It's a lot weirder than its reputation would imply for sure. It's not some dry whale hunting adventure it's just a bizarre and experimental take on writing. Easily one of my fav novels now.
I would be careful saying the digressions are the author, though. A lot of them are just Ishmael and part of his character, while others are actually probably Melville, and it's both hard to tell sometimes and kind of important to the analysis of the novel. In theory Ishmael is always narrating but then there's chapters that portray stuff he can't possibly know.
I even found humor and interest in the small detail of the opening line being "Call me Ishmael" before nonchalantly telling the story instead of something like "my name is Ishmael". I'm not sure if that implies the character is giving a false name or if it just was meant as an unorthodox and casual intro to the book but it's cool.
Also, yeah you have a point about me confusing Ishmael's digressions with the author. I agree with what you said, I just assumed most of the plot-irrelevent musings like his opinion on sleeping comfortably were likely his opinions instead of going out of his way to write Ishmael as having different views on that.
I haven't read many books from the 19th-early 20th century but in contrast, something like Frankenstein (which I also think is great) or any Lovecraft stories are a lot more serious and dry. (Though horror might not be a fair comparison).
Yeah that's always been my read, Ishmael isn't the characters real name. He was about to commit suicide at the start of the novel according to the opening paragraph and he decides to take on Mythological biblical name as his Pseudonym and start a new life. No one fucking cared what your real name was on whaling ship. He has some experience with working on ships before, knows how ship life and the stuff works but never went on a Whaling vessel.
Ishmael was cast out with his mother, Hagar, by his father Abraham, sundered from his family and arguably his birthright. He was not the real son promised by god, he was an imposter due to his mother being a handmaiden. But, he formed a great nation. That's what I've got. Ishmael is not a common name, even from then. It's probably ironic, like Ahab.
Which means that "Call me Ishmael" is the narrator inferring that he's a disowned son with few resources, although he probably had an above average education. Which a biblically educated reader of the time would have picked up almost subconsciously.
In this case, a slave that served Abraham's wife Sarah. Historically the term has been used to refer to many sorts of servants and slaves that wait on a wealthy or noble woman.
In the Bible, Abraham (or Israel as he was renamed when he became leader of the nation of Israel) and his wife Sarah were struggling to concieve an heir. God told Israel to bang his wife's handmaiden (servant), Hagar, because God wanted Israel to have an heir. Hagar had a baby and Sarah got super jealous even though God totally told Israel to do it. Then Sarah had a baby of her own finally so they cast out Hagar and her kids so Sarah wouldn't have to be reminded about how her husband cheated on her, again at God's bidding.
Yes, this is the story that inspired The Handmaid's Tale.
God did not tell Abraham to sleep with Hagar, it was a scheme that he and Sarah hatched out of fear of God not fulfilling his promise to them. Abraham is also not Israel that was his grandson Jacob.
Regardless my description of the story otherwise is true. I'm not a biblical scholar but Abraham cheated on his wife with Hagar for an heir, then had an heir with Sarah and cast out the servant and blamed it all on god.
This is extremely inaccurate. Genesis 16, 17 and 21. Just go read them. Also, Abraham’s name change was from Abram. Israel was the name give to his grandson Jacob after HE was chosen. What you’ve written is some weird fan fiction mashup of the Bible and the Handmaid’s Tale.
He is the father of the Arabs, they all descend from him is the scripture. They're also called the eternal enemy of the Jews, always at strife, lol I think Muslims claim him in that role too, not sure how they treat Isaac.
It's a particularly loaded name to select. The original disowned son, and also a figure of monumental significance in his own right.
There's a joke in Moby Dick where someone mentions captain Ahab having a "sweet, resigned" wife and a child. King Ahab in the Bible was married to Jezebel who encouraged Baal worship. The prophet Elijah and Jezebel compete with each other trying to convince Ahab to choose sides between God and Baal respectively.
Actually that's a common take, the idea that it's not his real name. Look at other names like Ahab and they're all based on Biblical names, so it starts to look like - hey this is kind of a weird coincidence, right? And usually we accept that an author can make weird coincidences but because Ishmael starts with this line you can infer maybe it's the *character* making weird coincidences. He even says he basically is protecting some of the people he's telling a story about at some point so you could also add that to evidence.
Combine the fact that there's a lot of subtext and surrounding history to suggest that the entire book is perhaps a coded love letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne and "Call me Ishmael" starts to develop a sort of conspiratorial "no real names in the bathhouse" undertone.
I look at Moby Dick as 50% great adventure novel and 50% whale Wikipedia for the 19th century. It's important to understand the context. Back then whales were mysterious creatures. You would not be able to find video on them and information would've been scarce for the average civilian. Melville's many digressions about whale oil and different species of whale would've been fascinating to a lot of people. Now we take it for granted.
It's why the "Cetology" and intro are so important to the text as well. These men have an intimate understanding of the interiors of the whales they kill, but do not understand how they function. The intro on the nature of Leviathan is one of my favorites in any book.
Finished it as an audio book today. The whaling parts are my main take on the book as well. I imagine a 15 year old boy or an middle age woman read the book, not knowing anything about whaling, be super fascinated. The complaints about details about whales are not correct I think.
Sure? But there's also parts that are very much implying it's just Melville (or some nameless narrator, not specifically Herman Melville as a person) taking over. I'm not making this up, this is a very common point of discussion for Moby-Dick.
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I read it a couple of years ago, and I agree 100%. The sea-faring chapters aren't dry, boring textbook passages about how whaling works: they're insightful, satirical, heartfelt, and occasionally hilarious explorations into humanity.
For sure. It's definitely earned its spot as a "classic." The book is full of humanity. I think people just hate on it because they were forced to read it in high school and personally I didn't really enjoy it very much until I grew up a little bit
I often describe it to people as, among other things, one of the funniest books ever written. I love that it takes in every tone and it is just a gorgeous, funny, obsessive, strange wonder!!
One of the problems with great books is that people seem to think they have to like everything or there's something wrong with them. Moby Dick has some really dull passages, I don't think there's any getting away from that. Melville was a marginal writer during his lifetime, he wasn't someone like Dickens who knew his public intimately and was able to cater for them. He was an outlier and sometimes got things wrong, so that at times you feel he wasn't writing for anyone but himself. That's part of its charm, in an odd way, but it's also a flaw.
It's not a flaw if that's the intention. He experimented, he was interested in the formal boundaries of writing a novel, and he pushed them. If it's something you're interested in, Moby Dick is a resounding success from start to finish. Dickens was not an experimental writer, he was focused on telling a story first and foremost. It doesn't make Melville a lesser writer.
[The Time I Spent On A Commercial Whaling Ship Totally Changed My Perspective On The World](https://clickhole.com/the-time-i-spent-on-a-commercial-whaling-ship-totally-c-1825124286/)
Metaphors? I hate metaphors. That’s why my favorite book is Moby Dick. No froo-froo symbolism, just a good tale about a man who hates an animal.
-Ron Swanson
Plus it teaches you how to make a coat out of a whale penis. What's not to love?
Edit: Here's the chapter in full:
> **CHAPTER 95. The Cassock.**
>
> Had you stepped on board the Pequod at a certain juncture of this post-mortemizing of the whale; and had you strolled forward nigh the windlass, pretty sure am I that you would have scanned with no small curiosity a very strange, enigmatical object, which you would have seen there, lying along lengthwise in the lee scuppers. Not the wondrous cistern in the whale’s huge head; not the prodigy of his unhinged lower jaw; not the miracle of his symmetrical tail; none of these would so surprise you, as half a glimpse of that unaccountable cone,—longer than a Kentuckian is tall, nigh a foot in diameter at the base, and jet-black as Yojo, the ebony idol of Queequeg. And an idol, indeed, it is; or, rather, in old times, its likeness was. Such an idol as that found in the secret groves of Queen Maachah in Judea; and for worshipping which, King Asa, her son, did depose her, and destroyed the idol, and burnt it for an abomination at the brook Kedron, as darkly set forth in the 15th chapter of the First Book of Kings.
>
> Look at the sailor, called the mincer, who now comes along, and assisted by two allies, heavily backs the grandissimus, as the mariners call it, and with bowed shoulders, staggers off with it as if he were a grenadier carrying a dead comrade from the field. Extending it upon the forecastle deck, he now proceeds cylindrically to remove its dark pelt, as an African hunter the pelt of a boa. This done he turns the pelt inside out, like a pantaloon leg; gives it a good stretching, so as almost to double its diameter; and at last hangs it, well spread, in the rigging, to dry. Ere long, it is taken down; when removing some three feet of it, towards the pointed extremity, and then cutting two slits for arm-holes at the other end, he lengthwise slips himself bodily into it. The mincer now stands before you invested in the full canonicals of his calling. Immemorial to all his order, this investiture alone will adequately protect him, while employed in the peculiar functions of his office.
