# Couldn't finish Moby Dick: Am I dumb? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [December 16, 2012, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/couldnt-finish-moby-dick-am-i-dumb/644186 "2012-12-16T15:43:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Eugene\_of\_Sandwich](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c37758/32.png) [@Eugene\_of\_Sandwich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eugene_of_Sandwich)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2012, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/couldnt-finish-moby-dick-am-i-dumb/644186/21 "2012-12-16T23:57:18Z")
I quit the first time, too. It’s not an action yarn. It’s a literary gem. Hope that helps. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2012, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/couldnt-finish-moby-dick-am-i-dumb/644186/22 "2012-12-17T00:28:08Z")
> [@davidm](#): > > **Smeghead** , did you listen to the one narrated by Stewart Wills? Uh…I have no idea. Is there more than one version there? I listened to most of it on a couple of 13 hour drives to and from a relative’s house for Thanksgiving. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2012, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/couldnt-finish-moby-dick-am-i-dumb/644186/23 "2012-12-17T00:35:54Z")
I loved _Moby Dick_. I’d already read Victor B. Schaeffer’s _The Year of the Whale_, which follows a year in the life of a sperm whale, and he constantly refers to _Moby Dick_. There’s a lot in there – not just Ahab vs. the Whale and Ishmael and Queequeg, but also the Business and Mechanics of Whaling, and the Symbolism of the Whale. I can understand getting bored with it – I’ve been bored with other Meliville works, some of which I had to give up on. If it helps, Moby Dick hasn’t been a best-seller since it was written, and for a time Meliville was viewed as a minor and obscure writer, but he came back in the 20th century. Moby Dick has been adapted for the screen at least three times. ---
**Author:** ![BrotherCadfael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@BrotherCadfael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrotherCadfael)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2012, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/couldnt-finish-moby-dick-am-i-dumb/644186/24 "2012-12-17T00:40:25Z")
> [@Edward\_The\_Head](#): > > I’ve tried a lot of Russian lit, can finish it. Heinlein claimed that the great Russian novels are even more impenetrable in the original Russian. ---
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2012, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/couldnt-finish-moby-dick-am-i-dumb/644186/25 "2012-12-17T00:40:48Z")
Try some shorter Melville first, to set the lights down low and get you “in the mood.” “Bartleby the Scrivener” is also a _bona fide_ literary classic, very rewarding. “Benito Cerino” is lesser known, but is a _tour de force_ of horror and suspense…the only piece of fiction I had to read IMMEDIATELY over just after I finished it, to find out whut-th’-hail had been going on while I was reading it the FIRST time. Which is what Melville wanted you to do, I’m sure. He was such a trickster!!! ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2012, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/couldnt-finish-moby-dick-am-i-dumb/644186/26 "2012-12-17T00:43:32Z")
[John Astin](http://hub.jhu.edu/magazine/2012/summer/staging-a-revival) was almost frightened out of the arts because of it: > [@](#): > > Astin had received a scholarship to study mathematics, and he wasn’t about to dally in the arts and letters. Once humiliated by a high school English teacher, who responded to his misreading of Moby-Dick by calling him a cretin—“I had characterized it as a fine adventure but thought at times it was like one long plug for the whaling industry,” he says with a shake of the head—Astin was hardly game for studying humanities: “I was devastated by this. I had so much rage. I vowed never to take English again.” > [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > We also had to read Billy Budd, which was shorter and easier to get through. And we were convinced that there was a gay subtext to that novel, which our teacher denied. (It seemed obvious that the master who falsely accused Billy Budd was in love or lust with him.) _Billy Budd_ was totally gay. And since Billy was a Christ figure the narrator had a hard-on for Jesus. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2012, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/couldnt-finish-moby-dick-am-i-dumb/644186/27 "2012-12-17T00:54:46Z")
> [@Ukulele\_Ike](#): > > Try some shorter Melville first, to set the lights down low and get you “in the mood.” > > “Bartleby the Scrivener” is also a _bona fide_ literary classic, very rewarding. I would prefer not to. 😉 It was a perfect portrait of the sort of person drawn to scrivenery, drafting, and other careers for the OCDs among us who think that there are worse ways to make a living than staring a a sheet of paper, making sure every detail is exact. A psychologist once told me, “At least you chose the right profession.” ---
**Author:** ![amarinth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3be4f8/32.png) [@amarinth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amarinth)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2012, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/couldnt-finish-moby-dick-am-i-dumb/644186/28 "2012-12-17T01:00:27Z")
I’m listening to/reading along with it now with the [Moby Dick Big Read](http://mobydickbigread.com/) where various artists (some of whom you’ve actually heard of) read a chapter a day. And I like it so far. Breaking into chunks helps, as does not having to worry about symbolism or parallels to other 19th century literature or whatever else English teachers try to do with it. Someone also said to think of it as a blog by some guy named Ishmael who occasionally posts long rambling discourses on whale fishing and has a tendency to get lost in the middle of his posts. It works surprisingly well taken like that. ---
