"I'm planning to start reading Moby-Dick," I messaged my wife.

"Is that supposed to cure your boredom??" she replied.

PART ONE: THE PRELUDE

Confession time: I studied English Education for four years, trained to be a high school English/Literature teacher, and yet never once cracked the cover on Moby-Dick. "Why bother?" I figured. "Somebody else has done the work already and everything that can be said must have been said by now." Yes, it was on some AP Literature "suggested reading" lists and it was offered as a class unto itself for seniors majoring in American Lit, but it never came up on a required course syllabus for me and I wasn't about to complain. If I did have to teach it to a class in the future, there would always be Cliff's Notes.

Confession continued: I do not like big books. Some readers love 'em, but not me. There are a handful of exceptions (obligatory plug for my personal white whale, Infinite Jest) but for the most part if a book goes past 350 pages I tend to lose interest. My feeling is, if you're going over that then you'd better have a darn good reason. I've always preferred minimalism, the Kurt Vonnegut approach, saying more with less. And Moby-Dick has the reputation of being just the opposite: the most overlong, overblown, overloaded novel of all. Critical consensus has it that Melville earns a pass on this, yet still every contemporary review cautions at some point: you will be bored.

Confession the third: I have grown into the smug literary hipster snob I used to mock as out-of-touch, trying too hard, and unbearable at parties. But now I'm a grown man, approaching middle age if not there already, and I find a lot of the dusty old "Classics" actually speak to me on a profound level. So maybe I won't have anything new to say about MD, but maybe that's OK. Maybe I don't need to say anything at all. Maybe I need to listen.

First things first: it's not as long as I thought. I always envisioned some thousand-plus page tome but my copy (W.W. Norton & Company's 1976 version, which I chose because it presents the full text with minimal commentary, limited to just a single chapter at the very end penned by one Howard Mumford Jones—now THERE'S a stodgy old literature critic name if I've ever heard one!) runs a total of 585 pages, glossary included. Sure, it'll make one hell of a thump if you drop it from any distance to your desktop. But it's not the forearm workout I feared. And as the last book of my 2018 reading challenge, I've got over a month to get through it. (50 days, a quick calendar consultation confirms. 12 pages a day? Seems do-able.)

Second things second: I already know the gist of it. It seems like it's about a whale but the whale is a symbol and it's really about obsession. The color white is important to pay attention to. I'm supposed to call him Ishmael, and he alone survives to tell the tale, and Ahab stabs at thee from Hell's heart but gets himself killed in the endeavor. I don't think anyone can cry foul over spoilers more than a hundred and sixty years old, and this sucker's so far intertwined into the popular culture that it'd be a miracle if I didn't already know how it ends. But this is about the journey, not the destination.

So I'll set sail on waters that have been charted and recharted already, and I'll keep my little reading log here so I can feel brainy for taking up this undertaking, here on the Internet haven for other brainy folks who love books so much we tell strangers what we think about them, where reading Moby-Dick is the norm and not the exception and joining your voice to the chorus of other reviewers is practically a rite of passage.


PART TWO: THE READ-THROUGH

This part took 32 days. That's a good long while for any avid reader.

Listen. Anybody can write a book, technically speaking. A much smaller set of people can write an interesting, entertaining, or at least coherent book. But very few people can write a Great Book, a.k.a. Literature. Moby-Dick more or less sets the bar, in my estimation, for what we all mean when we say "Great Book" or "Classic Literature," which is to say: big lofty ideas, conveyed via dense but memorable text, reproducing human drama of grave thematic import. As others have already noted, it's not difficult to read, per se. But I honestly would have loathed reading this as an assignment, working against a deadline. Because the further we move into modernity and the more removed we get from Melville's world, the more antiquated his dialect becomes and thus the true challenge arises: can you focus your attention long enough to read this? Will you? And do you want to? That's the difficulty of Moby-Dick, more so than the plot or the imagery or any of the thematic grandeur. Anybody can "get" Moby-Dick. Many(/most) people probably already have, without even actually reading it for themselves, since it's been around long enough to work its way into popular culture of all forms.

And so, if Mark Twain is the American Oscar Wilde then Melville is the American Charles Dickens. Has anybody written a term paper on that yet? I think I found my thesis.


PART THREE: THE REFLECTION

So, I read Moby-Dick.

It was worth it.

It was worth it the way that eating leafy green vegetables is worth it. You might not enjoy every bite while you're doing it, but someday down the road you'll be glad you did.

