What's the /lit/ consensus on it? Is it truly the Great American Novel? Or is it an overrated midwit piece of shit?
It's the great american novel.
>>24795503It's not only the Great American Novel, it's my favourite novel period.
>>24795503its the only good amerikan novel
One of the few unambiguous masterpieces in the english language. It is a comfort to return to it after trudging through thousands of pages of garbage to be instantly reminded what worthwhile writing looks and sounds like.
>>24795503The great american novel, and somehow still underrated
>>24795543Do the autistic posters here realize how fucking up their ass they sound when they post shit like this? "It's not only the best novel ever written, *I* also happen to like it" Whoop de fucking doo
>>24795647t. salty fag who hasn't read MD
One thing I don't understand is why Melville's other novels are almost completely ignored. Moby-Dick is much-loved, with a metric ton of scholarship, meetups and other materials. Meanwhile Pierre and Confidence-Man, not to mention Clarel, basically don't exist in the public consciousness. It can't just be their difficulty, the 20th century brought us Ulysses and GR. Hell, Finnegans Wake has 10 times as many goodreads reviews (shut up, it's a decent metric to judge a book's popularity) as Melville's later novels.
>>24795663because people are fucking stupid. that's why anon. that's why.
>>24795647Great American Novel does not imply "the best novel ever written", or even "the best American novel", but rather "the novel that best captures the American spirit".
>>24795663It's because they're simply not as good. By a pretty massive margin, in fact. They're still good and interesting, but only from the perspective of someone invested in him. The only works that come close to Moby-Dick are "Bartleby" and "Billy Budd."
>>24795666Why are you so rude to me, Satan?
>>24795670White Jacket is almost as good
>>24795503I'm reading it now and it definitely is good, but most of the rants weigh it down. It could've been improved with much trimming.
>>24795687I think White Jacket is his second best novel, it's really good, but he was aiming way, way below where he landed with Moby-Dick, you have to admit that. Maybe only the ending scene where the narrator falls off the ship approaches the levels of Moby-Dick
>>24795668but there was nothing in moby dick about genociding natives and raping black women, so then what makes it the great american novel?
>>24795702>women
>>24795705right, i forgot all mutts are latent fags
>>24795702>raping black womennigger
Favourite chapeters? Mine are the town, stubb's supper and the squeeze of the hand
>>24796167Queequeg in his Coffin, the Whiteness of the Whale, and the Castaway
>>24796173>the Whiteness of the WhaleLove that too
>>24796167When they encounter the other ship, captained by an ignorant man named Derick, futilely chasing after a finback whale they can’t hope to catch, and Melville writes:> Oh! many are the Fin-Backs, and many are the Dericks, my friend.
>>24796167The Chart is so badass
>>24795647shut the fuck up you fuckin faggot
>>24795503Dripping with gay subtext that niggas like to pretend isn't there for some reason.
I love MB. I don't think it's THE greatest American novel but it's certainly one of them. It is a shame that we're going to lose our understanding of this book but time marches on, people are getting more stupid and reading is falling by the wayside
>>24796167The SpecksnyderParticularly this part the sea.Nor, perhaps, will it fail to be eventually perceived, that behind those forms and usages, as it were, he sometimes masked himself; incidentally making use of them for other and more private ends than they were legitimately intended to subserve. That certain sultanism of his brain, which had otherwise in a good degree remained unmanifested; through those forms that same sultanism became incarnate in an irresistible dictatorship. For be a man’s intellectual superiority what it will, it can never assume the practical, available supremacy over other men, without the aid of some sort of external arts and entrenchments, always, in themselves, more or less paltry and base. This it is, that for ever keeps God’s true princes of the Empire from the world’s hustings; and leaves the highest honors that this air can give, to those men who become famous more through their infinite inferiority to the choice hidden handful of the Divine Inert, than through their undoubted superiority over the dead level of the mass. Such large virtue lurks in these small things when extreme political superstitions invest them, that in some royal instances even to idiot imbecility they have imparted potency. But when, as in the case of Nicholas the Czar, the ringed crown of geographical empire encircles an imperial brain; then, the plebeian herds crouch abased before the tremendous centralization.
>>24796167the try-works
>>24796574And I still don't know what the fuck it means but it sounds awesome in my head. Maybe my sultanism is too weak
>>24796578the first section is just talking about someone using terms usually only attributed to royalty, emperors, etc. then he shifts to the necessity of base methods to control men, regardless of intelligence, then he describes those who shirk god and cleave to the world as those who are not favored with royalty or kinghood because of any greatness above normal men, but rather because they're less than those elected by god to rule in heaven at his side. then he mentions that there have been plenty of instances where total idiots have held the crown, and closes with a description of what a true king looks like, how awesome and terrifying such a thing is to all who behold itbut that's just a guess at what the fuck he's talking about. reading melville is like eating a very dense brownie. always a pleasure, even if you don't quite grasp it.
