first introduction
I read years ago about a monster marathon reading of Moby Dick in the USA, volunteers would each read a chapter aloud and they would get through the book in maybe two and a half days, where they read I do not remember, not in Nantucket or New Bedford I think, but probably in New England - which gives you better odds of finding such a reading than Ahab had in searching for the White Whale. Surprisingly such readings haven't become a major spectator sport, nor even a matter of rivalry between towns and states, perhaps one day in the future...

second introduction
many years ago, but not quite four score years and ten, I read Moby Dick in the penguin edition, one of those in which the introduction is itself an epic ,fit to murder an honest reader and the endnotes virtually as long as the novel again - I felt obliged to read with one finger in the story and another in the notes and I flopped awkwardly from one to the other. This edition that I have read now, has all the cruel disadvantages of no over helpful introduction and no endnotes which explain everything that you never needed to know, and so as a consequence is a much easier book to read.

might be a review
reading the final pages I was suddenly reminded of the story of Saint Hubertus - man hunts stag, stag turns on man with message from God, man renounces hunting to become saint. Moby Dick is almost the same story except in a more old testament way, the hunter instead chooses to ignore or misunderstand all the warnings he is given. And as we are reminded in the book, ultimately the dogs licked King Ahab's blood (1 Kings 22). But I am getting entangling in my own line, let me cut myself free. Saint Hubertus' story was also mine own, for I turned my back on the glory of the White Whale until it came with a heavy splash after me and swallowed me whole even as Jonah was swallowed in days of old.

much more likely to be a review
Apparently, or so Wikipeadia tells me and what faith I put in that I dare not publically say, E.M. Forster wrote Moby-Dick is full of meanings: its meaning is a different problem, I believe however, that I concur to the utmost with that opinion, for me it is one of the great books of the world - a proud and vain belief as I shall certainly never read but a small percentage (if at all countable) of the world's books, and no less foolishly I believe it is The Great American Novel perhaps because slippery with whale blubber, it warns non-Americans about race and religion and society in the USA, it might be the great novel of capitalism (or Marxism) or even the great novel about what man does to the environment and our fellow creatures (but I repeat myself, as I said the great novel of capitalism or Marxism, reminding me of Melville's story The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids).

All novels set aboard ships immediately ring symbolic bells for the reader (if they are attended to is another question - and not attending to the toiling of symbolism is a big theme in the book). The ship and it's crew can be taken as representing society, it is the ship of state (not to be confused with a stately ship), a ship of fools, an Odyssey - though in this case the end point of the voyage is not Ithaca but a more final resting place, a Quest not for the Golden Fleece but for the golden oil or a quest for something else, vengeance or self-destruction. It is a surprisingly straight retelling of the Biblical story of Ahab set in Melville's own times and translated to his 'modern' setting. In the Bible God brings down King Ahab by means of false prophecy, here Captain Ahab plugs his ears to the siren call of true prophecy clinging instead to the Delphic riddle of a Parsi (not that there is anything intrinsically wrong in harkening to the fortune telling of Parsis  though I am compelled to say that soothsayers of other nations are available, a whaling ship makes use of all talents we are told). We believe what we want to, and when that leads us into disaster maybe that is just what we want.

Marvellously, the book proceeds like a whale, diving below water and swimming unseen, breaking the surface and turning on the reader suddenly. The eponymous whale is introduced to us through his actions and legends, but we barely meet him and in person only at the very end of the story, that he consists of massive symbolic power we are explicitly told, but what he symbolises is open to the reader to decide. The big old whale could of course just be a big old whale and not an incarnation of God or an agent of Divine will. The burden of symbolism and foreshadowing ought to be enough to make the poor Pequod capsize before she leaves harbour, but she bobs away prettily partly because of Melville's digressions on whaling and whales. Encyclopaedic diversions, which distract us from the vexing question of how in an Divine universe does a person distinguish between the false and the true prophets.

