― Jaq (Jaq), Tuesday, 29 November 2005 04:54 (fifteen years ago) link
i left off about halfway through and just picked it up again a few weeks ago, and i'm almost done. i agree that it's a much more fun book than ppl say - i actually find all the technical detail about whaling pretty interesting.
― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Tuesday, 29 November 2005 05:01 (fifteen years ago) link
― Abbadabba Berman (Hurting), Tuesday, 29 November 2005 05:30 (fifteen years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Tuesday, 29 November 2005 05:38 (fifteen years ago) link
it was a good thing the beginning turned out to be so funny. otherwise it would have been hard to press on.
― Josh (Josh), Tuesday, 29 November 2005 06:14 (fifteen years ago) link
― wmlynch (wlynch), Tuesday, 29 November 2005 06:36 (fifteen years ago) link
― wmlynch (wlynch), Tuesday, 29 November 2005 06:37 (fifteen years ago) link
― Josh (Josh), Tuesday, 29 November 2005 06:47 (fifteen years ago) link
― o. nate (onate), Tuesday, 29 November 2005 19:21 (fifteen years ago) link
― Dark Horse, Wednesday, 30 November 2005 20:48 (fifteen years ago) link
― steve ketchup, Thursday, 1 December 2005 16:21 (fifteen years ago) link
― Jaq (Jaq), Thursday, 1 December 2005 17:56 (fifteen years ago) link
― jed_ (jed), Friday, 2 December 2005 22:33 (fifteen years ago) link
― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Saturday, 3 December 2005 01:37 (fifteen years ago) link
― tom west (thomp), Saturday, 3 December 2005 03:10 (fifteen years ago) link
― steve ketchup, Saturday, 3 December 2005 05:46 (fifteen years ago) link
― Jaq (Jaq), Friday, 16 December 2005 22:37 (fifteen years ago) link
― Jaq (Jaq), Friday, 16 December 2005 22:43 (fifteen years ago) link
I am almost finished this, reading it for my classic book club. It is an amazing book... I can see where people who hail it as the greatest ever novel in the English language are coming from.
And yes, it is very funny, and it does lots of strange digressions, but when the action gets going, Jesus. The last 100-150 pages of my edition are astonishingly page turning.
― The New Dirty Vicar, Tuesday, 23 March 2010 15:15 (ten years ago) link
I tried this once, and failed.
― quincie, Tuesday, 23 March 2010 15:52 (ten years ago) link
the trick is to read it alound in your head in an "salty sea dog" voice
― Fox Force Five Punchline (sexyDancer), Tuesday, 23 March 2010 15:56 (ten years ago) link
a "salty, er
have had this book out from the library since last...october. progress: 50 pages
― 丫 power (dyao), Tuesday, 23 March 2010 16:01 (ten years ago) link
Yarrr, a land lubber eee be.
― The New Dirty Vicar, Tuesday, 23 March 2010 16:17 (ten years ago) link
ilx lubber more like it ;.;
― it is just like an unknown puzzle till the end of the world (dyao), Tuesday, 23 March 2010 16:20 (ten years ago) link
i find a lot of melville's other work more interesting than moby dick, it was kind of a disappointment when i finally got around to it
― bernardyao (velko), Tuesday, 23 March 2010 16:22 (ten years ago) link
I really enjoyed it when I read it earlier in the year, though I have a fondness for the tone of 19th-century encyclopaedias, which helped, I think.
I'm surprised at those who call it the Great American Novel, not because it's not great, but because it doesn't seem much concerned with America at all.
― Attention please, a child has been lost in the tunnel of goats. (James Morrison), Wednesday, 24 March 2010 23:23 (ten years ago) link
There is this theory that it is A Meditation On America - as opposed to a meditaton on whales and the maniacs who hunt them.
― The New Dirty Vicar, Thursday, 25 March 2010 17:05 (ten years ago) link
H. Bloom loves to compare Ahab to Andrew Jackson (it's been a while; is that conceit in the actual text?)...sometimes I think the "Great American Novel" hype is just because it's a great novel written by an American...
