I finished Moby-Dick on April 8th. I've almost been in denial that I actually finished it. I'm serious.
I miss reading it.
The ending was pretty spectacular. Three days, three showdowns with the mighty whale, and the entire crew, destroyed. Ishmael hung in a noose made from his own harpoon. The Farsi lashed to the back of the whale. The Leviathan smashing itself into the Pequod, and the entire thing going under.
Ishmael, swept away when Moby smashed into their boat, was away from the vortex of the sinking ship.
He's saved by a buoy that's really a coffin.
And he's plucked out of the water by the Rachel another orphan for her.
I could have spent an entire blog entry on the Rachel, and maybe I should have. That chapter is one of the most poignant in the entire book. When the captain of the ship makes his plea to Ahab, to just help him for 48 hours search for his missing son... and Ahab just LEAVES him there.... Ahab got what he was coming to. The sadness of his madness and obsession and revenge... the complete and utter shock of that captain... it was heartwrenching.
Truly great stuff.
I really wish I had blogged a bit more about Moby. I really do wish I was still reading it. It was a fantastic book - one of the best books I've ever read - and for it to be finished...
I really thought the book was going to be more difficult than it was, though.
So I'm challenging myself again. Tonight, I start the beginning of Proust's epic 4000+ page novel-in-parts, In Search of Lost Time. I start with the first book, Swann's Way. Let's see how difficult this one is...
I'll be blogging about the Proustian wonders on here, step by step, as I read my copy and hopefully love it to bits and pieces.
Let My Friend Moby continue, as My Friend M. M for Marcel, that is.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Monday, April 5, 2010
Chapter 59-126: And So We Near the End...
Wow.
Just wow. This has been a much faster, easier read than I ever thought possible. And beautifully written.
First, a round-up of quotes over the last 50+ chapters...
Re: eating sperm whale brain and stupid males into food in general: "The casket of the skull is broken into with an axe, and the two plump, whitish lobes being withdrawn (precisely resembling two large puddings), they are then mixed with flour, and cooked into a most delectable mess, in flavor somewhat resembling calves' head, which is quite a dish among some epicures; and every one knows that some young bucks among the epicures, by continually dining upon calves' brains, by and by get to have a little brains of their own, so as to be able to tell a calf's head from their own heads; which, indeed, requires uncommon discrimination."
One of the more famous passages, regarding eating whale and using whale-made candles while doing so: "But Stubb, he eats the whale by its own light, does he? and that is adding insult to injury, is it? Look at your knife-handle, there, my civilized and enlightened gourmand, dining off that roast beef, what is that handle made of?- what but the bones of the brother of the very ox you are eating? And what do you pick your teeth with, after devouring that fat goose? With a feature of the same fowl. And with what quill did the Secretary of the Society for the Suppression of Cruelty to Ganders formally indite his circulars? It is only within the last month or two that that society passed a resolution to patronize nothing but steel pens."
More about using whale skin to magnify the page of a book: "...it is pleasant to read about whales through their own spectacles, as you may say."
Pretty flowery imagery: "An intense copper calm, like a universal yellow lotus, was more and more unfolding its noiseless measureless leaves upon the sea."
RANDOM: "Midwifery should be taught in the same course with fencing and boxing, riding and rowing."
About life: "...this is life. For hardly have we mortals by long toilings extracted from this world's vast bulk its small but valuable sperm; and then, with weary patience, cleansed ourselves from its defilements, and learned to live here in clean tabernacles of the soul; hardly is this done when - There she blows! - the ghost is spouted up, and go through young life's old routine again."
Just a random note: Ishmael is so hardcore about whales and whale dimensions that he had the dimensions of the sperm whale TATTOOED on his arm. Yeahhhh.
Starbuck's angry curse: "Thou hast outraged, not insulted me, Sir; but for that I ask thee not to beware of Starbuck; thou wouldst but laugh; but let Ahab beware of Ahab; beware of thyself, old man."
So, what can we say has happened so far? Little Pip fell overboard and he's now stark raving mad. Actually he jumped in cowardice while in the whaling vessel. We've gotten interludes from the carpenter and the blacksmith.