While Moby Dick's narrator is saved by a comic inversion, the novel itself was not and sank only to be dredged up and revived after the author's death and glancing at reviews you can see why, it's a big novel full of disparate elements. It is unconventional in almost every way. In the updates I made I mentioned how a couple of lines reminded me of the poem Invictus, it is unlikely there is any relationship between the two, but culturally I would say that Invictus is a thoroughly Victorian piece asserting the triumph of the will, the heroic individual able to stand defiant if not o'ercome all difficulties. Moby Dick is the complete opposite, the heroic individual is Ahab, his triumphant will leads to death, admiration of his passion and obedience to his orders leads to lots of deaths and the novel questions the notion of I am the Captain of my soul, the master of my fate right from start - the narrator instead tells us who ain't a slave? Tell me that. Well, then, however the old sea-captains may order me about - however they may thump and punch me about, I have the satisfaction of knowing that it is all right; that everybody else is one way or other served in much the same way - either in a physical or metaphysical point of view that is; and so the universal thump is passed round, and all hands should rub each other's shoulder-blades and be content (p.5) and the commonalty lead their leaders in many other things, at the same time that the leaders little suspect it (p.5) , Ahab is the captain of the ship, but who is the captain of Ahab? Ahab himself denies responsibility - I don't think, I just feel - he tells us, but Ahab feels differently to other ship's captain's in similar situations, the solution then lies elsewhere: predestination maybe, fate perhaps, psychology even. From a broader point of view we are also shown that the whaling industry is both fundamental to Victorian society, but at the same time it's irreverent inversion. The married ship's officers are almost perpetually absent from their marriage beds, pausing there barely long enough to reproduce, the ship itself an idyll, a foretaste of heaven the narrator imagines when he participates in squeezing sperm on deck, gazing dreamily into his shipmate's eyes unable anymore to distinguish their sperm softened hands. Men of many nations and diverse faiths sail as one crew in an age that insisted on firm divisions between faiths, nations and races. The Narrator is married to the Polynesian Harpooner even before they join the ship, which they do as a couple, in this world a same-sex relationship is as normally abnormal as everything else. Society may be built upon whale oil, but the whaling business turns life on its head.

Perhaps to try to make something of Moby Dick to try to find meaning meaning is the last joke the book has at the reader's expense, turning the reader into Captain Ahab, a poor monomanic in pursuit of a dreadful White Whale. In which case just remember Bartleby's philosophy: I would prefer not to.

o _O

Mind blown....

I did it. It took me almost an entire year, but I did it. In truth, it took me roughly 34 years, starting back when I had an assigned summer reading list before my senior year, for Mr. Milheim's AP English class; a list that included "David Copperfield", "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn", "Slaughterhouse Five", and three other books that I have forgotten but I nevertheless read. "Moby Dick", however, was the only book on the list that I didn't read.

Until now. At age 52. Thirty-four years after passing AP English. Why bother? you may ask. You already passed the class, right? Indeed, you wrote an actual paper on "Moby Dick", without reading any of it, and you still received an A+, so what satisfaction could you actually gain from reading the book?

Not ironically, Herman Melville's classic magnum opus about a sea captain's obsessive quest to kill a white whale has, over the years, become my white whale. My obsessive quest to read the book has been my Ahab-like pursuit to do something grandiose with my life. Come hell or high water, I was determined to finish the book, and, today---November 16, 2024---I completed that task.

Did the skies open up with rays of sunlight shining down upon me, or a chorus of cherubim singing heavenly tunes?

No, actually. I read the last chapter on my lunch break at work.

Is my life better? Has it changed unalterably? Am I a better human being now? I can't answer those questions. I don't know. I feel like the answer to all of those questions is "no", but, dammit, I'm going to revel in my achievement, if only in a small way. (I might treat myself to Taco Bell tonight.)

Anyway, enough about me.

The first thing one needs to know is that "Moby Dick" is actually as readable today as it was nearly two hundred years ago when it was first published, which is to say that it was written in English.

Do I think high school students today should be forced to read it? Probably not. Assigning books like "Moby Dick" to high school kids is almost ensuring that most of those kids will hate reading, an activity that they probably already hate anyway, what with all the fucking video games, Internet porn, and smartphone activity that occupies a majority of their daily lives. What the fuck do they care about Nantucket whalers of the 1850s chasing a huge angry whale in the Pacific?

Sadly, they don't, and that's okay, I guess.

Here's the thing, though: "Moby Dick" is history, and history is fascinating, if done right, and Melville does it brilliantly right, because he took an incident long-forgotten in history texts (The whale-ship Essex that was attacked inexplicably not once but twice by a sperm whale) and turned it into a beautifully-written novel that brings the historical incident to vibrant life. And it is an exciting story, one that tells a tale of friendship, the awesomeness of nature, blind loyalty, madness.

It's also funny. Sure, some of the humor is hidden within a lot of fancy language, but it's there. And when you finally get it, trust me: you'll laugh hysterically.

It's also sad, because it's about the inevitability of death and about looking back upon one's life and feeling the regrets of things not done.

Now, is the book for everyone? Probably not. If you have a pathological fear of giant whales, nautical language, or books in which characters regularly speak with words like "thee" and "thou", this isn't for you.

