posted
Given that this forum is founded on interest in a particular author, and also the name of the forum: "books, films, etc." it seems like one of the classic novels might be discussed from time to time. We are a bunch of readers, aren't we?
Now, I happen to be really nuts about Moby Dick. And from time to time, I bring it up here. Like the thread on which movies should be remade, and so on.
Yet, aside from the suggestion that the movie was better than the book (by Alucard) I've never seen a response that even indicates that anyone here has ever read it.
Have you? And what did you think?
Rather than poisoning the thread with my own views, I'll stop here and discuss it more, further along...
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posted
I haven't read the novel completly, but I did read the story in comic book form, which I really enjoyed.
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I've read it, and it was okay, I wasn't just totally thrilled by it. But, that was probably due to the fact that I read it on assignment for a class, and didn't choose to read it myself at that particular time. I might feel differently if I were to read it on my own.
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posted
I hadn't ready Moby Dick until two years ago, when I had to for an early American lit. grad class. I had heard about how boring it was, and after suffering through Brockden Brown, Fenimore Cooper, Hawthorne (The Scarlet Letter, I mean; his short stories are much better), etc., I had low expectations.
Moby Dick is genius. Abso-frickin'-lutely genius: the subtle and enduring shift in tone from light-hearted to faintly menacing to dark; the parallel way Melville deftly moves Ishmael from the foreground to the background; the astounding free-play of form (novel, poem, song, drama, encyclopedia, etc.); the amazing ability to create characters that are both archetypal and realistic; the soaring, terrifying, beautiful prose; and the unequaled character of Ahab.
This is, hands down, the best American novel ever written. Mark Twain, Willa Cather, F. Scott Fitzgerald--not even close.
Read Moby Dick. If you've read it, read it again. If you haven't, repent and pick up a copy immediately (the Norton Critical Edition is a very fine one).
<grin> How's that for an encomium, Glenn?
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posted
(After looking up encomium. Thanks for the new word)
That's a start. And I agree wholeheartedly.
What did you think of the two "pre- chapters" - the etymology (consumptive usher to a grammar school) and the extracts (Sub-sub-librarian)?
I found them critical to understanding (well, my understanding) of what Mellville was trying to accomplish with the book.
And I should also throw out here (it might make the thread more lively, or just derail it) What is the meaning of the name: "Moby Dick"?
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posted
I should maybe read a critical edition. I picked up the TOR paperback because it was only $3.99. Gotta love the public domain. But Poor Mr. Mellville.
In any case don't anyone buy an abridged edition.
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The best movie version of "Moby Dick" is Tim Burton's "Big Fish," which of course, is not based on Moby Dick at all, but essentially deals with the same issue: The truth in telling an untrue tale.
Of course, the book is still better than the movie.
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posted
Moby Dick is one of my all time favorite books. I know many people that do not like it, and I seriously cannot understand not liking this book. It just boggles my mind. Oh well, to each his own.
For me, Moby Dick works first as a psychological thriller. I mean, you have the insane Ahab and you have this malevolent whale. They are locked in this eternal struggle and everyone else is just fodder.
But it works at a totally other level too. You've got Ishmael and the harpooner and the whole description of what it was like to be a sailor on a whaling vessel. Totally absorbing narrative, IMHO.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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Moby Dick was terrific. The only reason people don't see this is because of the excessive discussions of cetology. And yeah, they do drag. But the sections between are fantastic, especially once they are in open water. I think maybe a lot of people just don't get far enough into the book and are intimidated by the cetology. If you just skim through that (unless you really want to learn a lot of nineteenth century whale facts *shrug*) the remaining book is engaging, interesting, and well written. Even if you don't like "classics," if you like fantasy novels, say, you should like this book.
What this book needs is a good editor, but, of course, since it is a "classic," it doesn't get it.
I wrote one of my best grad school papers on free will in Moby Dick.Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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My HS senior year paper was on Moby Dick and existentialism. I had lots of valid points, I thought, but a high school library doesn't exactly have relevant sources, so I would up either borrowing them from my mom's old grad school pile or (being as there were only two of those) making them up entirely.
I (and I think the rest of my senior class) still have no idea what I got on that paper (she was a horrible teacher).
In response to Icarus- Yeah, sometimes it read like a whaling textbook.
[ October 26, 2004, 10:58 PM: Message edited by: Book ]
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I was lucky enough to find a concordance, and so I looked for particular phrases and word choices, and analyzed the implications of what I found.
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To me, the plot (or narrative) is almost irrelevant. It's merely something to hang Mellville's major purpose on. Mellville even jokes about how little narrative there is in the book (ch 45).
What's important isn't what the story is about, it's the STORY that's important. That's why he tells it in so many different ways. It's why he dwells on the exchange of mail from boat to boat. It's why it's so important that only Ishmael is left to tell the story in the end, so that it can't be corroborated. We either beleive it, because Ishmael has gone to such great lengths to make the story credible, or we disbelieve, because the story is so fantastic. But we have no evidence either way.
It's too bad no one had coined the term "meme" in time for Mellville to use it.