And there's tons of doomsday foreshadowing. The Pequod passes the Bachelor, a merry ship stocked to its gills with oil, and the contrast is severe. The masts are lit on fire by lightning during a typhoon. Ahab's compasses go awry and point the complete opposite direction. Ahab creates his harpoon, and forges it with the blood of the noble savage harpooners. Ahab breaks his quadrant, and loses the log-line. And the life-buoy. And a man dies.
The doom and gloom just keeps getting worse and worse and worse. The dread is ratcheting up. And still, we haven't seen a single sign of Moby-Dick! You'd almost think the whale to be unreal. That Ahab's obsession has manifested itself in a physical form, and that form is the monstrous white whale.
But we're almost there. The story is nearly over. And it has been epic. I can't wait to see what happens next!
Just wow. This has been a much faster, easier read than I ever thought possible. And beautifully written.
First, a round-up of quotes over the last 50+ chapters...
Re: eating sperm whale brain and stupid males into food in general: "The casket of the skull is broken into with an axe, and the two plump, whitish lobes being withdrawn (precisely resembling two large puddings), they are then mixed with flour, and cooked into a most delectable mess, in flavor somewhat resembling calves' head, which is quite a dish among some epicures; and every one knows that some young bucks among the epicures, by continually dining upon calves' brains, by and by get to have a little brains of their own, so as to be able to tell a calf's head from their own heads; which, indeed, requires uncommon discrimination."
One of the more famous passages, regarding eating whale and using whale-made candles while doing so: "But Stubb, he eats the whale by its own light, does he? and that is adding insult to injury, is it? Look at your knife-handle, there, my civilized and enlightened gourmand, dining off that roast beef, what is that handle made of?- what but the bones of the brother of the very ox you are eating? And what do you pick your teeth with, after devouring that fat goose? With a feature of the same fowl. And with what quill did the Secretary of the Society for the Suppression of Cruelty to Ganders formally indite his circulars? It is only within the last month or two that that society passed a resolution to patronize nothing but steel pens."
More about using whale skin to magnify the page of a book: "...it is pleasant to read about whales through their own spectacles, as you may say."
Pretty flowery imagery: "An intense copper calm, like a universal yellow lotus, was more and more unfolding its noiseless measureless leaves upon the sea."
RANDOM: "Midwifery should be taught in the same course with fencing and boxing, riding and rowing."
About life: "...this is life. For hardly have we mortals by long toilings extracted from this world's vast bulk its small but valuable sperm; and then, with weary patience, cleansed ourselves from its defilements, and learned to live here in clean tabernacles of the soul; hardly is this done when - There she blows! - the ghost is spouted up, and go through young life's old routine again."
Just a random note: Ishmael is so hardcore about whales and whale dimensions that he had the dimensions of the sperm whale TATTOOED on his arm. Yeahhhh.
Starbuck's angry curse: "Thou hast outraged, not insulted me, Sir; but for that I ask thee not to beware of Starbuck; thou wouldst but laugh; but let Ahab beware of Ahab; beware of thyself, old man."
So, what can we say has happened so far? Little Pip fell overboard and he's now stark raving mad. Actually he jumped in cowardice while in the whaling vessel. We've gotten interludes from the carpenter and the blacksmith.
And there's tons of doomsday foreshadowing. The Pequod passes the Bachelor, a merry ship stocked to its gills with oil, and the contrast is severe. The masts are lit on fire by lightning during a typhoon. Ahab's compasses go awry and point the complete opposite direction. Ahab creates his harpoon, and forges it with the blood of the noble savage harpooners. Ahab breaks his quadrant, and loses the log-line. And the life-buoy. And a man dies.
The doom and gloom just keeps getting worse and worse and worse. The dread is ratcheting up. And still, we haven't seen a single sign of Moby-Dick! You'd almost think the whale to be unreal. That Ahab's obsession has manifested itself in a physical form, and that form is the monstrous white whale.
But we're almost there. The story is nearly over. And it has been epic. I can't wait to see what happens next!
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Chapters 35-58 WHITE IS EVIL.
So, I think we're nearing the halfway point of the book, and you know what? I thought this was going to be way harder than it turned out to be. Seriously. I started the blog as a mini-support system for myself, but I'm finding that I'm devouring the pages at a far faster rate than I ever thought I would. I thought it would be boring. Instead, it's ridiculously fun and engaging. Seriously one of the best books I've read in a while.