But, there's a reason that this is a classic in American literature, and I think that things like that are pretty important to preserve in a country that is gradually slipping away into mediocrity and apathy.

Wanna know a secret? Lean over here and I’ll tell you: This is the first time I’ve read Moby Dick. No lie. 43 years old, never read it. That assignment in high school? Skipped it. Faked the report. Thank you, Cliff Notes. By that, I mean the guy named Cliff in my English class. He owed me a favor. A whale of a favor . . . And college? Bachelor’s degree in Humanities – I had to have read Moby Dick, right? Wrong. Just snippets. Excerpts. Then, feeling the guilt of being an educated American who had not read the book, I sat down to finally read it. This was, oh, about twenty years ago or so, I don’t rightly remember.
 
I started. But I didn’t finish. Why not? Because the book had a reputation, a monstrous reputation. It was big, boring, and scary, at least that’s what I was told. While I was reading comic books, fantasies, and role-playing game rulebooks in any spare time I had, my friends were reading Moby Dick. Or they had read it already and they were brooding on it. For years. I saw what that book had done to them. It didn't look very pretty from the outside.
 
But I have an addictive personality. Sometimes, I just can’t stop myself from reading. My curiosity – well, it gets me into a lot of trouble. And so it was that I was led, nay, possessed by some evil entity beyond myself (or maybe it was just embarrassment) to finally crack the spine and eat the marrow of, er, I mean, to read, yes, read what is considered by many to be Melville’s masterpiece.
 
Even then, I kept it a secret. I’m a multiple-book-at-a-time-reader (why does admitting that make me feel dirty?), so I’ve conveniently used the cloak of a few other books (even one, ironically, that involved whales) to disguise the fact that I’ve been covertly reading Moby Dick alongside these others. I know. I’m a creep, a literary lurker. Some kind of intellectual pervert. I can hardly help myself.
 
So it’s confession time. Time to repent and face up to reality. And the reality is: I really liked Moby Dick. It’s not nearly the daunting Leviathan that some led me to believe it was. Nor was it as boring as my little dalliances within its excerpts had initially indicated. No, actually, it was good. Really good.

And the book is not as "heavy" as you might think, at least not all the time. Melville’s sense of humor comes through, from time to time, in the book, and is rather endearing. Here, for example, he describes a painting of a whale and a narwhale appearing in the 1807 version of “Goldsmith’s Animated Nature”:
 
I do not wish to seem inelegant, but this unsightly whale
looks much like an amputated sow; and, as for the narwhale,
one glimpse at it is enough to amaze one, that in this nineteenth
century such a hippogriff could be palmed for genuine upon
any intelligent public of schoolboys.
 
There’s a sort of learned snarkiness in the narrator’s voice, though it’s not sharply critical. The kind of thing you’d appreciate around a table drinking tea with close friends, rather than the public humor of a stand-up comedian. This sense of talking with a (very erudite) friend makes the book “warm” in just the right spots, such as the point where Ishmael is getting to know Queequeg a little better than he'd like to. In time the narrator’s accepting attitude help us to accept not only Queequeg, but Ishmael himself, as well. We learn to trust him as our narrator.

Granted, there are moments, like the exhaustive (and exhausting) taxonomy of whales that tried the nerves (the optic nerves, in particular), and, yes, the language is archaic and even a bit esoteric at times. The alliteration can get a little tedious, too, even for a Dr. Seuss fanatic like me, as in this sentence:
 
It was while gliding through these latter waters that one
serene and moonlight night, when all the waves rolled by like
scrolls of silver; and, by their soft, suffusing seethings,
made what seemed a silvery silence, not a solitude; on such a
silent night a silvery jet was seen far in advance of the white
bubbles at the bow. 

But Melville – first off, the guy has chops. He can write a great sentence.

Secondly, he weaves dimestore philosophy throughout almost seamlessly, and I love works with a bit of the philosophical in them. Even in the descriptions of decapitated whale’s heads, the narrator waxes philosophical:
 
Can you catch the expression of the Sperm Whale's there?
It is the same he died with, only some of the longer wrinkles
in the forehead seem now faded away.  I think his broad brow
to be full of a prairie-like placidity, born of a speculative
indifference as to death.  But mark the other head's expression.
See that amazing lower lip, pressed by accident against the vessel's side, so as firmly to embrace the jaw.  Does not this whole head seem
to speak of an enormous practical resolution in facing death?
This Right Whale I take to have been a Stoic; the Sperm Whale,
a Platonian, who might have taken up Spinoza in his latter years.