― don't let it rest on the President's desk (Drugs A. Money), Saturday, 27 March 2010 01:50 (ten years ago) link
harold bloom is fat
― velko, Saturday, 27 March 2010 02:49 (ten years ago) link
reading it now - awesome.
"I'm surprised at those who call it the Great American Novel" :
one way of interpretation is to see the novel as an allegory to how destructive totalitarism is as oppose to democracy.in a way, the book is one out of many foundations for the american democracy, as portrait by art.
― Zeno, Tuesday, 4 May 2010 12:54 (ten years ago) link
Have been trying this and I started off really liking it, no problem with the the salty sea-dog prose and the characters were really striking; but then, my god, the endless digressions. History of whaling, crap cetology, how the crow's nest was invented... get on with the story already! I've pretty much given up ;_; perhaps there's an abridged version I could tackle.
― the big pink suede panda bear hurts (ledge), Tuesday, 4 May 2010 16:02 (ten years ago) link
Closer in some ways to Kafka
Which is interesting, because it's always been "Bartleby" that's considered a predessor to Kafka.
Anyway, after you all get done with Moby Dick, go read John Kessel's "Another Orphan," the story of a man who wakes up and becomes a character in that book. (It's much better than that description sounds. Trust me. )
― Christine Green Leafy Dragon Indigo, Tuesday, 4 May 2010 16:35 (ten years ago) link
A memorable sequence from chap 94, for those who like homoeroticism in their classics...
Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that spermtill I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till astrange sort of insanity came over me; and I found myself unwittinglysqueezing my co-laborers' hands in it, mistaking their hands for thegentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, lovingfeeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was continuallysqueezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally; asmuch as to say,--Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherishany social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come;let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves intoeach other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk andsperm of kindness.Would that I could keep squeezing that sperm for ever!
Would that I could keep squeezing that sperm for ever!
― Attention please, a child has been lost in the tunnel of goats. (James Morrison), Wednesday, 5 May 2010 00:21 (ten years ago) link
And this, which I found in reading ABOUt Moby-Dick
The largest monster in antebellum literature was the kraken depicted in EugeneBatchelder’s Romance of the Sea-Serpent, or The Ichthyosaurus (1849), a bizarrenarrative poem about a sea serpent that terrorizes the coast of Massachusetts,destroys a huge ship in mid-ocean, repasts on human remains gruesomelywith sharks and whales, attends a Harvard commencement (where he hasbeen asked to speak), shocks partygoers by appearing at a Newport ball, andat last is hunted and killed by a fleet of Newport sailors.
I need to read that.
― Attention please, a child has been lost in the tunnel of goats. (James Morrison), Thursday, 6 May 2010 00:38 (ten years ago) link
Christ, now there's a mission - I like to imagine the nanosecond I submit my interlibary form (as I most certainly will), it'll come back NO! NO! NO! with no other explanation given.
― R Baez, Thursday, 6 May 2010 18:14 (ten years ago) link
That sounds like a poem I would love!
― This is four-dimensional art; the 4th dimension is incredibly powerful. (Abbott), Thursday, 6 May 2010 19:54 (ten years ago) link
this book sux
― coining (Lamp), Thursday, 6 May 2010 19:55 (ten years ago) link
Full view over at Google Books, I see. It rhymes but it's written out in prose.
― alimosina, Thursday, 6 May 2010 20:17 (ten years ago) link
Argh! I can't find it. Link, please?
― Attention please, a child has been lost in the tunnel of goats. (James Morrison), Thursday, 6 May 2010 23:27 (ten years ago) link
Try this one.
― alimosina, Friday, 7 May 2010 15:13 (ten years ago) link
Am so reading that at the w/end.
― I had gained ten lewis (ledge), Friday, 7 May 2010 15:17 (ten years ago) link
Slightly better than this at least.
― alimosina, Saturday, 8 May 2010 03:31 (ten years ago) link
Thank you so much for this! These are the best/worst couplets ever.
― This is four-dimensional art; the 4th dimension is incredibly powerful. (Abbott), Saturday, 8 May 2010 03:53 (ten years ago) link
Magic! Thank you for the link!
