Moby Dick

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.

it was a good thing the beginning turned out to be so funny. otherwise it would have been hard to press on.

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.

I tried this once, and failed.

the trick is to read it alound in your head in an "salty sea dog" voice

a "salty, er

have had this book out from the library since last...october. progress: 50 pages

Yarrr, a land lubber eee be.

ilx lubber more like it ;.;

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

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.

There is this theory that it is A Meditation On America - as opposed to a meditaton on whales and the maniacs who hunt them.

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...

harold bloom is fat

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.

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.

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. )

A memorable sequence from chap 94, for those who like homoeroticism in their classics...

Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm
till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a
strange sort of insanity came over me; and I found myself unwittingly
squeezing my co-laborers' hands in it, mistaking their hands for the
gentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving
feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was continually
squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally; as
much as to say,--Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish
any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor 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.

Would that I could keep squeezing that sperm for ever!

And this, which I found in reading ABOUt Moby-Dick

The largest monster in antebellum literature was the kraken depicted in Eugene
Batchelder’s Romance of the Sea-Serpent, or The Ichthyosaurus (1849), a bizarre
narrative poem about a sea serpent that terrorizes the coast of Massachusetts,
destroys a huge ship in mid-ocean, repasts on human remains gruesomely
with sharks and whales, attends a Harvard commencement (where he has
been asked to speak), shocks partygoers by appearing at a Newport ball, and
at last is hunted and killed by a fleet of Newport sailors.

I need to read that.

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.

That sounds like a poem I would love!

this book sux

I need to read that.

Full view over at Google Books, I see. It rhymes but it's written out in prose.

Argh! I can't find it. Link, please?

Try this one.

Am so reading that at the w/end.

Slightly better than this at least.

Thank you so much for this! These are the best/worst couplets ever.

Magic! Thank you for the link!

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_CqDk4jAv_Y4/S-eU94J7dCI/AAAAAAAAC50/l-79c_1TmiY/s1600/11.jpg

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"

That sounds like a poem I would love!
--This is four-dimensional art; the 4th dimension is incredibly powerful. (Abbott)

They don't even try to keep a consistent meter. I needed this so bad in my life right now.

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

Oh man, once you've done that, would it be possible for me to purchase one, too?

Can you see this page? http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/a-romance-of-the-sea-serpent-or-the-icthyosaurus-%5Ba-whisky-priest-book%5D/10994552?productTrackingContext=search_results/search_shelf/center/8

Yes! Will it look like the Google book version printed out, or will it have a different layout?

Sadly it will look like the Google Book version (but with library stamps removed): I wanted it fast. But it has endpapers with extra pictures of sea monsters!

I've pretty much given up ;_; perhaps there's an abridged version I could tackle.

I have been pondering whether a version that was all narrative would still work. Anyway, you could try skipping the non-narrative chapters and see how it works. It is pretty much all narrative for the last c. 150 pages - and exciting narrative at that.

If anyone is struggling with Moby Dick, the bastard offspring of TEH AMAZE RANDY has posted a helpful summary of it on Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1289187

About time the random homework googlers have started giving back to ILB.

sweet.

glad rachel's included

Moby-Dick in Macedonian

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.

happy 200th to H.M.!

😍😍😍 pic.twitter.com/t4j5Sg4SIL

— Lee Rourke 🔰 (@LeeRourke) August 1, 2019