Another example comes to mind, as the narrator holds a rope tied around his friend, Queequeg, who is rather busy working on a whale carcass in the water, all the time trying to avoid being bitten by the school of sharks that is feeding on the body atop which the poor laborer is walking. I love the implications of this "monkey rope", how we are, as humans in society, tied together and dependent on one another. There’s a simultaneous fear and warmth in the trust implied thereby. That tightrope between fear and warmth seems to be a comfortable spot for Melville. Not an easy trick!

And third, his characters are incredibly detailed, alive, even. Take, for instance, this masterful description of the genesis of Ahab’s hatred toward Moby Dick:

It is not probable that this monomania in him took its instant
rise at the precise time of his bodily dismemberment.
Then, in darting at the monster, knife in hand, he had but
given loose to a sudden, passionate, corporal animosity;
and when he received the stroke that tore him, he probably
but felt the agonizing bodily laceration, but nothing more.
Yet, when by this collision forced to turn towards home, and for
long months of days and weeks, Ahab and anguish lay stretched
together in one hammock, rounding in mid winter that dreary,
howling Patagonian Cape; then it was, that his torn body and gashed
soul bled into one another; and so interfusing, made him mad.
That it was only then, on the homeward voyage, after the encounter,
that the final monomania seized him, seems all but certain
from the fact that, at intervals during the passage, he was
a raving lunatic; and, though unlimbed of a leg, yet such vital
strength yet lurked in his Egyptian chest, and was moreover
intensified by his delirium, that his mates were forced to lace
him fast, even there, as he sailed, raving in his hammock.
In a strait-jacket, he swung to the mad rockings of the gales.
And, when running into more sufferable latitudes, the ship,
with mild stun'sails spread, floated across the tranquil tropics,
and, to all appearances, the old man's delirium seemed left behind
him with the Cape Horn swells, and he came forth from his dark
den into the blessed light and air; even then, when he bore
that firm, collected front, however pale, and issued his calm
orders once again; and his mates thanked God the direful madness
was now gone; even then, Ahab, in his hidden self, raved on.

I find the crazed prophet Gabriel of the ship Jeroboam to be fascinating, as well. In fact, all the certifiably crazy people in the story (Gabriel, Ahab and, later, Pip) are fascinating in their ability to lift the reader beyond the mundane with their mad, eloquent ravings. I’d love to write Gabriel's full story, or a similar one. Maybe someday . . . is there such a thing as “Moby Dick fanfic?"

Now, Melville’s seemingly erratic jump from 3rd to 1st person, back and forth, as well as his diversions into stage directions and drama would be considered the greatest taboo by many of the big-name book publishers today. Inconsistent narration? Crazy! Metafiction? No one will want to read that!
 
But they did. And they do. The popularity of Moby Dick attests to that. But if Melville were to submit his manuscript today, few agents would take it. “Too experimental,” they’d say, “try the small presses”. And some obscure small press, run from a kitchen table in a suburb on a shoestring budget, would eventually take it and publish it right into nothingness. Eventually, as word spread among a cult of readers, one of the larger presses might note that the book was getting some notoriety and ask for sales trends. “This is a whale of a tale,” they’d say as their pupils assumed the shape of dollar signs, “how did we ever miss it?”
 
If it was a whale, it would have bitten their corporate leg off.

Maybe that's what makes this book so good. It's a tough read. It requires some stamina. You'll probably need to grab a dictionary from time to time. Some parts will read incredibly slow and you'll need to re-read them. Others will be over before you know it and you'll need to re-read them. This is not a book for the casual reader any more than the Pequod's quest was a casual fishing trip off the coast. This book is deep water. But like any challenge that requires great effort, the results are worth it. Some might consider this read a quest in and of itself, even memorializing their participation in the quest. I don't blame them. Moby Dick is a sort of readers' rite of passage. Now I can say, with some sense of pride, that I am one of the initiated, forever baptized in the depths along with Ahab, Queequeg, Starbuck, Stubbs, and all the rest. I know these people, or I knew them. I have smelled the blood of whales, the salt of the sea, tasted the iron of the harpoon, stood atop the mast and taken in the rolling immensity of the sea, seen the white whale rushing up from the watery dark toward my boat. I have served my time on the Pequod. And I say, welcome aboard!

I was that precocious brat who first read the whale-esque sized Moby-Dick at the age of nine. Why? I had my reasons, and they were twofold:

(1) I was in the middle of my "I love Jacques Cousteau!" phase, and this book had a picture of a whale on the cover.
n

n
(2) It was on the bookshelf juuuuust above my reach, and so obviously it was good because it was clearly meant to be not for little kids¹, and that made my little but bloated ego very happy.