**Author:** ![Jenaroph](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e8c25b/32.png) [@Jenaroph](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jenaroph)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2012, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/couldnt-finish-moby-dick-am-i-dumb/644186/29 "2012-12-17T02:31:16Z")
I read it for leisure and personally enjoyed it, but I’ve always enjoyed stories that go off on long tangents in excruciating detail about obscure, long dead professions. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2012, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/couldnt-finish-moby-dick-am-i-dumb/644186/30 "2012-12-17T02:33:41Z")
> [@Sattua](#): > > I put it in a group of literature that includes Proust… beautiful, purposeless writing. Just let the words wash around you. There is that, but reading like that is almost as uncommon as books to do it with these days. Though nobody ever called Wells a great writer I like to do that with the beginning of _War of the Worlds._ It was a different time. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2012, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/couldnt-finish-moby-dick-am-i-dumb/644186/31 "2012-12-17T04:40:20Z")
It isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. It is a way to pass time with beautifully written prose that at times is high falutin’ and at times deliberately tedious. It is not meant to be read by a person in a hurry, but by somebody who can and will sit by the seaside or in a cafe all day long. ---
**Author:** ![notsoheavyd3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/85e7bf/32.png) [@notsoheavyd3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/notsoheavyd3)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2012, 5:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/couldnt-finish-moby-dick-am-i-dumb/644186/32 "2012-12-17T05:26:25Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > followed by _The Old Man and the Sea_ Dear god no! Please not “Old Man and the Sea”, anything but that. I mean I barely finished it. It’s basically a 20 page short story padded out to a 100 pages. It seemed as though 50 plus pages were devoted to “Hey the sea looks nice today”. Ernie, I get it. Most of the time fishing is fucking boring. I’ve been fishing before, I already knew most of the time nothing happens. You didn’t have to go nuts overdoing it by making most of your book pointless. (If I wanted that experience I wouldn’t read your book you drunk, I’d just go fishing instead.) Gee, can anybody tell I’m not much of a fan of that book?😃 ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2012, 7:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/couldnt-finish-moby-dick-am-i-dumb/644186/33 "2012-12-17T07:31:14Z")
FWIW, the STAR TREK episode “The Doomsday Machine” was their version of Ahab and the Whale.\* 🆒 \*This is according to Leonard Nimoy. ---
**Author:** ![Enterprise](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/76d3ee/32.png) [@Enterprise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enterprise)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2012, 8:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/couldnt-finish-moby-dick-am-i-dumb/644186/34 "2012-12-17T08:22:47Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > No one read it at the time it was written. > > Melville was attempting to write a best seller, so the book is firmly in the tradition of the 19th century sentimental novel. That type of novel is long defunct and since no one nowadays has ever read one (I have), no one realizes that he was being extremely conventional for the time. The main thing lacking was a romance. > > […] > > The book was completely forgotten for years, until the sentimental novel was long dead and critics didn’t know where Melville was coming from. It was other authors who were advancing the novel at the time it came out, and the more astute critics passed over it because of its sentimental roots (which they were getting away from) while the more traditional critics didn’t like the way it strayed from the formula. That’s not totally true, I don’t think. In fact, I would venture to suggest it’s false, except there’s often not much chance to establish false readings in literature…where do you see sentimentalism in _Moby Dick_, not even to talk about “firmly within the tradition”? At any rate, to suggest that _Moby Dick_ is a conventional novel for its time is to misunderstand what conventions were like in 1850. From a London review: “There is so much eccentricity in its style and in its construction, in the original conception and in the gradual development of its strange and improbable story, that we are at a loss to determine in what category of works of amusement to place it.” Most reviewers were agreed on the technical description, even though their judgments varied–and as far as I can tell off hand, they were about evenly split between praise and blame. For all that, _Moby Dick_ did not do well commercially, it is true, but it seems an odd thing to me, at least, that people keep mentioning this as though it was a mark of anything but the fact that it didn’t sell well. Early Melville (_Typee_ to _Mardi_, even into _White Jacket_) was pretty conventional, and much better received, than _Moby Dick_, of course. However, those conventions were not those of the sentimental novel alone (many people will have read one, actually–_David