The story has had its bizarre moments. We've switched viewpoints two or three times now, and there are stage directions scattered through the pages. Moby Dick, the infamous white whale, has now been described in detail, and Ishmael has told us of Ahab's fiery and determined revenge on the beast that took off half his leg.
When they spotted their first whale in the story, and Ishmael nearly died after his boat was separated from the rest in pitch-blackness, it was revealed that Ahab had stowed away his own private little crew for whaling. They just popped out of the bowels of the ship at his command, and no one on board knew they existed.
Melville is a huge fan of alliteration and I love that cheesy goodness. Let's take an example: "Nor was there wanting still another precautionary motive more related to Ahab personally. Having impulsively, it is probably, and perhaps somewhat prematurely revealed the prime but private purpose of the Pequod's voyage..." Oh MAN. Those Ps. Craziness.
Let's do another, this one beautiful as well, but rife with the letter S: "It was while gliding through these latter waves that one serene and moonlight night, when all the waves rolled by like scrolls of silver, and, by their soft, suffusing seethings, made what seemed a silverly silence, not a solitude; on such a silent night a silvery jet was seen far in advance of the white bubbles at the bow." Man.
Oh, by the way, the English think of the Americans as "sea-peasants." This one little note pretty much confirms that the British have been uptight snobs for quite some time, tea and crumpets, thankyouverymuch.
There are typical Ishmael ramblings, but we get a really special on here: on the attributes of the color white. It was actually a fascinating argument against the color's typical associations with whiteness and purity. For white, juxtaposed against something terrifying, only amplifies the horror. A corpse is made even more horrible by its white skin. And so on and so forth.
Ishmael is the ultimate whaling fanboy. He even bemoans the fact that nobody seems to be able to draw a whale anatomically correct. He refers to Cuvier's attempt: "In a word, Frederick Cuvier's Sperm Whale is not a Sperm Whale, but a squash."
... Yep.
Another sad whale drawing: "As for the sign-painters' whales seen in the streets hanging over the shops of oil-dealers, what shall be said of them? They are generally Richard III. whales, with dromedary humps, and very savage, breakfasting on three or four sailor tarts, that is whaleboats full of mariners: their deformities floundering in seas of blood and blue paint." RICHARD III reference! LOVE.
But perhaps my favorite chapter of all in this latest chunk was Chapter 53, also known as "The Gam." This chapter starts out innocently enough. Ishmael goes into a detailed description of a traditional whaling practice called "gamming." This is when one whaling ship passes another, and the crew visits each other to swap stories, whether they be from home ports, or from seas farther away. The chapter starts by noting that Ahab rarely ever was up for a gam. And this would lead the reader to believe that Ahab is so consumed by his fiery rage for Moby Dick and so impatient for his revenge that he won't even stop to socialize, to chat.
But no, there's a greater reason than that. For we learn towards the end of the chapter that the captain from one ship must board the ship of the other. This requires a rowboat, manned by one of the crew, to cross the watery gap between the two boats. The journey over to the other ship is pretty rough - it's a ROWBOAT, on the Pacific Ocean. Naturally, the captain has to have excellent balance.
Except Ahab doesn't, because of his pegleg. One word: pride. Ahab's lost his masculinity with the bite of that whale. He has been shamed and his zealous, vengeful spirit is fueled by pride mixed with obsession. I just loved the fact that Melville didn't outright ever SAY that Ahab would have trouble standing up properly in such a boat, and would make a fool of himself, falling all over the place. The implications were clearly there, though, and it made the impact of those last paragraphs even greater.
So yeah, whoever said that Moby Dick is boring or long or uninteresting was completely lying. It's not even that difficult to read.
The story has had its bizarre moments. We've switched viewpoints two or three times now, and there are stage directions scattered through the pages. Moby Dick, the infamous white whale, has now been described in detail, and Ishmael has told us of Ahab's fiery and determined revenge on the beast that took off half his leg.
When they spotted their first whale in the story, and Ishmael nearly died after his boat was separated from the rest in pitch-blackness, it was revealed that Ahab had stowed away his own private little crew for whaling. They just popped out of the bowels of the ship at his command, and no one on board knew they existed.
