No book has ever made me want to eat a food more, Melville's description of clam chowder is enticing and obviously something he had experienced making it all the more perfect.

There is a problem with attempts to reconcile natural and supernatural claims in the human soul; that is, although we tend to be at odds with nature, we are ultimately subsumed by it, and barred from reasoning back to first causes.

While reading this classic, I often thought of the men on the Pequod and how they might not see land for months at a time. And I felt a kinship with them as I followed Melville on his tangential ramblings about the color white, the parts of a whale, and such. When our good narrator would finally return to the actual storyline, it was a relief, perhaps akin to spotting land after months at sea. That being said, this is a great story, albeit a rather strange one, which gives a lot of insight into the minds of whalers and their ethnocentric views at that time. For more than two decades I swore I would never read this book, after enduring Billy Budd in high school. But I am glad I soldiered through it, and I am really glad the White Whale won.

This is about the 5th time that I picked up this book. The time must be right, because I'm amazed at how much I'm finding in it. I love the perspective and the multi-ethnic/-cultural mix of characters. The narrator's voice is quite distinct and the style is of the time...but I think it enhances rather than detracts...but it was one of the reasons that I kept putting it down all those times as well. I now have fresh eyes for it.

I read every page of Moby Dick. The author loves to write pages and pages about things that do not seem interesting, for example the placement of the eyes on the whale, which direction the tail is pointing, etc. The book could have been recuced to a quarter of the book. Yet, I think if you understood all of the imagery that he is trying to get acorss it would be an aamzing book and although I viewed the majority of it boring(I didn't understand all of the symbolism that should be in it) because of all of the unnecessary chapter, the story line is very interesting.

Billy Budd is much shorter than Moby Dick and an interesting story line. I love all of the symbolism of Christ that is in there but some of it is just too sad for my taste.

John Huston created a phenomenal and worthwhile film of this symbolic allegory, BUT there is SO MUCH MORE in the literary text missing from the cinema version. -- Melville's narrative encompases brilliant wit and the constant eruption of humor, as well as extensive and fascinating maritime and whaling document and theory. Melville was a pioneer of psychoanalytic insight and symbolism. He is a master of irony, and visual panorama. Audio book read by Paul Boehmer.

I read Billy Budd and some of the other stories in this book in High School, and really enjoyed them. I never got around to reading Moby Dick, though.

Still breaking my mind, 23 years after I first read it!

Whale slay - Melville creates a wonderful and in-depth exploration of what it means to fully the profession of whaling and allows us to catch a glimpse of the strategies employed in their hunt for this Leviathan of the sea. This narrative is formed in Melville's best style, especially since he has managed to omit some of this monumental writer's less favourable literary habits. Melville balances this adventurous tale with musings about rope and other normally mundane subject matters. At the end we are left with our sea-fairing friend Ishmael, at the end I was so glad that the whale didn't eat our good buddy, we are in dept to this fabulous story. This is probably the best tale that has come from the mind of this talented mind so far, and in spite of it's many tangents, which have come to much criticism, Melville's originality shines through and even rivals his first work of art, the everlasting Typee.

The word Richard Poirier used for this vein of American writing is "extravagant". Sums it up. Brilliant in so many ways. A study of monomania. Very biblical. I loved so many passages and over-the-top lines eg "ponderous planets of unmwaning woe", "There is some unsuffusing thing beyond thee", "even the highest early felicities ever have a certain unsignifying pettiness lurking in them". But but but: for one thing Melville insists the whale is a "fish". For another the relentless description of whale deconstruction reminds me of Barthes' line to the effect that all language is fascist. And finally I couldn't help thinking - LEAVE THE WHALES ALONE, YOU BASTARDS! This line is transcendentally stupid: "we account the whale immortal in his species however perishable in his individuality." I always admire obsession - but an obsession with killing?

I really enjoyed reading this classic. There is a reason it is used in every English class in America. Melville was incredibly talented and the book is so layered with metaphor it would take a lifetime of study to uncover them all. It is very difficult to get through however. I didn't finish all of the chapters.

My favorite is Billy Budd.