“The Imposter Fantasy”
Jules Feiffer
1929- American

I felt like a fraud.
So I learned to fly an airplane.
At 50,000 feet I thought:
“A fraud is flying an airplane.”
So I crossed the Atlantic in a rowboat.
I docked at Cherbourg and thought:
“A fraud has crossed the Atlantic in a rowboat.”
So I took a space shot to the moon. On the trip home I thought:
“A fraud has circled the moon.”
So I took a full page ad in the newspaper and
confessed to the world that I was a fraud!
I read the ad and I thought:
“A fraud is pretending to be honest.”

Quotations from *Moby-Dick; or, The Whale*, 17 of 22
Herman Melville
1819-1891 American

“Where is Moby Dick?”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“Science! Curse thee, thou vain toy.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“Of all this fiery life of thine, what will at length remain but one little heap of ashes!”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

In these resplendent Japanese seas the mariner encounters the direst of all storms, the Typhoon. It will sometimes burst from out that cloudless sky, like an exploding bomb upon a dazed and sleepy town.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

To sailors, oaths are household words; they will swear in the trance of the calm, and in the teeth of the tempest; they will imprecate curses from the topsail-yard-arms, when most they teter over to a seething sea.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“I now know that thy right worship is defiance. To neither love nor reverence wilt thou be kind; and e'en for hate thou canst but kill; and all are killed.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“I own thy speechless, placeless power; but to the last gasp of my earthquake life will dispute its unconditional, unintegral mastery in me.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“Though thou launchest navies of full-freighted worlds, there's that in here that still remains indifferent.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“I own thy speechless, placeless power; said I not so? Nor was it wrung from me; nor do I now drop these links. Thou canst blind; but I can then grope.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“The lightning flashes through my skull; mine eye-balls ache and ache; my whole beaten brain seems as beheaded, and rolling on some stunning ground.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“Light though thou be, thou leapest out of darkness; but I am darkness leaping out of light, leaping out of thee!”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“Thou knowest not how came ye, hence callest thyself unbegotten; certainly knowest not thy beginning, hence callest thyself unbegun.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“Oh, thou foundling fire, thou hermit immemorial, thou too hast thy incommunicable riddle, thy unparticipated grief.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“The boat! the boat!” cried Starbuck, “look at thy boat, old man!”

Ahab's harpoon, the one forged at Perth's fire, remained firmly lashed in its conspicuous crotch, so that it projected beyond his whale-boat's bow; but the sea that had stove its bottom had caused the loose leather sheath to drop off; and from the keen steel barb there now came a levelled flame of pale, forked fire. As the silent harpoon burned there like a serpent's tongue, Starbuck grasped Ahab by the arm--“God, God is against thee, old man; forbear! t'is an ill voyage! ill begun, ill continued; let me square the yards, while we may, old man, and make a fair wind of it homewards, to go on a better voyage than this.”

Overhearing Starbuck, the panic-stricken crew instantly ran to the braces--though not a sail was left aloft. For the moment all the aghast mate's thoughts seemed theirs; they raised a half mutinous cry. But dashing the rattling lightning links to the deck, and snatching the burning harpoon, Ahab waved it like a torch among them; swearing to transfix with it the first sailor that but cast loose a rope's end. Petrified by his aspect, and still more shrinking from the fiery dart that he held, the men fell back in dismay, and Ahab again spoke:--

“All your oaths to hunt the White Whale are as binding as mine; and heart, soul, and body, lungs and life, old Ahab is bound. And that ye may know to what tune this heart beats; look ye here; thus I blow out the last fear!” And with one blast of his breath he extinguished the flame.

As in the hurricane that sweeps the plain, men fly the neighborhood of some lone, gigantic elm, whose very height and strength but render it so much the more unsafe, because so much the more a mark for thunderbolts; so at those last words of Ahab's many of the mariners did run from him in a terror of dismay.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“Didn't you once say that whatever ship Ahab sails in, that ship should pay something extra on its insurance policy, just as though it were loaded with powder barrels aft and boxes of lucifers forward?”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“I've part changed my flesh since that time, why not my mind?”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“Why don't ye be sensible, Flask? it's easy to be sensible; why don't ye, then? any man with half an eye can be sensible.”

