Moby Dick

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

Good meme. Good book. Good whale.

RFI: academic work on Ahab as Shakespearean pastiche?

yeah that meme is good. i have forgotten pretty much all the cetalogical facts i learned reading this book a decade ago

"facts" like "whales are fish"

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

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

is a fish a sandwich?

it's a hot dog

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

i love the section where he's asking "what actual shape is a whale ffs? can any of us know?"

one grand hooded phantom

I just read this (for the first time) a couple years ago and I might already want to read it again

https://miro.medium.com/max/1600/1*YRmtU6nrcbETqAhsOz1Aag.jpeg

whales... are fish

reading the chapter called "the cassock" for the first time and just never stopping saying WTF ever since

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.

post-mortemizing

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

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.

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

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.

Love the whole book, but I miss Ishmael’s narration/asides when the book becomes more plot/Ahab/Starbuck focused towards the end.

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?)

anyway:

let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness

— Moby Dick (@MobyDickatSea) January 25, 2020

I found critical biography among the most illuminating I've read about any novelist/poet in recent years.

Is Ishmael a reference beyond the name? Not very familiar with lesser biblical figures.

That mix of levity and casual profundity feels so modern to me.

where pynchon came from for sure:

We resumed business; and while plying our spoons in the bowl, thinks I to myself, I wonder now if this here has any effect on the head? What's that stultifying saying about chowder-headed people? "But look, Queequeg, ain't that a live eel in your bowl? Where's your harpoon?"

Fishiest of all fishy places was the Try Pots, which well deserved its name; for the pots there were always boiling chowders. Chowder for breakfast, and chowder for dinner, and chowder for supper, till you began to look for fish-bones coming through your clothes. The area before the house was paved with clamshells. Mrs. Hussey wore a polished necklace of codfish vertebra; and Hosea Hussey had his account books bound in superior old sharkskin. There was a fishy flavor to the milk, too, which I could not at all account for, till one morning happening to take a stroll along the beach among some fishermen's boats, I saw Hosea's brindled cow feeding on fish remnants, and marching along the sand with each foot in a cod's decapitated head, looking very slip-shod, I assure ye.

Now I want chowder

straight into my veins

would anyone buy a copy of MD printed in Comic Sans font?

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2701/2701-h/2701-h.htm#link2HCH0040

at the right price, i would buy anything printed in comic sans

that and papyrus are the classic "buy low" font opportunities, because the book buying public is only going to appreciate these classic fonts more and more as the years pass

AZORE SAILOR. (Dancing) Go it, Pip! Bang it, bell-boy! Rig it, dig it, stig it, quig it, bell-boy! Make fire-flies; break the jinglers!

https://imgur.com/0j1EgJP

https://i.imgur.com/0j1EgJP.png

now available in comic sans font

https://a.co/d/g9XuSaw

the link i s to this btw

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BMY5LC1L?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&ref_=cm_sw_r_cp_ud_dp_XPN5ERWC7BDT5NDGK4Z1

https://hinionge.substack.com/p/late-evening-daydream-of-the-pequod

Excellent piece on the breath in Moby Dick..