>write a legitimately 11/10 book>ruin it with about 200 pages of whale sciencewtf was Melville thinking?
He wanted to fuck a whale so bad.
everyone says this, but nobody ever spits out fun whale factscan you guys share some of the knowledge you learned from these alleged factual whale ramblings
>>25240689I found the part ambergris really interesting.
>>25240673he was thinking of whales
Using this thread to post the greatest passage ever written in prose.
>>25240723>Whale facts "enjoyers" when finally something, anything happens
>>25240673I read this book back when I was 17 or something and it was the most boring shit I've ever read. How tf people praise it so much?
>>25240931I read it at 16 and got absolutely nothing out of it. Just re-read it at 26 and I am pretty blown away having understood maybe 30% of it. Theres something there. I don't know what. I think the book itself is a whale.
The book peaks at the discussion between Stubb and the cookIt is also a reference to an old Portuguese/Brazillian tale
>>25240673>wtf was Melville thinking?Ask his editor
>>25240955>old Portuguese/Brazillian taleregurgitate it por favor
>>25240974There is a very famous XVII century sermon of a Portuguese/Brazillian priest, António Vieira, said to be the best prose writer in Portuguese before the XIX Century, which is about the Priest saying his human audience is unworthy so he is just going to give a sermon to the fishes, which he does, and they are a stand in of the audience (he is very harsh to "Brother Octopus). This is, in itself, a reference to Portuguese Saint Anthony (better known as Anthony of Padua, although he was Portuguese), who was also said to have made a sermon to the fishes. In Moby-Dick, Stubb outright tells the cook to give a sermon to the sharks eating the whale
>>25240689rereading it again after being a little older, I found these parts very entertaining an interesting.It's not so much facts but whaling lore and cultural knowledges about human's understanding and systematizing of whales (and how this conflicts with practical knowledge, like how he sides with whalers that they are indeed fish).Even the fact about the gray whale being the devilfish, known for it's fight and perhaps a quarter of all whaling men dying in fight with the devilfish was an interesting section.And I have impressed actual aquarium staff with knowing stuff about the junk and spermeceti, and right whale factoids in those chapters.>>25240931when you learn more about that time period, it becomes really incredible what he does in the novel. I completely missed the sort of satirizing he pulls off in the new bedford chapters. It's fascinating how Melville, writing in the mid 18th century is very well disposed to hold the image of the savage up against the very society that creates that image.And he was doing this in his very first novel Typee as well. The majesty, insight, and inventiveness of his prose, with his inexhaustible incorporation of a variety of sources makes Moby Dick so engaging on practically every page.
>>25241165One thing I’d like to add, which is also kind of sad: Melville didn’t really live to see praise for this masterpiece, the praise that it deserved; it pretty much was forgotten for a while, even he repudiated it if I recall.
>>25241174yeah, the story goes it was first published in london to secure the copyright. It did have some good reviews at the time, but negative reviews in the major papers that he was counting on, which killed sales and started a negative press cycle when it released in America. Wasn't until the centennial retrospective of its publication that it got reevaluated as the Great American Novel.He was most known in his life of Typee and Omoo, which are good in their own right but more straight adventure stories.
>>25240673I think he was trying to advocate for the nobility of the profession of whaling
>>25240673>200 pages of whale sciencethat part was so fucking cool wtf are you talking about
>>25241203The novel during that time was considered pretty low brow anyway, in the west especially where generally only realism, adventure or romance was admitted. So to have someone write an ambitious encyclopaedic novel such as Moby Dick, which owes more to Miltonic poetry than it does your average adventure novel, which of course on the surface it still was, was probably a filter for many who wanted something a little more conventional. Perhaps I have it all wrong though, I haven’t looked into it too much.
>>25241346You have Rabelais and Sterne, both of whom predate Melville. And Moby-Dick is closer in spirit to Anatomy of Melancholy than to anything else that came before it. But note that all of these are European, the American literary tradition was very poor at the time. Note that Moby-Dick was very well-reviewed in Britain, while American reviewers panned it.
>>25240673I'm not an expect and I only got a copy this while sleep deprived by the CIA locked in a mental institution of masonic priests that believe jewsus will release the arab semitic messiah so they are killing everybody from my city.from the one paragraph I read from it, the copy was all fucked up not even all pages were there.if the book contains 200 pages of whale science it is a nice analogy of life as it is categorized.you spent your whole life doing the same shit ever everyday because you have to live, you don't even know what you're doing properly, the whale shows how narrow is your existence, I don't even know if he catches it but I be he did so the allegory is this, you chase something you think you know but once you get, you don't truly knew anything about this in relation to your existence.it's all obsessions, we obsesses, our nature is to always overcome, embrace and want/achieve more.so, I have no idea what the book is about but I would guess it's about life, we go, we study/chase things, we think we know everything about it but we don't know the thing relating to ourself or our existence.the beauty is this, if I could guess, people find some narrow minded shit, die pursuing it, some get, some don't but every time you achieve something you somehow embrace and at least is "open" to new experiences...the carrot on a stick, the cumulative disadvantage of the common man without leisure, the basic drive for food itself, it that's the case, the beauty is this, seeing that you, yourself have some whale that if you get or not you have no fucking clue what to do next.if you fish, you fish everyday, the idea of the whale is the ambition man trying to take a break from his existence, I could go on and on but I never read more than one paragraph of it...
>>25240689Well, to start whales are fish apparently
>>25241812You sound like a Pynchon/Bolano character
But that IS the coolest part. At least it makes more sense than Ahab’s going full Shakespearean on everyone
>>25240689He thinks that whales are fish.
>>25241834>>25242111All vertebrates are technically very specialized fish. Whales are closer genetically to tuna than tuna is to sharks.
>>25240673It's because at the time no landlubber's knew shit about whales. If google images had existed, he would have cut most of that shit out. They are worth reading once and never again on re-reads.
>>25242067The man is insane.
>>25242355Yes, exactly. To give Ahab/Melville credit, his speeches aren’t nonsensical, but rather dense and as such very difficult to parse (upon first unaided reading). The antiquated language is just salt on the wound.
>>25241679>You have Rabelais and Sterne, both of whom predate Melville.Of course, you have Goethe, Richardson, Cervantes and Grimmelshausen too. But I meant the 19th century specifically. I did hear it was well received in Britain actually, but thanks for clearing that up for me anyway, with regard to its overall reception in the west. I also haven’t read Anatomy of Melancholy yet, but I really must because I know how it influenced Sterne, Milton and Goethe as well.
>>25242613Anatomy is a bit of a mess. It flip-flops from dry retelling of facts or the author's bizarre political views to some beautiful and insightful passages. >Copernicus, Atlas his successor, is of opinion, the earth is a planet, moves and shines to others, as the moon doth to us. Digges, Gilbert, Keplerus, Origanus, and others, defend this hypothesis of his in sober sadness, and that the moon is inhabited: if it be so that the earth is a moon, then are we also giddy, vertiginous and lunatic within this sublunary maze. At the very least it's worth it just to collect some Latin phrases for future use.
>>25242619It is beautifully written, I can see Sterne and even a little bit of Joyce in there. It also looks, in one word, autistic. I suppose I’ll give it a proper read some time soon. If only just to admire for its quaint encyclopaedic writing and perhaps as you said, to collect some Latin phrases.
I’m almost upset that they force dumbass kids to read these sorts of books in school. The interpretation will be forever tainted by first reading it as an ignorant child.
one thing that confused me is if this book canonically was written by Ishmael then how are there private scenes where Ishmael isn't present? did he just eavesdrop at every moment?
