examination.
Chapter 90, Heads or Tails, is a good example. Ostensibly a glance at the nature of jurisprudence under a monarchy, it betrays the author’s antipathy to the sort of arbitrary, inherited power as precipitated the revolutionary war. The author’s grandfathers were distinguished generals in that contest, which make his love of country a trustworthy extension of his love of family.
The chapter title references the fact that the heads of whales were the property of the king, while the tail was reserved for the queen. Fair enough for the authors of English law to seek equity by giving half the whale to each half of the monarchy, but their commentary in support of that division is based in error, not fact.
It declared the reason the tail half of whales was reserved for the Queen was because that was the locale of the bones required for her majesty’s boustiere. That whalebone, however, is found in the head of the whale. Without the cauldron of a constitution such as America’s, which identifies errors in the laws so they may be amended, that mistake remains on the books in England, even if whalebone was last worn by Queen Victoria.
The passage concludes with a statement that may be among the nearly 2,000 cut or modified in the original London edition of Moby-Dick. They were made by printers who worked in fear of upsetting royal sensibilities, strangers as they were to American-styled freedom of the press.
It says …the King receiving the highly dense and elastic head peculiar to that fish, which, symbolically regarded, may possibly be humorously grounded upon some presumed congeniality. To liken where his majesty’s crown perches to either the head of a sturgeon or whale would be a poor business decision for any of the King’s subjects.
If Melville’s patriotism is trustworthy because it is rooted in his love of family, then our fake king’s hyper noisy patriotism can be seen as fraudulent for the same reason. He has been driven by a lust for retribution since 1976, when the department of justice arrested his father for violations of fair housing legislation. That familial insult, during a republican presidency, is what drove him to first destroy the republican party, then the republic itself.
Already, he has transformed the department of justice into a global laughing stock, with such ridiculous appointments as Bondi and Patel, a myriad of revenge-driven prosecutions doomed to failure, and the witholding of the Epstein files.
His misuse of presidential pardons, for both personal gain and retribution, further sullies the very notion of justice in America. Our phony king is far along on his campaign to destroy government of the people, by the people, and for the people, to be replaced with government by the candidate able to buy the most votes.
In 2016, 83% of all voters for the republican ticket failed to list reading as a favored pastime – by 2024, that number had risen to 91%. Such is the perception-deadening power of TV and streaming media that the MAGA mass are unable to see through their phony king’s transparent royal robes.
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
1. If Nixon had not been pardoned by un-elected President Ford, and made to do time commensurate with his crimes, we would have been spared our present mess.
2. If more people had read Moby-Dick by 2015, with enough clarity of mind to recognize it as a grand admonition against complicity with monomaniacs, we would have been spared our present mess.