― Attention please, a child has been lost in the tunnel of goats. (James Morrison), Sunday, 9 May 2010 23:53 (ten years ago) link
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_CqDk4jAv_Y4/S-eU94J7dCI/AAAAAAAAC50/l-79c_1TmiY/s1600/11.jpg
― Did you in fact lift my luggage (dyao), Monday, 10 May 2010 06:10 (ten years ago) link
Thank you for the link!
Heck, I'd never heard of this, uh, marvel until your post.
Abbott's next paper... "Polarities of Prophetic Vision: Paradise Lost and Romance of the Sea-Serpent"
― alimosina, Monday, 10 May 2010 13:35 (ten years ago) link
That sounds like a poem I would love! --This is four-dimensional art; the 4th dimension is incredibly powerful. (Abbott)
― mrsameh31, Wednesday, 12 May 2010 06:07 (ten years ago) link
They don't even try to keep a consistent meter. I needed this so bad in my life right now.
― This is four-dimensional art; the 4th dimension is incredibly powerful. (Abbott), Monday, 17 May 2010 20:08 (ten years ago) link
I'm designing myself a POD edition. Too 'good' not to have a physical copy.
http://static.lulu.com/product/item/a-romance-of-the-sea-serpent-or-the-icthyosaurus-%5Ba-whisky-priest-book%5D/10994552/thumbnail/320
― Attention please, a child has been lost in the tunnel of goats. (James Morrison), Tuesday, 18 May 2010 00:05 (ten years ago) link
glad rachel's included
― the white queen and her caustic judgments (difficult listening hour), Monday, 15 April 2013 00:16 (seven years ago) link
Moby-Dick in Macedonian
― xyzzzz__, Thursday, 31 August 2017 21:45 (three years ago) link
started reading this on a plane last week and i'm totally absorbed. every sentence is an adventure. it totally speaks to that 7-year-old version of me that wanted to obsessively catalog every species of shark, or 5-year-old me who knew all the dinosaurs. i haven't reached the cetalogy chapter (only just met Ahab and the Pequod), but i think i'm prepared.
― voodoo chili, Thursday, 23 August 2018 18:58 (two years ago) link
happy 200th to H.M.!
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Thursday, 1 August 2019 18:02 (one year ago) link
😍😍😍 pic.twitter.com/t4j5Sg4SIL— Lee Rourke 🔰 (@LeeRourke) August 1, 2019
― xyzzzz__, Friday, 2 August 2019 09:55 (one year ago) link
Good meme. Good book. Good whale.RFI: academic work on Ahab as Shakespearean pastiche?
― Swilling Ambergris, Esq. (silby), Friday, 24 January 2020 20:31 (one year ago) link
yeah that meme is good. i have forgotten pretty much all the cetalogical facts i learned reading this book a decade ago
― bidenfan69420 (jim in vancouver), Friday, 24 January 2020 20:32 (one year ago) link
"facts" like "whales are fish"
― culture of mayordom (voodoo chili), Friday, 24 January 2020 20:33 (one year ago) link
best chapter imo is when Ishamel is talking about hanging out with his multiple boyfriends in Peru or something months after the end of the book
― Swilling Ambergris, Esq. (silby), Friday, 24 January 2020 20:36 (one year ago) link
melville's argument for "whales are fish" is lol scientists they have none of them been to sea, whalers know a LOT abt whales so they also get to say what they ARE
this argument is correct in all its reaches
― mark s, Friday, 24 January 2020 21:08 (one year ago) link
is a fish a sandwich?
― I have not yet begun to fart (rip van wanko), Friday, 24 January 2020 21:10 (one year ago) link
it's a hot dog
― Οὖτις, Friday, 24 January 2020 21:12 (one year ago) link
mark s otm and also getting at why the whale facts are not rly distractions: in general this is a book about interpretation and understanding
― difficult listening hour, Friday, 24 January 2020 21:17 (one year ago) link
i love the section where he's asking "what actual shape is a whale ffs? can any of us know?"