Melville is a huge fan of alliteration and I love that cheesy goodness. Let's take an example: "Nor was there wanting still another precautionary motive more related to Ahab personally. Having impulsively, it is probably, and perhaps somewhat prematurely revealed the prime but private purpose of the Pequod's voyage..." Oh MAN. Those Ps. Craziness.
Let's do another, this one beautiful as well, but rife with the letter S: "It was while gliding through these latter waves that one serene and moonlight night, when all the waves rolled by like scrolls of silver, and, by their soft, suffusing seethings, made what seemed a silverly silence, not a solitude; on such a silent night a silvery jet was seen far in advance of the white bubbles at the bow." Man.
Oh, by the way, the English think of the Americans as "sea-peasants." This one little note pretty much confirms that the British have been uptight snobs for quite some time, tea and crumpets, thankyouverymuch.
There are typical Ishmael ramblings, but we get a really special on here: on the attributes of the color white. It was actually a fascinating argument against the color's typical associations with whiteness and purity. For white, juxtaposed against something terrifying, only amplifies the horror. A corpse is made even more horrible by its white skin. And so on and so forth.
Ishmael is the ultimate whaling fanboy. He even bemoans the fact that nobody seems to be able to draw a whale anatomically correct. He refers to Cuvier's attempt: "In a word, Frederick Cuvier's Sperm Whale is not a Sperm Whale, but a squash."
... Yep.
Another sad whale drawing: "As for the sign-painters' whales seen in the streets hanging over the shops of oil-dealers, what shall be said of them? They are generally Richard III. whales, with dromedary humps, and very savage, breakfasting on three or four sailor tarts, that is whaleboats full of mariners: their deformities floundering in seas of blood and blue paint." RICHARD III reference! LOVE.
But perhaps my favorite chapter of all in this latest chunk was Chapter 53, also known as "The Gam." This chapter starts out innocently enough. Ishmael goes into a detailed description of a traditional whaling practice called "gamming." This is when one whaling ship passes another, and the crew visits each other to swap stories, whether they be from home ports, or from seas farther away. The chapter starts by noting that Ahab rarely ever was up for a gam. And this would lead the reader to believe that Ahab is so consumed by his fiery rage for Moby Dick and so impatient for his revenge that he won't even stop to socialize, to chat.
But no, there's a greater reason than that. For we learn towards the end of the chapter that the captain from one ship must board the ship of the other. This requires a rowboat, manned by one of the crew, to cross the watery gap between the two boats. The journey over to the other ship is pretty rough - it's a ROWBOAT, on the Pacific Ocean. Naturally, the captain has to have excellent balance.
Except Ahab doesn't, because of his pegleg. One word: pride. Ahab's lost his masculinity with the bite of that whale. He has been shamed and his zealous, vengeful spirit is fueled by pride mixed with obsession. I just loved the fact that Melville didn't outright ever SAY that Ahab would have trouble standing up properly in such a boat, and would make a fool of himself, falling all over the place. The implications were clearly there, though, and it made the impact of those last paragraphs even greater.
So yeah, whoever said that Moby Dick is boring or long or uninteresting was completely lying. It's not even that difficult to read.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Chapters 19-34 Ahab, the Infamous Pipe, Whale Family Trees, and More.
So we've met Ahab, who likes to kick people around with his ivory leg. And we've also gotten to one of the most famous symbolic moments in Moby-Dick - the chapter known as "The Pipe." From what I've read elsewhere, Ahab tossing his pipe into the sea stands for Ahab throwing away his happiness. To me, it's not just Ahab giving in to his obsession, but finally acknowledging it as well. He realizes that nothing of his former life will ever make him truly happy until he's grappled with the massive white whale that took his leg off. Even the pipe, his most cherished past-time, has become more of an annoyance than a pleasure.
I found even more interesting Stubb's dream, in which he envisions Ahab kicking him with his peg-leg. And then Ahab turning into a pyramid, which Stubb then kicks, until a humpbacked dude tells him that it's an honor to be kicked by Ahab, to be noticed by Ahab, and that it's not insulting to be kicked by a pegleg because it's an inanimate object. I'm not really connecting the dots here as to why Ahab turned into a pyramid. Maybe I'm looking too deeply for symbolism here, but... yeah. I can't find any connection.
Ahab is a pretty cranky old dude, but we haven't really gotten into his character much. For the time being, he's pretty much moping around deck and kicking the hands.
