IT ARRIVED !
>>24786549You should read the annotated edition. It's actually drastically improved and will ensure you have better comprehension and memory of the core text.
>>24786549Enjoy, anon. It's my all-time favourite novel; requires a bit of a shift in mindset to enjoy if you've only ever read realist novels, but nearly every chapter is a joy once you stop caring about the plot and start enjoying the digressions.If you end up liking it, check out Pierre and Confidence-Man too. Great novels, woefully underappreciated (mainly due to their difficulty).
>>24786595>start enjoying the digressionsBut I don't give a fuck about antiquated whaling, whale anatomy, etc. I'm more than half way through and it's just laborious. Don't get me wrong, the story is great, Ishmael's philosophical musings are very interesting, but the digressions are killing my motivation with it. What do?
>>24788362They're not digressions, anon. The book is about The Whale
>>24786549this book is my substitute for pistol and ball
>>24788362>I don't give a fuck about antiquated whaling, whale anatomyNeither do I. But even the whale anatomy chapters have the same brilliant prose present throughout the rest of the book, and these chapters are typically not just about anatomy. Melville uses the whale body parts as symbols, they're just a thinly veiled excuse to talk about philosophy or theology. The only chapter that filtered me, where I see no deeper meaning, is cetology's 2nd half, the one where he classifies whales by using book sizes.
I have this edition and I think it's good
>>24788366>>24788384I thought it was supposed to be about obsession? The story is about Ishamel, Queequeg, and Ahab, the Pequod's mission. I didn't come for a documentary on 19th century whaling. Anyway, I'm seriously considering just skipping all this garbage. As for the idea the anatomy etc is symbolic. I admit I may be too dense, but it just feels empty. Can I have an example? What is the whales battering ram head symbolic of? ... Like the way obsessions can destroy other parts of our lives? Doesn't seem like he was trying to communicate that.
>>24788396I really don't recommend skipping any of it at all anon. It's not garbage at all, it's an incredible treasure. I guess I can't truly relate to what you say because I thought it was -all- very beautiful and entertaining and I never felt bored with it, but if it helps you understand where I'm coming from I'll say that I agree that it's about obsession, but not some specific character's, but that it's a book about (or of) obsession with The Whale. Ishmael reads The Whale like fervent catholics read the bible, with multiple holistic methods and narratives, every detail and image and turn of phrase explored from every angle and in every light, building systems of meaning around it and seeing how all the pieces fit together in this or that way. Like the section of cetology the other anon complained about, it's not really a proper classification that we need to internalize, nor something that's necessary to understand an ultimate symbolic intepretation of The Whale, but another way to think about it, another image painted, another lens viewwed through, and another idea of The Whale beautifully explored. I'm not any kind of literary critic (as you can tell), and I see others talk about the novel in other ways, and it was admittedly a couple of years since I last read it, but that's how I see it, and I hope it's worth some little thing. To skip the non-narrative parts is to skip much of what makes the book great and what makes it the book it is. You can't rip chapters out and expect the whole to remain functional or beautiful. I think you'd really regret it, it may even make you not appreciate the novel at all, other than as a well-written dramatic adventure.Do you re-read books often? Even the heavy, dense, long ones that you didn't exactly love the first time through? If you do so, actually do, then sure, maybe skip some sections if you truly won't make it through otherwise, but if you do not, try instead to appreciate each page and chapter as you you stroll through them without considering whether or not it brings you closer to a point or a narrative conclusion
>>24788424Thanks for the "effort post" as they say. I get what you're saying about the different lenses, angles, the images painted etc. but to me it doesn't resonate as beautiful (and I do see his prose as beautiful.) It just comes off as excessive. A multiplication of detail, description, more lights etc doesn't equate to profundity as far as I'm concerned. For me, detail that doesn't fit into a structure that contributes to an symbolic or narrative end just seems like superfluity. Nevertheless, I agree with the latter part of your post. I think I'll look at it more from the pov of an elaboration of Ishamel's character. That said, I do maintain that what I consider it's superfluities detracting from its overall quality. Yet he's still a very fine writer, and I see why it's a classic, so I'll endeavour to preserve.