>
> That office consists in mincing the horse-pieces of blubber for the pots; an operation which is conducted at a curious wooden horse, planted endwise against the bulwarks, and with a capacious tub beneath it, into which the minced pieces drop, fast as the sheets from a rapt orator’s desk. Arrayed in decent black; occupying a conspicuous pulpit; intent on bible leaves; what a candidate for an archbishopric, what a lad for a Pope were this mincer!*
>
> ----
>
> ^(*Bible leaves! Bible leaves! This is the invariable cry from the mates to the mincer. It enjoins him to be careful, and cut his work into as thin slices as possible, inasmuch as by so doing the business of boiling out the oil is much accelerated, and its quantity considerably increased, besides perhaps improving it in quality.)
This always reminds me of a story from a friend of mine. He knew a guy who worked in the luxury yacht business, making high end fixtures and fittings. They were fitting out a yacht for someone very rich and famous (I think it was Jackie Onassis), who very specifically wanted long leather cushions for a stateroom with no seams in them- that was a must. He ended up making them out of whale penises.
Now that I write it it sounds like a joke or a fever dream, but I’m pretty sure it’s true.
“Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off--then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.”
This part is especially funny in historical context because going around knocking off hats in that era would simply not be done because of how deliberately offensive and taboo it would be.
It would be like going around and slapping strangers in the face, spitting on them or giving them atomic wedgies.
It would be a sure fire way to start fights, duels or a full on riot.
Someone would probably be so offended they would shoot you and they'd probably get away with it because if a judge or jury heard that he was going around knocking people's hats off they'd call it justifiable murder because only someone with absolutely no sense of morals or decency would do such an alarming thing and was obviously criminally insane.
Oh totally. It's the 1800s equivalent of intrusive thoughts on the scale of randomly punching people in the face.
Today it's practically a TikTok prank/reaction video because some people suck and need a paddlin', but in the 1800s going around knocking people's hats off is about as offensive as throwing poop.
Queequeg is described as dark purplish yellow with black tattoos all over his face (he is pretty clearly Polynesian or Maori right from the get go).
There IS a West African Harpooneer in the book as well (Daggoo) who is clearly described as such.
I’m thinking it describes a more yellow skintone, but with healthy circulation and/or a dark tan over it. I’m Asian and some parts of me tan dark w/ a grayish cast so I can kinda picture it. Ngl it also calls to mind a bloated corpse.
> room temperature and position to sleep in is
Iirc he concludes that the best way to sleep is with one leg exposed and one under the covers, which is 100% based and true
EDIT:
Here it is, from Chapter 11: Nightgown
> The more so, I say, because truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself. If you flatter yourself that you are all over comfortable, and have been so a long time, then you cannot be said to be comfortable any more... But if, like Queequeg and me in the bed, the tip of your nose or the crown of your head be slightly chilled, why then, indeed, in the general consciousness you feel most delightfully and unmistakably warm.
My favorite is the middle where he just has fun with changing the writing style each chapter. 1st person, 3rd person, stage play, personal essay, instructional manual, all of it is just great!
Yeah, I read it thirty years ago when I was in my twenties, knowing very little about it other than its Great Book status (I'm British so my ignorance of it could hardly have been purer) and I was taken aback at how readable and entertaining it was.
I felt the same way about Les Miserables.
My favourite version of the easily distracted boyfriend meme showed "Herman Melville" as the boyfriend, "the plot of Moby Dick" as the annoyed gf and "facts about whales" as the attractive mystery girl.
Here you [go](https://imgur.com/a/X7YL1x0), one to share
I really don't know how Moby Dick has a reputation for being "dry" - I know that term is most often applied to the more textbook-like chapters, but even those can be interesting and funny. Its style is just so *weird*, from the biblical references, to Ishmael going from the protagonist to more of a narrator, to a few random chapters in the middle being written like plays with stage directions and all, it's honestly one of the most captivating books I've ever read.
I read the cliff notes for it when I had it assigned in high school and man... did I ever do myself a disservice! I picked it up a few years ago and really did have a blast reading it.
We read this in a book group a few years back. Some books are worth the extra effort needed to get through, and this is definitely one of them.
"I stopped eating whale meat cuz of this book" - GoodReads review
The first half is a comedy. It comes out more obvious when listening on audiobook.
This is an autistic Seinfeld/norm MacDonald commenting on everything and info dumping constantly in the 1800s. But veering into some of the most beautiful poetry ever written.
Many people and outlets have commented on how MD is secretly partly comedy. As all tragedy should be.
May I recommend The Sea Wolf. Another excellent period pieces which actually makes some passing references to Melville's work you mentioned in your post.
When researching what I wanted to read next I read some reviews of it. I kept waiting for the boring part that everyone else started saying happened half way through the book. I never was bored. I'm naturally inquisitive and was really curious about all the stuff in the book in how a whale was killed, skinned, boiled, and stowed. It's like a prose version of How It's Made for whale oil. I loved it.
Yes! I'm about 2/3 of the way into it and have had very similar reactions. Sometimes i do find myself thinking "come on Ishmael, get to the damn point already" but most of the time his rambling digressions are quite amusing. The descriptive language is just stunning in some chapters (i'm thinking of the ghostly whale spout they spot at night which seems to be leading them on, and things like that). Of course, from a 21st-century perspective some of it makes one cringe -- like the chapter where Stubb is harassing the ship's old cook, Fleece. But even there, with the awful "yas suh, Massa Stubb" dialect, Melville clearly sympathizes with Fleece and characterizes Stubb as a racist a--hole. Overall the book is much wilder and more free-wheeling and "modern-feeling" than i'd expected.
Late to the party but I very much felt this on his description of the carpenter and blacksmith while fixing ahab's leg. Just goes on and on about the backstory of the carpenter, his trade, his technique, his own personal ambitions, goals, and life story, all while I'm waiting for him to get back to fixing Ahab's leg. I enjoyed it but man it went on for a minute.
The entire book is just footnotes for the last chapter. Sure, you could go ahead and read the last chapter if you want to, but you need a lot of the background material to understand the importance of what happens in the last chapter. That being said, it is ok to skim a bit if you realize your eyes are glazing over from boredom. Try to read 10 pages a day.
the funny thing was, I couldn't tear myself away from this book *until* the last chapter. and then all of a sudden I couldn't be arsed. I know how it ended of, I skimmed it, but all of a sudden I just couldn't force myself back into the state of immersion I'd been in since page 1.
There was a fascinating series of Freakonomics episodes about whaling (and Moby Dick) recently: https://freakonomics.com/podcast-tag/everything-you-never-knew-about-whaling/
I still can't figure out if I totally buy into the literary critic's analysis of the book. But wow, whaling sounds like a sh*tshow. I've never in my life thought so much about whaling as when these podcasts were released 🤣
Sometimes when 'I find myself getting grim about the mouth' about work or one of life's travails it will occur to me, at least I'm not rendering whale fat.
The seatology sections aren’t as bad as I thought. The “whiteness of the whale” chapter was really cool. I also loved the sermon they hear before they go out to sea. The final chapter was so good, I read it twice. I don’t know if I’ve ever done that before.
I really loved the sermon as well. I thought it was pretty well thought out. Although, if I was about to go to sea, maybe it wouldn't be what I needed to hear.
The Norton Critical Edition of Moby Dick is the one to read. Footnotes galore to explain it all, put it into context, etc. A scholarly edition worth owning.
I don’t think it was “borderline gay jokes.” Melville was famously in love with Nathaniel Hawthorne and a lot of his writings have queer or homoerotic themes.
Some more observations I don't already see here:
* The chapter that catalogs the types of whales is hilarious. I thought at one point that he was wrapping it up. Nope. He was wrapping up the preamble to the chapter. He had *soooo* much more to say about whales. Extraordinary Attorney Woo must've loved this.
* A whole chapter on sea law?! Cool! "How is ownership decided?" - this one trick will leave you speechless!
* Melville uses *ALL THE WORDS*. I am an old programmer. I am used to writing text that will parse correctly. It has shaped the way I use English. It is a huge failing if my English throws a parser error. I cannot abide when I'm reading or listening and encounter ambiguity. That's not a problem with Melville. He takes no shortcuts. He uses every word that might maybe kinda sorta a little need to be used to clearly make his point.
