Moby Dick is a novel by Herman Melville based on his experiences on whaling ships.
It tells of sailors' voyages searching for an albino sperm whale that had taken the leg of the captain of the whaling boat, Ahab.
Whaling is described as particularly dangerous, to the point that changing your will is an activity like any other:
And now, I thought, unconsciously rolling up my sleeves, let's go for a calm and serene plunge into death and desolation: every man for himself and God for all. "
I enjoyed this novel because I had observed this hunt from an internal point of view; the reader follows the events from the gaze of Ismael, a sailor who wishes to go whaling on a whaling boat in Nantucket, a village known for this activity.
I took less pleasure in reading the end of the book, which I only understood after rereading it.
Will they succeed in catching this chimera?

MELVILLIAN APOCRYPHA:

A Mega-Dick Proposal

Dear Mr Melville

Thank you for your submission of "A Modest Treatise on Whaling".

I regret to advise that it does not fit within our current publishing guidelines.

I do however see potential to turn your treatise into a novel of the maximalist genre. I am confident that one day it might come to be regarded as the MOTHER of all maximalist novels.

If you retain all of the treatise and just intersperse some kind of a plot, a romance of adventure, for example, it could even become a novel of encyclopaedic scope and proportions.

Rather than call it "A Modest Treatise on Whaling", I humbly suggest that you entitle it something we can market like "Mega-Dick (or Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Whaling (But Were Afraid to Ask)".

I wish you luck with your venture.

Sincerely,
Richard Bentley
Publisher and Editor-in-Chief,
S. & R. Bentley,
London, England


NOTES ON STRUCTURE [POTENTIAL SPOILERS]:

"The Old Man and the Sea" Writ Large

Here is a selective summary of the narrative structure:

n  Pages xiii to xiv:n Etymology of the whale

n  Pages xv to xxxi:n Extracts from mentions of whales in previous literature

n  Page 1:n Ishmael leaves home in Manhattan to "sail about a little and see the watery part of the world" to cure the grimness of his almost suicidal depression.

n  Page 9:n Ishmael catches a packet to New Bedford

n  Page 16:n Ishmael seeks board and lodging in the Spouter-Inn, which has no vacancies.

n  Page 21:n Ishmael first encounters the mysterious Bulkington, a "full six feet in height, with noble shoulders, and a chest like a coffer-dam. I have seldom seen such brawn in man. His face was deeply brown and burnt, making his white teeth dazzling by the contrast; while in the deep shadows of his eyes floated some reminiscences that did not seem to give him much joy. His voice announced at once that he was a Southerner, and from his fine stature, I thought he must be one of those tall mountaineers from the Alleganian Ridge in Virginia."

n  Page 35:n (Instead,) Ishmael must share a bed with the "savage, heathen" harpooneer, Queequeg.

n  Page 75:n "Thus, then, in our hearts' honeymoon, lay I and Queequeg - a cosy, loving pair."

n  Page 91:n Ishmael arrives in Nantucket.

n  Page 146:n The Pequod departs on its voyage.

n  Page 152:n Ishmael looks "with sympathetic awe and fearfulness upon" Bulkington. "Take heart, take heart, O Bulkington! Bear thee grimly, demigod!"

n  Page 154:n "Queequeg and I are now fairly embarked in this business of whaling."

n  Pages 162 to 174:n Profiles of Starbuck, Stubb, Flask, Tashtego, and Daggoo

n  Page 176:n Captain Ahab finally emerges from his cabin to stand on the quarter-deck.

n  Pages 190 to 207:n A disquisition on cetology

n  Pages 272 to 283:n on the whiteness of the whale

n  Pages 379 to 395:n Pictures of whales and whale artworks

n  Pages 409 to 415:n Stubb kills a whale other than Moby Dick

n  Pages 431 to 434:n Eating whale meat

n  Pages 435 to 437:n Shark attack

n  Pages 467 to 474:n Stubb and Flask kill a Right Whale

n  Pages 523 to 530:n The mythology of whaling

n  Pages 549 to 565:n Attack on a school of Sperm Whales

n  Pages 571 to 580:n The law of whaling

n  Pages 590 to 593:n All you ever needed to know about ambergris

n  Pages 600 to 604:n On squeezing sperm

n  Pages 650 to 665:n The measure of a whale

n  Pages 666 to 683:n Pulling Ahab's leg

n  Pages 698 to 702:n Forging the harpoon

n  Page 781:n There she blows! It's Moby-Dick! (95% of the way into the book!)

n  Page 792:n The sun goes down!

n  Page 798:n Moby-Dick reappears

n  Pages 810 to 820:n They harpoon and struggle with Moby-Dick (and lots of sharks)

n  Page 822:n The ship is wrecked!

n  Page 825:n "And I only am escaped alone to tell thee." "The drama's done...The unharming sharks, they glided by as if with padlocks on their mouths."

I'd estimate that 10% to 20% of the novel consists of any sort of narrative concerned with the pursuit of Moby-Dick. The bulk of the rest is quasi-encyclopaedic entries on aspects of whaling.


NOTES ON THEMES:

"Leap Up, and Lick the Sky!"

I'd like to venture a hypothesis that "Moby-Dick" concerns two tormented men, and that the voyage of the Pequod is their way of attempting to deal with their own torment. It's a quest novel, which seeks the resolution of an internal conflict. In effect, give me resolution or give me death.

The grim and depressive Ishmael doesn't mention his real family, but at the end, having lost the ship and all its crew, he understandably regards himself as an orphan. Ahab doesn't seem to have ever known his mother.

Ishmael leaves his home in Manhattan to go to sea, while Captain Ahab needs to go to sea to kill the White Whale which he blames for his disfigurement and misfortune. Both view the ocean as the arena within which they will resolve their conflicts.