“I don't know that, Stubb. You sometimes find it rather hard.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

Quotations from *Moby-Dick; or, The Whale*, 18 of 22
Herman Melville
1819-1891 American

“Seems to me we are lashing down these anchors now as if they were never going to be used again.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“I wonder, Flask, whether the world is anchored anywhere; if she is, she swings with an uncommon long cable, though.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“Lord, Lord, that the winds that come from heaven should be so unmannerly! This is a nasty night, lad.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

The loaded muskets in the rack were shiningly revealed, as they stood upright against the forward bulkhead. Starbuck was an honest, upright man; but out of Starbuck's heart, at that instant when he saw the muskets, there strangely evolved an evil thought; but so blent with its neutral or good accompaniments that for the instant he hardly knew it for itself.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“I come to report a fair wind to him. But how fair? Fair for death and doom,--that's fair for Moby Dick.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“But shall this crazed old man be tamely suffered to drag a whole ship's company down to doom with him?”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“Not reasoning; not remonstrance; not entreaty wilt thou hearken to; all this thou scornest.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“Is heaven a murderer when its lightning strikes a would-be murderer in his bed, tindering sheets and skin together? -- And would I be a murderer, then, if” -- and slowly, stealthily, and half sideways looking, he placed the loaded musket's end against the door.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“The wind has gone down and shifted, Sir; the fore and main topsails are reefed and set; she heads her course.”

“Stern all! Oh Moby Dick, I clutch thy heart at last!”

Such were the sounds that now came hurtling from out the old man's tormented sleep, as if Starbuck's voice had caused the long dumb dream to speak.

The yet levelled musket shook like a drunkard's arm against the panel; Starbuck seemed wrestling with an angel; but turning from the door, he placed the death-tube in its rack, and left the place.

“He's too sound asleep, Mr Stubb; go thou down, and wake him, and tell him. I must see to the deck here. Thou know'st what to say.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

The sea was as a crucible of molten gold, that bubblingly leaps with light and heat.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

In his fiery eyes of scorn and triumph, you then saw Ahab in all his fatal pride.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“To him nothing's happened; but to me, the skewer seems loosening out of the middle of the world.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“The greater idiot ever scolds the lesser.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“Lo! ye believers in gods all goodness, and in man all ill, lo you! see the omniscient gods oblivious of suffering man; and man, though idiotic, and knowing not what he does, yet full of the sweet things of love and gratitude.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

Making so long a passage through such unfrequented waters, descrying no ships, and ere long, sideways impelled by unvarying trade winds, over waves monotonously mild; all these seemed the strange calm things preluding some riotous and desperate scene.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

He had not been long at his perch, when a cry was heard -- a cry and a rushing -- and looking up, they saw a falling phantom in the air; and looking down, a little tossed heap of white bubbles in the blue of the sea.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

And thus the first man of the Pequod that mounted the mast to look out for the White Whale, on the White Whale's own peculiar ground; that man was swallowed up in the deep. But few, perhaps, thought of that at the time.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

In the feverish eagerness of what seemed the approaching crisis of the voyage, all hands were impatient of any toil but what was directly connected with its final end, whatever that might prove to be.
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“But heigh-ho! there are no caps at sea but snow-caps.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“Thou art as unprincipled as the gods.”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“Faith, Sir, I've -- ”

“Faith? What's that?”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“Oh! how immaterial are all materials! What things real are there, but imponderable thoughts?”
—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

“I Hated Tonto (Still Do)”
Sherman Alexie
1966- Spokane/Coeur d'Alene

I was a little Spokane Indian boy who read every book and saw every movie about Indians, no matter how terrible. I'd read those historical romance novels about the stereotypical Indian warrior ravaging the virginal white schoolteacher.

I can still see the cover art.

The handsome, blue-eyed warrior (the Indians in romance novels are always blue-eyed because half-breeds are somehow sexier than full-blooded Indians) would be nuzzling (the Indians in romance novels are always performing acts that are described in animalistic terms) the impossibly pale neck of a white woman as she reared her head back in primitive ecstasy (the Indians in romance novels always inspire white women to commit acts of primitive ecstasy).

Of course, after reading such novels, I imagined myself to be a blue-eyed warrior nuzzling the necks of various random, primitive and ecstatic white women.

And I just as often imagined myself to be a cinematic Indian, splattered with Day-Glo Hollywood war paint as I rode off into yet another battle against the latest actor to portray Gen. George Armstrong Custer.

But I never, not once, imagined myself to be Tonto.

I hated Tonto then and I hate him now.

However, despite my hatred of Tonto, I loved movies about Indians, loved them beyond all reasoning and saw no fault with any of them.

I loved John Ford's "The Searchers."

I rooted for John Wayne as he searched for his niece for years and years. I rooted for John Wayne even though I knew he was going to kill his niece because she had been "soiled" by the Indians. Hell, I rooted for John Wayne because I understood why he wanted to kill his niece.

