Sign in with Facebook
Ian "Marvin" Graye's Reviews > Moby-Dick: or, The Whale
Moby-Dick: or, The Whale
by
by
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:
Pages xiii to xiv: Etymology of the whale
Pages xv to xxxi: Extracts from mentions of whales in previous literature
Page 1: 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.
Page 9: Ishmael catches a packet to New Bedford
Page 16: Ishmael seeks board and lodging in the Spouter-Inn, which has no vacancies.
Page 21: 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."
Page 35: (Instead,) Ishmael must share a bed with the "savage, heathen" harpooneer, Queequeg.
Page 75: "Thus, then, in our hearts' honeymoon, lay I and Queequeg - a cosy, loving pair."
Page 91: Ishmael arrives in Nantucket.
Page 146: The Pequod departs on its voyage.
Page 152: Ishmael looks "with sympathetic awe and fearfulness upon" Bulkington. "Take heart, take heart, O Bulkington! Bear thee grimly, demigod!"
Page 154: "Queequeg and I are now fairly embarked in this business of whaling."
Pages 162 to 174: Profiles of Starbuck, Stubb, Flask, Tashtego, and Daggoo
Page 176: Captain Ahab finally emerges from his cabin to stand on the quarter-deck.
Pages 190 to 207: A disquisition on cetology
Pages 272 to 283: on the whiteness of the whale
Pages 379 to 395: Pictures of whales and whale artworks
Pages 409 to 415: Stubb kills a whale other than Moby Dick
Pages 431 to 434: Eating whale meat
Pages 435 to 437: Shark attack
Pages 467 to 474: Stubb and Flask kill a Right Whale
Pages 523 to 530: The mythology of whaling
Pages 549 to 565: Attack on a school of Sperm Whales
Pages 571 to 580: The law of whaling
Pages 590 to 593: All you ever needed to know about ambergris
Pages 600 to 604: On squeezing sperm
Pages 650 to 665: The measure of a whale
Pages 666 to 683: Pulling Ahab's leg
Pages 698 to 702: Forging the harpoon
Page 781: There she blows! It's Moby-Dick! (95% of the way into the book!)
Page 792: The sun goes down!
Page 798: Moby-Dick reappears
Pages 810 to 820: They harpoon and struggle with Moby-Dick (and lots of sharks)
Page 822: (view spoiler)
Page 825: (view spoiler) "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, (view spoiler), 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:
(view spoiler)
April 30, 2017
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:
Pages xiii to xiv: Etymology of the whale
Pages xv to xxxi: Extracts from mentions of whales in previous literature
Page 1: 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.
Page 9: Ishmael catches a packet to New Bedford
Page 16: Ishmael seeks board and lodging in the Spouter-Inn, which has no vacancies.
Page 21: 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."
Page 35: (Instead,) Ishmael must share a bed with the "savage, heathen" harpooneer, Queequeg.
Page 75: "Thus, then, in our hearts' honeymoon, lay I and Queequeg - a cosy, loving pair."
Page 91: Ishmael arrives in Nantucket.
Page 146: The Pequod departs on its voyage.
Page 152: Ishmael looks "with sympathetic awe and fearfulness upon" Bulkington. "Take heart, take heart, O Bulkington! Bear thee grimly, demigod!"
Page 154: "Queequeg and I are now fairly embarked in this business of whaling."
Pages 162 to 174: Profiles of Starbuck, Stubb, Flask, Tashtego, and Daggoo
Page 176: Captain Ahab finally emerges from his cabin to stand on the quarter-deck.
Pages 190 to 207: A disquisition on cetology
Pages 272 to 283: on the whiteness of the whale
Pages 379 to 395: Pictures of whales and whale artworks
Pages 409 to 415: Stubb kills a whale other than Moby Dick
Pages 431 to 434: Eating whale meat
Pages 435 to 437: Shark attack
Pages 467 to 474: Stubb and Flask kill a Right Whale
Pages 523 to 530: The mythology of whaling
Pages 549 to 565: Attack on a school of Sperm Whales
Pages 571 to 580: The law of whaling
Pages 590 to 593: All you ever needed to know about ambergris
Pages 600 to 604: On squeezing sperm
Pages 650 to 665: The measure of a whale
Pages 666 to 683: Pulling Ahab's leg
Pages 698 to 702: Forging the harpoon
Page 781: There she blows! It's Moby-Dick! (95% of the way into the book!)
Page 792: The sun goes down!
Page 798: Moby-Dick reappears
Pages 810 to 820: They harpoon and struggle with Moby-Dick (and lots of sharks)
Page 822: (view spoiler)
Page 825: (view spoiler) "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, (view spoiler), 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:
(view spoiler)
April 30, 2017
Sign into Goodreads to see if any of your friends have read
Moby-Dick.
Sign In »
Quotes Ian Liked
“What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it; what cozening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor commands me; that against all natural lovings and longings, I so keep pushing, and crowding, and jamming myself on all the time; recklessly making me ready to do what in my own proper, natural heart, I durst not so much as dare? Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of himself; but is as an errand-boy in heaven; nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible power; how then can this one small heart beat; this one small brain think thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I. By heaven, man, we are turned round and round in this world, like yonder windlass, and Fate is the handspike.”