Good and evil reside uneasily in the same body and soul. Ahab's "torn body and gashed soul bled into one another; and so, interfusing, made him mad.":

"Ever since that almost fatal encounter, Ahab had cherished a wild vindictiveness against the whale, all the more fell for that in his frantic morbidness he at last came to identify with him, not only all his bodily woes, but all his intellectual and spiritual exasperations. The White Whale swam before him as the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some deep men feel eating in them, till they are left living with half a heart and half a lung...

"Ahab did not fall down and worship it [like a devil], but deliriously transferring its idea to the abhorred White Whale, he pitted himself, all mutilated, against it...all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby-Dick. He piled upon the [White Whale] the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it."

Towards the end, Ahab cries out in the company of Starbuck (though he seems to be addressing Christ [at least, in the guise of Moby-Dick]). The language is almost ecclesiastical:

"Light though thou be, thou leapest out of darkness; but I am darkness leaping out of light, leaping out of thee! The javelins cease; open eyes; see, or not? There burn the flames! Oh thou magnanimous! now I do glory in my genealogy. But thou art but my fiery father; my sweet mother, I know not. Oh cruel! what hast thou done with her? There lies my puzzle, but thine is greater. Thou knowest not how came ye, hence callest thyself unbegotten; certainly knowest not thy beginning, hence callest thyself unbegun. I know that of me, which thou knowest not of thyself, oh, thou omnipotent...Leap! Leap up, and lick the sky! I leap with thee; I burn with thee; would fain be welded with thee; defyingly I worship thee!"

Ahab is equally concerned with his origin and his fate, his creation and his destiny.

He also seems to be torn by a conflict between the defiance that is free will, and the religious obligation to conform, obey and worship.

"The Chick's That's in Him Pecks the Shell"

Stubb makes a comment about Ahab that could equally be applied to Ishmael:

"The chick that's in him pecks the shell. T'will soon be out."

This is an internal conflict that needs to come out, in order to be resolved.

Ishmael rather ingenuously admits that "It is the easiest thing in the world for a man to look as if he had a great secret in him...I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas and land on barbarous coasts...[I have] the problem of the universe revolving in me."

Are Ishmael's problems really common to us all?

He "takes the mystic ocean at his feet for the visible image of that deep, blue, bottomless soul, pervading mankind and nature," but I suspect his problem is more intimate and personal than that. It's not beyond the realm of possibility that he is struggling with his homosexual inclinations. Melville plays up the homoerotic aspect of his relationship with Queequeg at the beginning of the book, but I wonder whether his feelings are more directed at Captain Ahab (with whose quest he identifies)(if not the mysterious, demigodlike Bulkington, who is frustratingly dropped from the narrative, for all his apparent appeal):

"A wild, mystical, sympathetical feeling was in me; Ahab's quenchless feud seemed mine."

"No More My Splintered Heart"

On the other hand, the affinity might be purely metaphysical or spiritual, which might better explain his identification with Queequeg:

"There, then, he sat, holding up that imbecile candle in the heart of that almighty forlornness. There, then, he sat, the sign and symbol of a man without faith, hopelessly holding up hope in the midst of despair...I began to be sensible of strange feelings. I felt a melting in me. No more my splintered heart and maddened hand were turned against the wolfish world."

The question remains: what was the cause of the splintered heart: was it sexuality or spirituality? Is the body perpetually in conflict with the Christian soul?

Whatever the answer, Melville might definitely have created the ultimate "romance of adventure", the definitive "wicked book" (if not [also] the MOTHER of all maximalist novels).

E. L. Doctorow on Moby-Dick and the "Writing Fool" who Authored It

"Moby-Dick is a big kitchen-sink sort of book into which the exuberant author, a writing fool, throws everything he knows, happily changing voice, philosophizing, violating the consistent narrative, dropping in every arcane bit of information he can think of, reworking his research, indulging in parody, unleashing his pure powers of description—so that the real Moby Dick is the voracious maw of the book swallowing the English language."

https://www.loa.org/news-and-views/64...

Three cheers for linguistic exuberance!

CETACEOUS VERSE:

Mount That Whale
[In the words of Herman Melville]

With a frigate's anchors
For my bridle-bitts
And fasces of
Harpoons for spurs,
Would I could mount
That whale and leap
The topmost skies,
To see whether
The fabled heavens
With all their
Countless tents
Lie encamped beyond
My mortal sight!

Oh Head!
[In the words of Herman Melville]

Oh head!
Thou hast
Seen enough
To split
The planets
And make
An infidel
Of Abraham,
And not one
Syllable
Is thine!

No Stop for Water
[In the words of Herman Melville]

For a long time, now,
The circus-running sun
Has raced within his fiery ring,
And needs no sustenance,
But what's in himself.

Java Head
[In the words of Herman Melville]

Though the green
Palmy cliffs
Of the land
Soon loomed
On the
Starboard bow,
And with
Delighted nostrils
The fresh cinnamon
Was sniffed
In the air,
Not a single
Jet was descried.

The Face of the Fire
[In the words of Herman Melville]

Look not too long in the face of the fire, O man!
Tomorrow, in the natural sun,
The skies will be bright;
Those who glared like devils in the forking flames,
The morn will show in far other,
At least gentler, relief;
The glorious, golden, glad sun,
The only true lamp - all others but liars!

Tormented Flaming Life
[In the words of Herman Melville]

I have sat before the dense coal fire
And watched it all aglow,
Full of its tormented flaming life;
And I have seen it wane at last,
Down down to dumbest dust.

Casablanca
[Apologies to Felicia Hemans]

Ahab stood on the quarter-deck,
Whalemen Ishmael and Queequeg, too,
Awaiting signs of Moby-Dick
On the ocean tranquil blue.

