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Ok so I'm about halfway through this and I'm forcing myself to continue.
The last 10 chapters have just been long winded descriptions of whales,water,sky,islands, exc. and a short story about some mutiny on another ship that is completely unrelated to the story and lead absolutely fucking nowhere. I liked the first few chapters, the characters are interesting but NOTHING IS HAPPENING. All of this feels like i'm reading a students attempt to turn a 200 word essay into a 200 page essay.
How much of this can I skip? When does it go back to being good?
go back to reading YA novels
It will all become clear once you finish the book
>reading moby dick for the plot
I bet you read Shakespeare for the narrative, pl00b
Honestly, it's an overrated book. It has great moments, and it should be read to understand it's influence on yank lit if nothing else, but it has the tendency of many 19th century novels to portentously ramble. Melville needed a better prose style and a surgical editor.
However, don't skip parts of a fucking book. Just read it or don't. If you want to understand and interpret the Western Canon you're going to have to read books you don't like, it's an interconnected set of narratives that rely on one another, the symbols become richer when their connotations, allusions, and influences become clear.
TL;DR - Read a fucking book.
>>8268331
what's the best anglo lit then 1850~+?
God, the English have such insipid novels after the Americans take over. Look at Dickens, Jane Eyre, Middlemarch, Tennyson, ALL of Victorian literature--trash compared to Moby Dick. Compared to Whitman, Twain, Dickinson.
Moby Dick's importance is its language, THAT is its influence on all of english language literature. Not its 'moments' or its exclusivity in influence on strictly American literature.
>>8268361
The language of Moby Dick is mongrel hickshit slang compared to some of the great literary stylists of the Victorian Era, and the Victorian Era consists of stuffy contrived upper class patois compared to the modernist revolution in the 20th century. It's an overrated book because Americans are desperate to have some kind of cultural tradition before the 20th century, I'm not denying there was one or that it contained some fantastic books, I just wouldn't count Moby Dick among them.
As for the best, I don't strictly think that the term 'best' really works, but if I had to place one novel after 1850 above all others based on the only real measure of literature, aesthetic merit, it would have to be Ulysses with Pale Fire as a deserving runner up.
Also, the best prose fiction of the 19th century was Russian hands down. The best poetry was British, and the best essays were German.
>>8268382
ur 1 cheeky kunt, m8
>>8268400
>best poetry not french
would agr33 with you otherwise though m8
>>8268331
>Melville needed a better prose style
Kill yourself.
>>8268382
Automatically invalidated as there is no worse English than Victorian lit.
I'll give you at least Dickens is more consistent in quality than Melville (Bartleby is extremely solid but Billy Budd drops off and after that it's only worse) but count me three beautiful passages illuminating the human condition, depictions of nature, or the commingling of the both in the best English writer of this period (before the modernists) you can throw at me, and I'll bounce back 30 more from Moby Dick. You are that wrong.
It is basically "digressions : the novel"
It's also quintessential high literature. It goes through many phases, it starts as an adventure yarn, sometimes it is a sermon from an extremely well read preacher, other times it is a whale biology book. What remains constant is God tier prose. Check out this excerpt:
Lulled into such an opium-like listlessness of vacant, unconscious reverie is this absent-minded youth by the blending cadence of waves with thoughts, that at last he loses his identity; takes the mystic ocean at his feet for the visible image of that deep, blue, bottomless soul, pervading mankind and nature; and every strange, half-seen, gliding, beautiful thing that eludes him; every dimly-discovered, uprising fin of some undiscernible form, seems to him the embodiment of those elusive thoughts that only people the soul by continually flitting through it. In this enchanted mood, thy spirit ebbs away to whence it came; becomes diffused through time and space; like Crammer’s sprinkled Pantheistic ashes, forming at last a part of every shore the round globe over.
There is no life in thee, now, except that rocking life imparted by a gentle rolling ship; by her, borrowed from the sea; by the sea, from the inscrutable tides of God. But while this sleep, this dream is on ye, move your foot or hand an inch; slip your hold at all; and your identity comes back in horror. Over Descartian vortices you hover. And perhaps, at midday, in the fairest weather, with one half-throttled shriek you drop through that transparent air into the summer sea, no more to rise for ever. Heed it well, ye Pantheists!
>>8268487
what chapter is that excerpt from?
>>8268487
Jesus wept, this gave me the biggest prose boner.
I need to read this.
>>8268495
The Mast Head
>>8268495
He's talking about the perils of being a philosophical youth at the mast head, also known as the crows nest
>>8268297
Awwwwwe, I read that edition when I was little... I remember I sat by the pool early in the morning and imagined Moby Dick in the water... it was so early in the morning when I started and nobody had woken up yet when I was finished... in that quiet house in Beverly Hills.
God I miss America before the recession.
>>8268297
I recommend that if you don't like it, don't read it. Maybe it is not your style. There are plenty of books that may suit you. It's not school you know, you are not forced to read every popular book, or to like it. And that book isn't even considered that good anymore.