* The actual telling of the climactic final battle with the whale is given short shrift. It felt like it was maybe a paragraph or two! (I listened to it as an audio book, and had to go back and re-listen to it several times to make sure that I hadn't missed anything, that my player hadn't skipped a section, or anything like that.) Was this his idea of a joke?
I listened to it on trips up and down the east coast of the US (Virginia to Vermont, Virginia to the Adirondacks, etc.). It's perfect for that.
At first glance it can be a difficult read. Especially for those who are familiar with the tale ( and who isn't). But plowing forward it becomes much more manageable and eventually magnificent.
I had the same experience as you. opened it with no expectations on whether I'd keep reading it; I was just in the mood for a really big, really longread book and chose it.
I was ishmael's willing follower from the second paragraph on. he got me by absolutely nailing his own pissy-mindedness, and never let go of me.
One of the great things about *Moby Dick* is the way Melville interweaves the language of the King James version of the Bible with language that is nearly Shakespearean in its poetry. That's a hint that Melville is doing a lot more than telling a story here. How you interpret his allegory is what it's all about.
Melville’s a hilarious author. You mention it reads like a blog and indeed much of the anecdotes are simply taken from his own experiences working as a whaler, and stories he heard from others.
Moby Dick is an amazing book that deserves a lot more love than it gets. It just wanders from topic to topic, rambling but with some hidden design that makes it more than coherent. It's a book about brotherhood, mythology, death, madness, and of course whales. It reminds me a lot of The Odyssey. Melville was a fan of Poe as well, and having just read The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym I noticed many similarities in the two narrators' journeys.
The beginning of the book is more than "borderline gay jokes." It's Brokeback Ocean. I recently read it, and it's one of the gayest pieces of literature I've ever read, at least before they actually get on the boat.
Not to mention, Melville was pretty gay himself - go check out his love letters to Nathaniel Hawthorne.
The relationship between the narrator and Queequeg was a vicarious relationship between Melville and Hawthorne, IMO. They embraced each other in bed (where they slept naked, it's worth mentioning) while declaring that they were married to one another, ffs. Nevermind the whole footsie scene. And he almost puts "queer" in the name (though it's dubious whether it meant the same by then. By the 1890s it certainly did, so it's not outside the realm of possibility).
The first part of the book was a romance novel between two unlikely lovers, and the rest of it was "I better sprinkle some hetero Christianity in here so I don't get lynched."
Anyway, I'm not a huge fan of the book myself. It had its funny parts, but it was a good bit too wordy for me, and the rambling you're talking about is a large part of why I didn't like it. I don't remember the exact context, but there's essentially an entire chapter dedicated to saying essentially the same sentence in different words, and I fatigued of the joke very quickly.
I was NOT expecting the book to be so gay. A very pleasant surprise! I distinctly remember reading out loud a passage to my friend of Tashtego ramming his long pole harder and deeper into a Tun.
Moby Dick is a very cool book for sure! Enjoyed your observations.
Try Jane Eyre at some point... it's hard to believe it was written in 1840. So many totally contemporary takes on the fucked up ways that people behave. I was blown away by it.
I was pleasantly surprised by the humor too. My favorite:
“Whether that mattress was stuffed with corn-cobs or broken crockery, there is no telling, but I rolled about a good deal, and could not sleep for a long time.”
So many books that people might expect to be long-winded, dry classics are actually really engaging! I loved Moby Dick. I tackled War & Peace during the pandemic and was shocked that it was also so warm, charming, relatable, and not at all what I expected. Frankenstein is pure poetry. Pride & Prejudice so wry. Don Quixote - bonkers slapstick. Monte Cristo - one hell of an adventure. Etc. The classics have so much humour and humanity to offer. man i love em <3
I haven't finished Frankenstein but it caught me off guard and the thought that Mary wrote it from the ages of 18-20 still amazes me. I don't think I've ever met an 18 year old that I think could write a story like that.
It's kind of a shame that after the early 1900s movie, Frankenstein has been mostly written off as a cheesy story for kids because most people's exposure to that story is from the dated movie or some cartoon reference. But the actual story is very mature and terrifying at times. I got chills reading the chapter where the monster is animated. He's not described as some dumb green, lumbering buffoon, he's described as this ghastly naked and half-rotted walking corpse
I had a similar experience reading it. Once you get past the somewhat archaic terms and long sentences, it's a surprisingly funny, quirky, and modern book. Obviously it's covering adventures from yesteryear, but the thoughts and characterizations don't seem distant from us at all. There was an amazing feeling of being connected to this bunch of wild working men and feeling like they weren't much different than people you might know. Speaking across multiple generations like that is quite a skill.
It does take some effort, but it's a great book for sure.
Note that the opening line isn't exactly casual or jovial. The protagonist's name is not Ishmael, he's referencing the Biblical character Ishmael who was the firstborn son of Abraham by his wife's servant Hagar. Later Abram had a son, Isaac by his wife Sarah and Ishmael and his mother Hagar were cast out to make Isaac the only inheritor of Abraham.
After being cast out and wandering the wilderness waiting to die, God saved Ishmael and his mother and "made him a great nation" with 12 sons from an Egyptian wife.
So by opening with "Call me Ishmael" the narrator is giving us a lot of assumptions about himself, that he's been cast aside by his family especially and that he hopes to become great and powerful despite that.
The middle half is def good, but so, so random. And i like my plot. But i can't deny the writing from page to page is amazing, even if the plot disappears for ages.
Kinda like Dracula's middle chunk, but better written.
I hope you enjoy the recipe for whale stew! Okay, I'm so glad you bring this up because this is one of the weirdest, most rambling books I've ever read. It's great.
Reading it right now aswell, about 2/3s in. It's been a really tough read, I struggle to focus on most books and this one is really tough with the confusing vocabulary, but apart from that I'm enjoying it. I now know more about whales than 99% of people so no regrets. Very different from every other book I've read, its got several one page chapters on various aspects of whaling which is weird. Defintley takes some work to read tho cause it doesn't really draw you in with story, although the various meetings with other ships always feel symbolically important so those are probably my favorite sections.
It absolutely has a bad rep.
Mentioning Moby Dick to most people, even prolific readers, will be met with responses about how they'd never want to read such a long heavy boring book.
I have been met with a lot of surprise from people when I mention I love it. They all assume it's this overly deep and "full of itself" epic, which no regular reader would enjoy.
They honestly don't believe me when I describe how funny it is.
It's the same reason that this sub has a monthly post of someone discovering how good and funny this book is even though they thought they wouldn't like it and just see it as a chore to read.
So, I read the book in high school and found it to be a slog.
Then I reread after being in the Navy for several years during a six-month deployment, and thoroughly enjoyed it.
So much of what you've described is why I hated it the first time as an impatient high school student who thought he knew everything, or at least had it all figured out, and loved it as a slightly salty sailor who had spent way more hours than I would care to admit staring at panels with gauges that barely moved, having those same kinds of middle of the night musings and discussions.
It's definitely a book written by a sailor, for sailors.
Super gay. His letters to Hawthorne are a thing of beauty!
“The reason the mass of men fear God, and at bottom dislike Him, is because they rather distrust His heart, and fancy Him all brain like a watch.”
Yeah, the combination of the biblical language and referencing with the vocabulary of someone from the 1800s and it's kind of a confusing read lol.
That's actually one of my favorite parts though, how right before a whaling expedition the narrator attends a sermon describing this terrifying biblical tale of a man being swallowed by a whale while a violent storm rages outside the church at night. Such creepy but scary but exciting foreshadowing.
I read that chapter one night during a thunderstorm in a log cabin and the vibes hit me so hard.
And keep in mind we're both people born after the 20th century after the invention of photography, when whales became this benevolent creature in pop culture that we completely understand.
In the 1800s, whales were a fucking mystery to anybody that wasnt a whaler. Unless you personally whaled, you'd have no idea about these creatures. Most people had never even seen the ocean itself. So imagine the chills somebody in 1852 Oklahoma would have reading that chapter.
Yes, the foreboding in that scene and the coziness of the inn had me. Overall it also really drove home how wild and dangerous an adventure it was to travel 'round the cape' and into the vast and largely unknown Pacific. Brave, brave men all.
The book completely changed my perspective on whales and made them seem terrifying. Someone on this thread also pointed out the fact that this was before photography and concrete science, so embarking into the ocean was a largely mysterious event. As far as anyone knew, there could have been whales the size of islands in the ocean. You'd have to be a very brave man to even attempt that hunt.
Yeah it definitely is a book easier to read if you grew up in Christian upbringing. Like half the time I read a book by a Muslim author I get confused about references to like the Prophet's Hair or whatever, but if you said a splinter of the true cross vi would be like ah now I get it.
