I think that would be The Confidence Man or Pierre. I had a seminar on Melville in grad school, and those were the ones I found the most trying to get through. I liked a lot of his earlier, nautical stuff.
I experienced it differently. I listened to it as an audiobook during my daily commute. I enjoyed it, all of it, but I suppose it’s not exactly the same experience as reading it.
Well listen to this guy:
His spiel is interesting, but I still wouldn't buy his album of body-triggered sound effects. Fundamentally, there's a point at which an artist has ceased trying to entertain and create for his audience, and if the artist can't do that, he's basically stopped being an artist and has instead become a curiosity.I’m listening to the audiobook of In the Heart of the Sea! How timely. I’ve never read Moby Dick because of the reputation that it has of being kind of a slog, but perhaps I’ll do the audiobook now.
To my mind, it’s about obsession - and written obsessively. It isn’t written the way it was by accident! In Moby Dick, he isn’t just telling, he’s also showing: this is what true obsession looks like.
Coincidentally, I came across this recently:
I read it about twenty years ago. I thought it was brilliant. Favorite line: “Angels are but sharks well govern’d.”
Moby Dick is three books.
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A book about the friendship about Queequeq and Ishmael. This contains the early chapters of the book, but is dropped.
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A book about Ahab and his search for Moby Dick. This shows up in various disconnected chapter throughout the book. Much of this is Ahab finding another whaler and asking if they saw the white whale. They’d say “no” and he’d move on. There are only a handful of chapters dealing with this story.
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A nonfiction treatise on the mechanics of whaling, with all the details of the hunt, live aboard the ship, and philosophical musings on the process. This is most of the novel.
#2 also contains most of the main theme and is most of the movie version (with some of #1).
I found #3 to be a fascinating historical document of a forgotten type of work and life. #2 is ok, but a bit too preachy. #1 could have been a fascinating story, especially if Melville had done more with the homosexual subtext (but, of course, he wouldn’t, not only for propriety’s sake, but because “homosexual” was not a word (nor was “subtext”)).
I also enjoyed the description of the mechanics of whaling. I know a lot of people think that part is boring, but I found it fascinating.
Homosexual subtext? Huh. Apparently I was oblivious to that or I just don’t remember.
Another good reason to seek out the Arion Press edition (UC Berkeley Press keeps it in print in paperback). Moser illustrates and diagrams things like the layout of a whaleboat, which makes Melville’s descriptions smoother and more enjoyable reading.
Orson Welles plays Father Mapple in the movie, and delivers the sermon based on the Jonah story. Another excellent scene worth re-watching.
I guess we’ll have to make it a case of chacun a son gout.. I happen to enjoy experimental music (not THAT guy in particular…let’s say Edgard Varese?) and jazz, and people who write weird shit (Melville, Barthelme, Calvino…). I don’t find jazz musicians any more narcissistic than rock musicians or bluegrass players.
Gregory Peck returned to play him Father Mapple in the Patrick Stewart remake (also excellent). Apparently Stewart was intrigued by the quote in the Star Trek: First Contact script, read the book, decided he just had to play Ahab, had his people do lunch with their people, and so on.
There is a chapter where the seamen have to thrust their hands into the spermaceti (the creamy, viscous white fluid) in the whale’s head and just squeeze and squeeze the lumps out of it. They invariably end up squeezing each other’s hands and feeling very loving and brotherly towards each other.
Yeah, I don’t see it either.
Bradbury came up with something utterly brilliant for the ending: having Ahab’s dead body appear to beckon to the crew (Arthur C. Clarke actually references this in his novelization of 2001). It’s such a perfect touch that I had to check the novel to make sure it wasn’t really in there!
Excellent advice! I’d suggest that anyone who’s thinking of reading Moby Dick should seek out a good edition with footnotes, a glossary, etc. Free public domain ebooks are great, I know, but in this case you need those extras.
Here’s the scene of Orson Welles/Father Mapple Moby-Dicking it up.
Ooooooo! Foreshadowing!
I’ve read it during a brief period where I decided to visit the classics on my own rather than whatever the English teacher decided was our required reading for the year. I rank it as the second most painful book I’ve ever read. It doesn’t make the top billing only because I started skipping paragraphs, pages, then entire chapters to speed the fucking story along.
That was, I think, the chapter where I said, “Of, fer the love a Christ,” and gave up. All respect to Melville for his mad chops and all, and there were great bits of the book up to that point, but god help me, I need a plot, and long before the chapter called “Some Things Are White,” I’d decided that the white whale was a metaphor for the book’s plot: rarely seen, mostly submerged, surfacing only once in a great while and then all too quickly diving back down to unknown depths, leaving me with only the unbroken sea of random contemplations on how there are crow’s nests in ships, and here’s a really detailed description of one, but after three pages of description, oh no, that’s not actually the one on our ship, the one on our ship is much simpler, here’s a page of description of this thing sailors stand on, and did I mention that there are other things people stand on? here’s a list, and speaking of which, there are other things that other things stand on, like, oh, say, pedestals, let’s brainstorm what those are!
God help me, I need a plot, and unlike Ahab, I’m not obsessed enough to pursue the plot across all seven seas or seven hundred pages hoping against hope I’ll catch one more glimpse of it. Show me a chapter called “Did You Know There Are Some Things That Are White,” and I’ll say, “Oh, fer the love a Christ,” and go find a different book.
But seriously, I’m very glad other folks like Melville, and I wish I could, too.
Left Hand:. Try the short stories. And “Benito Cerino.”
Wait, forget “Benito Cerino.” Having to read it twice (see my above post) might irritate you to madness.
No need to read all 600 pages. The first sentence sums up the theme (“Call me Ishmael”). That’s the whole story, the rest is just window dressing.