¹ So, in retrospect, were War and Peace and Le Père Goriot and The Great Gatsby. In retrospect, there may have been an underlying pattern behind my childhood reading choices.

n

From what I remember, I read this book as a sort of encyclopedia, a bunch of short articles about whaling and whale taxonomy and many ways to skin a whale and occasional interruptions from little bits of what (as I now see it) was the plot. It was confusing and yet informative - like life itself is to nine-year-olds.

What do I think about it now, having aged a couple of decades? Well, now I bow my head to the brilliance of it, the unexpectedly beautiful language, the captivating and apt metaphors, the strangely progressive for its time views, the occasional wistfulness interrupted by cheek. The first third of it left me spellbound, flying through the pages, eager for more.

Just look at this bit, this unbelievable prose that almost makes me weep (yes, I'm a dork who can get weepy over literature. I blame it on my literature-teacher mother. So there.)

n  "Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off - then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship."n

Bits like this is what made me stay up at night, pouring over the pages. I could finally see what my nine-year-old past self did not care about (and appropriately so, in the light of literal-mindedness and straightforwardness that children possess) - Melville's constant, persistent comparison of whaling to life itself, using bits and pieces of whaling beliefs and rituals to illuminate the dark nooks and crannies of human souls, to show that deep down inside, regardless of our differences, we all run on the same desires and motives and undercurrents of spirit.

n  "Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing. When you think it fled, it may have but become transfigured into some still subtler form."n

The elusive White Whale is what we are all chasing, in one form or another, different for all of us, different in how we see it and approach it and deal with it. It's what we all pursue - the difference is how. Melville gives us one of the extremes, the views of a single-minded fanatic, of one who puts everything aside, sacrifices everything (and everyone else) for the sake of a dream, of a desire, of a goal; the person who is capable of leading others unified in his focused, narrow, overwhelmingly alluring vision. We can call Ahab a madman. We can also call him a great leader, a visionary of sorts - had he only used the charisma and the drive and the single-minded obsession to reach a goal less absurd, less suicidal less selfish. Had he with this monomaniac single-mindedness led a crusade for something we think is worthwhile, would we still call him a madman, or would we wordlessly admire his never-altering determination? Isn't the true tragedy here in Ahab focusing his will on destruction and blind revenge, leading those he's responsible for to destruction in the name of folly and pride? Is that where the madness lies?

n  "...For there is no folly of the beast of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men."n

Moby-Dick, the elusive and largely symbolic whale - until, that is, the last haunting three chapters where the chased idée fixe becomes terrifyingly real and refuses to humor Ahab's life goal - is a force of nature so beautiful, so majestic and breathtaking, so lovingly described by Melville over pages and pages (even though, in all honesty, he breaks up the fascination by trying, unsuccessfully, to persuade the reader that the amazing whale is just a fish).

Really, the idea of a mere human considering it his right, his goal to stand up to the majestic nature force, armed with a destructive deadly weapon, and bring it to the end after a long chase in the ultimate gesture of triumph - that idea is chilling in its unremarkability. Humans taming and conquering nature, bending it to our will and desires, the world being our oyster - all that stuff. It is not new. It is what helped drive the industrial expansion of the modern society. It is what makes us feel that we are masters of our world, that our planet is ours to do whatever we, humans, please. But Moby-Dick, finally abandoning his run from Ahab and standing up to him with such brutal ease is a reminder of the folly of such thinking and the reminder that there are forces we need to reckon with, no matter how full of ourselves we may get.
------------
Why only three stars, you ask, when clearly I appreciate the greatness of the classic? Because the metaphors and parallels and meandering narration at times would get to be too much, because I quite often found my mind and attention easily wandering away in the last two-thirds of the book, needing a gargantuan effort to refocus. This what took of a star and a half, resulting in 3.5 sea-stars grudgingly but yet willingly given to this classic of American Romanticism.

n  "Buoyed up by that coffin, for almost one whole day and night, I floated on a soft and dirgelike main. The unharming sharks, they glided by as if with padlocks on their mouths; the savage sea-hawks sailed with sheathed beaks. On the second day, a sail drew near, nearer, and picked me up at last. It was the devious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing children, only found another orphan."n

OH MY HOLY MOTHER FUCK. This novel, this FUCKING novel. Phenomenal. Astounding. Groundbreaking. One of the greatest novels ever written. Yeah there's like 200 pages of whale anatomy and the history of whales in literature and whales in art and whale classification and I LOVED EVERY SINGLE WORD OF IT. So it's five-stars. Yes, five-stars. A five-star rating here is as rare as seeing the White Whale itself! READ THIS RIGHT FUCKING NOW. NOW. NOW. NOW.

