https://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/historys-dick-jokes-on-melville-and-hawthorne
The issue, then, is whether serious scholars writing about famous authors can reasonably deign to take dick jokes as evidence. And if we are indeed willing to take them as evidence, just how do we go about determining what kind of evidence they are?
― j., Wednesday, 16 December 2015 02:20 (eight years ago) link
decided this is next on my list of things to read. in my grand, dilettantish tour of Important Literature recently i've made it through Ulysses (admittedly difficult), War & Peace (very readable, but fucking endless), and two books of Proust's In Search of Lost Time (endless, but so good i'm grateful for it) among other things. comments here making me feel like MD should be a breeze, relatively speaking. i'm actually pretty excited about it!
― circa1916, Wednesday, 16 December 2015 16:09 (eight years ago) link
crapped out my new year's resolution for this
so renewing
― skateboards are the new combover (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 16 December 2015 16:20 (eight years ago) link
i need to read this so i can understand the references in Metal Gear
― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Wednesday, 16 December 2015 16:24 (eight years ago) link
Loved the part where the sailors are all, like, "Sperm! Glorious sperm!"
― dinnerboat, Wednesday, 16 December 2015 17:41 (eight years ago) link
http://www.citypaper.com/blogs/noise/bcp-lil-wayne-and-birdman-like-father-like-son-20150203-story.html
― welltris (crüt), Wednesday, 16 December 2015 19:01 (eight years ago) link
^ can't believe this is 9 years old
― welltris (crüt), Wednesday, 16 December 2015 19:02 (eight years ago) link
this book now so totemic and intimidating it's just one more metaphor for itself
decided this is next on my list of things to read. in my grand, dilettantish tour of Important Literature recently i've made it through Ulysses (admittedly difficult), War & Peace (very readable, but fucking endless), and two books of Proust's In Search of Lost Time (endless, but so good i'm grateful for it) among other things
and in the wild conceits that swayed me to my purpose, two and two there drifted into my innermost soul endless processions of Important Literature, and, midmost of them all, one grand hooded phantom, etc.
it's a breeze tho yes, part wisecracking naturalism, part "pomo" (tho premo) info-deluge, part insane fourth-wall-breaking comic book where people soliloquize madly ("science! curse thee, thou vain toy!"), part paradise lost. there are no better books. also by the end its dialogue is blatantly trying for shakespeare and daring you to scold it:
Ahab stood before him, and was lightly unwinding some thirty or forty turns to form a preliminary hand-coil to toss overboard, when the old Manxman, who was intently eyeing both him and the line, made bold to speak.“Sir, I mistrust it; this line looks far gone, long heat and wet have spoiled it.”“‘Twill hold, old gentleman. Long heat and wet, have they spoiled thee? Thou seem’st to hold. Or, truer perhaps, life holds thee; not thou it.”“I hold the spool, sir. But just as my captain says. With these grey hairs of mine ’tis not worth while disputing, ‘specially with a superior, who’ll ne’er confess.”“What’s that? There now’s a patched professor in Queen Nature’s granite-founded College; but methinks he’s too subservient. Where wert thou born?”“In the little rocky Isle of Man, sir.”“Excellent! Thou’st hit the world by that.”“I know not, sir, but I was born there.”“In the Isle of Man, hey? Well, the other way, it’s good. Here’s a man from Man; a man born in once independent Man, and now unmanned of Man; which is sucked in—by what? Up with the reel! The dead, blind wall butts all inquiring heads at last. Up with it! So.”
“Sir, I mistrust it; this line looks far gone, long heat and wet have spoiled it.”
“‘Twill hold, old gentleman. Long heat and wet, have they spoiled thee? Thou seem’st to hold. Or, truer perhaps, life holds thee; not thou it.”
“I hold the spool, sir. But just as my captain says. With these grey hairs of mine ’tis not worth while disputing, ‘specially with a superior, who’ll ne’er confess.”
“What’s that? There now’s a patched professor in Queen Nature’s granite-founded College; but methinks he’s too subservient. Where wert thou born?”
“In the little rocky Isle of Man, sir.”