And we've sort of switched perspective to Stubb once or twice, whose dialect is a bit harder to read than Ishmael's, but is still pretty easy to breeze through.
And we've begun to delve into the encyclopedia part a bit. I just read through a complete description of all the various categories of whales there are. And you know what? I was bracing myself for dry, boring text, but this was actually ridiculously interesting, and at parts, laughable. He insists that whales are in fact, a species of fish, which Linnaeus' description he cites completely pegs them for the mammals they are. Melville’s language is so wonderful, that the reading is just plain entertaining. This is way better to read than an encyclopedia. He claims that the sperm whale was the largest whale in the sea, even though at the time of writing, the blue whale's existence was known to mankind.
He even goes as far as to name Harbor Porpoises the Huzza breed, since they make people cheer when they're bebopping around the harbor.
Some beautiful description about changing weather, worthy of Homer's "rosy-fingered dawn." "For, as when the red-cheeked, dancing girls, April and May, trip home to the wintry, misantropic woods; even the barest, ruggedest, most thunder-cloven old oak will at least send forth some few green sprouts, to welcome such gladhearted visitants; so Ahab did, in the end, a little respond to the playful allurings of that girlish air."
Also: "The warmly cool, clear, ringing perfumed, overflowing, redunant days, were as crystal goblets of Persian sherbet, heaped up - flaked up, with rose-water snow. The starred and stately nights seemed haughty dames in jewelled velvets, nursing at home in lonely pride, the memory of their absent conquering Earls, the golden helmeted suns!"
Such gorgeous language. It nearly makes me swoon.
I am getting into more difficult chapters, like the Specksynder and the Cabin-Table, wherein websites like www.powermobydick.com are becoming a really big help with looking up little nuances that I've bookmarked on my Kindle.
Still plowing through, though, and it's still pretty darned interesting.
I found even more interesting Stubb's dream, in which he envisions Ahab kicking him with his peg-leg. And then Ahab turning into a pyramid, which Stubb then kicks, until a humpbacked dude tells him that it's an honor to be kicked by Ahab, to be noticed by Ahab, and that it's not insulting to be kicked by a pegleg because it's an inanimate object. I'm not really connecting the dots here as to why Ahab turned into a pyramid. Maybe I'm looking too deeply for symbolism here, but... yeah. I can't find any connection.
Ahab is a pretty cranky old dude, but we haven't really gotten into his character much. For the time being, he's pretty much moping around deck and kicking the hands.
And we've sort of switched perspective to Stubb once or twice, whose dialect is a bit harder to read than Ishmael's, but is still pretty easy to breeze through.
And we've begun to delve into the encyclopedia part a bit. I just read through a complete description of all the various categories of whales there are. And you know what? I was bracing myself for dry, boring text, but this was actually ridiculously interesting, and at parts, laughable. He insists that whales are in fact, a species of fish, which Linnaeus' description he cites completely pegs them for the mammals they are. Melville’s language is so wonderful, that the reading is just plain entertaining. This is way better to read than an encyclopedia. He claims that the sperm whale was the largest whale in the sea, even though at the time of writing, the blue whale's existence was known to mankind.
He even goes as far as to name Harbor Porpoises the Huzza breed, since they make people cheer when they're bebopping around the harbor.
Some beautiful description about changing weather, worthy of Homer's "rosy-fingered dawn." "For, as when the red-cheeked, dancing girls, April and May, trip home to the wintry, misantropic woods; even the barest, ruggedest, most thunder-cloven old oak will at least send forth some few green sprouts, to welcome such gladhearted visitants; so Ahab did, in the end, a little respond to the playful allurings of that girlish air."
Also: "The warmly cool, clear, ringing perfumed, overflowing, redunant days, were as crystal goblets of Persian sherbet, heaped up - flaked up, with rose-water snow. The starred and stately nights seemed haughty dames in jewelled velvets, nursing at home in lonely pride, the memory of their absent conquering Earls, the golden helmeted suns!"
Such gorgeous language. It nearly makes me swoon.
I am getting into more difficult chapters, like the Specksynder and the Cabin-Table, wherein websites like www.powermobydick.com are becoming a really big help with looking up little nuances that I've bookmarked on my Kindle.
Still plowing through, though, and it's still pretty darned interesting.