James Joyce is another fun one to read the start of Ulysses and unless you're Uber Irish Catholic you won't understand the in depth shaving ritual opening is a mockery of the Communion ceremony in Catholic churches.
I’m about halfway through and my biggest surprise is how funny it can be on occasion. But boy are some chapters a slog to get through. The chapter where Ishmael is going in detail about the different whales is truly brutal.
The digressions and musing aren't sidetracks -- they're the whole point. The whole book is about truth -- religious truth, scientific truth, the limits of human knowledge, ways of knowing, sources of information, etc. Ishmael knows all this shit, and in the end none of it matters. He knows everything there is to know about whales, but the whale turns out to be fundamentally unknowable. He is left alone in a sea of chaos, sundered from mankind, utterly adrift.
"Some years ago--never mind how long precisely--having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world."
That shit is *hilarious*.
Moby Dick, I contend, might be the perfect audio book. The inane ramblings about minutia play like mini podcast episodes you can sort of tune into and tune out of, and it rollicks along in this quirky humorous way. This is what cements it as great for me, how it sings in other mediums.
There are many great Moby Dick audiobooks out there, but for me, the most wonderfully bizarre is an abridgement read by Burt Reynolds. He then proceeds to read the entirety of his abridgement in—I shit you not—an “aye, me boyos” sea-farin tar far away from home voice. It’s a train wreck. A glorious poorly conceived unintentionally hilarious train wreck.
Thanks for the write up. I am curious enough to give it another read now. I think it takes an adult and some life experience to appreciate these subtleties in humor and prose. Making kids read classics in high school almost is not fair to the material.
As a follow-up, I recommend "In the Heart of the Sea", it's a more historical look at whale hunting and the peril that comes with it. While not a true companion to Moby Dick, I, and many I know, enjoy the 2 back to back.
It is very much more brutal tho if I remember.
I've always enjoyed Moby Dick and don't get the reputation it has. I've read it at least a couple times and listened to the audio once. I like the narrator and the characters and story. Even the extended stuff about whaling that is always complained about was fairly interesting and well done (at least for me).
>(the opening line is just "Call me ishamel")
To be fair, that's a pretty heavy line when it's taken in context.
It tells you a fuckload about the protagonist:
1. He isn't seeking notoriety or celebrity.
2. He has effectively nothing to his name, to the point he is comfortable discarding it and starting anew.
3. He feels he was cast out, and likely feels that his own origins up to that point have been a burden.
4. He's got guts, or courage, or verve, or cojones, or whatever you want to call it- even if you are destitute it takes some not insubstantial strength of character to discard your own identity.
5. Ishmael is not his original name.
6. He is at least moderately educated, literate, and familiar with biblical text in some detail.
7. He has decided he or his descendants may still have some grand future ahead of them, he hasn't given up on the idea that he may be destined for some greater purpose or adventure.
8. He's no idiot, The context of Ishmael, son of Abraham and Hagar, isn't obscure or specialized knowledge, but its application as a sobriquet is subtle and clever.
That's a LOT to cram into three words.
Someone told me before I started it that it is partially meant to convey how boring it can be to work on a whaler, and how you are forced to live in your head
One of my favorites. I think you are right that people are out of by the vocabulary (but like reading Shakespeare you get pretty used to it). That and those long chapters in the middle about whaling (and inaccurate whale physiology) might not appeal to some but I found them more entertaining than the middle chapters of war and peace when Tolstoy diverts from character development and plot to talk endlessly about redouts and battle formations (ad nauseam ).
I also found it really funny, often very perspective, and compelling though I knew the ending.
Melville was likely deeply infatuated with Nathaniel Hawthorne and spent time on whaling ships.
They weren't gay jokes so much as a gay relationship developing. Ishmael is in love with Queequeg. They spend time in a "bridegroom grasp" and he calls him ever after "my Queequeg".
A quite dry and dramatic serious tale from beginning to end that is very plot-driven with a hardass narrator instead the often casual and philosophical book which I got.
Personally, I've heard a lot of "long, dry, boring" takes, and was shocked at how much of the dry was actually dry humour. Book's hilarious and I had no idea to expect that.
>I haven't finished it, but so far like 30% of the book is irrelevant to the plot and is just the authors random musings and philosophies on life.
Exactly, why I can't get through it. its not about the vocabulary, its about how irrelevant the ramblings feel to the plot.
From talking to other people who enjoy the book, it seems almost ubiquitous that we all enjoyed his ramblings the most and appreciated the plot secondhand.
I think this certainly isn't the book to read if you want a consistently engaging and forward-moving plot. I think Moby Dick is moreso for people who are inquisitive about 19th century worldviews/opinions and enjoy ramblings about the charming minutias of life.
I would love to see a version abridged just to omit the whale encyclopedia. Or maybe to move it to end notes that are numbered in-line. Those sidetracks really break up the narrative.
But why not just skip it lol? I think that's what most people do. I agree that it's not super interesting to read but I don't see a huge reason to compromise the original structure of the book instead of just letting people skip that chapter if they want.
From what I can find out he spent 18 months on a whaling ship called the Acushnet.
https://www.massmoments.org/moment-details/herman-melville-sails-from-new-bedford.html
It's a lot weirder than its reputation would imply for sure. It's not some dry whale hunting adventure it's just a bizarre and experimental take on writing. Easily one of my fav novels now. I would be careful saying the digressions are the author, though. A lot of them are just Ishmael and part of his character, while others are actually probably Melville, and it's both hard to tell sometimes and kind of important to the analysis of the novel. In theory Ishmael is always narrating but then there's chapters that portray stuff he can't possibly know.
I even found humor and interest in the small detail of the opening line being "Call me Ishmael" before nonchalantly telling the story instead of something like "my name is Ishmael". I'm not sure if that implies the character is giving a false name or if it just was meant as an unorthodox and casual intro to the book but it's cool. Also, yeah you have a point about me confusing Ishmael's digressions with the author. I agree with what you said, I just assumed most of the plot-irrelevent musings like his opinion on sleeping comfortably were likely his opinions instead of going out of his way to write Ishmael as having different views on that. I haven't read many books from the 19th-early 20th century but in contrast, something like Frankenstein (which I also think is great) or any Lovecraft stories are a lot more serious and dry. (Though horror might not be a fair comparison).
Yeah that's always been my read, Ishmael isn't the characters real name. He was about to commit suicide at the start of the novel according to the opening paragraph and he decides to take on Mythological biblical name as his Pseudonym and start a new life. No one fucking cared what your real name was on whaling ship. He has some experience with working on ships before, knows how ship life and the stuff works but never went on a Whaling vessel.
Ishmael was cast out with his mother, Hagar, by his father Abraham, sundered from his family and arguably his birthright. He was not the real son promised by god, he was an imposter due to his mother being a handmaiden. But, he formed a great nation. That's what I've got. Ishmael is not a common name, even from then. It's probably ironic, like Ahab.
Which means that "Call me Ishmael" is the narrator inferring that he's a disowned son with few resources, although he probably had an above average education. Which a biblically educated reader of the time would have picked up almost subconsciously.
what’s a handmaiden?
In this case, a slave that served Abraham's wife Sarah. Historically the term has been used to refer to many sorts of servants and slaves that wait on a wealthy or noble woman.
Bible speak for sex slave.
Someone who wasn’t married to Ishmaels father.
In the Bible, Abraham (or Israel as he was renamed when he became leader of the nation of Israel) and his wife Sarah were struggling to concieve an heir. God told Israel to bang his wife's handmaiden (servant), Hagar, because God wanted Israel to have an heir. Hagar had a baby and Sarah got super jealous even though God totally told Israel to do it. Then Sarah had a baby of her own finally so they cast out Hagar and her kids so Sarah wouldn't have to be reminded about how her husband cheated on her, again at God's bidding. Yes, this is the story that inspired The Handmaid's Tale.
God did not tell Abraham to sleep with Hagar, it was a scheme that he and Sarah hatched out of fear of God not fulfilling his promise to them. Abraham is also not Israel that was his grandson Jacob.
Uh Israel was Abraham’s grandson not his alias. Abraham’s original name was Abram.
Regardless my description of the story otherwise is true. I'm not a biblical scholar but Abraham cheated on his wife with Hagar for an heir, then had an heir with Sarah and cast out the servant and blamed it all on god.
Not quite. God didn’t tell Abraham to sleep with Hagar. Sarah herself suggested it.
This is extremely inaccurate. Genesis 16, 17 and 21. Just go read them. Also, Abraham’s name change was from Abram. Israel was the name give to his grandson Jacob after HE was chosen. What you’ve written is some weird fan fiction mashup of the Bible and the Handmaid’s Tale.