The Last Great American Whale
[Owed to Jim Capaldi]

Whale meat again,
Don't know where,
Don't know when.

SOUNDTRACK:


Jim Capaldi Tribute (feat. Jon Lord) - "Whale Meat Again" (feat. "While My Guitar Gently Weeps")

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qm09J...

Rockettothesky (Jenny Hval) - Grizzly Man

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Dgye...

Rockettothesky (Jenny Hval) - Grizzly Man (Live)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_6kx...

Lou Reed - "Last Great American Whale"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTlsS...

Died Pretty - "Ambergris"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXjoM...

Guided By Voices - "Ambergris"

Insert shitty soundtrack selection here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jX3NO...

Stephen Colbert’s two-minute Moby-Dick lesson is a real roller-coaster ride

https://www.loa.org/news-and-views/11...



April 30, 2017

Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I'd strike the sun if it insulted me.
Moby-Dick; or, The Whale ~~  Herman Melville


4.5/5
Selected by Srđan for February 2022 Big Book Read

Herman Melville's  Moby-Dick; or, The Whale is one of those books I have an odd history with. I started it 15 years ago. The introduction to my edition was written by  Elizabeth Hardwick. In the first paragraph of her introduction, Hardwick gave away the entire plot of the novel. She assumed everyone knew what happens in n   Moby-Dick; or, The Whalen. I was quite upset by this, put the novel aside, and vowed to return to it in the future. Now, I skip the introductions in novels, and return to them when done reading the book.

I've made several half-hearted attempts to read n   Moby-Dick; or, The Whalen since then, but the ghost of  Elizabeth Hardwick still haunted me ...

15 years later ~~ a close friend selects n   Moby-Dick; or, The Whalen as my Big Book read for February of 2022. I’m excited. Then, thoughts of the evil  Elizabeth Hardwick slowly creep into my mind. For a bit, I thought my reading Moby Dick was cursed. Maybe I should wait another 15 years? No ~~  Elizabeth Hardwick be damned; I was not going to allow her to keep me from reading n   Moby-Dick; or, The Whalen once more.

I’m so glad I pushed on ~~ n   Moby-Dick; or, The Whalen is a brilliant book, and was not at all what I expected.



n   Moby-Dick; or, The Whalen is not an easy book to review. It is a difficult read at times. The narrative portions are few and far between. If you are looking for a straightforward narrative read, this book is not for you. I also believe it is crucial to read n   Moby-Dick; or, The Whalen as both a religious and philosophical text. The portions describing whales and whaling struck me as a theology of the divine white whale rather than mere biology and history. Yes, you can read of whale genitals without being overwhelmed by the underlying divinity of the subject ~~ but I felt while reading that Melville is probing eternity and divinity at a great depth. This was a very spiritual read.

We begin with perhaps the most famous line in all of English literature: n  Call me Ishmaeln …

It is Ishmael that leads us through the short narrative ~~ this is Ishmael's story ~~ not Ahab’s, as I had been lead to believe. The majority of chapters take us on a journey through whales, whaling, sailing, philosophy and theology. Melville's ability to guide his readers through both realistic and philosophical subjects is unparalleled to me as a reader. I marveled at the end of chapters when I realized how deep and thought provoking Melville's writing was.



n   Moby-Dick; or, The Whalen is an epic piece of literature on a par with n   The Iliadn, n   King Learn and n   The Book of Jobn. It is densely rich in language and structure, in character and story. In other words, n   Moby-Dick; or, The Whalen has it all.

Its account of a man vs. nature is a story that had never been told before with such grandeur. Yet, it equals other efforts by brilliant writers throughout history to portray humans confronting the unanswerable questions of existence.

Like Job grappling with the question of why bad things happen to good people ~~ why is there suffering is in the world.

Like Lear raging against the deterioration of the body, the betrayal of others and, even more, his own betrayals of himself.

Achilles ~~ the unconquerable, fights and dies because of a fatal flaw. Oedipus unknowingly kills his father and has sex with his mother because of the blindness that every human being is born with, the inability to know everything, to understand the consequences of actions.

As I said, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale is an epic piece of literature.



n  He pressed his forehead against mine, clasped me round the waist, and said that henceforth we were married.n

Before concluding, I must address the underlying queer narrative in n   Moby-Dick; or, The Whalen.

n   Moby-Dick; or, The Whalen is filled with sexual imagery ~~ sailors massaging each other’s hands in a tub of sperm oil comes to mind. Melville's words are loaded with sensuality. This is most noticeable in the relationship between Ishmael and Queequeg. The evolution of their relationship throughout the book associates homosexuality with negative consequences. As the book progresses their interactions become increasingly more erotic. This negativity culminates with the death of Queequeg. Sadly, intimate relationships between men are negatively depicted by Melville. Perhaps this is done as a response to Melville's unrequited love for Nathaniel Hawthorne. Melville once wrote to Hawthorne. n  You have sunk your northern roots down into my southern soul.n



n   Moby-Dick; or, The Whalen is a book with so many layers; I'm certain I did not penetrated all of them ~~ I doubt anyone could with just one reading. It is a book that has found it way into my soul, where it will remain for a very long time. It belongs to that category of books that you are never finished with even when you finish it. In the end, n   Moby-Dick; or, The Whalen pierced my soul, and its harpoon stuck.

