What to say about Moby Dick, constant contender for my favorite novel ever (depending on how I’m feeling about secret societies and novels about same) in spite of significant narrative lulls?

How about that it is the first[1] eco-terror novel, anticipating a time in which even a diverse, multiracial band of (alas, only) men are unable to overcome a natural foe, in spite of forsaken vices, incantations, weapons forged in blood, and all the determination in the world? Sometimes, young men, you can’t be anything you want to be.

Or that is not only the great American novel, but is, in fact, the original great American novel[2], being a philosophical document about freedom and its costs and boundaries, and how our country was literally founded at that nexus[3], but also spending oodles of time on process and taxonomy, and fittingly, if a bit sadly, (mans)/explaining culture(s) to readers?

Or that it is the first explicitly multi-racial buddy-narrative[4]. Queequeg is not only treated at least as well as the various white characters in the novel, but is one of the few unabashedly heroic[5] characters in it?

Or that the prose is remarkably funny, whipping between Shakespearean pronouncements and understated humor so quickly it would be easy to interpret things as dour, if one isn’t reading carefully. I assure you, though, all that dark humor is intentional and extremely funny[6]?

Or that it is as compelling a boys’ adventure story as any I’ve yet read? The last several chapters, in particular, crash with tectonic force, as Ahab repeatedly once-mores into the breach until the mission is finally over.

Or that this Goodreads entry is a fool’s errand? Moby Dick is one of most scoured and covered works of art in the English language, and so what exactly can I write here that is new?

I can only recommend if you haven’t read it, that you do so. It may seem a struggle to get to all of its rewards, but they are well worth it.
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[1] I’d argue that Frankenstein is the first novel about men being unable to overcome nature, which isn’t quite the same thing. But Moby and Frank are close cousins, in that they share monomaniacal protagonists, sympathetic “monsters”, and tragedies well underway by the time the reader enters. They are also the basis for a substantial portion of the horror and sci-fi genres.

[2] Sorry, Cooper fans, but the Leatherstocking Tales are too slight to vie for the title, and Hawthorne’s a bit too focused on religion and hypocrisy to qualify as cataloging America, for me, personally.

[3] To be clear, while Melville does sling around words that are slavery-adjacent, there is little specific talk of the slave trade. A lot of interpretation has been written about the novel’s metaphorical or allegorical connections to that national disgrace, what with white whaling captains chasing black whales (exception important), and so on, but I don’t know if the book would have been better if it had made Melville’s views[7] more explicit. For all that Melville explicitly disavows allegory (In the text(!): “they might scout at Moby Dick as a monstrous fable, or still worse and more detestable, a hideous and intolerable allegory”), the various symbols and portents are so bold that it is amongst the most interperable and interpreted books written in English.

[4] Homosexual subtext already firmly built into the genre at its inception: “You had almost thought I had been his wife.”

[5] You could do a lot worse than internalizing the motto: “What Would Queequeg Do?” Especially since the answer is always either: “Be helpful.” or “Don’t judge”

[6] I’ve pulled out bunches of quotations for your perusal should you wish to indulge.

[7] By all writing and accounts, he was appalled by and deeply morally opposed to slavery. ( )

"To produce a mighty book you must choose a mighty theme."

An epic tale of whaling and its historical influence, all told in a humorous, sarcastic tone.

I enjoyed the book but found it too long for the value I got out of it. The finale only spans a couple pages, so the book amounts to a long-winded foreshadowing and buildup to those final moments.

It's certainly a well-written book with rich characterization, but the plot is sparse, instead preferring to go off on tangential commentary about whales and humorous pseudo-science about them. ( )

I reached chapter 38, I think. The idea of a melancholic captain on a mission to take revenge from a whale, the characterization, dialogues and monologues, were all too theatrical for my taste. Also, as an audiobook, the style was difficult to follow.

It's been a good long while since I read this book, maybe the 60s. I remember I wasn't fascinated with it, seeing it more as a chore to get through. I also found the overabundance of academic dissecting a bore. As the years progressed though, and my perspective broadened with life's experiences, parallels with human proclivities occasionally came to mind.

I don't think it's a book one might read for immediate entertainment, but in subsequent years it might help in understanding the subjective bubble we and other 'reasoning' life forms are enslaved in. ( )

This novel is just as good as its mammoth (or should I say leviathan) reputation indicated it would be. It was caricatured to me as a dull slog through a science exhibit on whaling, but it's famous for a reason: it's a thoughtful examination of our relationship with nature, an extremely rewarding character study, and an informative investigation of an entire livelihood, all with plenty of wit, insight, depth, and great writing. In fact, while I was reading it I had several of those moments where I get irritated at how much more self-indulgent and less pleasurable a lot of contemporary novels seem than 19th century ones. It might seem odd to call anything more self-indulgent than this long, digressive, allusive tome about whaling that has not one but multiple sections where Melville stops the action to explain his own use of symbolism, but not only are those moments usually funny or informative, they help give the book an enjoyable rhythm that makes it speed along in a way that a truly self-indulgent book could never manage.