>>8268331
>Honestly, it's an overrated book. It has great moments, and it should be read to understand it's influence on yank lit if nothing else, but it has the tendency of many 19th century novels to portentously ramble. Melville needed a better prose style and a surgical editor.
Stop
lel thats like a teen saying classic music is boring.
go read something that suits you.
Herman is no Tao Lin for sure
I didn't think it would be so funny, I actually laughed out loud at the bit where they're squeezing the blubber in those vats to keep them from going off. The way he wrote it felt like a nursery rhyme or something.
>>8269501
>the part he writes about accidentally squeezing another sailor's hand, and the sailor squeezes them back, and they're all squeezing each others hands instead of the blubber
Gayest fucking thing I've ever read in my life
>>8269512
Hey, we can squeeze each other's hands, anon, though, there's nothing gay about it, friend.
>>8268297
Read "The count of monte christo", by alexandre dumas. One of the best books of all times!
>>8268297
Watch the movie with Gregory Peck instead! Very good, much better than the book!
>>8268297
>Reading books
>Expecting things to happen
Go back to /sffg/ you pleb
>>8268297
>NOTHING IS HAPPENING
>reading Moby Dick for plot
>>8269519
Hark! Stubb, off with ye!
>>8268331
> Melville needed a better prose style
Found the pleb.
Although he's write about not forcing yourself to read a book you don't enjoy.
>eww, he jerks of le whale XD
>>8268420
This.
>>8269707
>Found the pleb.
>he's write
>>8270192
Hey. Shut up.
You could contrast Melville with someone like Lovecraft.
>"hrmm... uhhh... 'It was unfathomable! I was so paralyzed with fear I like couldn't make sense of anything' ... Yeah!"
Whereas, Melville explains the motion, structure and history of every appendage of the whale to the point where you have a very objective image of it swimming in your head. Personally I think it's amazing. Yes, it's more scholarly than it is dramatic during these encyclopedic asides but it adds so much to the story. Better to use the ink and paper towards this than pointlessly dragging out the story's events. Part of the novel's beauty as a medium gives its author the opportunity to slow down and explain the minutiae, setting and details. It's important to mention as well that these aren't just encylopedia articles either; Ishmael's commentary encompasses a multitude of subjects and is delivered in a very logical, articulate, warm, witty, and refreshing style. These "digressions" aren't digressions, they are just as much the bread and butter of the book as Captain Ahab and the Pequod are. There's no rule that says every word of a novel must be in the service of advancing the plot.
>>8268297
Slug through it and then read it 10 years later when you can actually appreciate it.
Also check out this book some dude wrote on it if you have the time. Some nice analysis on the novel:
https://books(dot)google(dot)ca/books?id=Kb6FdqTDOQIC&printsec=frontcover&dq
>>8268297
>reading moby dick for story
literally skip to the last 5 pages - get it over with and read that part, then continue where you are now #pleb
>>8268321
why the fuck would you read a story if not for the plot?
>>8271686
u r brand fuckin new
>>8268297
Life itself is nothing but a digression, OP. Maybe someday you will know this.
>>8271686
le epic prose
I literally just finished it minutes ago OP. Let the pace take you as it does or you'll finish the book thinking there would be as much longer as I thought it was. It's all building up and there for a reason. Pay attention.
Btw.
>CHAPTER 122
>Midnight Aloft.- Thunder and Lightning
>The Main-top-sail yard - Tashtego passing new lashings around it.
>"Um, um, um. Stop that thunder! Plenty too much thunder up here. What's the use of thunder? Um, um, um. We don't want thunder; we want rum; give us a glass of rum. Um, um, um!"
Was this shitposting?
On page 410 of 576 of the California edition, which has some very beautiful illustrations, maps, and studies of the subjects in the book, that I checked out from my university's library.
Whenever they lower for the whales, the soundtrack from Shadow of the Colossus starts playing in my head. Excuse me for comparing it to a video game, but the two works seem to have a bit in common.
Hey guys what should I read before Moby Dick?
>>8272180
jonah and the whale, that's it
moby dick is a pretty smooth read
>>8272180
All I read is pulp fantasy tripe but I understood most of the references in this, Melville explains them anyways so it's not like you need to go read the original
>>8272192
the book is just called Jonah
>>8272212
actually book of jonah, right?
>>8272219
Technically it was written before books were a thing
>>8268487
crazy how he describes the unconscious before psychology was a thing
It's shit
>>8272617
look at this guy
>>8272618
o i am lookin
>>8272668
>It's about a god damned whale, OP.
Yeah but it's a whale of a tale for a tale of a whale. Go easy on a guy.
>>8268297
Don't strain yourself OP.
why don't you skip the section?
so much of the enjoyment in moby dick is from the prose that you could probably pick it up anywhere, read it totally out of order, or only partially
but as with any book, if you dont like it, just stop
>>8268487
Fuck me, I just re-prosed this passage, didn't I?
>In the crow's nest, a boy's mind tends to wander. His thoughts are the sea's, and his movements the boat's.
>But move with will, and thought returns.
>Crow's nest, boy's not. Crow's wing, boy's fall.