Moby-Dick is a cultural icon, a touchstone for bookworms, an American legacy, and a darn fine book. It is surprisingly entertaining despite its lulls and its length and its reputation as a chore to get through, and it is well-deserving of its status as a work of literary art. In fact, knowing the book's reputation and other readers' aspersions against it beforehand somehow made reading it much more tolerable. Every time it grew tedious, the knowledge that I was participating in a shared experience with all the readers and reviewers who'd come before me helped to carry me through. And the critical analysis comes easily, as Melville never obscures his message. Most of the theme is all but stated outright in plain language, and the sumptuous writing reinforces through tone what we are to take away from it all: from Ishmael's openness, from Queequeg's dual dignity, from Ahab's dark obsession.

5 stars out of 5. It couldn't possibly be any less.

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.

(sigh) okay i'll read it

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

Many people warned me of this book so I ended up being quite apprehensive before starting. However, as is often the case (especially with classics as far as I can tell), I wasn‘t dismayed by the detailed descriptions of ships or whales.

But let‘s start at the beginning.

Moby Dick is one of THE American novels. It tells of Ishmael, the protagonist and narrator with one of the most famous opening lines in literature. Ishamel is a teacher but decides to go to sea so he enlists with the Pequod, a whaling ship from Nantucket. Captain of the ship is the famous Captain Ahab, a man driven half mad when a whale not only costs him one of his legs but also escapes afterwards.
Thus begins the journey of the Pequod‘s crew through the world oceans (not all of them but they are underway for quite a while) in search of the infamous white whale that someone, somehow, has named Moby Dick.
It is only natural that they do not come across the „right“ whale immediately and while they and we readers are waiting, Melville proceeds to describe life on board a whaling ship. These descriptions range from the ship itself, the crew living with one another, sailing, what whalers did with the carcasses of whales when they caught one, religion, race, history and so much more. It becomes clear fairly quickly that he was an accute observer and thought long and hard about all the topics he addressed in his writing. Moreover, for a man of his skin colour and time, he was relatively open and progressive.
There are some ridiculous instances where the openminded Ishmael describes his view that any religion has its place and that none is better than the other, seconds after which he details how this or that ritual of an „exotic“ religion is silly or unnecessary. So yes, the book had some comedic moments as well (whether on purpose or not is another matter).
Oh and let‘s not forget the homosexual encounter in the beginning! I did NOT expect that but I like that he put it in there (again: whether he was aware of its significance or not is another matter).

As for the writing itself, Melville was certainly very erudite. This combined with the research he must have conducted for this book results in all the details being accurate (for the time this was written in) and giving a 360-view on the world of whaling, be it on the construction and handling of a ship or the anatomy of whales (though I got aggressive whenever one of these whale-murderers called the animals „fish“).

The fascinating thing about the book’s form is that the author often wrote as if it was a stage play. That is to say there are actual stage directions. Moreover, Ishmael, while telling the story, sometimes „disappears“ inside his own narrative, being fully submerged in the events, only to resurface some time later as the narrator.

It‘s a story about obsession and revenge but also about other people letting themselves be drawn into other peoples‘ fights. It‘s about men who just want to earn a living in a period when several nations around the world committed horrible atrocities against the whale populations of this planet (and even commenting at one point how, just like elephants on the plains of Africa, there would always be enough of them because look at how much space they have to live in *doh*).

This might not be the best classic I‘ve ever read but it is in a class of its own (I could be more detailed with a 10-star rating system but we don‘t have that so ...).

I HATE whaling. It‘s one of the things that makes me positively despise certain Scandinavian countries as well as Japan (and nobody give me that silly excuse about „scientific research“). Reading about a whale being caught and what was subsequently done with it was therefore hard, but it‘s science/history and I had already read a non-fiction book about what inspired Melville to write this novel. Nevertheless, I wanted them all to die horribly. Just like the people who fin sharks.
All I can say is that the ending thus is very satisfying for someone like me. I‘ve read somewhere that the ending leaves the readers without any solace but I disagree: it offers solace aplenty for anyone who, like me, is #teamwhale. ;)

#bibliotecaafectivă

„Clătinîndu-și în chip ciudat capul fatidic, Moby-Dick înainta spre corabie printr-un brîu lat de spumă... Prin întreaga ei înfățișare, își trăda firea aprigă, răzbunătoare, dorința de a pedepsi, răutatea veșnică”.