Love it or hate it, whenever someone asks if Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick is worth reading I always enthusiastically say yes you should, yes it's worth it, yes, yes like some weirdass library Molly Bloom. An epic seafaring quest—one that is a prime example of how a major theme in literature is Don’t Get on Boats (my rant on that here)—to fight the emptiness and meaninglessness of the world symbolized by the white whale. Even if we the reader may be like Cpt. Ahab trying to find our own sense of purpose in our pursuit of the novel, it is a voyage of beautiful prose worth setting out on. C’mon, who doesn’t want to hang out and possibly die horrifically with this complete fucker:
n  n
Sure, I see how you can find the middle sections on whaling facts to be dry, but the ending of this slaps. It’s as hard hitting as a whale ramming a boat like, say, the n  Essexn which inspired this novel (Philbrick’s In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex is an excellent read on the tragedy). If you don’t end up liking it, you aren’t alone as the reviews upon its release in 1851 are rather harsh (you can read some excerpts here) and at the time of Melville’s death it had sold only a third of what his first novel, Typee, had done, but it has since become a heralded classic with many other “classic” authors spouting praise (William Faulkner wrote ‘I wish I had written [Moby-Dick]’) and had a rise in popularity following WWI with expatriates living in 1920’s Paris describing it as ‘a sort of cunning test by which the genuineness of another man’s response to literature could be proved.’ But also it is because both Moby-Dick the novel and the symbolism of Moby Dick the whale (the title is hyphenated, the whale is not and the reason might be as much a hunt as for the whale himself), have become so analyzed and debated over and over again on the many themes such as the power of nature and the frailty of humans, the dangers of monomania and self-assuredness (some critics cite Ahab as a criticism of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s ideas of self-reliance or what Melville wrote as his ‘transcendentalisms, myths & oracular gibberish), and more. Perhaps it is partly the way Moby-Dick is interpreted as a map through the soul of the early US and its issues around race, religion and false promises, all told in a powerful prose that flows like the waves on the sea. This book has lasted for a reason and there’s likely nothing new to say about it but I’m gonna ramble at ye.

‘My favorite book is Moby-Dick. No frou-frou symbolism. Just a story of a man who hates an animal. And that's enough.’
-Ron Swanson, Parks and Recreation

Greil Marcus has said that Moby Dick has lasted as ‘the sea we swim in.’ It has been a staple of pop culture for a long time, and likely still long to come. In music Moby Dick gave us that epic John Bonham drum solo, that Umphrey’s McGee jam, or even Melville’s great-great-great-musician nephew, Moby, who acted a dick towards Natalie Portman. Bob Dylan went on about the book in his Nobel Lecture and references it in many of his songs.The character’s became code names for The Baader-Meinhof Gang in prison (ironically, Moby Dick was their code for the State which, like in the book, outlived them all) and the doom-fated character Starbuck’s namesake has become a major coffee chain and a character in Battlestar Galactica. It has been many films, and film references, such as the other whaling ship, Rosebud, being a key name in Orson Welle’s n  Citizen Kanen (he would attempt, but never finish a 1971 film adaptation). The coffin surfacing in the flood in O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a direct reference, and recently there was a whole scene as a blatant allusion to the book in the second Avatar film. It was also a major source for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), with Khan going to his death quoting the book: ‘From Hell’s heart, I stab at thee… for hate’s sake, I spit my last breath at thee…’
n  n
Gregory Peck as Ahab in John Huston’s 1956 Moby Dick film, with a screenplay written by Ray Bradbury

While pop culture is full of references to Moby-Dick, the novel itself is overflowing with allusions to other great works of literature. Ahab himself is often argued to be a composite reference to Oedipus, Narcissus, Prometheus and his biblical namesake. Ahab—who is temporarily afflicted—comes across the head of a sperm whale hanging from the ship (‘it seemed the Sphynx’s in the desert’) and demand of it ‘tell us the secret thing that is in thee,’ a pretty on-the-nose reference to Oedipus (also he frequently uses his spear as a crutch and to murder whales, not unlike Oedipus murdering his own father with his walking stick). Also the whole prophecy thing that occurs to Oedipus and Ahab, because the two chariots that will lead to his death bit is pretty excellent when it comes about. The tale of Narcissus is directly referenced in the first chapter and foreshadows Ahab’s own fate, failing to see that the evil he sees in the whale is a ‘wildly projected’ image of himself (well and the whole drowning aspect). The Prometheus bits are my favorite though, with Ahab often associated with fire such as his flaming spear and, with respect to him symbolizing the white whale as a god of sorts, stealing from the whales the oil for fire (for which he was punished). King Ahab was punished for worshiping false gods (whales as gods again).

But I want to get back to Prometheus for a moment because I have my own Prometheus confession. Silence please. Well…when I was at the university, having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would go the the Barnes and Noble and see the literary part of the world. I was interested in Moby-Dick, but like, whew, should I spend my money on a book? Just then there was a big flash of lightning, a store shaking crash, and we were plunged into darkness as the power went out. People screamed, I ran outside to see the storm, to see the powerline that had been struck, “only to realize” I had “accidentally” (emphasizing the air-quotes while scanning the room for who might be a cop) left with Moby-Dick still in hand under the cover of dark. I’M NOT PROUD OF IT, OKAY (im gonna be real with you—not that bad, honestly) but it had pictures and I did read it all rather quickly sitting under a bridge off campus by the river (would recommend reading this in your early 20s when you A. are old enough to get a lot of it, B. have disposable time to read in big chunks and C. an attention span). Anyways, like Prometheus, I would later find myself chained to a rock AKA the customer service desk of a different Barnes and Noble for several years to be pecked at daily by customers and management alike. They didn’t have to bother with my liver, my good friend alcohol was ravishing that enough on its own. SO I GOT MINE, everyone can back off now.