“Excellent! Thou’st hit the world by that.”
“I know not, sir, but I was born there.”
“In the Isle of Man, hey? Well, the other way, it’s good. Here’s a man from Man; a man born in once independent Man, and now unmanned of Man; which is sucked in—by what? Up with the reel! The dead, blind wall butts all inquiring heads at last. Up with it! So.”
― denies the existence of dark matter (difficult listening hour), Wednesday, 16 December 2015 20:11 (eight years ago) link
The dead, blind wall butts all inquiring heads at last.
(spoiler warning)
― denies the existence of dark matter (difficult listening hour), Wednesday, 16 December 2015 20:12 (eight years ago) link
http://40.media.tumblr.com/ae04c2d18a74f4a64a175766467580f1/tumblr_n346diPnTV1rm9irpo2_1280.jpg
― Karl Malone, Wednesday, 16 December 2015 20:18 (eight years ago) link
I read the novel in a week, didn't find it intimidating; it felt like I was listening to an old aunt sharing stories using her peculiar quirks and speech patterns.
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 16 December 2015 20:33 (eight years ago) link
intimidating before commencement, while still looming.
― denies the existence of dark matter (difficult listening hour), Wednesday, 16 December 2015 20:49 (eight years ago) link
it's a breeze tho yes, part wisecracking naturalism, part "pomo" (tho premo) info-deluge, part insane fourth-wall-breaking comic book where people soliloquize madly ("science! curse thee, thou vain toy!"), part paradise lost. there are no better books.
otm.
always a little miffed when people act as if this book consists long boring passages about whaling interspersed amongst a more traditional seafaring adventure. the whole thing is wild and funny and not a single page drags for me.
― ryan, Wednesday, 16 December 2015 20:50 (eight years ago) link
this book is nearly impossible to read. today i had lunch with a girl who claimed someone in her family tree was on the whaleship that inspired melville. (apparently there is a movie) i asked her if she ever read the book herself, and she said she thought so, a long time a go. i was like...if you had finished this friggin' book you would know!~
― rap is dad (it's a boy!), Wednesday, 16 December 2015 21:01 (eight years ago) link
That = me on the ILB thread, will rectify.
why "nearly impossible"?
One thing that struck me about reading excerpts from it (via twitter) was how Shakesperian it is. And seems to pull off that language with some ease too. Or at least it makes me like Shakespeare a lot more than I do.
― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 16 December 2015 23:22 (eight years ago) link
re: "nearly impossible"
It's dense. I don't have much affinity with Shakespeare or the 'history of literature." Or the ocean. Would love to read Ishmael go on about the woods though.
― rap is dad (it's a boy!), Wednesday, 16 December 2015 23:49 (eight years ago) link
or go through a couple more Queequegs
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 16 December 2015 23:50 (eight years ago) link
I loved this novel until the part where they actually struck off to sea and then it got really boring
― canoon fooder (dog latin), Thursday, 17 December 2015 15:48 (eight years ago) link
the diverting if comparatively behind-its-time gravity's rainbow is an ilx totem while this thread is 80% "long, boring": lieutenant huxley, your fascination with the vulgar twentieth century seems to be affecting your better judgement
― denies the existence of dark matter (difficult listening hour), Thursday, 17 December 2015 18:29 (eight years ago) link
I found gravity's rainbow legitimately extremely difficult to read. moby dick is not even in the same league in terms of difficulty. though the idea that "it's a breeze" to read or whatever rings false to me, though maybe your reading habits might include reading naturalist tracts from the 19th Century and the reams of cetology will be like sweet manna to you.
― Karl Rove Knausgård (jim in glasgow), Thursday, 17 December 2015 18:50 (eight years ago) link
never cared much for pynchon
― rap is dad (it's a boy!), Thursday, 17 December 2015 18:51 (eight years ago) link
Ha. Gravity's Rainbow was another stop I took on my book tour. And I did say "a breeze" relative to, like, Ulysses.