میخوام توی این ریویوو خیلی صادق باشم و بگم آقاجون من "موبی دیک"، این شاهکار آمریکایی که همه منتقدان قرن بیستم رو شیفته خودش کرده و بیشتر از سیصد و هجده هزار ریوبوو چهار و پنج ستاره توی گودریدز داره رو دوست نداشتم .
"موبی دیک" یکی از اون کتاب‌هایی بود که فکر می‌کردم الکی گنده شده و وقتی اسمش رو می‌شنیدم، می‌گفتم: "خب، یک داستان کلاسیک درباره شکار نهنگ... همچبن چیزی مگه چقدر می‌تونه پیچیده باشه؟" ولی وقتی شروع به خوندنش کردم، فهمیدم این کتاب اصلاً قرار نیست با من روراست، ساده و دوستانه رفتار کنه.
.....
داستان با اون جمله معروف "مرا اسماعیل صدا کن" شروع می‌شه؛ و خیلی خونسرد و بی‌مقدمه تو رو درگیر ماجرایی میکنه که دیگه نمیتونی ازش بیرون بیای.
انگار توی سال ۱۸۵۱ هستی، یک پر سفید از آسمون به پایین شناوره و توی یک ایستگاه اتوبوس در ساوانا، جورجیا فرود میاد. بعد مردی که اسمش اسماعیل هستش اون رو برمی‌داره، لای کتاب مزامیر میگذاره؛ و بعد داستان زندگیش رو برای تو و غریبه هایی که کنارش روی نیمکت ایستگاه دلیجان نشسته ان، تعریف می کنه میگه: «خب، بذار برات بگم چی شد...»
راستش موقع  شروع خوندن موبی دیک فکر کردم وارد یک ماجرای هیجان‌انگیز شدم، ولی در عوض، خودم رو وسط یک کلاس درس خسته کننده فلسفه و زیست‌شناسی موجودات دریایی پیدا کردم.
ملویل با دقتی وسواس‌گونه، تک‌تک جزئیات کشتی‌رانی، شکار نهنگ ، گره زدن طناب ها، و حتی آناتومی وال‌ها رو شرح می‌ده. باور کنید گاهی حس می‌کردم در حال خوندن یک کتاب مرجع دانشگاهی هستم نه یک رمان. باورتون نمیشه فصل‌هایی وجود داره که فقط درباره ساختار دندون‌های نهنگ نوشته شده. بله، دندون‌ها!
و امان از زبان سخت کتاب؛ آه و افسوس و فغان! چون هم زبان انگليسی کتاب قدیمی و دشوار بود و هم ترجمه آقای صالح حسینی خیلی عجیب و پیچیده؛ و حتی گاهی آنقدر فهم متن ترجمه شده برام سخت می‌شد که به نسخه انگليسي پناه می‌بردم و درمواردی هم کلا بیخیال فهم اون قسمت می‌شدم و به خودم میگفتم: بیا از بقیه داستان لذت ببریم عزیزم!
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حالا برسیم به قهرمان اعصاب خورد کن داستان، کاپیتان اخاب...
ول‌نکن‌ترین آدم کل کائنات؛ مردی که احتمالاً یکی از کله‌شق‌ترین و وسواسی‌ترین شخصیت‌هاییه که تا به حال خوندم. اون کل زندگیش رو روی این ایده مسخره گذاشته بود که باید یک نهنگ سفید غول‌پیکر رو بکشه، فقط به این دلیل که زمانی موقع شکار همون نهنگ، پاش قطع شده.
باور کنید خیلی وقت‌ها دلم می‌خواست برم یقه آخاب رو بگیرم تکونش بدم و بگم: «مرد! زندگی کوتاه‌تر از این حرفاست. مووآن کن، برو یک کار دیگه پیدا کن!» ولی خب، از طرفی می‌دونستم که اگر اخاب دست از این تعقیب، مبارزه و دیوونگی برداره، دیگه اخاب نیست.
و موبی دیک؟ نهنگ لعنتی که هرچقدر بیشتر درباره‌اش می‌خوندم، کمتر درکش می‌کردم. گاهی فکر می‌کردم اصلاً موبی دیک بعنوان نهنگ عنبر، یک موجود واقعی دریایی نیست، بلکه نمادیه از تمام اون چیزهای غیرقابل‌دستیابی که در زندگی دنبالشون می‌ریم. چیزهایی که هر چقدر هم تلاش کنیم، باز دستمون بهشون نمی‌رسه ولی همچنان از دنبال کردن‌شون دست برنمی‌داریم. و خب! همه ما انگار توی زندگی‌مون حداقل یک موبی‌دیک داریم.
حالا اگه فکر کردید این‌ همه ماجراست، باید عرض کنم که نه! صحنه‌های دریانوردی، توفان‌ها و شکارهای وحشیانه، همگی توی بطن داستان واقعاً هیجان‌انگیز بودن و باعث می‌شدن گهگاهی فکر کنم: آهان! این همون ماجراجوییه که دنبالش بودم.
ولی خب، درست وقتی داستان اوج می‌گرفت، دوباره یک فصل طولانی درباره انواع مختلف چربی‌های نهنگ و شکل جمجمه انواع مختف وال ظاهر می‌شد و کل هیجانم رو می‌کشت.
اما یک چیزی هم بود که این کتاب رو برای من خاص‌ کرد، و اون فضای زنده و جادویی‌اش بود. تصور اینکه وسط اقیانوس هستی، روی عرشه کشتی، همراه با ملوان‌هایی که هر کدومشون داستانی برای گفتن دارن، توفان‌های وحشی، دریاهای بی‌پایان، و هیجان شکار... همه‌چیز آن‌قدر واقعی بود که بوی نمک دریا رو حس می‌کردم.
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خلاصه که، اگه حوصله توضیحات طولانی، نمادهای فلسفی پیچیده و شخصیت‌هایی سرسخت و وسواسی رو دارید، "موبی دیک" قطعاً کتاب بزرگیه که ارزش خوندن داره. اما اگر دنبال یک داستان کلاسیک ماجراجویی سرراست هستید بهتره به جای این کتاب، یک ماجرای دریایی کوتاه‌تر مثل "پیرمرد و دریا" رو بخونید.
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با همه غرغرهام، نمی‌تونم انکار کنم که این کتاب برام مثل یک موج عظیم بود که گاهی خیلی زیاد کلافه‌ام می‌کرد، ولی در نهایت اثری عمیق و فراموش‌نشدنی در دلم جا گذاشت. شاید همین تناقض‌هاست که باعث می‌شه هنوز به کاپیتان اخاب، کوییکوک، فتح الله، استاپ، استارباک، و اون نهنگ سفید لعنتی فکر کنم.
اما هنوزم میگم شما ملوان ها عالی بودید، من دوستتون داشتم، اما جوری که ملویل داستان‌تون رو تعریف کرد رو دوست نداشتم.
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درآخر از دانیال و مسعود برای شروع همخوانی بی‌پایان این کتاب تشکر میکنم، امیدوارم بالاخره اونهام یکروز تمومش کنن :)
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حرفای بیشتر درباره کتاب و فایل انگلیسی، و ترجمه شهدادی و ریوبوو صوتی توی چنلم هست.