But this book is just teeming with symbolism and themes. When Bob Dylan delivered his Nobel Lecture, he spoke on how this was one of three books that really shaped him ‘and the themes from those books worked their way into many of my songs either knowingly or unintentionally.’ One of the themes I frequently discussed with a coworker when she read this last year was the representation of race. She pointed out there are some problematic issues but how it’s interesting to remember this book was pretty progressive at its time. We see racism as a major sin, such as the ship, The Pequod, taking it’s name from an indigenous tribe in Massachusetts that perished under the arrival of Europeans and thus makes the Pequod a symbol of death and doom (*jazz hands* fooooooreshadowinggggg!). Melville has often referred to the novel as an allegory, and one prevailing interpretation with critics is that it functions as an allegory for te racial relations around slavery that would lead to the Civil War. Melville lets us know he’s not down with slavery, such as when Pip realizes the price of a dead whale is significantly more than his own price as a living slave and promptly has a mental breakdown. It should be noted that Ishmael’s close friendship with Queequeg (it could be argued it pushes towards the erotic) is highly subversive and the latter fellow and his skills are a critique on the belief of white superiority.

‘There is no folly of the beast of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of man,’ states Ahab, and many interpretations of the novel focus on the whale as an evil. I believe Ahab sees Moby Dick this way (a projection, as previously mentioned), and we can certainly view this story as an expression of the fragility of humans in the face of the awesome power of nature. Don’t fuck with nature, it’s going to win. However, so much of this is wrapped up in an investigation of applying meaning, applying symbols and needing purpose in the terrifying face of meaninglessness. The white whale (based on a similar ship-killer whale named Mocha Dick) is no accident, with white often believed to be an absence of color and calling to mind a cold, apathetic nothingness. It is a lack of good or evil, and Ahab is falsely applying evil here, trying to create a destiny and fight against a perceived villain to be the main character hero of his own invention. We also see this all as humans defenselessness against fate. Whales are big, don’t mess with them. You’ll see…

Okay, I’ve spun quite the yarn here and really, just give this a go. Even if you don’t like it, it’s still pretty cool to say you’ve read it. And there are SO many amazing scenes, I promise. Like, okay, I can’t talk about this book without mentioning when Ahab makes everyone do shots out of the cavities in their spears. And that ending. It’s wild. It’s a big book, it’s full of themes and complex symbolism and tons of literary allusions and it may rock you like a ship upon stormy seas, but it’s worth the voyage. And, hey, at least you can read about whales noshing on sailors, that’s pretty fun.
n  n

I'm going to hold off on rating / sharing my feelings, because I am very much so still in the processing stage over here with this one.

Hast Seen The White Whale?

Melville's sixth novel, "Moby-Dick" received mixed reviews when published in 1851 and was nearly forgotten after the author's death in 1891. In the early 1920's, the book was rediscovered and quickly achieved the stature of an American classic. The book is inexhaustible. I have recently returned to it. In his 2005 study, "Melville", Andrew Delbanco discusses some of the ways "Moby-Dick" has been read over the years. Delbanco writes:

"Moby-Dick was not a book for a particular moment. It is a book for the ages. What gives it its psychological and moral power is that, freakish as he is, Ahab seems more part of us than apart from us. Like all great literary representations of evil, he is attractive as well as repulsive. And so Melville emerged in the twentieth century as the American Dostoevsky -- a writer who, with terrible clairvoyance, had been waiting for the world to catch up with him."

"Moby-Dick" is long, difficult, and digressive. It is not a straighforward narrative. Melville pauses many times for extended chapters to explore matters seemingly tangential to the intense story he has to tell. The book is written in a baroque, large, blustery and exuberant prose that is worlds away from the tightness and concision favored by many 20th Century American writers. Melville also knows how to build tension. The work unfolds story and by indirection. A rather lengthy opening section of the book takes place on land in New York City, New Bedford, and Nantucket. Captain Ahab's monomaical character is revealed slowly through hints, offered by a shadowy character with the Biblical name of Elijah and by visions and foreshadowing. A sermon on the Book of Jonah by Father Mapple frames the book and it is quickly contrasted with Queequeg and his attitude towards his gods. When Ahab and many of the main characters appear, the book is already well underway.

The book is narrated in the first person by Ishmael -- a Biblical outcast -- with his famous opening line, "Call me Ishmael". As the story proceeds, however, Melville seemingly disregards the limits of first-person narration as the story describes closely scenes and events well beyond Ishmael's ability to know.

Ishmael denies that the story of Ahab and the great whale is an allegory, and his denial deserves to be thought about and taken seriously. Many readers have found meanings of all sorts in "Moby-Dick", ranging from the personal, through the religious, through the political. Melville was himself a seeker and largely an autodidact with the deepest doubts about religious faith combined with a need to believe. Understanding evil and suffering is at the heart of "Moby-Dick". Ahab fanatically and selfishly pursues the whale and destorys himself and his crew. Ishmael, in signing on to the Pequod and undertaking a voyage hazardous in the best of circumstances is also a seeker in the story. Through luck, prudence, and sense, Ishmael is a survivor.

The story moves between Ahab's quest for the whale and a welter of factual material on the biology of whales, the history of whaling, the techniques of the whale fishery and immeasurably more. These long sections, which puzzle many readers, seem to me integral to the work. Mellville wants the reader to see the difference between a symbol and an icon, taken for good or ill, and the vast being of the natural world. Ahab expands the whale to something metaphysical in his ravings. Melville understands this, and he also understands that the whale is simply a magnificent animal. The various factual chapters move in different ways. Most of them develop a theme at some length before offering philosophical or spiritual questions about the matter under discussion. The broad themes of the book seldom are absent from view.

During the course of the voyage, the Pequod encounters other whalers, some of which seek Ahab's help while others bring messages of the joys of life. Ahab dispenses with what are the overtures of common, shared life with his abrupt opening query to each of them: "Hast Seen the White Whale"? Readers can identify with Ahab to a greater or lesser degree as they try to understand the passions which tend to rule their own lives. There are many extraordinary scenes in this book, not the least of which is the climactic fight between Ahab and the whale at the end.