Copperfield_, for instance) which itself was a genre on the way out, but rather of the romance, a much broader genre. And it’s similarly problematical to separate the reviewers of the novel into critics and authors–many critics, Melville included, were themselves authors. ---
**Author:** ![don\_t\_ask](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@don\_t\_ask](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/don_t_ask)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2012, 8:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/couldnt-finish-moby-dick-am-i-dumb/644186/35 "2012-12-17T08:58:33Z")
> [@The\_Second\_Stone](#): > > It isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. It is a way to pass time with beautifully written prose that at times is high falutin’ and at times deliberately tedious. It is not meant to be read by a person in a hurry, but by somebody who can and will sit by the seaside or in a cafe all day long. Or sit reading aloud by the bed of a friend in a deep, deep coma. I don’t think one need apologise for failing to finish a book that has a chapter about just how white that whale was. With a bonus explanation of what white is: _Or is it, that as in essence whiteness is not so much a color as the visible absence of color; and at the same time the concrete of all colors…_ ---
**Author:** ![glaeken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@glaeken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glaeken)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2012, 11:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/couldnt-finish-moby-dick-am-i-dumb/644186/36 "2012-12-17T11:03:03Z")
I did make it through Moby Dick but would rate it as one of the toughest books I have ever read when it came to maintaining my interest level. There is just so much padding around the central story it seems the plot progresses for only about one page in every twenty. I do read a lot of older books and you do find the pacing was certainly much slower than modern readers might be used to but Moby Dick takes it to a whole different level. I would say there is a good short story in there trying to get out from under the weight of 400 pages of padding. If you do want to know every minute detail about 19th century Whaling though it would be right up your street. ---
**Author:** ![iamnotbatman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/858c86/32.png) [@iamnotbatman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamnotbatman)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2012, 11:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/couldnt-finish-moby-dick-am-i-dumb/644186/37 "2012-12-17T11:10:52Z")
> [@](#): > > 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. I found finishing MD to be a bit of a slog, but I found scattered throughout the book enough succulent nuggets to make it heartily memorable. ---
**Author:** ![Cayuga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/3e96dc/32.png) [@Cayuga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cayuga)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2012, 12:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/couldnt-finish-moby-dick-am-i-dumb/644186/38 "2012-12-17T12:04:01Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > I actually enjoyed _Moby Dick_ and have even read it aloud to one of my kids. How long did that take? It took me a month or so to read my daughter _Little House on the Prairie_. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2012, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/couldnt-finish-moby-dick-am-i-dumb/644186/39 "2012-12-17T17:22:40Z")
> [@don\_t\_ask](#): > > I don’t think one need apologise for failing to finish a book that has a chapter about just how white that whale was. With a bonus explanation of what white is: > > _Or is it, that as in essence whiteness is not so much a color as the visible absence of color; and at the same time the concrete of all colors…_ Early on I decided that the book’s plot was a metaphor for whaling…buried deep beneath the sea of the chapters was the plot, and once in a long while the plot would surface, and I’d shout, “THAR SHE BLOWS!” before the plot dove out of sight, and the long wait for something, goddamn **anything** to happen would recommence. When I hit the chapter about people standing on top of crows nests, no, make that people standing on top of things, no, make that things on top of other things, like statues and shit, anyway people on crows nests, and here’s a five page description of a totally awesome crows-nest with like a wet bar and everything, but no, that’s not the kind of crow’s nest this ship has–that chapter was when I felt the end approaching. When I realized I was reading a chapter about the color white, I threw in the towel, was done. I, unlike Ahab, wasn’t determined to kill my whale, and the plot dove forever beneath the surface. ---
**Author:** ![davidm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidm/32/225_2.png) [@davidm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidm)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2012, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/couldnt-finish-moby-dick-am-i-dumb/644186/40 "2012-12-17T18:12:43Z")
> [@Smeghead](#): > > Uh…I have no idea. Is there more than one version there? > > I listened to most of it on a couple of 13 hour drives to and from a relative’s house for Thanksgiving. I think there’s another version where each chapter is read by a different narrator. If yours had the same narrator all the way through then it’s probably the one I listened to. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/couldnt-finish-moby-dick-am-i-dumb/644186.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/couldnt-finish-moby-dick-am-i-dumb/644186.md?page=3)