Iedereen kent Kapitein Ahab, maar wie kent de zin "Noem mij Ismael?" Dit is een van de boeken die ik eens in de paar jaar lees. Het geeft een fantastisch beeld van de walvisvaart in die tijd. De romantische schrijfstijl in combinatie met de stoere zeemansverhalen maken dit boek adembenemend goed.

Read "Moby-Dick" from this collection.

This is a man's man book. It was awsome.

Not Melville's best work but it fit my activity at the time...sailing the ocean on a square rigger. Bark Europa sailing from Cape Horn to Cape of Good Hope.

Got a whale of a tale to tell ya, lads
A whale of a tale or two
'Bout the flappin' fish and the girls I've loved
I swear by my tattoo

I'm going to go out on a limb and give it neither a love rating nor a hate rating. Learned more about whales than anyone should need to know, and more than I would have ever expected Melville to know. All i have to say is that the whale doesn't show till page 689, baby, and that's a whole lot of anticipation to build up.

Melville wrote in his letters that he produced Redburn and White-Jacket "...for money—being forced to it as other men are to sawing wood". Yet even within these stories there is a deeper artistic streak (notably restrained) that nonetheless bursts through from time to time and produces something brilliant. He cannot help but burst into poesy or - via reference - share with us the depths of his reading and erudition.

Highly worth reading for anyone enamored with Melville.

I like to read a classic every now and then. Melville did not disappoint. The character development between Ishmael and Ahab was interesting. I learned a lot about whaling too. I read Ahab's Wife a few years ago, so I kept comparing the two books.

"And thus, though surrounded by circle upon circle of consternations and affrights, did these inscrutable creatures at the centre freely and fearlessly indulge in all peaceful concernments; yea, serenely revelled in dalliance and delight. But even so, amid the tornadoed Atlantic of my being, do I myself still for ever centrally disport in mute calm; and while ponderous planets of unwaning woe revolve around me, deep down and deep inland there I still bathe me in eternal mildness of joy."

as this is a classic, there will be "spoilers"....

what a juicy book.. boring as fuck at times, but it does reward you throughout. i wanted something that would force me to slow down and pay attention, and it definitely did that. classics are like that i guess! the way melville brings poetry to even his densest passages, where he dissects the whale (literally and figuratively) with just about every razor possible. history, mythology, industry, anatomy, the bible, ecology, philosophy... the cetology doesn't end. in most of these studies, though, he treats the whale with absolute majesty. he makes his hyperfixation interesting, that's for sure.

the legendary opening "call me ishmael" kind of threw me; if i hadn't known it was so renowned i don't think i would've taken much note of it to be honest. what did stand out to me was the way in which ishmael and much of the crew seem to dissolve once the voyage starts. instead, the ship takes on a life, almost a consciousness of its own. its a perspective i haven't seen before, you kind of become the all-seeing eye. in that sense, major dissolution of the ego vibes (which, looking back, is all spelled out in ishmael's intro). at the same time, one of melville's favorite little winks was the idea that "we are all this way". i would go so far as saying he got the closest a human could get to writing about whales the way God knows them.

and i have to say, i love how biblical it got. it felt like reading certain books totally paid off in a literary way with this one. mainly Jonah, for obvious reasons, but also Job, which is the one that means the most to me. every time he describes the idea of the whale as Leviathan it gave me shivers, all the more when it's Moby himself. even Numbers had its moment when he's measuring the goddamn whales... but when it got reallyy juicy was towards the end with the apocalyptic, Revelations-type vibes. the omens are there throughout, but they build up in such a dark and METAL way, i couldn't get enough.

the ship and the sea act as driving forces more so than the narrator or most of the individual characters (excepting Ahab) and on that level i thought the novel adhered to its anti-anthropocentric themes very cohesively. the sea takes on this void quality that put the scale of the humans versus the rest of creation into perspective. it and it's creatures are treated with such sublimity, makes you realize we are Nothing in comparison!! it makes all the violence inflicted so much more grotesque and visceral. "you would have thought we were offering up ten thousand red oxen to the sea gods". okayyayayyyy. what does it say about me that this whole time, i thought they KILLED MOBY DICK?!?! no, he ended them without a second thought, and as the paragon of what the whole book is talking about, he's right for that. it was a subversion of my expectation, but it brings it all together. i will say, pacing-wise, i think "The Whale" is a better title than Moby Dick.

if you're a big book lover, you have to make your way to this one eventually. if not, don't start here!

i am going to be releasing a pod (hehe) about this on my freeee Patreon, so I'll update this review with the link (here!) when the episode is ready. casual, personal, wavy vibes more so than literary analysis. it's biiiig boook seasoooon