Reader reviews allow for many different perspectives on Melville's book from readers with different degrees of familiarity with the text. "Moby-Dick" invites many different readings in searching for the sources of one's demons and for the common life. I have tried to offer some of my own reactions from my recent reading of "Moby-Dick."

Robin Friedman

LISA: Dad, you can't take revenge on an animal. That's the whole point of Moby Dick.
HOMER: Oh Lisa, the point of Moby Dick is 'be yourself.'
-- The Simpsons, Season 15, Episode 5, “The Fat and the Furriest”

(Ahoy, Matey! Thar be spoilers ahead).

There, there. Stop your crying. You didn’t like Herman Melville’s Moby Dick? You didn't even finish it? I’m here to tell you, that’s okay. You’re still a good person. You will still be invited to Thanksgiving dinner. You won’t be arrested, incarcerated, or exiled. You will not be shunned (except by English majors; they will shun you). Your family and friends will still love you (or at least stand you). Your dog will still be loyal (your cat, though, will remain indifferent).

Moby Dick can be a humbling experience. Even if you get through it, you may be desperately asking yourself things like “why didn’t I like this” or "am I totally missing something” or "how long have I been sleeping?" See, Moby Dick is the most famous novel in American history. It might be the great American novel. But in many ways, it’s like 3-D movies or Mount Rushmore: it’s tough to figure out why it’s such a big deal.

I suppose any discussion about Moby Dick must start with thematic considerations. It is, after all, “classic” literature, and must be experienced on multiple levels, if at all. So, what’s the point of Moby Dick? Is it about obsession? The things that drive each of us in our ambitions, whether they be wealth, hate, prejudice or love? Is it a deconstruction of Puritan culture in colonial America? Is it a Joseph Campbell-style hero’s journey? Is it a good ol' yarn of men against the sea? Is it all of these things?

Perhaps.

Is it a colossal bore?

Decidedly.

Now, I hate to use that word, the b-word. Boring. It means so little. It means nothing. It is the ultimate grade-school criticism: subjective; vague; and expressing annoyance at having been forced to experience the thing at all. To say something is boring implies that nothing happens, when in fact, something is always happening. Whether or not that happening is exciting is another question.

Having said all that, I found Moby Dick boring in the purest sense of the word. On just about every page, I felt a distinct lack of interest. And this is not a response to the subject matter. I love sea stories. I enjoyed Nathaniel Philbrick’s In the Heart of the Sea and Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of Jaws. Normally, a novel about an obsessed man trying to harpoon a terrifying monster would be right in my wheelhouse.

What was the problem? More specifically, what was my problem? (Because despite what I say, most people are going to blame me rather than Melville).

It all comes down to density. I’ve never actually harpooned a whale (or anything, for that matter), but I can only assume that it is slightly easier than finishing this turgid, mammoth work of literature. I found it almost impenetrable. Like reading Hawthorne, except it doesn't end, ever. I tried reading it three different times, and failed. In a meta turn of events, the novel became like my white whale, elusive and cagey, an arch opponent.

I would get through the first few chapters all right. The dinner at the Spouter-Inn. The homo-erotically charged night two men share in bed. Melville’s exquisitely detailed description of his breakfast companions:

You could plainly tell how long each one had been ashore. This young fellow’s healthy cheek is like a sun-toasted pear in hue, and would seem to smell almost as musky; he cannot have been three days landed from his Indian voyage. That man next to him looks a few shades lighter; you might say a touch of satin wood is in him. In the complexion of a third still lingers a tropic yawn, but slightly bleached withal; he doubtless has tarried whole weeks ashore. But who could show a cheek like Queequeg? which, barred with various tints, seemed like the Andes’ western slope, to show forth in one array, contrasting climates, zone by zone.

Somewhere in the neighborhood of the fortieth page, when Father Mapple starts to give his sermon, I’d start to get a little restless. A few pages into his fire-and-brimstone screed, my mind would wander. By the end of the chapter, I’d realize that instead of paying attention to the text, I’d actually started to amuse myself by trying to calculate my income taxes in my head. And then I’d quit.

During one of my periodic bouts of self-improvement (which I regularly intersperse with bouts of day-drinking), I decided to finish this damn thing once and for all. To do this, I hit upon a plan: I brought it to work and forced myself to read twenty pages a day at lunch. No more surfing the internet or listening to podcasts. No more chatting with coworkers. Until I finished, I would dedicate the hour to 20 pages of Melville. As a result I: (1) finished the book; and (2) grew to hate lunch (which is really quite a sad turn of events).

What did I learn?

Not too much.

Moby Dick is about a milquetoast named Ishmael who sets out on a whaling ship called the Pequod. Like many literary heroes, he is a bit of an outcast. Also, following in the tradition of Charles Dickens’ tedious first-person narrators, he is a bit of a cipher. Ishmael doesn't do much, except offer endless exegeses on every aspect of whaling, as well as stultifying digressions on topics too numerous to count (don’t miss the chapter about how the color white can be evil!). Ishmael's pedagogic ramblings will soon have you pleading for the whale – or a squid or an eel or a berserk seagull – to eat him, and eat him quickly (but painfully) so the book will end.

The Pequod is commanded by Captain Ahab, the one-legged nut who is obsessed with finding the whale that ate his now-absent limb. He's sort of the 19th century version of the psycho ex-boyfriend who just can't seem to let go the past. Ahab is an interesting character in the abstract. Profoundly, almost suicidally driven. The obvious progenitor of Robert Shaw’s captivating performance as Quint in Spielberg’s Jaws. However, in the context of the book's thees and thous and utterly excessive verbiage and arcane sentence structure, the sheen wears off mighty quick. It’s one of those instances in which I’d much prefer someone to tell me about Ahab, rather than read about him myself. (In other words, I need an interpreter to translate from Ye Olde English to English).