I hated those savage Indians just as much as John Wayne did.

I mean, jeez, they had kidnapped Natalie Wood, transcendent white beauty who certainly didn't deserve to be nuzzled, nibbled, or nipped by some Indian warrior, especially an Indian warrior who only spoke in monosyllables and whose every movement was accompanied by ominous music.

In the movies, Indians are always accompanied by ominous music. And I've seen so many Indian movies that I feel like I'm constantly accompanied by ominous music. I always feel that something bad is about to happen.

I am always aware of how my whole life is shaped by my hatred of Tonto. Whenever I think of Tonto, I hear ominous music.

I walk into shopping malls or family restaurants, as the ominous music drops a few octaves, and imagine that I am Billy Jack, the half-breed Indian and Vietnam vet turned flower-power pacifist (now there's a combination) who loses his temper now and again, takes off his shoes (while his opponents patiently wait for him to do so), and then kicks the red out of the necks of a few dozen racist white extras.

You have to remember Billy Jack, right?

Every Indian remembers Billy Jack. I mean, back in the day, Indians worshipped Billy Jack.

Whenever a new Billy Jack movie opened in Spokane, my entire tribe would climb into two or three vans like so many circus clowns and drive to the East Trent Drive-In for a long evening of greasy popcorn, flat soda pop, fossilized licorice rope and interracial violence.

We Indians cheered as Billy Jack fought for us, for every single Indian.

Of course, we conveniently ignored the fact that Tom Laughlin, the actor who played Billy Jack, was definitely not Indian.

After all, such luminary white actors as Charles Bronson, Chuck Connors, Burt Reynolds, Burt Lancaster, Sal Mineo, Anthony Quinn and Charlton Heston had already portrayed Indians, so who were we to argue?

I mean, Tom Laughlin did have a nice tan and he spoke in monosyllables and wore cowboy boots and a jean jacket just like Indians. And he did have a Cherokee grandmother or grandfather or butcher, so he was Indian by proximity, and that was good enough in 1972, when disco music was about to rear its ugly head and bell-bottom pants were just beginning to change the shape of our legs.

When it came to the movies, Indians had learned to be happy with less.

We didn't mind that cinematic Indians never had jobs.

We didn't mind that cinematic Indians were deadly serious.

We didn't mind that cinematic Indians were rarely played by Indian actors.

We made up excuses.

"Well, that Tom Laughlin may not be Indian, but he sure should be."

"Well, that movie wasn't so good, but Sal Mineo looked sort of like Uncle Stubby when he was still living out on the reservation."

"Well, I hear Burt Reynolds is a little bit Cherokee. Look at his cheekbones. He's got them Indian cheekbones."

"Well, it's better than nothing."

Yes, that became our battle cry.

"Sometimes, it's a good day to die. Sometimes, it's better than nothing."

We Indians became so numb to the possibility of dissent, so accepting of our own lowered expectations, that we canonized a film like "Powwow Highway."

When it was first released, I loved "Powwow Highway." I cried when I first saw it in the theater, then cried again when I stayed and watched it again a second time.

I mean, I loved that movie. I memorized whole passages of dialogue. But recently, I watched the film for the first time in many years and cringed in shame and embarrassment with every stereotypical scene.

I cringed when Philbert Bono climbed to the top of a sacred mountain and left a Hershey chocolate bar as an offering.

I cringed when Philbert and Buddy Red Bow waded into a stream and sang Indian songs to the moon.

I cringed when Buddy had a vision of himself as an Indian warrior throwing a tomahawk through the window of a police cruiser.

I mean, I don't know a single Indian who would leave a chocolate bar as an offering. I don't know any Indians who have ever climbed to the top of any mountain. I don't know any Indians who wade into streams and sing to the moon. I don't know of any Indians who imagine themselves to be Indian warriors.

Wait--

I was wrong. I know of at least one Indian boy who always imagined himself to be a cinematic Indian warrior.

Me.

I watched the movies and saw the kind of Indian I was supposed to be.

A cinematic Indian is supposed to climb mountains.

I am afraid of heights.

A cinematic Indian is supposed to wade into streams and sing songs.

I don't know how to swim.

A cinematic Indian is supposed to be a warrior.

I haven't been in a fistfight since sixth grade and she beat the crap out of me.

I mean, I knew I could never be as brave, as strong, as wise, as visionary, as white as the Indians in the movies.

I was just one little Indian boy who hated Tonto because Tonto was the only cinematic Indian who looked like me.