>>24788396The book's about obsession, but philosophical obsession. Ahab (at least according to Ishmael, who is clearly embellishing the narrative) is not trying to take revenge on one particular whale, he's trying to take revenge on the Creator, and Leviathan as per Book of Job, is a symbol of God's majesty and power:>Then answered the Lord unto Job out of the whirlwind, and said,>Gird up thy loins now like a man: I will demand of thee, and declare thou unto me.>Wilt thou also disannul my judgment? wilt thou condemn me, that thou mayest be righteous?>Hast thou an arm like God? or canst thou thunder with a voice like him?>Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook? or his tongue with a cord which thou lettest down?>Canst thou put an hook into his nose? or bore his jaw through with a thorn? >Behold, the hope of him is in vain: shall not one be cast down even at the sight of him?>None is so fierce that dare stir him up: who then is able to stand before me? Ahab is consciously modeled after Satan in Paradise Lost, he takes the same defiant stance, but unlike Satan he has no clear target, apart from the White (the signify of the color should be clear thanks to chapter 42) Leviathan, who to him is a symbol of the supernatural.>I own thy speechless, placeless power; said I not so? Nor was it wrung from me; nor do I now drop these links. Thou canst blind; but I can then grope. Thou canst consume; but I can then be ashes. Take the homage of these poor eyes, and shutter-hands. I would not take it. The lightning flashes through my skull; mine eye-balls ache and ache; my whole beaten brain seems as beheaded, and rolling on some stunning ground. Oh, oh! Yet blindfold, yet will I talk to thee. Light though thou be, thou leapest out of darkness; but I am darkness leaping out of light, leaping out of thee! The javelins cease; open eyes; see, or not? There burn the flames! Oh, thou magnanimous! now I do glory in my genealogy. But thou art but my fiery father; my sweet mother, I know not. Oh, cruel! what hast thou done with her? There lies my puzzle; but thine is greater. Thou knowest not how came ye, hence callest thyself unbegotten; certainly knowest not thy beginning, hence callest thyself unbegun. I know that of me, which thou knowest not of thyself, oh, thou omnipotent. There is some unsuffusing thing beyond thee, thou clear spirit, to whom all thy eternity is but time, all thy creativeness mechanical. Through thee, thy flaming self, my scorched eyes do dimly see it. Oh, thou foundling fire, thou hermit immemorial, thou too hast thy incommunicable riddle, thy unparticipated grief. Here again with haughty agony, I read my sire. Leap! leap up, and lick the sky! I leap with thee; I burn with thee; would fain be welded with thee; defyingly I worship thee!Other characters also share Ahab's search for Meaning and find it in various forms. How much of this search is Ishmael projecting his own doubts and fears onto other characters is up for debate.
>>24788448The length of my posting was kind of accidental. I'm speeded so I ramble and risk incoherence, and I only just now remembered that I should try for a little restraint. Apologies. Although I think I've always had a taste for maximalism myself, I could understand a dislike of that kind of excess, and while breadth isn't depth, I feel an excessively full treatment can work to elevate a subject, but that takes a while to achieve and probably can't be forced upon someone who is finding it grating or tedious. It's not quality through quantity, exactly, but more like through richness. I hope it's not only an issue of taste and that some of that can be appreciated in spite of what you say. But I really hope you enjoy the book, in either case, now or later. It's a lovely work.
>>24786549It's shit, only religious freaks like it when they basedface having "got the reference"
>>24788448Moby-Dick is a sort of Rorschach test of sorts. It tries to overwhelm you with all sorts of different symbols, styles and points of view, letting you the reader make whatever sense you want of it. The more sensitive you are to symbols, the more well-read you are, the more connections you make in your head. It's a very different form of reading, one where the author places you in a wilderness where you have chart out your own path, rather than following the author's guidance. This sort of book is taken to its extreme in V. and Gravity’s Rainbow, almost to the point of parody. Stencil looks for connections where there may be none. Ahab has his Whale, Stencil has his V, and Slothrop has his V-2.I recommend rereading the Spouter-inn chapter where the chaotic picture on the wall is described. Various interpretations are raised by Ishmael, but he ultimately chooses to believe that the picture depicts Leviathan. It's just one of many different interpretations, but it clearly depicts Ishmael's mode of thought. Something similar happens to us when reading Moby-Dick - whether we view it as a boggy, soggy, squitchy book or as something more depends entirely on our point of view and how open we are to perceiving its structure and beauty.
>>24788468War and Peace was rich. I'm finding this dense.
>>24788548I dunno. Sounds an awful lot to me like wank to me. If an author has something to say, they should say it, or show it. Not just vomit out anything and everything and pose as if it's profound. And we shouldn't try justify things that are flabby. I'm at chapter 78 and feel as if 20 or so chapters could have been cut and the overall effect improved. Now I think about it, I experienced the same feeling reading the Iliad. But the lyrical rhythms and vividness carried me through it. I honestly think Melville has talent and depth but the lack of concision hurts the book. I guess I get this >>24788548 modern thrust it has in order to try and depict obsession through demonstrating it but I argue this is not beautiful classicism, it's just ugly modernism. Honestly I've yet to read an American novel I was really impressed with.
>>24788591Melville is often considered a proto-modernist, and I'd even argue his later novels get very postmodern. He was very interested in formal and stylistic innovation, so it's no wonder he was rediscovered at the peak of modernism.I also think modernism>realism and Iliad>Odyssey. Different strokes for different folks.
>>24788591>It seemed plain that the whole must be a collection of those wretched imported daubs, which with the incredible effrontery peculiar to some of the foreign picture-dealers in America, were christened by the loftiest names known to Art. But as the most mutilated torsoes of the perfections of antiquity are not unworthy the student’s attention, neither are the most bungling modern incompletenesses: for both are torsoes; one of perished perfections in the past; the other, by anticipation, of yet unfulfilled perfections in the future. Still, as Pierre walked along by the thickly hung walls, and seemed to detect the infatuated vanity which must have prompted many of these utterly unknown artists in the attempted execution by feeble hand of vigorous themes; he could not repress the most melancholy foreboding concerning himself. All the walls of the world seemed thickly hung with the empty and impotent scope of pictures, grandly outlined, but miserably filled. The smaller and humbler pictures, representing little familiar things, were by far the best executed; but these, though touching him not unpleasingly, in one restricted sense, awoke no dormant majesties in his soul, and therefore, upon the whole, were contemptibly inadequate and unsatisfactory.