The challenging language permeates Moby Dick. Melville writes in a overly-verbose, grandiloquent style. His book is packed with symbols and metaphors and allusions and nautical terms. There were very few pages in which I didn't have to stop reading and flip to the back of the book, to read the explanatory notes or consult the glossary. There are digressions and soliloquies and even, at certain points, stage directions. It is also a primer on whaling, in case you wanted to learn:

The Pequod’s whale being decapitated and the body stripped, the head was hoisted against the ship’s side – about half way out of the sea, so that it might yet in great part be buoyed up by its native element. And there with the strained craft steeply leaning over it, by reason of the enormous downward drag from the lower mast-head, and every yard-arm on that side projecting like a crane over the waves; there, that blood-dripping head hung to the Pequod’s waist like the giant Holofernes’s from the girdle of Judith.

Maybe you are familiar with the giant Holfernes and Judith’s girdle. Maybe you want to be familiar with them. If so, by all means, proceed.

Melville’s other notable character is Queequeg, the South Seas cannibal with whom Ishmael shares a bed at the Spouter-Inn (a scene that has launched a thousand dissertations). Ishmael’s best friend on the Pequod, Queequeg expresses the duality of man: outwardly a tattooed savage, he is also purveyor of what might be termed Christian ethics (he gets along with people; he turns the other cheek; and he’s willing to jump into the ocean to save a stranger’s life).

The rest of the cast is too large to get into. Besides, they all run together in my mind. For example, I can’t tell you off the top of my head whether Starbuck or Stubb was the first mate. Frankly, I don't really care. They all end up in the same place. Hint: think Jonah. (Melville really harps on this Biblical allusion, as he harps on everything).

None of this is to say that Moby Dick lacks any charms. There are passages of great beauty. For instance, there is a moment when Pip, the black cabin boy, falls out of one of the longboats and is left in the ocean. Upon being rescued, he is irrevocably changed:

The sea had jeeringly kept his finite body up, but drowned the infinite of his soul. Not drowned entirely, though. Rather carried down alive to wondrous depths, where strange shapes of the unwarped primal world glided to and fro before his passive eyes; and the miser-merman, Wisdom, revealed his hoarded heaps; and among the joyous, heartless, ever-juvenile eternities, Pip saw the multitudinous, God-omnipresent, coral insects, that out of the firmament of waters heaved the colossal orbs. He saw God's foot upon the treadle of the loom, and spoke it; and therefore his shipmate's called him mad.

I’m not going to lie and say I have the slightest idea of what that all means, but it sure is pretty. I suppose that was part of the allure that Moby Dick held for me. Even though I often wanted to quit, every once in awhile, a passage would jump out at me and smack me across the face with its classicalness. Unfortunately, you have to wade through so much, the mind becomes numb.

Moby Dick is quite simply a slog. It is tedious. Detail-laden. Attention-demanding. Then, after 56 billion pages, the climax comes in an instant, and in a matter of a few pages, everything you learned about the ship, the knots that held the sails, the crewmembers, Ahab – everything – is for naught, because it's all gone, and the sea rolls on, as it has for a thousand years. In a way, it's kind of cool to do it that way; I mean, that's life. You don't always get a great death scene. But on the other hand, what a gyp!

I realize my tone is preemptively defensive. After all, I consider myself a high functioning individual. Like you (I assume), I don’t like being told: “You just don’t get it.” Oh no, I get it. At least, I tried very hard to get it. I just didn't like it. And I’ll admit, I didn't like having to try so hard. This complaint is not simply a function of having my brain rotted by soda pop, candy, and first-person-shooter video games. Rather, there is an important argument to be made for clarity. Some say Melville’s stylized prose is elegant; I think it’s tortured. Some find his allusions illuminating; I find them hopelessly outdated. Some discover a higher pleasure in unpacking each complex theme; I just wanted to push Ishmael over the gunwale or hang him from the yardarm.

Melville can gussy things up as much as he wants. He can toss off references to 19th century prizefighters, Schiller’s poetry, and the Bible; he can discourse on civilization and savagery, on man and God; he can teach you every knot needed to sail a whaler; and he can draw out enough metaphors to keep SparksNotes in business for the next hundred years.

Melville can do all these things, but he can’t hide the fact that this is a story about some guys going fishing. That’s it. That simple story is the vessel for Melville’s explorations. Upon this he heaps his complications. Whether Melville’s technique is effective or not, or whether Melville has convinced you that it’s effective, is an open question.

Well, not to me. I think I’ve answered the question.

In short, I would rather be harpooned, fall off my ship, get eaten by a great white shark, and then have the great white shark swallowed by a whale, then read this book ever again.

I can’t get any clearer than that.

how can a book that's almost entirely set in the ocean be this dry :(

Totally extraordinary - both poles of its critical reception shock me: the half-century of complete obscurity and its current status as a G.A.N.. Because this is one weird book. It's a perfect example of experimental form melding with and amplifying content. Ishmael's fundamental digressiveness and lexicographic drive allows H.M. the room to get all the way into the particulars of his research. It's a treat - and I think, necessarily, a lost thing - to read a book that is so proud of, that RELISHES, the work that went into its bibliography. The contrast with Ahab's monomania is incredibly effective. And what a treat to read a book that invites every interpretation without ever landing anywhere.

t tried reading this about ten years ago and just had no chance. The intertextuality, the lack of narrative drive, and the difficulty of the language murdered me. I imagine I'll like it even more ten years from now.