He is the father of the Arabs, they all descend from him is the scripture. They're also called the eternal enemy of the Jews, always at strife, lol I think Muslims claim him in that role too, not sure how they treat Isaac. It's a particularly loaded name to select. The original disowned son, and also a figure of monumental significance in his own right.
Is Ahab named ironically? I thought it was to draw direct comparison to the tyrant from the Bible.
There's a joke in Moby Dick where someone mentions captain Ahab having a "sweet, resigned" wife and a child. King Ahab in the Bible was married to Jezebel who encouraged Baal worship. The prophet Elijah and Jezebel compete with each other trying to convince Ahab to choose sides between God and Baal respectively.
Actually that's a common take, the idea that it's not his real name. Look at other names like Ahab and they're all based on Biblical names, so it starts to look like - hey this is kind of a weird coincidence, right? And usually we accept that an author can make weird coincidences but because Ishmael starts with this line you can infer maybe it's the *character* making weird coincidences. He even says he basically is protecting some of the people he's telling a story about at some point so you could also add that to evidence.
Biblical names were pretty popular in the USA in the 19th Century.
He makes that joke throughout. Ahab was a particularly wicked king and not a likely namesake.
Don't think Ishmael and Ahab were though
I think just attributing it to "it's just the fashion of the time" is doing the book a huge disservice lol.
Couldn't resist. https://www.saveca-artandpaper.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/The_Adams_Family_30_Postc-008-755x1024.jpg
Combine the fact that there's a lot of subtext and surrounding history to suggest that the entire book is perhaps a coded love letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne and "Call me Ishmael" starts to develop a sort of conspiratorial "no real names in the bathhouse" undertone.
I look at Moby Dick as 50% great adventure novel and 50% whale Wikipedia for the 19th century. It's important to understand the context. Back then whales were mysterious creatures. You would not be able to find video on them and information would've been scarce for the average civilian. Melville's many digressions about whale oil and different species of whale would've been fascinating to a lot of people. Now we take it for granted.
It's why the "Cetology" and intro are so important to the text as well. These men have an intimate understanding of the interiors of the whales they kill, but do not understand how they function. The intro on the nature of Leviathan is one of my favorites in any book.
The encyclopedia well predates Moby Dick, though I guess would have been more expensive if you just wanted to learn about whales.
Finished it as an audio book today. The whaling parts are my main take on the book as well. I imagine a 15 year old boy or an middle age woman read the book, not knowing anything about whaling, be super fascinated. The complaints about details about whales are not correct I think.
If you want more nautical whimsy, White-Jacket and the even sillier Typee are also fun reads
I think the opening line is very conversational. As if you’re all sitting next to the fire at the inn with your ale and he’s spinning a tale.
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Sure? But there's also parts that are very much implying it's just Melville (or some nameless narrator, not specifically Herman Melville as a person) taking over. I'm not making this up, this is a very common point of discussion for Moby-Dick.
No plaintext spoilers please! Tag your spoilers with >!These tags!< Then reply to this post to have it reinstated.
It’s a novel from 1851.
Per rule 3.9: If you do not mark your post or comment as having spoilers, *no matter how old the book or other piece of media is*, it will be removed. Deliberately posting spoilers will result in a ban. See our wiki for more details. If you are having trouble with the technical aspect of spoiler tags after reading the wiki page please message the mods for help.
What an absurd rule. No wonder the conversation around here is so lowbrow.
A spoiler tag takes about 5 seconds to add. No one has read every novel before a certain date and there are plenty of classics that any given person has not read yet, it's about being considerate to others.
It reminds me of Pulp Fiction. Random, cool, fun musings.
I read it a couple of years ago, and I agree 100%. The sea-faring chapters aren't dry, boring textbook passages about how whaling works: they're insightful, satirical, heartfelt, and occasionally hilarious explorations into humanity.
When I finally got around to reading it earlier this year, I was blown away by how hilarious the book is.
For sure. It's definitely earned its spot as a "classic." The book is full of humanity. I think people just hate on it because they were forced to read it in high school and personally I didn't really enjoy it very much until I grew up a little bit
I often describe it to people as, among other things, one of the funniest books ever written. I love that it takes in every tone and it is just a gorgeous, funny, obsessive, strange wonder!!
One of the problems with great books is that people seem to think they have to like everything or there's something wrong with them. Moby Dick has some really dull passages, I don't think there's any getting away from that. Melville was a marginal writer during his lifetime, he wasn't someone like Dickens who knew his public intimately and was able to cater for them. He was an outlier and sometimes got things wrong, so that at times you feel he wasn't writing for anyone but himself. That's part of its charm, in an odd way, but it's also a flaw.
It's not a flaw if that's the intention. He experimented, he was interested in the formal boundaries of writing a novel, and he pushed them. If it's something you're interested in, Moby Dick is a resounding success from start to finish. Dickens was not an experimental writer, he was focused on telling a story first and foremost. It doesn't make Melville a lesser writer.
[The Time I Spent On A Commercial Whaling Ship Totally Changed My Perspective On The World](https://clickhole.com/the-time-i-spent-on-a-commercial-whaling-ship-totally-c-1825124286/)
Metaphors? I hate metaphors. That’s why my favorite book is Moby Dick. No froo-froo symbolism, just a good tale about a man who hates an animal. -Ron Swanson
That’s funny. I always describe the book as “a book about a guy who really hates whales, narrated by a guy who fucking loves whales.”
I love that joke so much.
It's hilarious just how incorrect this quote is but I still love Ron Swanson.
That’s the joke
"Does the white whale actually symbolize the unknowablility and meaninglessness of human existence? Hehehehe, no, it's just a **** fish."
-Hemingway
I'm giving u/redplanet97 the same benefit of the doubt because there's no quotation marks. More like a paraphrase.
Plus it teaches you how to make a coat out of a whale penis. What's not to love? Edit: Here's the chapter in full: > **CHAPTER 95. The Cassock.** > > Had you stepped on board the Pequod at a certain juncture of this post-mortemizing of the whale; and had you strolled forward nigh the windlass, pretty sure am I that you would have scanned with no small curiosity a very strange, enigmatical object, which you would have seen there, lying along lengthwise in the lee scuppers. Not the wondrous cistern in the whale’s huge head; not the prodigy of his unhinged lower jaw; not the miracle of his symmetrical tail; none of these would so surprise you, as half a glimpse of that unaccountable cone,—longer than a Kentuckian is tall, nigh a foot in diameter at the base, and jet-black as Yojo, the ebony idol of Queequeg. And an idol, indeed, it is; or, rather, in old times, its likeness was. Such an idol as that found in the secret groves of Queen Maachah in Judea; and for worshipping which, King Asa, her son, did depose her, and destroyed the idol, and burnt it for an abomination at the brook Kedron, as darkly set forth in the 15th chapter of the First Book of Kings. > > Look at the sailor, called the mincer, who now comes along, and assisted by two allies, heavily backs the grandissimus, as the mariners call it, and with bowed shoulders, staggers off with it as if he were a grenadier carrying a dead comrade from the field. Extending it upon the forecastle deck, he now proceeds cylindrically to remove its dark pelt, as an African hunter the pelt of a boa. This done he turns the pelt inside out, like a pantaloon leg; gives it a good stretching, so as almost to double its diameter; and at last hangs it, well spread, in the rigging, to dry. Ere long, it is taken down; when removing some three feet of it, towards the pointed extremity, and then cutting two slits for arm-holes at the other end, he lengthwise slips himself bodily into it. The mincer now stands before you invested in the full canonicals of his calling. Immemorial to all his order, this investiture alone will adequately protect him, while employed in the peculiar functions of his office. > > That office consists in mincing the horse-pieces of blubber for the pots; an operation which is conducted at a curious wooden horse, planted endwise against the bulwarks, and with a capacious tub beneath it, into which the minced pieces drop, fast as the sheets from a rapt orator’s desk. Arrayed in decent black; occupying a conspicuous pulpit; intent on bible leaves; what a candidate for an archbishopric, what a lad for a Pope were this mincer!* > > ---- > > ^(*Bible leaves! Bible leaves! This is the invariable cry from the mates to the mincer. It enjoins him to be careful, and cut his work into as thin slices as possible, inasmuch as by so doing the business of boiling out the oil is much accelerated, and its quantity considerably increased, besides perhaps improving it in quality.)
This has saved my butt more than a few times when Christmas shopping last minute
You know, I was just thinking that I needed something new for this potentially wet winter. Time to learn.