Monday, March 15, 2010
Chapters 5-18: In Which Ismael Wanders Around Some, And then Wanders Around Some More
So, what's happened since we left our intrepid narrator in the bed of a cannibal savage? Well, not much. Queequeg ends up being Ishmael's bosom buddy. And I mean buddy.
Our bumbling narrator even goes as far as to say that Queequeg is "George Washington cannibalistically developed." WHAT. The pair even go as far as to get "married" in Queequeg's terms. Seriously.
There's a nice little passage about going to bed with your lover. "...there is no place like a bed for confidential disclousures between friends. Man and wife, they say, there open the very bottom of their souls to each other; and some old couples often lie and chat over old times till nearly morning."
I want it to be like this for me and Jon.
Ishie goes to church, and the sermon is frought with sea metaphors and death and dying and whatnot. He sleeps some more with Queequeg, then heads to Nantucket to eat chowder and pick his boat out for whaling. On the way there's a lot of stupid young "saplings" on board that choose to make fun of our typical noble savage character. "I thought the bumpkin's hour of doom was come." Oh Ishmael. Queequeg then proceeds to toss the dude around, only to have the boat nearly fall apart, and the dumbass nearly drowns. Of course, Queequeg saves him. WHAT NOBILITY.
We also find out that Queequeg is a real live cannibal. As in, he's eaten people before. Specifically his enemies. What. Seriously. I thought the cannibal stuff was a joke.
Nantucket isn't the most exciting place. In fact, "There is more sand there than you would use in twenty years as a substitute for blotting paper." HOW MUCH SAND? Why don't you go on about it for a million pages, Ishmael?
I don't poke fun, because then I proceed to read those million pages, utterly fascinated.
So Ishmael is tasked with choosing a whaling ship, and he chooses the Perquod, the infamous boat of Moby-Dick lore, helmed by Captain Ahab! The owners, Bildad and Peleg, are pretty nutty.
Okay, so we haven't met Ahab, but we keep hearing about him. This legendary bad-ass whaler dude that got his leg bitten off by a huge whale.
Dying in whaling is so poetic: "Yes, there is death in this business of whaling - a speechlessly quick chaotic bundling of a man into Eternity." I love that line. It's such a beautiful image. "bundling into Eternity."
Queequeg is sort of a prodigy harpooner. At one point he hits a tiny spot of oil with his harpoon from very far away. What.
Also, "hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple-dumpling."
And there you have it. Welcome to my world of wonderful reading.
But in all seriousness, I'm enjoying this way more than I have the right to. Moby-Dick is earning its classic status with flying colors.
NOW GIMMIE SOME AHAB.
Our bumbling narrator even goes as far as to say that Queequeg is "George Washington cannibalistically developed." WHAT. The pair even go as far as to get "married" in Queequeg's terms. Seriously.
There's a nice little passage about going to bed with your lover. "...there is no place like a bed for confidential disclousures between friends. Man and wife, they say, there open the very bottom of their souls to each other; and some old couples often lie and chat over old times till nearly morning."
I want it to be like this for me and Jon.
Ishie goes to church, and the sermon is frought with sea metaphors and death and dying and whatnot. He sleeps some more with Queequeg, then heads to Nantucket to eat chowder and pick his boat out for whaling. On the way there's a lot of stupid young "saplings" on board that choose to make fun of our typical noble savage character. "I thought the bumpkin's hour of doom was come." Oh Ishmael. Queequeg then proceeds to toss the dude around, only to have the boat nearly fall apart, and the dumbass nearly drowns. Of course, Queequeg saves him. WHAT NOBILITY.
We also find out that Queequeg is a real live cannibal. As in, he's eaten people before. Specifically his enemies. What. Seriously. I thought the cannibal stuff was a joke.
Nantucket isn't the most exciting place. In fact, "There is more sand there than you would use in twenty years as a substitute for blotting paper." HOW MUCH SAND? Why don't you go on about it for a million pages, Ishmael?
I don't poke fun, because then I proceed to read those million pages, utterly fascinated.
So Ishmael is tasked with choosing a whaling ship, and he chooses the Perquod, the infamous boat of Moby-Dick lore, helmed by Captain Ahab! The owners, Bildad and Peleg, are pretty nutty.
Okay, so we haven't met Ahab, but we keep hearing about him. This legendary bad-ass whaler dude that got his leg bitten off by a huge whale.