I'll finish by saying that this paragraph from the brief chapter, "The Lee Shore," might be about the prettiest thing I've ever read:

" When on that shivering winter’s night, the Pequod thrust her vindictive bows into the cold malicious waves, who should I see standing at her helm but Bulkington! I looked with sympathetic awe and fearfulness upon the man, who in mid-winter just landed from a four years’ dangerous voyage, could so unrestingly push off again for still another tempestuous term. The land seemed scorching to his feet. Wonderfullest things are ever the unmentionable; deep memories yield no epitaphs; this six-inch chapter is the stoneless grave of Bulkington. Let me only say that it fared with him as with the storm-tossed ship, that miserably drives along the leeward land. The port would fain give succor; the port is pitiful; in the port is safety, comfort, hearthstone, supper, warm blankets, friends, all that’s kind to our mortalities. But in that gale, the port, the land, is that ship’s direst jeopardy; she must fly all hospitality; one touch of land, though it but graze the keel, would make her shudder through and through. With all her might she crowds all sail off shore; in so doing, fights ‘gainst the very winds that fain would blow her homeward; seeks all the lashed sea’s landlessness again; for refuge’s sake forlornly rushing into peril; her only friend her bitterest foe!"

"Novelist" is too small a term for Melville--he's some kind of shaggy bard, writing rhapsodic yet precise, musuclar yet dulcet Elizabethan-tinged English at the midcentury high noon of "realism." For the time and place, the book and the man are uniquely American products, such as only America's social fluidity, untamed confusion of forms and sheer what-the-fuck randomness could produce: a sketchily educated scion of a declined old family goes to sea as a common sailor, comes back, immerses himself autodidactically in Shakespeare and Browne and the Bible, and produces this awesome stew of sermons, whaling lore, zoology, abtuse philosophical speculation, outlandish allusion, terrifying metaphysical pessimism and, above all, Hamlet-and-Lear-grade tragic characterization. Then his career gradually peters out, newspapers delcare him insane, a son kills himself, he takes a lowly job as a customs inspector at the port of New York while devoting his remaining literary energy to privately published poetry and homoerotic fiction that will be found in a trunk long after his barely-noted death. Was this guy really on the same planet as Balzac and Flaubert and George Eliot?

There's an old 1950s science fiction story in which aliens have taken over Earth and now wish to learn everything about the human race. But they can't tell what's important and what's trivial, yet. So to be on the safe side, they employ people to read every single book ever published and summarise its main points. And the story is a day in the life of one of these readers. And he's got Moby Dick. And what he writes on the file index card is :

Nineteenth century knowledge about cetaceans, particularly physeter macrocephalus, was inadequate.

Another way of summarising this one is boy meets whale, boy loses whale, boy gets whale back.

And another way would be : brilliant, terminal, essential, outrageous, infuriating.

“Where the White Whale, yo?”

Ah, my first DBR. And possibly my last, as this could be a complete shit show. Approaching a review of Moby-Dick in a state of sobriety just wasn’t cutting it, though. So let’s raise our glasses to Option B, yeah?

I fucking love this book. It took me eight hundred years to read it, but it was so, so worth it. Melville’s writing is impeccable. The parallels he draws, even when he’s seemingly pulling them out of his ass, which I swear to God he’s doing, because who can find this many parallels to draw when talking about a whale, are just perfect. He can compare any and every aspect of the whale—did you know this whole book is about a whale?—to the human condition. And he does so in a way that is humorous and poetic. It is pretty remarkable, I tell you.

So here’s the thing: I had zero interest in whales before starting this book. But holy hell if I haven’t been googling the crap out of them lately. I mean, it’s the mark of a superior writer (isn’t it?) to command one’s attention—not just to hold it but to carry it forth hither and thither—for seven hundred pages of a book about a whale. It’s impressive, really, when you think about it. And yet, this book suffers a severe level of under-appreciation on TEH GOODREADS. It has an average rating of 3.33, which is extraordinarily dismal by this website’s standards (and with almost a quarter million ratings so far, it is unlikely to migrate much from that figure). So in an attempt to understand what it is people hate about this book, I filtered the community reviews to show 1-star results, and here is what I’ve discovered:

• This book would have been great, admits Anulka, if it weren’t for that darn tootin’ whale interfering with the story.

• The language is too much for Gil Michelini, who believes words have their place (after all we are not heathens!), but they simply do not belong in this novel.

• Marlan’s complaint is that there is too great a lack of story here, so much so that it feels crammed in. It’s like trying to squeeze a cookie into a breadbox.

• Some have experienced extreme aversions to this book. It has made Colleen seasick, quite frankly; it has totally messed up Edwin’s mind; and it has made Robert want to light himself on fire. Even Liz has acknowledged a preference for drowning if such an option existed as a substitute for reading Moby-Dick.

• Tracy Dunning would recommend renting the cartoon version, which far surpasses the actual text in storytelling capability.

• Still others have been befuddled by this novel’s ability to hoodwink its readers into thinking they like it (when in fact they don’t), a bizarre phenomenon Esther Hansen can personally attest to.

• Finally, Keya offers a sobering perspective, which is that people are only reading this book to read it, meaning that if they weren’t reading it, then it would simply be a book not being read. Truly, Yogi Berra couldn’t have put it better himself.

But Keya does bring up an interesting point here: why doesn’t Ahab just “get over it” and live his life? I mean, should that be so hard? In some sense, the White Whale is nothing more than a stand-in for everything that has gone wrong in Ahab’s life. He mounts this campaign against the stand-in but isn’t that sort of disingenuous? After all, it’s not the whale that’s responsible for his miserable life. Ahab claims to be an instrument of fate, but fate in this case seems nothing more than a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Oh, fuck, my fingers hurt from the backspace.

Look, here’s the bottom line. I was afraid this book would be long and boring. And now I wonder how many people hesitate reading it because of its bad rap. Well I’m here to tell you, Potential Reader, this book might be long but it is by no means boring. (Therefore, it is long and exciting? TWSS?) I implore you to ignore the negative reviews! Melville has a talent for flowing, humorous prose, and there is so much of it here to enjoy.

So go find your White Whale.

(P.S. Gin rules.)