Couldn't finish Moby Dick: Am I dumb?

[Malthus]

Moby Dick is a novel about obsession, written obsessively. I myself found it wonderful, but I can well understand why someone would not.

[Snickers]

IIRC, every other chapter continues the basic story. The alternate ones contain everything and anything there is to know about hunting sperm whales. When I read it, I skipped every other chapter and voila, Bob’s your uncle.

[davidm]

I found the stuff about whales in general and specifically the hunting of sperm whales to be fascinating.

For example, Melville talked about the fact that whales have their eyes on opposite sides of their heads rather than facing forward and therefore have two separate fields of view.

He wondered about what their inner experience of vision was like because of this. Can they only focus their attention on one eye or the other at a time? Are they aware of and processing both inputs at the same time? What is their experience? Two images side by side? I had never thought about any of this or just how alien the day to day experience of some creatures must be compared to what I experience as a human.

He talked about how they must be blind as to what’s in front of them and wondered how they dealt with that. I found that interesting because we now know about their sonar capabilities but of course Melville wouldn’t have been aware of that.

He gave his totally unsound reasoning as to why he believed that sperm whales could never be over-fished and why there would always be a plentiful supply. It was an interesting look at the mindset of people at that time (and too many people of our time).

I guess I’m the kind of person who likes that kind of stuff. Others find it boring.

[Scougs]

If it was the version from The Song Remains The Same, I’m not surprised.

What?

[BigT]

@Enterprise

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.

I know nothing of Moby Dick, but the post you are countering says that the novel was written well before it was published, so a review after publication would not be valid.

And it is informative to explain that something did not do well commercially as it shows that the OP is not alone in not liking the book. While there are other factors that go into whether a book sells well, such as low publicity, these do not seem to be an issue with a popular writer.

[Enterprise]

@BigT

I know nothing of Moby Dick, but the post you are countering says that the novel was written well before it was published, so a review after publication would not be valid.

And it is informative to explain that something did not do well commercially as it shows that the OP is not alone in not liking the book. While there are other factors that go into whether a book sells well, such as low publicity, these do not seem to be an issue with a popular writer.

No, I think you’re misunderstanding that post: the book was forgotten after publication (in fact, not so much forgotten as not sold–there was a 1892 or so reprint of Moby Dick, directly after Melville’s death), not as a manuscript. Melville wrote Moby Dick rather quickly in winter 1850/1851, and had it published almost immediately after finishing, in England.

And I fully agree that it’s useful to understand why things don’t sell. However, it’s not useful to make claims about a book that are doubtful at best, such as calling it a sentimental novel or claiming that it was conventional, when it manifestly was not.

[hogarth]

I usually bring a long, dense book with me when I’m travelling by plane, and Moby-Dick certainly fit the bill (I read it on a trip to China). But once I got into it, I thought it was quite funny.

I can see that it wouldn’t be everyone’s cup of tea, though. Similarly, I wasn’t a big fan of Tristram Shandy, but some people think that’s equally hilarious and/or mind-blowing.

[Pixel_Dent]

Just watch Wrath of Khan instead. The plot’s the same and much of the dialog is taken directly from the book.

I actually liked Moby Dick quite a lot when I read it as a Senior in High School. I suspect as other people have pointed it out it was because of the cetology section and the hundred page digressions into the minutia of whaling rather than in spite of it. Even without the narrative that would be the sort of book I’m attracted to.

[Acsenray]

Studio 360 did a fascinating show on Moby Dick. I’d recommend listening to it, in case it offers a new way to approach the book – http://www.studio360.org/2011/dec/30/

[Freddy_the_Pig]

@No Wikipedia Cites

I made it for the first few chapters through willpower, but it just kept going on about the motel the narrator was staying at, going into big detail about his bed arrangements. It also kept spending many words trying to set up the mood in the whaling port, which I thought would be better set for the ship itself.

I liked the chatty, pre-voyage first-hand narrative part of Moby Dick better. I love the scene where Ishmael signs up with the two Quakers–“the seven hundred and seventy-seventh lay wouldn’t be too much, would it, Bildad?”

Later on, the narrator vanishes (he never speaks or interacts with the other characters in the second half of the book), the story converges on Captain Ahab and the whale, and things get turgid. (And I don’t mean the whale’s member.)

So if you didn’t like the first part, maybe you’d like the second part better. Or maybe you’d hate it even more. There’s only one way to tell.

[Baal_Houtham]

@Freddy_the_Pig

I liked the chatty, pre-voyage first-hand narrative part of Moby Dick better.

I had a similar experience. I really enjoyed the opening, but after the voyage started and the Christian symbolism took center stage it became nearly unreadable. The Christian symbolism was obvious and, to me, devoid of mythic power. Okay, the first mate (I think) is acting like the Prince of Darkness. Okay. And… being pretty damn boring doing so. And not advancing the story arc that I can see. And there’s another symbolic thingie. Sigh.

[Ruffian]

Billy Budd scared me off Melville forever. When I encountered a six-page paragraph describing the ship, I was out. I finished it because I had to–read it as a junior in high school–but WOW. Doestoevsky was Dr. Seuss in comparison.

[davidm]

@Freddy_the_Pig

I liked the chatty, pre-voyage first-hand narrative part of Moby Dick better. I love the scene where Ishmael signs up with the two Quakers–“the seven hundred and seventy-seventh lay wouldn’t be too much, would it, Bildad?”

Later on, the narrator vanishes (he never speaks or interacts with the other characters in the second half of the book), the story converges on Captain Ahab and the whale, and things get turgid. (And I don’t mean the whale’s member.)

So if you didn’t like the first part, maybe you’d like the second part better. Or maybe you’d hate it even more. There’s only one way to tell.

The pre-voyage narrative was probably my favorite part. I enjoyed Ishmael meeting Queequeg.

[gigi]

@Pixel_Dent

Just watch Wrath of Khan instead. The plot’s the same and much of the dialog is taken directly from the book.

Call me ISHMAAAEEEEEL! ::shakes fist

So I asked my father the English major whether he had read it. His face lights up “It’s one of the greatest American novels”. “Even though there’s a whole chapter about the color white?” “Oh, that’s all about good and evil…”

I still don’t think I can make it through it.