The Frogs of Australia: End of Ramble in the Southern Hemisphere

Growling Grass Frog (Litoria raniformis)

Since I'm leaving Australia in a few hours for wintry latitudes, hoping to some day return, I figured this might be a good time to resurrect a few excerpts from the "self-interview" that The Nervous Breakdown asked me to write almost exactly a year ago (you'll see why). I've been asked a few times since arriving down under to explain why it is I love Melville's novel so, and I welcome that question, challenging as it can be to answer quickly, and I swung at it a few different ways. Here's another, slightly longer swing:

... The title. What were you thinking? I mean, Moby-Dick is this epic masterpiece, and you, my friend, whatever you are, are no Herman Melville.
It started as a kind of joke. I chose the title before I wrote a single word, which is unusual. Once I committed to it, I had to take the joke seriously. I knew that my voyage had to be a grand one. I often wished that for my first book I’d chosen a smaller project, a nice little monograph of an essay on oh, I don’t know, the pleasures and perils of bicycling in New York. But I love Moby-Dick, love the so-called informational chapters as well as the action sequences. I think most of all I love the dynamics in Melville’s prose, the swells and troughs, the storms and calms, how it mixes the high and the low, the philosophical and the naughty. I used to tell my students to look out for the fart joke in chapter 1, “Loomings,” (hint, it has to do with the pythagorean maxim). Then, too, Ishmael is an insular Manhatto, like I was, a former schoolteacher as I was. I couldn’t resist. I carried a tattered, annotated copy around with me during my travels and kept it on my desk and sought inspiration in its pages. It sustained as well as daunted me. Frankly, I’d almost prefer to talk about Melville’s book than mine.

And here's the bit that made me think of this now:

There’s much about fatherhood and childhood in the book. One of your two sons even turns up as a kind of recurring character. What does he want to be when he grows up? 

His plans keep changing, of course. Recently, he’s decided to be the host of a televised cooking show. But once he told me that he was going to be a scientist so that he can go to Antarctica and bring things back for me and his mother. Another time, god help him, he said he wanted to be “a papa and a writer.” He even had a great book title picked out. 

What was it? 

The Frogs of Australia.