Dying in whaling is so poetic: "Yes, there is death in this business of whaling - a speechlessly quick chaotic bundling of a man into Eternity." I love that line. It's such a beautiful image. "bundling into Eternity."
Queequeg is sort of a prodigy harpooner. At one point he hits a tiny spot of oil with his harpoon from very far away. What.
Also, "hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple-dumpling."
And there you have it. Welcome to my world of wonderful reading.
But in all seriousness, I'm enjoying this way more than I have the right to. Moby-Dick is earning its classic status with flying colors.
NOW GIMMIE SOME AHAB.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Chapters 1-4: Smooth Sailings
So far this has been a breeze. Sure, the plot has been pretty slow-moving, but I'm adoring the style of the writing. It's sumptuous and funny and remarkably current. I mean, there's a lot that's completely in the past. Vocabulary words that are non-existent now. TG for the Kindle's dictionary look-up! It's gotten me out of a few tough spots.
I've been sort of proud of all the little mentions and asides I've caught so far.
"The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us. But being paid - what will compare with it? The urbane activity with which a man receives money is really marvelous, considering that we so earnestly believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! how cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition!"
ORCHARD THIEVES AKA ADAM AND EVE GET IT?! I love that passage in general. Greed is an interesting thing.
But I was holding back a big grin on the bus when I began to read about Ishmael's introduction to Queequeg, the harpooner and purple-skinned, checkered-tattoo dude that attempts to pawn off several New Zealand heads on a Saturday night. I'm serious.
Plus he doesn't know American customs and hides under the bed to put on his boots. ROFFLE.
These passages made me roffle:
"For all his tattooings he was on the whole a clean, comely looking cannibal."
Oh Melville.
He follows it with this:
"Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian." O RLY.
Not only that, but when they fall asleep together, Queequag's "pagan arm" finds its way around Ishmael's body, and try as Ishie might, he cannot break the "bridegroom clasp." This is hilarious stuff. Seriously.
Ishie is so proper. Look at this gem:
"At length, by dint of much wriggling, and loud and incessant expostulations upon the unbecomingness of his hugging a fellow male in that matrimonial sort of style, I succeeded in extracting a grunt; and presently, he drew back his arm, shook himself all over like a Newfoundland dog just from the water, and sat up in bed, stiff as a pike-staff [lawl], looking at me, and rubbing his eyes as if he did not altogether remember how I came to be there, though a dim consciousness of knowing something about me seemed slowly dawning over him."
That is one LONG-ASS sentence.
So yeah, so far, nothing about whale and knots and stuff like that.
Just pure, hardcore non-man-sex bunk buddies.
I'm really impressed by Melville's knack to make total asides seem completely interesting. It's so irrelevant that it's awesome. He waxes poetic about Lazurus freezing his ass off in the wind. He starts going on endlessly about a random painting in the entryway of the inn that's so worn down, everyone speculates what exactly is depicted.
I've come to the conclusion that Melville, at this point in the novel, is pretty much Morgan Freeman.
Yeah, bear with me.
He's pretty much rattling on about really NON-INTERESTING things. Yet the entire time I've been completely enthralled, turning the pages, wondering what's going to happen next.
I mean, one of the chapters is named Carpet-Bag. Another is named Counterpane. WTF. Carpetbag is a type of bag. Counterpane is a quilt. Really, really nonessential items to a story about a FREAKING WHALE. But it's awesome anyway.
I can't wait to read Chapter 5. I mean, the heading is BREAKFAST.
I've been sort of proud of all the little mentions and asides I've caught so far.
"The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us. But being paid - what will compare with it? The urbane activity with which a man receives money is really marvelous, considering that we so earnestly believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! how cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition!"
ORCHARD THIEVES AKA ADAM AND EVE GET IT?! I love that passage in general. Greed is an interesting thing.
But I was holding back a big grin on the bus when I began to read about Ishmael's introduction to Queequeg, the harpooner and purple-skinned, checkered-tattoo dude that attempts to pawn off several New Zealand heads on a Saturday night. I'm serious.
Plus he doesn't know American customs and hides under the bed to put on his boots. ROFFLE.
These passages made me roffle:
"For all his tattooings he was on the whole a clean, comely looking cannibal."