― circa1916, Thursday, 17 December 2015 18:55 (eight years ago) link
when i finally did go back and give the book another shot in 2010 i actually found the "habits of whales" chapters to be pretty enjoyable. melville filters all the information through his kooky narrator voice, so a lot of those chapters are just him doing his weird autodidactic musings on some musty old book he (i assume) was taking a glance at while he wrote.
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Thursday, 17 December 2015 19:16 (eight years ago) link
i started a poll here a long time ago about books like moby dick, ulysses, proust, et al -- i forget what won, but it was primarily a way to motivate myself to read all those books (it didn't work too well).
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Thursday, 17 December 2015 19:18 (eight years ago) link
his weird autodidactic musings on some musty old book he (i assume) was taking a glance at while he wrote.
he loved to dust his old grammars; it somehow mildly reminded him of his mortality
― denies the existence of dark matter (difficult listening hour), Thursday, 17 December 2015 19:19 (eight years ago) link
Love Moby-Dick, have read it somewhere between four and six times; have never made it through Gravity's Rainbow.
― the top man in the language department (誤訳侮辱), Thursday, 17 December 2015 20:09 (eight years ago) link
i'm only like 200 pages into Moby Dick but i'm completely in love with it. you really can draw a line from this to something like pynchon. comic book action/adventure, mysticism, obscure taxonomy/science/history, blended language, fluid pov, all butting up against and mixing with each other in strange and surprising ways. so excited for the rest of it.
― circa1916, Wednesday, 16 March 2016 06:55 (eight years ago) link
YUP
― denies the existence of dark matter (difficult listening hour), Wednesday, 16 March 2016 06:56 (eight years ago) link
had someone articulate this complaint to me the other day and i was just like, jeez, the whaling chapters are not only extremely entertaining, they tend to necessarily explain the action of the previous chapter
― HYPERLINK TO RAP GENIUS (BradNelson), Wednesday, 16 March 2016 07:05 (eight years ago) link
anyway i have a moby-dick tattoo. this is the best book ever
― HYPERLINK TO RAP GENIUS (BradNelson), Wednesday, 16 March 2016 07:06 (eight years ago) link
"The skeleton dimensions I shall now proceed to set down are copied verbatim from my right arm, where I had them tattooed; as in my wild wanderings at that period, there was no other secure way of preserving such valuable statistics."
― remove butt (abanana), Wednesday, 16 March 2016 07:08 (eight years ago) link
i guess it goes on a little longer later, but the first Cetology chapter was like 14 pages and it was really interesting. was expecting it to be a dead dry 50 pages or something.
― circa1916, Wednesday, 16 March 2016 07:10 (eight years ago) link
This is the first fat 19th century book I really love (almost all of my faves tend to be small-ish: Lermontov, Nerval, von Kleist, Lenz). Maybe Portrait of a Lady or The Devils.
The Moby Dick twitter account is wonderful. As well as comments on here and Melville's The Confidence Man it was the thing that actually made me try it. Need to read Bartleby next.
― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 16 March 2016 09:11 (eight years ago) link
"First, we must ask, does it have to be a whale?"#RejectionLetterQuote for Moby Dick, a novel by Herman Melville. pic.twitter.com/WZBVCrb2RE— Pulp Librarian (@PulpLibrarian) October 3, 2018
― mark s, Wednesday, 3 October 2018 12:53 (five years ago) link
^^^this is the edition i have -- wit the rockwell kent illustrations -- and it's lovely
― mark s, Wednesday, 3 October 2018 12:54 (five years ago) link
been working my way through this, they finally mentioned the whale and i'm 400 iPad pages in
― nba jungboy (voodoo chili), Wednesday, 3 October 2018 13:04 (five years ago) link
the book is awesome tho
the "whiteness of the whale" chapter was...quite something.
― nba jungboy (voodoo chili), Wednesday, 3 October 2018 13:05 (five years ago) link
hit my stopping point last night at the end of chapter 31, tonight we get CETOLOGY.
― papal hotwife (milo z), Tuesday, 21 February 2023 00:37 (one year ago) link
If y'all want fun, read Clarel.
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 21 February 2023 00:55 (one year ago) link