Publisher's Synopsis
Book Description: Cogitations on the White WhalePoised on the edge of the Octogenarian Age, Hezekiah Hopewell, palaverer extraordinaire, reads Moby-Dick and talks, talks, and talks. In fact, he talks and sings his way without stopping through a short novel of 50,000 words. Inspired by Bohumil Hrabal's novel in one sentence, Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age, U.R. Bowie's Cogitations cogitates on a wide variety of issues and themes: the prevalence of self-declared Messiahs in human history, the outrageous cost of dental care in the U.S., how to train a pet lizard to bark, beg and fetch, ways of committing suicide, including holding your breath, the smell of irradiated horse chestnut leaves in Kiev, autumn of 1986, modern-day hate-drenched America, the return of the Saviour for a look around at the world, two thousand years after He was last here, the way global warming threatens the frozen sighs of seals, polar bears and Eskimos in Alaska, how to hold your mouth and face when having your picture made for a Russian passport, the way beautiful old words are threatened with extinction in our wordless, incoherent age, the Christian ascetics known as Stylites, the ephemeral three-day existence of the Florida love bug, how to make a good living selling ambergris gathered from the guts of sperm whales, what to do with old age when it stares you in the face, why Jonah in the bible was vomited out of a whale onto dry land, why the Pope wears a little white cappie, and why that annoys the human race, why there are no whys on earth (because there are no becauses), and much, much, much more.What has Hezekiah Hopewell done with his long life? Well, he has been married to four different women. Lucky for him, since he has never had a job and his wives have supported him. He has not really done much of anything but read books. Now, fast approaching deep old age, Hezekiah drives around with his nephew Hiram-"a man steeped in self-rectitude, ineptitude, rednecktitude"-in a rusted old jeep through rural north Florida, cogitating all the while and indulging himself in logorrhea, or "spouting-out-the-mouth disease." Where does this incessant garrulousness lead our hero, Hezekiah? Where is his ever-going-forward getting him? To the same place all of our ever-going-forward-really more of a circling round and round, rather than going forward-is getting the rest of us here on God's green earth.