Moby Dick by Herman Melville
https://youtu.be/EGhRGF22E1w

This book is:

25% nature guide
25% footnotes
25% adventure story
25% waffle

It took me a year to get through it. Literally a year.

Ugh. I'm off for a lie down. I feel like I've been beaten over the head with a dictionary.

A Moby Dictionary.

My expectations were so low that I actually didn't mind Moby-Dick at all. The middle is the slowest part with the descriptions of ship life and whaling hurting my head quite a bit, but I enjoyed the characters and (most of the time) being inside Ishmael's mind. It's a densely-written novel so be prepared.

Is there a polite version of saying 'I hope you're roasting in hell since you died Herman Melville!'? If there's not, there should be...Screw you, Melville.

Once on Imdb (books section), I saw some yahoo saying to a naysayer of Moby Dick "It's your loss". The naysayer replied sarcastically. "My loss? On no. What will my boss and my wife and friends think of me when I tell them I gave Moby Dick 1 star?". That's my feeling as well.

This book is only for the pedants, the elite of snootiness, many of whom will be real behemoths intellectually. I persevered with this book just to know how awful a classic can be. I can assure you folks, they don't make them like this anymore.

I don't think I got it. Okay, I admit that. The problem with Moby Dick is not that it's boring. But it's that 99% of people will find it tedious enough not to read it entirely. It's hypnotic in its lack of actual plot. It wouldn't get published today.

Has there been a movie adaptation of Moby Dick? The closest to it is Jaws. That was a masterpiece. Not this book. This book is an editor's nightmare. It is the type of book, that when part of a curriculum of a class will prevent the student from loving books. Unforgivable.