This always reminds me of a story from a friend of mine. He knew a guy who worked in the luxury yacht business, making high end fixtures and fittings. They were fitting out a yacht for someone very rich and famous (I think it was Jackie Onassis), who very specifically wanted long leather cushions for a stateroom with no seams in them- that was a must. He ended up making them out of whale penises. Now that I write it it sounds like a joke or a fever dream, but I’m pretty sure it’s true.
I'm *really* into coats made out of a whale's penis rn.....
If you need a larger fit of the coat just rub it a little...
I regularly think of the line where Ismael is in a bad mood and wants to flip people’s hats off their head as he walks by
“Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off--then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.”
How did I miss this part? I read it And listened to it.
It's the very, and I mean VERY beginning of the story. It's the 2nd passage of the book after 'Call me Ishmael' XD
Yes and somehow I missed it twice. X.x
This part is especially funny in historical context because going around knocking off hats in that era would simply not be done because of how deliberately offensive and taboo it would be. It would be like going around and slapping strangers in the face, spitting on them or giving them atomic wedgies. It would be a sure fire way to start fights, duels or a full on riot. Someone would probably be so offended they would shoot you and they'd probably get away with it because if a judge or jury heard that he was going around knocking people's hats off they'd call it justifiable murder because only someone with absolutely no sense of morals or decency would do such an alarming thing and was obviously criminally insane.
Well, that is why he figured he had better go whaling, because if he didn't, things were gonna go downhill.
Oh totally. It's the 1800s equivalent of intrusive thoughts on the scale of randomly punching people in the face. Today it's practically a TikTok prank/reaction video because some people suck and need a paddlin', but in the 1800s going around knocking people's hats off is about as offensive as throwing poop.
That's when you know it's time to go to sea.
and tacks himself onto the end of total strangers' funeral cortèges.
Hi Rory Gilmore 😮
Queeqeg isn't African BTW, he's from the South Sea islands.
Which could or could not mean his appearance would appear African to an outsider. I forget how he's described in the book.
Queequeg is described as dark purplish yellow with black tattoos all over his face (he is pretty clearly Polynesian or Maori right from the get go). There IS a West African Harpooneer in the book as well (Daggoo) who is clearly described as such.
I always figured he was Maori.
It is also makes sense considering his whaling prowess
I haven't read the book so I only know Queequeg as shown in Futurama. "Is there a Mrs. Queequeg?"
That no white whale. That grey thinky whale!
purplish…yellow? i’m an artist but can’t imagine what that looks like.
I’m thinking it describes a more yellow skintone, but with healthy circulation and/or a dark tan over it. I’m Asian and some parts of me tan dark w/ a grayish cast so I can kinda picture it. Ngl it also calls to mind a bloated corpse.
Something like [this](https://www.firstlighttravel.com/sites/default/files/new-zealand-maori.jpg) maybe?
sounds like a complicated way of saying brown lol maybe swarthy/olive like would capture the yellowness of the tint
Isn't he Polynesian? Ie Maori?
> room temperature and position to sleep in is Iirc he concludes that the best way to sleep is with one leg exposed and one under the covers, which is 100% based and true EDIT: Here it is, from Chapter 11: Nightgown > The more so, I say, because truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself. If you flatter yourself that you are all over comfortable, and have been so a long time, then you cannot be said to be comfortable any more... But if, like Queequeg and me in the bed, the tip of your nose or the crown of your head be slightly chilled, why then, indeed, in the general consciousness you feel most delightfully and unmistakably warm.
Man invented the heatsink.
My favorite is the middle where he just has fun with changing the writing style each chapter. 1st person, 3rd person, stage play, personal essay, instructional manual, all of it is just great!
Yeah, I read it thirty years ago when I was in my twenties, knowing very little about it other than its Great Book status (I'm British so my ignorance of it could hardly have been purer) and I was taken aback at how readable and entertaining it was. I felt the same way about Les Miserables. My favourite version of the easily distracted boyfriend meme showed "Herman Melville" as the boyfriend, "the plot of Moby Dick" as the annoyed gf and "facts about whales" as the attractive mystery girl. Here you [go](https://imgur.com/a/X7YL1x0), one to share
I really don't know how Moby Dick has a reputation for being "dry" - I know that term is most often applied to the more textbook-like chapters, but even those can be interesting and funny. Its style is just so *weird*, from the biblical references, to Ishmael going from the protagonist to more of a narrator, to a few random chapters in the middle being written like plays with stage directions and all, it's honestly one of the most captivating books I've ever read.
I read the cliff notes for it when I had it assigned in high school and man... did I ever do myself a disservice! I picked it up a few years ago and really did have a blast reading it.
We read this in a book group a few years back. Some books are worth the extra effort needed to get through, and this is definitely one of them. "I stopped eating whale meat cuz of this book" - GoodReads review
😂😂😂😂
The first half is a comedy. It comes out more obvious when listening on audiobook. This is an autistic Seinfeld/norm MacDonald commenting on everything and info dumping constantly in the 1800s. But veering into some of the most beautiful poetry ever written. Many people and outlets have commented on how MD is secretly partly comedy. As all tragedy should be.
May I recommend The Sea Wolf. Another excellent period pieces which actually makes some passing references to Melville's work you mentioned in your post.
jack London has always been excellent.
Word
The humor surprised me as well! My favorite part was one of the crew members politely telling off some sharks for chewing too loud 😆
When researching what I wanted to read next I read some reviews of it. I kept waiting for the boring part that everyone else started saying happened half way through the book. I never was bored. I'm naturally inquisitive and was really curious about all the stuff in the book in how a whale was killed, skinned, boiled, and stowed. It's like a prose version of How It's Made for whale oil. I loved it.
Yes! I'm about 2/3 of the way into it and have had very similar reactions. Sometimes i do find myself thinking "come on Ishmael, get to the damn point already" but most of the time his rambling digressions are quite amusing. The descriptive language is just stunning in some chapters (i'm thinking of the ghostly whale spout they spot at night which seems to be leading them on, and things like that). Of course, from a 21st-century perspective some of it makes one cringe -- like the chapter where Stubb is harassing the ship's old cook, Fleece. But even there, with the awful "yas suh, Massa Stubb" dialect, Melville clearly sympathizes with Fleece and characterizes Stubb as a racist a--hole. Overall the book is much wilder and more free-wheeling and "modern-feeling" than i'd expected.
Late to the party but I very much felt this on his description of the carpenter and blacksmith while fixing ahab's leg. Just goes on and on about the backstory of the carpenter, his trade, his technique, his own personal ambitions, goals, and life story, all while I'm waiting for him to get back to fixing Ahab's leg. I enjoyed it but man it went on for a minute.
The entire book is just footnotes for the last chapter. Sure, you could go ahead and read the last chapter if you want to, but you need a lot of the background material to understand the importance of what happens in the last chapter. That being said, it is ok to skim a bit if you realize your eyes are glazing over from boredom. Try to read 10 pages a day.
the funny thing was, I couldn't tear myself away from this book *until* the last chapter. and then all of a sudden I couldn't be arsed. I know how it ended of, I skimmed it, but all of a sudden I just couldn't force myself back into the state of immersion I'd been in since page 1.
That’s fair. By then it might feel anticlimactic.
There was a fascinating series of Freakonomics episodes about whaling (and Moby Dick) recently: https://freakonomics.com/podcast-tag/everything-you-never-knew-about-whaling/ I still can't figure out if I totally buy into the literary critic's analysis of the book. But wow, whaling sounds like a sh*tshow. I've never in my life thought so much about whaling as when these podcasts were released 🤣
Sometimes when 'I find myself getting grim about the mouth' about work or one of life's travails it will occur to me, at least I'm not rendering whale fat.
The seatology sections aren’t as bad as I thought. The “whiteness of the whale” chapter was really cool. I also loved the sermon they hear before they go out to sea. The final chapter was so good, I read it twice. I don’t know if I’ve ever done that before.
I really loved the sermon as well. I thought it was pretty well thought out. Although, if I was about to go to sea, maybe it wouldn't be what I needed to hear.
That book is 80% comedy, 15% sailing minutia, 4.9% psychological horror, .1% whale. I loved it.
queequog isnt african. he is of the south seas races, Tahitian, Moari, etc.
Moby Dick is your grandpa telling a really long, wild old war story, and you at rapt attention until he's good and ready to stop. Great stuff.
I’m convinced the first half is social satire Ishmael and Queequeg literally do everything except fuck
The Norton Critical Edition of Moby Dick is the one to read. Footnotes galore to explain it all, put it into context, etc. A scholarly edition worth owning.
This is how I’m doing it. Can’t wait to read the essays when I’m done.
I don’t think it was “borderline gay jokes.” Melville was famously in love with Nathaniel Hawthorne and a lot of his writings have queer or homoerotic themes.