Most people who don't like the book seem to have two main complaints - first, that it's too long; and second, that there's too much whaling stuff. The only sensible responses are that it's interesting along its whole length; and that the whaling stuff is cool. If you actually pay attention to what Melville is talking about when he starts going off about hawsers, top-gallants, whale physiognomy, and proper flensing and blubber-sawing techniques, you can learn a lot about an important historical industry, though it helps to have read a Patrick O'Brien novel or two, and I think it also helps to think of those sections as worldbuilding on an incredible scale. It's interesting that the same people who can't get enough of The Lord of the Rings' royal genealogies, or catalogs of spells in Harry Potter, or lists of Federation starship classes have issues with the whaling details. What really separates those areas of nerdery? Is Moby Dick just out of the zeitgeist, or is there truly something different about the way he lovingly recounts the types of tasks a ship's carpenter can be called upon to perform in the course of his duties?

It can seem that Melville does drone on for a bit too long, particularly that long stretch of pontificating about the noble qualities of whales, but not only is his enthusiasm for his subject infectious, if you read carefully it's never pointless, nor aimless autistic rambling. A digression on, say, whale's tails, reveals a much broader point on careful inspection:

"Nor does this - its amazing strength, at all tend to cripple the graceful flexion of its motions; where infantileness of ease undulates through a Titanism of power. On the contrary, those motions derive their most appalling beauty from it. Real strength never impairs beauty or harmony, but it often bestows it; and in everything imposingly beautiful, strength has much to do with the magic. Take away the tied tendons that all over seem bursting from the marble in the carved Hercules, and its charm would be gone. As devout Eckerman lifted the linen sheet from the naked corpse of Goethe, he was overwhelmed with the massive chest of the man, that seemed as a Roman triumphal arch. When Angelo paints even God the Father in human form, mark what robustness is there. And whatever they may reveal of the divine love in the Son, the soft, curled, hermaphroditical Italian pictures, in which his idea has been most successfully embodied; these pictures, so destitute as they are of all brawniness, hint nothing of any power, but the mere negative, feminine one of submission and endurance, which on all hands it is conceded, form the peculiar practical virtues of his teachings."

I don't think there's a single chapter in the book with a long meander like that where the diversion doesn't have a real point being made, and his ability to smoothly draw the general point from multiple examples makes those excursions a pleasure. A list of my favorite chapters with insightful second layers would be nearly as long as the book itself: Chapter 89, "Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish", that brilliantly connects the legal status of whales with the applications of legal pseudo-doctrine of "possession is half of the law", and also with systems of justice more generally would rank up there; as would Chapter 24, "The Advocate", which is as impassioned a defense of the profession of whaling as a vital tool of peaceful communication between nations as you could ask for.

Plus Melville never forgets to be funny, inside those massive paragraph blocks and outside. His labyrinthine sentences wind their ways through all kinds of grand rhetorical flourishes that are just a joy to read, easily on the level of a Shakespearean soliloquy. The famous chapter on handjobs is worth quoting at length:

"Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity came over me; and I found myself unwittingly squeezing my co-laborers' hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally; as much as to say - Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness.
Would that I could keep squeezing that sperm for ever! For now, since by many prolonged, repeated experiences, I have perceived that in all cases man must eventually lower, or at least shift, his conceit of attainable felicity; not placing it anywhere in the intellect or the fancy; but in the wife, the heart, the bed, the table, the saddle, the fireside, the country; now that I have perceived all this, I am ready to squeeze case eternally. In thoughts of the visions of the night, I saw long rows of angels in paradise, each with his hands in a jar of spermaceti."

Its plot is too famous to spend much time recounting, and Melville doesn't really spend much time on it himself, based on simple page count. Yet the basic narrative become iconic even though it's over-ripe for parody: Ishmael's almost whimsical urge to go adventuring meets Ahab's implacable obsession with the whale, and aside from various minor characters who get a few lines or bits of page time, the overwhelming majority of the plot is focused on those two and their respective fascination with whales. All the philosophizing, all the digressions and allusions and cetology are just a platform for the main quest, though no less enjoyable for that. It's a great example of an author enjoying his subject, and even if it almost seems like he rushes the climactic battle between the Pequod and the whale at the end, that's only because the rest of the book has been so pleasant it's a shame to see it end.

Why am I still talking about this book? It definitely deserves its place in the canon, and DH Lawrence's famous essay that revived its reputation is also worth a read. ( )