Mutley Hyde

After a year or so of picking it up, putting it down, periods of great interest and marvel, periods of dry struggle and desperate anxiousness (to get through the dang thing), I just had to share with my fellow otters that I have indeed finally killed the white whale.

It was quite good, but DAMN that Melville can go on and on! He can eat up 10 pages explaining what could be conveyed in a paragraph or so. Not so much the technical stuff (he does go off on that too, but it's easily followed), but I mean the righteous ramblings when he goes off on the romance and spiritual/ideological and cultural significance of the sea, the whale (in general, and Moby Dick specifically), and whatnot. Bah! After this, I've gone back to cheap pulp fiction for a while.


Mutley Ahab

Darren H

Congrats, Mutley!

I am firmly of the opinion that everyone should read Moby Dick at least once. Just finishing it is part of the challenge. I'll admit that, as much as I love Melville's language, I was ready for the thing to end, and I'm not sure when/if I'll read the whole thing again. I often reread sections of it, though. The "Whiteness of the Whale" chapter might be my favorite bit of writing ever. Just amazing stuff.

If you're ever in the mood for more Melville, but don't want to make the commitment to an entire novel, read the Piazza Tales. Benito Cereno and Bartleby, the Scrivener are just great stories. Also, his early sea novels, like Typee and Omoo, are a good mix of Melville's style with pulp adventure -- much easier reads than Moby Dick.

Mutley Hyde

Thanks Darren!

Yeah, I'm thinking I should have tried some of those first! But you're absolutely right on in saying that there is great writing in Moby Dick. Like I said, there were times, and many of them, that I marveled at Melville's writing; the narrative, the depth of detail and descriptive writing, the suspense and action, how he captures both the beauty of the sea and unapologetic, efficient brutality of the trade... all this I enjoyed very much. Really, my only problem with it was his often ideological and mythological meanderings that would go on forever and it seemed we would never get back to the story. The third quarter of the book just kills me dead, but the last several chapters, once Ahab catches solid wind of Moby, while meeting with The Rachel, and then the chase is on, it really picks up speed and stays on course til the end.

And I can certainly agree that the book begs for select revisiting of "passages". There were several, numerous "favorite quotes" that I really do need to go back and jot down for future reference. Some were simply a sentence or two, but some were nearly whole chapters.

Well, after Moby, like I said before, I'm gonna do some pulp, as in H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Rice Burroughs (The Martian Tales), and Philip K. Dick. It's seriously time for some short storys and novelettes, lol.



p.s., I would like to make it perfectly clear that my stated disdain for the marathon meanderings does not in any way pertain to the musings of Ahab. What little he is actually in the book, it rocks getting in his mind. Talk about obsessive! That guy was intense (and wonderfully tragic). And Queequeg rules!

Alyoshka

I'm really a fan of Moby Dick. I had two weeks to read it in a college class, and I actually went ahead and did it. Reading that book took my mind off all the other things I was also supposed to be doing. It was nice.

BigStinky

Congrats, Mutley,

I just started that book a week ago. And it looks like I'll have a similar struggle.

It doesn't help that I don't understand entire sentences.

Alyoshka

Ahh! Bad memories! In my class we had to map a lot of Melville's sentences. I'm seeing images in my mind.

silentbob007

I got into it pretty early, then I bogged down when Melville started explaining why he wrote the book. Some of the chapters outside of the narrative want me to throw the book agains the wall ... hard. I did like Benito Cereno, though.

Alvis

I had to read Billy Bud in school, much shorter, but kind of like a drug dream that we were meant to interpret as great literature.

Darren H

Um, it is great literature.

msbailey

Congratulations, I got through this last summer. It was tough going, but boy was it rewarding. I can't remember what I read afterwards, but I remember craving something short and trashy. As a supplement to Moby Dick, I recommend Nathaniel Philbrick's "In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex". Also, read something by Melville's favorite writer (and friend) Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Samuel

I recently read this book and I know what you went through. It was one of the toughest books to read but still very good. It took me a month to read and although I liked the book it was quite agonizing. I think it made the ending all the much better. It was something reading/experiencing those words "A hump like a snowhill, It's Moby Dick!"

You made it out alive, congrats.

veritas

Melville was 32 when he wrote the greatest doorstop and dinner-table-leveler of all-time.

I still haven't made it through. His style is, to me, particularly atrocious, though I do like what he's trying to convey. After a few hundred pages, though, I yearn for R.A. Salvatore and modern drivel.

Small doses are much easier. BB and Bartleby are particularly good.

msbailey

Actually, if you want a Melville doorstop or table-leveler, I'd go with Pierre, or, The Ambiguities. Melville decided he wanted to make something more epic after the slim novella that is Moby Dick.

Mutley Hyde

Heh, I've never even heard of those, and probably for good reason! Thanks for the congrats everyone!

Vampyr

Wow....I applaud you standing........I love the story but to me reading the book was always like pulling ones own teeth with a pair of pliers. IMHO

Matt925

Ha! I picked this up about a month ago. There were times when I loved the language and others where I found it pretty frustrating.

"It was now about nine o'clock, and the room seeming almost supernaturally quiet after these orgies, I began to congratulate myself upon a little plan that had occurred to me just previous to the entrance of the seaman."



"So, if any one man, in his own proper person, afford stuff for a good joke to anybody, let him not be backward, but let him cheerfully allow himself to spend and to be spent in that way."



From when he met Queequeg to when they boarded the ship I could hardly put it down. But from that point forward I found myself glancing to see how long each new chapter was, and being pretty excited when I finished each and was able to put the book down. Finally I gave up after chapter 36 "The Quarter-Deck."

I think I'm going to give it another try though.

Mutley Hyde

Hey Matt, like I said, I went through months of not reading, and other times of determined reading. Definitely get back to it, but at your own pace. The good thing is that the chapters are for the most part amazingly short. I got to a point where I was reading a few chapters a night. Then I'd quit again . But after that, I picked the sucker up and determined to finish it, maybe going 50 pages or so at a time. That was for maybe the last 200 pages.

And thanks Vampyr!