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.