― mark s, Friday, 24 January 2020 21:26 (one year ago) link
one grand hooded phantom
― difficult listening hour, Friday, 24 January 2020 21:27 (one year ago) link
I just read this (for the first time) a couple years ago and I might already want to read it again
― Swilling Ambergris, Esq. (silby), Friday, 24 January 2020 21:29 (one year ago) link
https://miro.medium.com/max/1600/1*YRmtU6nrcbETqAhsOz1Aag.jpeg
whales... are fish
― difficult listening hour, Friday, 24 January 2020 21:31 (one year ago) link
reading the chapter called "the cassock" for the first time and just never stopping saying WTF ever since
― mark s, Friday, 24 January 2020 21:35 (one year ago) link
Yeah yeah, I think the fact that so much of the ~whale science~ is wrong and/or presumptive is a large part of what makes those sections interesting. Deepens the sense of UNKNOWABLE that permeates the book. Also it’s just kinda neat.
― circa1916, Friday, 24 January 2020 21:39 (one year ago) link
post-mortemizing
― Swilling Ambergris, Esq. (silby), Friday, 24 January 2020 21:48 (one year ago) link
otm all around, i loved the whale facts chapters (whiteness of the whale otoh...), especially the part where he bids adieu to the sulphur bottom whale lol
― culture of mayordom (voodoo chili), Friday, 24 January 2020 22:02 (one year ago) link
Read it for a third time last year, the only book I’ve re-read in 20 or more years, gets more fun every time. The wrong science in the whale chapters never bothers me bc it always just ends up being in the service of teeing up some philosophical point in the last couple paragraphs anyhow, it’s never about actually teaching u about whales.
― warn me about a lurking rake (One Eye Open), Friday, 24 January 2020 23:42 (one year ago) link
It was a good companion getting me through the dark weeks after USA Election Day 2016, I picked it up the morning after, thought it might be good to get a refresher on how to exist in a world filled with random disasters & unknowable evils
― warn me about a lurking rake (One Eye Open), Friday, 24 January 2020 23:49 (one year ago) link
this time of year I always think about the passage early in the book where he talks about the special joy of looking out at cold winter night from a warm cozy indoor perch: it maketh a marvellous difference, whether thou lookest out at it from a glass window where the frost is all on the outside, or whether thou observest it from that sashless window, where the frost is on both sides... What a fine frosty night; how Orion glitters; what northern lights! Let them talk of their oriental summer climes of everlasting conservatories; give me the privilege of making my own summer with my own coals.
Also the part slightly later where he talks about how you cant fully enjoy being under a warm blanket in a cold room unless some part of you is sticking out to feel the cold & remind you how good you have it.
― warn me about a lurking rake (One Eye Open), Friday, 24 January 2020 23:56 (one year ago) link
Love the whole book, but I miss Ishmael’s narration/asides when the book becomes more plot/Ahab/Starbuck focused towards the end.
― culture of mayordom (voodoo chili), Saturday, 25 January 2020 00:17 (one year ago) link
i listened to e1 of talia levin's BIG MOBY DICK ENERGY podcast on stitcher: my conclusion is that the title and music have already palled but the discussion is engaging enough, bcz very enthusiastic (1st guest = ex-deadspin writer david roth) if not particularly deep so far*
*(viz they were both oddly stumped by what happens in the tale of lazarus and dives, possibly partly bcz this was a call forward to the next chapter which they hadn't reread with a view to discussing it, but still decided to discuss it anyway lol) (i mean i get not knowing much abt the new testament if you didn't grew up with it as an adjunct in yr education but it is probably going to be kind of an important element?)
― mark s, Saturday, 25 January 2020 15:42 (one year ago) link
anyway:
let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness— Moby Dick (@MobyDickatSea) January 25, 2020
― mark s, Saturday, 25 January 2020 15:52 (one year ago) link
I found critical biography among the most illuminating I've read about any novelist/poet in recent years.
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 25 January 2020 16:05 (one year ago) link
Is Ishmael a reference beyond the name? Not very familiar with lesser biblical figures.