Un roman pe care l-am citit pentru prima dată cu mult, mult timp în urmă. Probabil că sînt la a treia sau la a patra lectură. Nu mai contează. Mulți critici pretind că romanul e ilizibil și că nu poate fi dus pînă la capăt. John Sutherland, printre ei, ca să dau numai un singur exemplu. Sutherland publică destul de des în The Guardian, e o somitate ironică, a scris o carte despre Bestsellers (am recenzat-o nu de mult)...

În treacăt fie spus, a citi un roman de 4 ori nu este o ispravă nemaivăzută în univers, unii au citit Război și pace de 12 ori și tot nu s-au săturat. De vreme ce am ajuns cu lecturile atît de departe, înseamnă că Moby-Dick nu mi s-a părut nici ilizibil și nici imposibil de dus pînă la capăt. Vă mai amintiți cum se termină? Da, cu moartea căpitanului Ahab (care e obsedat de balena albă pînă la cea mai pură demență) și cu salvarea bietului Ishmael, singurul supraviețuitor de pe baleniera Pequod. În definitiv, dacă și Ishmael ar fi murit, nu ar mai fi fost nimeni care să ne relateze ce s-a întîmplat cu Pequod :)

Unii spun că singura semnificație a cărții e cea literală: „Moby-Dick se referă - nici mai mult, dar nici mai puțin - la vînătoarea unei balene. Punct” (E.M. Forster). Cei mai mulți au căutat, în schimb, simbolismul. Nu poate fi vorba doar de o vînătoare dramatică. Și au propus cele mai bizare interpretări. Iată una teologică: Moby-Dick ilustrează „inscrutabila tăcere” cu care Dumnezeu răspunde tuturor celor care Îl caută” (James Wood). Alții propun o interpretare mai laică: Moby-Dick prezintă căutarea unui adevăr de neatins, a unui adevăr care se retrage mereu din fața minții noastre. Această căutare sfîrșește în umilință și uluială (James McIntosh). Jorge Luis Borges a găsit în romanul lui Melville o „coborîre în infern”, o nekya. Mă opresc aici.

Adaug doar că primii critici (cei din 1851) au văzut în Moby-Dick un roman încîlcit, obscur, de o valoare îndoielnică, în nici un caz o capodoperă. Prea multe digresiuni abat atenția cititorului de la acțiunea cărții. În publicațiile britanice au apărut și cîteva cronici pozitive. Din păcate, Herman Melville nu le-a cunoscut. A murit ignorat de toți, dezamăgit, în dimineața zilei de 28 septembrie 1891.

Moby-Dick reprezintă, cu siguranță, cel mai zdrobitor exemplu de orbire critică.

I read this during the time I spent at a science conference in Cuba back in the last century.

I think if I hadn't been so lacking diversion - isolated in the hotel by the extortionate price of tourist taxis - I would never have made it through the book. There are certainly passages written with considerable literary power:

“He piled upon the whale's white hump 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.”

And the story is certainly not without interest: the 'mad' captain hunting his nemesis across the seas, his obsession driving his crew into extremis.

But none of that can expunge the memory of what felt like literally a hundred pages of dry, mechanical exposition about the mechanics of whaling and the minutiae of the whaling industry.

It was, I have to say, a slog that I wouldn't encourage anyone else to undertake without good reason. I have read many 19th century classics that I found far more appealing.


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I want to quickly say that I have not (yet) reread Moby Dick, but I read a review of this recently released edition of the book illustrated by the American painter Gilbert Wilson and I ordered it from the library. Here's the review so you can see examples of his artwork:

https://www.chicagotribune.com/column...

Moby Dick is a story of, among SO many other things, Captain Ahab's obsession with a great white whale. Not-quite-famous and mostly forgotten painter Wilson also had an obsession: Captain Ahab's obsession, which I read inspired John Huston's film version of the novel.

The book is a coffee table size production, produced for the occasion for the occasion of Melville's 200th birthday, and while I very much liked all the introductions from editor Robert K. Elder and others, and reading Wilson's own writings about Moby Dick, and while I was interested and impressed with the paintings, I really wish the publishers Hat and Beard had gone one more step and produced full page versions of ALL the accompanying paintings. But it's a great accomplishment, and worth checking out. Now I am committed to rereading the novel this year, as I read passages throughout as they were connected to certain paintings.

Brilliant, timeless novel.