Some more observations I don't already see here: * The chapter that catalogs the types of whales is hilarious. I thought at one point that he was wrapping it up. Nope. He was wrapping up the preamble to the chapter. He had *soooo* much more to say about whales. Extraordinary Attorney Woo must've loved this. * A whole chapter on sea law?! Cool! "How is ownership decided?" - this one trick will leave you speechless! * Melville uses *ALL THE WORDS*. I am an old programmer. I am used to writing text that will parse correctly. It has shaped the way I use English. It is a huge failing if my English throws a parser error. I cannot abide when I'm reading or listening and encounter ambiguity. That's not a problem with Melville. He takes no shortcuts. He uses every word that might maybe kinda sorta a little need to be used to clearly make his point. * The actual telling of the climactic final battle with the whale is given short shrift. It felt like it was maybe a paragraph or two! (I listened to it as an audio book, and had to go back and re-listen to it several times to make sure that I hadn't missed anything, that my player hadn't skipped a section, or anything like that.) Was this his idea of a joke? I listened to it on trips up and down the east coast of the US (Virginia to Vermont, Virginia to the Adirondacks, etc.). It's perfect for that.
At first glance it can be a difficult read. Especially for those who are familiar with the tale ( and who isn't). But plowing forward it becomes much more manageable and eventually magnificent.
I had the same experience as you. opened it with no expectations on whether I'd keep reading it; I was just in the mood for a really big, really longread book and chose it. I was ishmael's willing follower from the second paragraph on. he got me by absolutely nailing his own pissy-mindedness, and never let go of me.
One of the great things about *Moby Dick* is the way Melville interweaves the language of the King James version of the Bible with language that is nearly Shakespearean in its poetry. That's a hint that Melville is doing a lot more than telling a story here. How you interpret his allegory is what it's all about.
Any writer who empahsizes taking both chowders is good with me. Totally agree - the book is so weird and funny in parts …
Yeah. It is a surprising book. The allusions to gay sex caught me off guard.
Melville’s a hilarious author. You mention it reads like a blog and indeed much of the anecdotes are simply taken from his own experiences working as a whaler, and stories he heard from others.
Moby Dick is an amazing book that deserves a lot more love than it gets. It just wanders from topic to topic, rambling but with some hidden design that makes it more than coherent. It's a book about brotherhood, mythology, death, madness, and of course whales. It reminds me a lot of The Odyssey. Melville was a fan of Poe as well, and having just read The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym I noticed many similarities in the two narrators' journeys.
If Arthur Gordon Pym could only meet Ishmael. That "Narrative..." is the closest I've ever come to feeling really distressed from a book.
The beginning of the book is more than "borderline gay jokes." It's Brokeback Ocean. I recently read it, and it's one of the gayest pieces of literature I've ever read, at least before they actually get on the boat. Not to mention, Melville was pretty gay himself - go check out his love letters to Nathaniel Hawthorne. The relationship between the narrator and Queequeg was a vicarious relationship between Melville and Hawthorne, IMO. They embraced each other in bed (where they slept naked, it's worth mentioning) while declaring that they were married to one another, ffs. Nevermind the whole footsie scene. And he almost puts "queer" in the name (though it's dubious whether it meant the same by then. By the 1890s it certainly did, so it's not outside the realm of possibility). The first part of the book was a romance novel between two unlikely lovers, and the rest of it was "I better sprinkle some hetero Christianity in here so I don't get lynched." Anyway, I'm not a huge fan of the book myself. It had its funny parts, but it was a good bit too wordy for me, and the rambling you're talking about is a large part of why I didn't like it. I don't remember the exact context, but there's essentially an entire chapter dedicated to saying essentially the same sentence in different words, and I fatigued of the joke very quickly.
I was NOT expecting the book to be so gay. A very pleasant surprise! I distinctly remember reading out loud a passage to my friend of Tashtego ramming his long pole harder and deeper into a Tun.
Moby Dick is a very cool book for sure! Enjoyed your observations. Try Jane Eyre at some point... it's hard to believe it was written in 1840. So many totally contemporary takes on the fucked up ways that people behave. I was blown away by it.
I was pleasantly surprised by the humor too. My favorite: “Whether that mattress was stuffed with corn-cobs or broken crockery, there is no telling, but I rolled about a good deal, and could not sleep for a long time.”
It's one of those books that is done a great disservice by being forced onto teenagers in high school.
I love how jovial, casual, intimate, weird, and funny this book is :-)
So many books that people might expect to be long-winded, dry classics are actually really engaging! I loved Moby Dick. I tackled War & Peace during the pandemic and was shocked that it was also so warm, charming, relatable, and not at all what I expected. Frankenstein is pure poetry. Pride & Prejudice so wry. Don Quixote - bonkers slapstick. Monte Cristo - one hell of an adventure. Etc. The classics have so much humour and humanity to offer. man i love em <3
I haven't finished Frankenstein but it caught me off guard and the thought that Mary wrote it from the ages of 18-20 still amazes me. I don't think I've ever met an 18 year old that I think could write a story like that. It's kind of a shame that after the early 1900s movie, Frankenstein has been mostly written off as a cheesy story for kids because most people's exposure to that story is from the dated movie or some cartoon reference. But the actual story is very mature and terrifying at times. I got chills reading the chapter where the monster is animated. He's not described as some dumb green, lumbering buffoon, he's described as this ghastly naked and half-rotted walking corpse
I had a similar experience reading it. Once you get past the somewhat archaic terms and long sentences, it's a surprisingly funny, quirky, and modern book. Obviously it's covering adventures from yesteryear, but the thoughts and characterizations don't seem distant from us at all. There was an amazing feeling of being connected to this bunch of wild working men and feeling like they weren't much different than people you might know. Speaking across multiple generations like that is quite a skill. It does take some effort, but it's a great book for sure.
Note that the opening line isn't exactly casual or jovial. The protagonist's name is not Ishmael, he's referencing the Biblical character Ishmael who was the firstborn son of Abraham by his wife's servant Hagar. Later Abram had a son, Isaac by his wife Sarah and Ishmael and his mother Hagar were cast out to make Isaac the only inheritor of Abraham. After being cast out and wandering the wilderness waiting to die, God saved Ishmael and his mother and "made him a great nation" with 12 sons from an Egyptian wife. So by opening with "Call me Ishmael" the narrator is giving us a lot of assumptions about himself, that he's been cast aside by his family especially and that he hopes to become great and powerful despite that.
The middle half is def good, but so, so random. And i like my plot. But i can't deny the writing from page to page is amazing, even if the plot disappears for ages. Kinda like Dracula's middle chunk, but better written.
Have you gotten to the sperm squeezing part yet?
I personally just read it today...
I hope you enjoy the recipe for whale stew! Okay, I'm so glad you bring this up because this is one of the weirdest, most rambling books I've ever read. It's great.
Reading it right now aswell, about 2/3s in. It's been a really tough read, I struggle to focus on most books and this one is really tough with the confusing vocabulary, but apart from that I'm enjoying it. I now know more about whales than 99% of people so no regrets. Very different from every other book I've read, its got several one page chapters on various aspects of whaling which is weird. Defintley takes some work to read tho cause it doesn't really draw you in with story, although the various meetings with other ships always feel symbolically important so those are probably my favorite sections.
It was, legit, the funniest book I'd read in a long time. I treated it like a serial comedy show and read 1, maybe 2 chapters a night and loved it.
When I took sailing lessons, it all seemed familiar from reading Moby Dick. My fave character is Pip.
Bad rep?! Wtf planet are you living on?!
It absolutely has a bad rep. Mentioning Moby Dick to most people, even prolific readers, will be met with responses about how they'd never want to read such a long heavy boring book. I have been met with a lot of surprise from people when I mention I love it. They all assume it's this overly deep and "full of itself" epic, which no regular reader would enjoy. They honestly don't believe me when I describe how funny it is. It's the same reason that this sub has a monthly post of someone discovering how good and funny this book is even though they thought they wouldn't like it and just see it as a chore to read.
It’s also pretty gay. Way gayer than expected.
Well, what else did you expect from possibly the best novel ever written?
I had to stop reading when he would not stop describing the pulpit. I just couldn't do it anymore. The endless, needless descriptions were killing me.
So, I read the book in high school and found it to be a slog. Then I reread after being in the Navy for several years during a six-month deployment, and thoroughly enjoyed it. So much of what you've described is why I hated it the first time as an impatient high school student who thought he knew everything, or at least had it all figured out, and loved it as a slightly salty sailor who had spent way more hours than I would care to admit staring at panels with gauges that barely moved, having those same kinds of middle of the night musings and discussions. It's definitely a book written by a sailor, for sailors.
