"Chinese Society for the Suppression of Meddling with other People's Business" what did he mean by this?
My edition says in a footnote that this is simply a "Melville's invention", but there must be some context? (chapter 89)
I believe he’s making the kind of joke where you juxtapose something high brow serious and weighty with something made up and silly. So the concise elegance of the American fisherman’s approach to fast-fish and loose-fish is on par with Justinian’s Pandects (which codified centuries of piecemeal Roman law into one document) or the by laws of the “Chinese Society for the Suppression of Meddling with other People’s Business” (which would presumably amount to “mind your own business”). In terms of context, this next part is just my unresearched conjecture. Melville, like Ishmael, lived in New York City which had then, like it does now, countless civic organizations for countless causes. Many of them were/are started by immigrant communities looking to achieve their goals (whether those be economic advancement or cultural promotion or legal equity or whatever) through ethnic solidarity. I don’t think he’s making any particular comment about the Chinese other than “the ones I see in NYC tend to keep to themselves.” I think you could mad lib the name with any number of other nouns, proper nouns and verbs and the joke would work the same. Like “The Lutheran Womens League for the Promotion of Keeping to Yourself” or “The Polish Students Brotherhood for the Advancement of Keeping Your Eyes on Your Own Paper.” Just my take!
