Moby Dick

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.

He was Abraham's son with his wife's handmaid Hagar.

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…

patriach of Islam too

There is a big picture of Melville in the cafe at the South Street Seaport location of McNally-Jackson bookstore which is quite appropriate.

It has that quality of the eyes seeming to follow you about, like the portrait or a certain patriarch of the family Flintstone.

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

i have a moby-dick tattoo that i'm not embarrassed about, that is how much i love it

Sick

I found Melville's poems harder going than Moby-Dick.

I tried to read Confidence Man, wasn't happening

that's my least favorite of the novels I've read

god this is the best book ever

literally true

i only know about lazarus+dives because they're a recurring symbol in MLK sermons

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.

i picked his book of civil war poems recently and it was really a chore, tough going indeed

christ, this revive scared me, i thought maybe melville had died or something

No, but 🚨 SPOILER/TRIGGER ALERT 🚨 I believe Billy Budd, Sailor is now in the public domain.

Confidence Man is great, you guys mad.

It was a popular choice when I was in high school, don’t know if that’s a relevant data point.

Confidence is really good. Better than his poems, surely.