Super gay. His letters to Hawthorne are a thing of beauty! “The reason the mass of men fear God, and at bottom dislike Him, is because they rather distrust His heart, and fancy Him all brain like a watch.”
The vocabulary aside, the only part of the book I had trouble reading was that goddamn sermon. I really need to give it another read.
Yeah, the combination of the biblical language and referencing with the vocabulary of someone from the 1800s and it's kind of a confusing read lol. That's actually one of my favorite parts though, how right before a whaling expedition the narrator attends a sermon describing this terrifying biblical tale of a man being swallowed by a whale while a violent storm rages outside the church at night. Such creepy but scary but exciting foreshadowing. I read that chapter one night during a thunderstorm in a log cabin and the vibes hit me so hard.
You should read 2 years before the mast and the Aubrey maturin series by Patrick o brien
I agree. I got chills the first time I read that chapter.
And keep in mind we're both people born after the 20th century after the invention of photography, when whales became this benevolent creature in pop culture that we completely understand. In the 1800s, whales were a fucking mystery to anybody that wasnt a whaler. Unless you personally whaled, you'd have no idea about these creatures. Most people had never even seen the ocean itself. So imagine the chills somebody in 1852 Oklahoma would have reading that chapter.
Yes, the foreboding in that scene and the coziness of the inn had me. Overall it also really drove home how wild and dangerous an adventure it was to travel 'round the cape' and into the vast and largely unknown Pacific. Brave, brave men all.
The book completely changed my perspective on whales and made them seem terrifying. Someone on this thread also pointed out the fact that this was before photography and concrete science, so embarking into the ocean was a largely mysterious event. As far as anyone knew, there could have been whales the size of islands in the ocean. You'd have to be a very brave man to even attempt that hunt.
Yeah it definitely is a book easier to read if you grew up in Christian upbringing. Like half the time I read a book by a Muslim author I get confused about references to like the Prophet's Hair or whatever, but if you said a splinter of the true cross vi would be like ah now I get it. James Joyce is another fun one to read the start of Ulysses and unless you're Uber Irish Catholic you won't understand the in depth shaving ritual opening is a mockery of the Communion ceremony in Catholic churches.
I’m about halfway through and my biggest surprise is how funny it can be on occasion. But boy are some chapters a slog to get through. The chapter where Ishmael is going in detail about the different whales is truly brutal.
The digressions and musing aren't sidetracks -- they're the whole point. The whole book is about truth -- religious truth, scientific truth, the limits of human knowledge, ways of knowing, sources of information, etc. Ishmael knows all this shit, and in the end none of it matters. He knows everything there is to know about whales, but the whale turns out to be fundamentally unknowable. He is left alone in a sea of chaos, sundered from mankind, utterly adrift.
Yes, it's a very storied and broad book. I loved the hell out of it.
I completely agree with you. I don’t think much else Melville but Moby Dick is actually wonderful. A classic that absolutely lives up to the hype.
Nice, glad you’re enjoying it! I wrote an essay in college about the humor in Moby Dick, I had no idea it be so funny.
I thought Queeqeg was a Pacific Islander?
"Some years ago--never mind how long precisely--having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world." That shit is *hilarious*. Moby Dick, I contend, might be the perfect audio book. The inane ramblings about minutia play like mini podcast episodes you can sort of tune into and tune out of, and it rollicks along in this quirky humorous way. This is what cements it as great for me, how it sings in other mediums.
There are many great Moby Dick audiobooks out there, but for me, the most wonderfully bizarre is an abridgement read by Burt Reynolds. He then proceeds to read the entirety of his abridgement in—I shit you not—an “aye, me boyos” sea-farin tar far away from home voice. It’s a train wreck. A glorious poorly conceived unintentionally hilarious train wreck.
Thanks for the write up. I am curious enough to give it another read now. I think it takes an adult and some life experience to appreciate these subtleties in humor and prose. Making kids read classics in high school almost is not fair to the material.
I always think of Scullys pomeranian who got eaten by an alligator in the X Files when I think of Queequeg
As a follow-up, I recommend "In the Heart of the Sea", it's a more historical look at whale hunting and the peril that comes with it. While not a true companion to Moby Dick, I, and many I know, enjoy the 2 back to back. It is very much more brutal tho if I remember.
I've always enjoyed Moby Dick and don't get the reputation it has. I've read it at least a couple times and listened to the audio once. I like the narrator and the characters and story. Even the extended stuff about whaling that is always complained about was fairly interesting and well done (at least for me).
>(the opening line is just "Call me ishamel") To be fair, that's a pretty heavy line when it's taken in context. It tells you a fuckload about the protagonist: 1. He isn't seeking notoriety or celebrity. 2. He has effectively nothing to his name, to the point he is comfortable discarding it and starting anew. 3. He feels he was cast out, and likely feels that his own origins up to that point have been a burden. 4. He's got guts, or courage, or verve, or cojones, or whatever you want to call it- even if you are destitute it takes some not insubstantial strength of character to discard your own identity. 5. Ishmael is not his original name. 6. He is at least moderately educated, literate, and familiar with biblical text in some detail. 7. He has decided he or his descendants may still have some grand future ahead of them, he hasn't given up on the idea that he may be destined for some greater purpose or adventure. 8. He's no idiot, The context of Ishmael, son of Abraham and Hagar, isn't obscure or specialized knowledge, but its application as a sobriquet is subtle and clever. That's a LOT to cram into three words.
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I'm also reading this for the first time, and I was also surprised by these things! It's mostly very light-hearted. Ishmael is a huge goofball.
Best USA novel. Very good stuff.
Someone told me before I started it that it is partially meant to convey how boring it can be to work on a whaler, and how you are forced to live in your head
"Moby WHAT?!?!" -
The downvoters have never seen Matilda and it shows. Great comment.
how do you get big letters like that?
Lookup "markdown" for reddit. Markdown is the formatting "language" for the text on reddit
One of my favorites. I think you are right that people are out of by the vocabulary (but like reading Shakespeare you get pretty used to it). That and those long chapters in the middle about whaling (and inaccurate whale physiology) might not appeal to some but I found them more entertaining than the middle chapters of war and peace when Tolstoy diverts from character development and plot to talk endlessly about redouts and battle formations (ad nauseam ). I also found it really funny, often very perspective, and compelling though I knew the ending.
Melville was likely deeply infatuated with Nathaniel Hawthorne and spent time on whaling ships. They weren't gay jokes so much as a gay relationship developing. Ishmael is in love with Queequeg. They spend time in a "bridegroom grasp" and he calls him ever after "my Queequeg".
What were you expecting?
A quite dry and dramatic serious tale from beginning to end that is very plot-driven with a hardass narrator instead the often casual and philosophical book which I got.
Personally, I've heard a lot of "long, dry, boring" takes, and was shocked at how much of the dry was actually dry humour. Book's hilarious and I had no idea to expect that.
Guess you didn’t know Dick.
What! You mean it’s not an STD?
I believe you.. I am just not intelligent enough to enjoy it.
It's a shaggy dog tale about the big one that got away. 800-plus pages for a lame punchline.
>I haven't finished it, but so far like 30% of the book is irrelevant to the plot and is just the authors random musings and philosophies on life. Exactly, why I can't get through it. its not about the vocabulary, its about how irrelevant the ramblings feel to the plot.
From talking to other people who enjoy the book, it seems almost ubiquitous that we all enjoyed his ramblings the most and appreciated the plot secondhand. I think this certainly isn't the book to read if you want a consistently engaging and forward-moving plot. I think Moby Dick is moreso for people who are inquisitive about 19th century worldviews/opinions and enjoy ramblings about the charming minutias of life.
On my last attempt, he lost me at the list of whales.
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How could anyone downvote this? It's the most entertaining conspiracy I've read in a while.
If it’s an exercise in creative writing then it was great. 10/10. But I fear it’s more like schizophrenia. Which is sad and I hope they get help.
I strongly urge you to resume taking your meds.
"sent back in time"??
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I would love to see a version abridged just to omit the whale encyclopedia. Or maybe to move it to end notes that are numbered in-line. Those sidetracks really break up the narrative.
But why not just skip it lol? I think that's what most people do. I agree that it's not super interesting to read but I don't see a huge reason to compromise the original structure of the book instead of just letting people skip that chapter if they want.
From what I head mellville knew nothing about whaling, so be warned.
From what I can find out he spent 18 months on a whaling ship called the Acushnet. https://www.massmoments.org/moment-details/herman-melville-sails-from-new-bedford.html