BTW I found all the cetology fascinating. Not boring at all. And it's necessary if Ishmael's story is to be found credible, since it validates his experience as a whaler.
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quote:(unless you really want to learn a lot of nineteenth century whale facts *shrug*)
Facts are facts. The science holds true today. In fact, we wouldn't know nearly as much as we know about whales if it wasn't for the whaling industry. Some irony there.
I'd love to see someone make a movie of Moby Dick using Melville's perspective on issues that have been brought out by the "save the whales" movement. The guy was way ahead of his time on that score.
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Does anyone have any idea what the significance of the name Moby Dick? It seems like it should be really important, but I have no idea.
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In the movie "Heathers," Shannon Doherty's character walks around all angsty with a copy of Moby Dick, underlining the profound parts. When Christian Slater and Winona Ryder talk about killing her, they talk about underlining just the word "Iceberg" on one page, and then about the priest reading a whole bunch into it.
posted
Dag, I thought you were making a joke about Titanic
Shoot.
cetology? Sheesh, the book is short. There's not that much in there about whales per se. The whaling industry was harsh and that's the backdrop for the story. It's brilliant!
Moby means "big" I believe, in 19th century slang.
Dick is a generic name for a man. Like how people might use John, Dick or Harry.
or Bob.
Moby Bob!
Now there's a story worth blubbering over!
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Eh? Sorry, I missed the question. It was basically just about the sense of preordination in Moby Dick, as I recall, but, to be honest, it's been so long since I wrote it that I can't be too much more specific than that. What made it different from other lit papers I had written was that instead of merely focusing on major plot elements, I focused on how subtle cues in the language emphasized the sense of fate. Particular word choices he made and stuff. I doubt I could find this paper now.
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quote:Yet, aside from the suggestion that the movie was better than the book (by Alucard) I've never seen a response that even indicates that anyone here has ever read it.
The book was actually written by Herman Melville.
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posted
I read Billy Budd. Also good. Shorter, without the cetology, but not quite as compelling, either. I wonder if it was the inspiration for "The Drumhead" episode of Star Trek: TNG.
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posted
I read Typee, and there was a short story that was excerpted from Billy Budd (I can't remember anything about it), that I read a long time before I read Moby Dick.
I know Typee was his big hit, apparently because it was semiautobiographical, and although there's nothing explicit in it, his relationship with the naked native girl was assumed to be sexual, so he became a sex symbol of the 1800's.
It was the setting, really, that I think captured the imagination for those stuffed shirt Victorians. The isolation of the island, and the sexually free spirited culture, contrasted with a strong social order, and the suggestion of cannibalism. This was like science fiction for the 1900's, so far removed from any reality they knew, except that there was that remote possibility...
I actually didn't like the book that much, but I made it through it. I think it suffered precisely because it was autobiographical. He changed names, but the plot wasn't as engaging as it might have been if he'd written it from scratch. Maybe also, to me it read kind of like a travel brochure to Tahiti, so it's kind of dated.
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Both are better as adults, that's for sure.
Same with Silas Marner. I read it as a kid and about died of boredom. I read it when I was 25 and absolutely loved it.
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I read the condensed version. Then I realized it was the condensed version. Now I mus commit seppuku and die with honor.
Posts: 1735 | Registered: Oct 2004
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I've never been able to get through Moby Dick. I bought it when I was twelve years old, and have tried several times throughout the years to read it, and have always failed. Last time, though, I got almost a quarter of the way through, which is encouraging because all the previous times, I hadn't got past the first chapter. So at this rate, by the time I'm...
*calculates*
52. By the time I'm fifty-two, I will have read it all the way through.
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I read Moby Dick and...meh. Which brought to mind the Simpsons episode where they go to Block-o-land. Which has the above mentioned exchange between Homer, Lisa and Bart.
Sorry I had to explain it.
Posts: 196 | Registered: May 2003
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I must say that the first time I tried to read Moby Dick, I didn't make it either. I was about 15. I didn't try again until I was about thirty. And then it wasn't mind blowing from the get go. It took several chapters before I understood what was going on...
From then on it was unbelieveable. I guess I've read it in its entirety about 4 times, plus rereading individual chapters and looking up specifics to clarify something I was thinking about.
Once I knew what Melville was doing, the first chapters (and as I mentioned before, the etymology and the extracts, which come before chap 1) were just as cool as the rest. Even better, perhaps, because it was looking at something I'd seen before, yet it was completely different.
I think the point where it really took off was when I started thinking about WHY Father Mapple referred to the story of Jonah as a "yarn." That's just what Moby Dick is. It's a sea story. Which can only be told by someone who has been to sea. The rest of us just have to listen, and try to weed out what is true, what is exaggeration and what is perhaps an out and out lie.
In "etymology" Melville gives us a clue that he's not going go play fair. He loves his "lexicons and grammars;" That is, he plays word games. All though the book you have to look for his word games. One of the reasons not to buy an abridged or edited version (the image is hysterical), comes from the chapter on "the Cassock." If it's not spelled "archbishoprick," you're missing the joke.
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