― Stevolende, Saturday, 25 January 2020 16:14 (one year ago) link
He was Abraham's son with his wife's handmaid Hagar.
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 25 January 2020 16:18 (one year ago) link
Ishmael was the child of Abraham and his wife’s servant Hagar, who was cast out from the family after Abraham and Sarah’s son Isaac was born. God promised to make Ishmael a great nation as well, separate from the line of Abraham that became the tribes of the Hebrews. So Ishmael might be a name implying wanderings, being an outsider, heterodoxy…
― Swilling Ambergris, Esq. (silby), Saturday, 25 January 2020 16:18 (one year ago) link
patriach of Islam too
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 25 January 2020 16:19 (one year ago) link
There is a big picture of Melville in the cafe at the South Street Seaport location of McNally-Jackson bookstore which is quite appropriate.
― TS: Kirk/Spock vs. Marat/Sade (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 25 January 2020 16:33 (one year ago) link
It has that quality of the eyes seeming to follow you about, like the portrait or a certain patriarch of the family Flintstone.
― TS: Kirk/Spock vs. Marat/Sade (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 25 January 2020 16:38 (one year ago) link
god this is the best book ever. the way the "whale facts" chapters either explained things that had just happened or foreshadowed things to come was intoxicating, i always felt i was like running through these alleyways of lowkey narrative that inextricably bound the "actual" narrative
― american bradass (BradNelson), Saturday, 25 January 2020 16:42 (one year ago) link
i have a moby-dick tattoo that i'm not embarrassed about, that is how much i love it
― american bradass (BradNelson), Saturday, 25 January 2020 16:44 (one year ago) link
Sick
― Swilling Ambergris, Esq. (silby), Saturday, 25 January 2020 16:45 (one year ago) link
I found Melville's poems harder going than Moby-Dick.
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 25 January 2020 16:47 (one year ago) link
I tried to read Confidence Man, wasn't happening
― I have not yet begun to fart (rip van wanko), Saturday, 25 January 2020 16:59 (one year ago) link
that's my least favorite of the novels I've read
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 25 January 2020 17:04 (one year ago) link
god this is the best book ever
literally true
i only know about lazarus+dives because they're a recurring symbol in MLK sermons
― difficult listening hour, Saturday, 25 January 2020 18:27 (one year ago) link
I started trying to read Confidence Man cos Nick Cave was said to be a fan. Think I got a couple of chapters in. Must give it another go. This 30+years later.
― Stevolende, Saturday, 25 January 2020 18:29 (one year ago) link
i picked his book of civil war poems recently and it was really a chore, tough going indeed
― warn me about a lurking rake (One Eye Open), Saturday, 25 January 2020 19:36 (one year ago) link
christ, this revive scared me, i thought maybe melville had died or something
― revenge of the jawn (rushomancy), Saturday, 25 January 2020 22:31 (one year ago) link
No, but 🚨 SPOILER/TRIGGER ALERT 🚨 I believe Billy Budd, Sailor is now in the public domain.
― TS: Kirk/Spock vs. Marat/Sade (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 26 January 2020 01:07 (one year ago) link
Confidence Man is great, you guys mad.
― Tsar Bombadil (James Morrison), Sunday, 26 January 2020 01:14 (one year ago) link
It was a popular choice when I was in high school, don’t know if that’s a relevant data point.
― TS: Kirk/Spock vs. Marat/Sade (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 26 January 2020 01:18 (one year ago) link
Confidence is really good. Better than his poems, surely.
― xyzzzz__, Sunday, 26 January 2020 11:12 (one year ago) link
Alfred not liking Confidence Man, liking Ad Astra, world is mad.
― Tsar Bombadil (James Morrison), Tuesday, 4 February 2020 08:37 (one year ago) link
my curvy cetacean wife
This excerpt from a rejection letter to Melville re Moby Dick is just amazing.the more things change... pic.twitter.com/dRaelwdlaG— Andrey (@andreyp_ap) January 21, 2021
― mookieproof, Friday, 22 January 2021 20:07 (one month ago) link