― Moby-Dick or, The Whale
― Moby-Dick or, The Whale
Reading Progress
April 1, 2011
– Shelved
April 16, 2017
–
Started Reading
April 16, 2017
– Shelved as:
to-read
April 16, 2017
–
0.85%
"A book for these times:
Grand contested election for the Presidency of the United States
Whaling voyage by one Ishmael
Bloody battle in Afghanistan"
page
7
Grand contested election for the Presidency of the United States
Whaling voyage by one Ishmael
Bloody battle in Afghanistan"
April 16, 2017
–
1.82%
"But no more of this blubbering now, we are going a-whaling, and there is plenty of that yet to come."
page
15
April 24, 2017
–
18.0%
"At last the anchor was up, the sails were set, and off we glided...We gave three heavy-hearted cheers, and blindly plunged like fate into the lone Atlantic."
page
148
April 25, 2017
–
18.61%
"Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore?"
page
153
April 26, 2017
–
26.64%
"Though nominally included in the census of Christendom, [Ahab] was still an alien to it. He lived in the world, as the last of the Grisly Bears lived in Missouri. And as when Spring and Summer had departed...lived out the winter there, sucking his own paws, so, in his inclement, howling old age, Ahab's soul, shut up in the caved trunk of his body, there fed upon the sullen paws of its gloom!"
page
219
April 26, 2017
–
28.71%
"Vengeance on a dumb brute that simply smote thee from blandest instinct! Madness! To be enraged with a dumb thing, Captain Ahab, seems blasphemous."
page
236
April 26, 2017
–
29.56%
"The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run."
page
243
April 27, 2017
–
39.9%
"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."
page
328
April 27, 2017
–
40.02%
"There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own."
page
329
April 28, 2017
–
58.15%
"Is it not curious, that so vast a being as the whale should see the world through so small an eye, and hear the thunder through an ear which is smaller than a hare's?"
page
478
April 29, 2017
–
64.11%
"Perseus, St George, Hercules, Jonah, and Vishnoo! There's a member roll for you! What club but the whaleman's can head off like that?"
page
527
April 29, 2017
–
73.11%
"Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humour or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness."
page
601
April 29, 2017
–
77.25%
"What is best let alone, that accursed thing is not always what least allures. He's all a magnet!"
page
635
April 29, 2017
–
86.13%
"'Come aboard, come aboard! cried the gay Bachelor's commander, lifting a glass and a bottle in the air."
page
708
April 30, 2017
– Shelved as:
read-2017
April 30, 2017
– Shelved as:
reviews
April 30, 2017
–
Finished Reading
May 2, 2017
– Shelved as:
reviews-4-stars
June 11, 2022
– Shelved as:
melville
Comments Showing 1-11 of 11 (11 new)
date
newest »
newest »
message 1:
by
Ian
(new)
-
rated it 4 stars
Apr 16, 2017 05:56PM
Let them curse it that curse the day, who are ready to rouse up leviathan.
reply
|
flag
Mega-Dick sounds like a direct-to-video film wherein a robot cetacean returns from the future in order to assassinate the perfume industry.
sologdin wrote: "Mega-Dick sounds like a direct-to-video film wherein a robot cetacean returns from the future in order to assassinate the perfume industry."Don't know it, but I've seen the musical "Amber-Grease", starring Olivia Nantucket-Sailor.
Ian, this makes me want to read Moby Dick just so I can read your review without worrying about spoilers. I stopped where your selective summary of the narrative began. I'm truly tempted to keep reading your review for the delectable delights I anticipate therein. But for now I am sticking with delayed gratification. Once I read Moby Dick, then reading your review will be my reward.
Very mind-expanding with your multifarious multimedia response. I always was short of reasons to take on this read--it's like a great white whale that keeps getting away. If I had a theme to call to me it would help. Like man against nature; or man versus God; man against his own psyche; sublimation gone too far; the karma of civilization's corsets and lamplight. The seeming ambiguity of what the whale represents seems an achievement in itself. For him to put so much into this and eventually end up living an obscure life seems sad.
Sorento62 wrote: "Ian, this makes me want to read Moby Dick just so I can read your review without worrying about spoilers. I stopped where your selective summary of the narrative began. I'm truly tempted to keep re..."Thanks for your kind words. I try not to be spoilerish from a factual point of view, and prefer to discuss themes, though sometimes I can't do that because it involves factual spoilers. The narrative summary was really only intended to be a skeleton and I marked what I thought were spoilers in the last two entries.
I love it when somebody gets a kick out of a review years after it was written. Despite the rumours, I'm not driven by immediate likes or ego.
Michael wrote: "Very mind-expanding with your multifarious multimedia response. I always was short of reasons to take on this read--it's like a great white whale that keeps getting away. If I had a theme to call t..."Thanks, Michael. There's a bit of all that in the White Whale. Definitely, Man against his own nature or psyche...with religion as the spanner in the works.
Now that I have read the Apocyphra, I better understand why the book is the way it is. Thank you for bringing this hitherto unknown information to us all!
Christopher wrote: "Now that I have read the Apocyphra, I better understand why the book is the way it is. Thank you for bringing this hitherto unknown information to us all!"Haha, thanks, Christopher. Needless to say, Melville couldn't embrace the title, "Mega-Dick", which would have ensured it an eternal cult following.
You have to be careful with apocrypha on the internet and GR. I included one in my review of "Gravity's Rainbow", which later turned up (uncredited) as an historical fact in a GR review by someone who didn't get the joke.
A very long review but well done! I read it two years ago and found it exceptional. I will always remember all these ramblings on the anatomy of a whale 🐳. This novel is all about rhythm, Melville slows down the action to create anticipation. The psychological aspect of the book is unrivaled. The sense of isolation and loneliness reveals the very humane character of the protagonists. Besides, some passages are so wonderful and moving. I remember the tears welling.
No one should die without having read Moby Dick. It is just unforgettable 🐳
Hello, Ian-I have now read Moby Dick, and indeed I did return to this review of yours — with relish and delight. Thanks especially for the link to Stephen Colbert’s YouTube rollercoaster Moby Dick lesson.
The book is a peculiar, obstinate idiosyncratic thing. A treasure.
