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File: 3433.max.jpg (182 KB, 600x941)
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How well known is Moby Dick outside the U.S.?
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Is this a serious question? My Balkan coworkers who read at a pre-K level and get all their news from Viber groups know Moby Dick is a white whale.
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>>25553696
>angry man has confusing revenge fantasy about a cheap source of oil
It's well known as one of the most American stories ever written.
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it's universally known amongst people familiar with english literature but you can tell when people actually talk about moby dick and white whales that very few have actually read it. might be the work of us literature with most name recognition worldwide, up there with gatsby and mockingbird
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>>25553696
It's extremely well known as a book, just like Harry Potter or Twilight. But the rest of the world doesn't consider Americans writing as "literature" the way they do writing from intelligent countries.
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>>25553696
His dick was the size of a whale so its whale known.
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>>25554147
Brown hands typed this post
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>>25554124
wow never thought about it this way
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>>25553696
I have picrel, but I read it in English. In my subjective and uninformed opinion, Melville is not as well known and famous as his European contemporaries. I don't know if that's due to his whale autism, the losses this book suffers in translation, or something else.
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>>25553696
at my french uni in literature class i said moby dick was my favorite book and no one knew it and i said it's american and they asked me if its like dale carnegie
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>>25554147
This point backed up by OPs original question and absolute lack of knowledge outside of the of their podunk town somewhere in hicksville county.
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The beauty of Moby Dick is on how the author dominate the language.
Translations are just a book about whale facts and potentially homoeroticism between the protagonist and the savage.
t. Have read it in Portuguese for the first time and disliked it.
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>>25553696
2nd most famous book in the world after the Bible.
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>>25553696
Not very.
The most well-known American novels outside the US are definitely Stephen King's books.
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>>25554839
>Not very.
You're crazy.
t. eurofag
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>>25553696
It's known in the sense that I've heard of it and roughly what it is about, but extremely few people have read it or shown interest in reading it.
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>>25554839
Nah, I think the most known American literature would be Salinger. The Catcher in the Rye was the only American required reading I had in school, and my parents also read Salinger's short stories as kids, so he had been at least somewhat popular for many decades.
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>>25553696
It was initially poorly received in the US but became cult classic in France and Germany around 1900-1910. Only after the 2nd world war it was really rehabilitated in America



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