Oh Melville.
He follows it with this:
"Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian." O RLY.
Not only that, but when they fall asleep together, Queequag's "pagan arm" finds its way around Ishmael's body, and try as Ishie might, he cannot break the "bridegroom clasp." This is hilarious stuff. Seriously.
Ishie is so proper. Look at this gem:
"At length, by dint of much wriggling, and loud and incessant expostulations upon the unbecomingness of his hugging a fellow male in that matrimonial sort of style, I succeeded in extracting a grunt; and presently, he drew back his arm, shook himself all over like a Newfoundland dog just from the water, and sat up in bed, stiff as a pike-staff [lawl], looking at me, and rubbing his eyes as if he did not altogether remember how I came to be there, though a dim consciousness of knowing something about me seemed slowly dawning over him."
That is one LONG-ASS sentence.
So yeah, so far, nothing about whale and knots and stuff like that.
Just pure, hardcore non-man-sex bunk buddies.
I'm really impressed by Melville's knack to make total asides seem completely interesting. It's so irrelevant that it's awesome. He waxes poetic about Lazurus freezing his ass off in the wind. He starts going on endlessly about a random painting in the entryway of the inn that's so worn down, everyone speculates what exactly is depicted.
I've come to the conclusion that Melville, at this point in the novel, is pretty much Morgan Freeman.
Yeah, bear with me.
He's pretty much rattling on about really NON-INTERESTING things. Yet the entire time I've been completely enthralled, turning the pages, wondering what's going to happen next.
I mean, one of the chapters is named Carpet-Bag. Another is named Counterpane. WTF. Carpetbag is a type of bag. Counterpane is a quilt. Really, really nonessential items to a story about a FREAKING WHALE. But it's awesome anyway.
I can't wait to read Chapter 5. I mean, the heading is BREAKFAST.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
And so it begins...
Hello, world.
I guess I should introduce myself to my audience of one. My name is Christine, and I'm a deprived English major.
Even though I am an avid reader, I haven't dived into any of the big classics. Among my embarassments:
But I figure my education needs to begin somewhere. If the misery of high school didn't educate me, and college proved too specialized (Harlem Renaissance and Literature of Social Change, anyone? Who knew Jack London's other books aren't about frozen Arctic tundras that howl in the night?), I need to take matters into my own hands.
And I start with a book.
Moby-Dick, to be exact.
I'm going to read the behemoth, the Great American Novel, the epic with Ahab and that white sperm whale and that dude called Ishmael. All I know is that there's going to be pages upon pages of detailed minutiae about whaling. Knots. And rope. And ships, and probably harpoons. There's going to be obsession, and symbolism.
And we're going in... NON-ANNOTATED. Gasp. I know. I'm a rebel.
The Kindle's charging up, the e-pages are ready to be turned. I'm ready to dive in.
And that's about it.
There's no contest here. No prize. No time limit.
It's just me and the whale of a tale.
I guess I should introduce myself to my audience of one. My name is Christine, and I'm a deprived English major.
Even though I am an avid reader, I haven't dived into any of the big classics. Among my embarassments:
- I've only read one Hemingway
- I've never read any of the Great Russian Novels. I put this in caps because, y'know, they're kind of a big deal. Not a single one.
- I've never read Joyce
- Mrs. Dalloway? Didn't finish that.
- Chaucer? Nope.
- Hamlet? Nope.
- Beowulf? Not a chance.
But I figure my education needs to begin somewhere. If the misery of high school didn't educate me, and college proved too specialized (Harlem Renaissance and Literature of Social Change, anyone? Who knew Jack London's other books aren't about frozen Arctic tundras that howl in the night?), I need to take matters into my own hands.
And I start with a book.
Moby-Dick, to be exact.
I'm going to read the behemoth, the Great American Novel, the epic with Ahab and that white sperm whale and that dude called Ishmael. All I know is that there's going to be pages upon pages of detailed minutiae about whaling. Knots. And rope. And ships, and probably harpoons. There's going to be obsession, and symbolism.
And we're going in... NON-ANNOTATED. Gasp. I know. I'm a rebel.
The Kindle's charging up, the e-pages are ready to be turned. I'm ready to dive in.
And that's about it.
There's no contest here. No prize. No time limit.
It's just me and the whale of a tale.
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