I read it over the course of a few months in 2010, the year I was a Corps Member in Obama's socialist militia- I mean, Americorps. I read about half of it in New Orleans, perhaps a chapter or two during our week between projects at the VA in Perry Point, Maryland, right on the Chesapeake, and the rest while staying at Lafayette's Quarters in Valley Forge, where our workdays were spent picking mile-a-minute and hunting invasive crayfish. So yes, Moby-Dick took me a while, and a few different states, and a couple of uncanny experiences (Lafayette's Quarters are haunted), to read. It's long and digressive, and I wouldn't change a word. Melville's language, and the interplay between the reality of life on the ship and his mystical inclinations, is incredibly evocative and beautiful.

It's also a book that's intimidating to write about, since I can't help but assume that everything's been said. But for my own sake if nothing else, I'm going to record a few of the commonplaces that bounced around in my skull this morning while I drove to Wawa in the rain. That life is full of disappointment and injustice, for example. Some things can be mitigated, and some things are simply beyond our control. Sometimes a whale takes your leg, and you can't change that. The only thing you can control- perhaps- is how you live with it.

In Moby-Dick, Ahab allows himself to become bitter. His bitterness disfigures him as a human being, and develops into a grudge against the universe. But one of the great things about the novel is that Melville, far from holding Ahab up for mockery and cheap shots, shows that such people possess an incredible magnetism. This magnetism isn't bestowed by Wotan, Loki, or even the Koch brothers, but by the simple fact that people like Ahab are saying what, on some level, we long to hear. Isn't that the only way propaganda ever really works? Yes, Ahab seems to say, we're born into a hostile universe, and the only satisfying response is a rebellion against nature. People like him inspire that impulse in ourselves, and make us feel that it's grand and heroic. He isn't a con man, he's sincere, and in that chapter where he seems able to control the lightning, you almost believe that his rebellion can win. Melville throughout the novel uses the mysteriousness of the ocean to suggest that we don't really know nature as well as we might think. Who can say for sure that it doesn't wish us ill? Maybe Ahab is right after all?

Except that Ahab is evil. He's evil, quite simply, because he rejects life. He rejects the factual world by insisting that a whale consciously intended to maim him. He's evil because of his terrible sentimentality- his willingness (desire, even) to sacrifice the lives of his entire crew to satisfy his vengefulness. He's evil not because of an idea he possesses but because of an idea that he's allowed to possess him- that he must annihilate or be annihilated. Perhaps those twin desires are simply one fantasy of death. The alternative must be between those extremes.

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

3.5 stars.

I finally finished this behemoth of a book, in just under a year! I did in fact take around a 10 month or so break, so that is understandable, but I'm so glad I persevered and completed it. Moby Dick, although unfuriating and challenging at the best of times, is well worth the read.

The storyline generally follows a sailor called Ishmael, who along with new found friend and harpooner Queequeg, gets a job aboard the Peyquod, a whaling ship manned by the insane Captain Ahab. The crew think they are just going on a typical whaling expedition, but in reality Ahab has bigger prizes in mind - killing the famous white whale Moby Dick who took his leg from him years before.

I think the main reason it took me so long to finish this book was that I picked it up at a bad time. I picked it up last September when I already had a lot of books (quite hefty ones at that) which I had challenged myself to read in the year. So I got 250 pages in and had to put it down in favour of others. And then the months passed and I was nervous to pick it up again because 1) this book is dense as hell and 2) it's really long. I would even argue too long, but that's just my personal opinion.

There is a lot to love in Moby Dick - the action sequences are impeccable, you learn a lot about whaling and the actual procedures behind procuring oil, spermacetti, etc., and there are some genuinely hilarious moments. The book is littered with innuendo which I found incredibly fun to read (although that might just be my immature side coming out). However, what slowed this read down for me, and made me have to knock it down a half star, was the AMOUNT of telling, rather than showing. There are a lot of info-dump chapters in Moby Dick, and often I felt that they took me out of the flow and rhythm of the story. At times they were interesting, and at times they were tied in with the actual events taking place with the characters, but sometimes I felt like they were just there to bulk up the page count and display Melville's vast knowledge of whales and whaling. It definitely was a bit of a road block for me.

Saying that, I would probably read this book again. Not anytime soon of course, but maybe a few years down the line, because I think you could get a lot more out of it through subsequent readings. I would definitely recommend this book to most people, but just be aware that it is a time-consuming read and it is dense. But it's definitely worth it in my opinion.

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?