Everyone eventually comes across the White Whale in one form or another. The trick is to not keep its attention for too long.

*****

Avast! Dost thee have a five spot thou can see thyself parting ways with?

No?

Jibberjab up the wigwam! Cuisinart the poopdeck!

What's that ye say? Thou canst not make heads nor tails of what I sayeth?

Here then. Let me take this pipe outta my mouth and stop menacing you with this harpoon. Better? Good.

Huh? No, no! Ho-ho! I wasn't asking for money! I was asking if you've seen the White Whale! Ha-ha!

No?

Okay, okay…well then, do you know who famously wrote, "The world seems logical to us because we have made it logical"?

Here's a hint: his bushy visage and even bushier philosophies have launched a thousand heavy metal bands.

Take your time. I'll just hone the point of this harpoon…

No again? No biggie, I'm happy to report that it is none other than one Friedrich Nietzsche.

But we know what became of that crusty old phrenologist, don't we? He went nuts. Why? Because he grew up in a house full of women, of course. But guess what? Turns out that hanging out with a bunch of guys doesn't work out too well, either.

Especially when they're so monomaniacal about Dick.

Moby-Dick.

You know? The White Whale?

Of course that's what I meant. What else did you --- ? You what?

Put away all that sophomoric homoerotic stuff, won't you? Let us turn to the thrust of the plot. The long and hard plot, whose veiny, undulating, ruminative tributaries all lead back to the all-consuming desire for globulous sperm…aceti.

I know what you're thinking, "Who the hell does this guy think he is, reviewing a canonical work like Moby-Dick? What aplomb!"

Aplomb? Really?

Who says aplomb any more? Just for that, I'm gonna tell you what happens -- EVERYBODY DIES AT THE END!

Jerk.

Yeah, yeah. You're right. I should put the harpoon back down. Sorry. I just get worked up sometimes.

Now. This is the fourth time I've read this weighty tome, and I ain't gonna lie -- I may not be able to bend spoons with my mind, but I'm not as scared of clowns as I used to be.

For reals.

You see, Melville gets me. I'm a little outta my depth arguing epistemology, but a guy who challenges the conceit that any sort of absolute truth can be apprehended already has my sympathies. Then when he opens a book of exhaustive -- and exhausting -- prose, itself like so much chanting by a humble pilgrim before his incomprehensible and terrible god, with a casual, "Call me Ishmael." Well. One thinks that he would be just as comfortable with the moniker The Dude.

What's in a name, man? It's all relative.

Fucking hippie, right?

Right!

And guess what? The hippie's the only one to make it out alive! (So I lied, everybody doesn't die.) There's a mad man at the helm of this rapacious project we call Life and you've got to be a bit of a hippie yourself if you plan on enduring it. Yet, there's nothing you can do about your participation in said project -- where would you go? Jump in the ocean?

HERE BE SHARKS.

And what's worse, what else would a guy like our mad man do than captain a doomsday machine? It's impossible for the mad man to do anything else. What? Ahab as gourmand?

"Damn thy eyes for a Cossack but if this not be the most succulent baked halibut in ten counties!"

Maybe it's a sort of inertia: certain professions attract certain types. Just look at Wall Street. Or the latest amateur video of a cop beating some innocent senseless. Or those child-molesting priest assholes.

Or clowns.

We're doomed!

Still, if you can channel your inner hippie, you might just be okay. "Oh man! admire and model thyself after the whale! Do thou, too, live in this world without being part of it." Not bad advice. The whale's lack of humanly reason isn't just dumb animalism, but is really a sort of supra-reason. The whale, like our hippie, is a wanderer that is never going to complete a journey. Welcome incompleteness! It'll ensure that you survive those brushes with the White Whale. Surrender to the idea of "Doubts of all things earthly, and intuitions of some things heavenly; this combination makes neither believer nor infidel."

To mistake that mossy crust of reason gathered on the back of Schopenhaurean WILL as the conclusion of the Self instead of mere technique available to the same is to invite what D.H. Lawrence calls the "mystic dream-horror" of Moby-Dick.

Come again? You can't wait for Hollywood to suck the last bit of marrow from America's bones with something directed by Guy Ritchie and starring Bruce Willis as Ahab? Keanu Reeves as Ishmael, George Lopez as Queequeg, and Vin Diesel as Starbuck? With the whale rendered in vainglorious CGI?

Me? Oh, nothing. Just setting the pipe so, hefting my harpoon, and ---

n  THAR SHE BLOWS!n