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Moby-Dick
by Herman Melville, Nathaniel Philbrick
by Herman Melville, Nathaniel Philbrick
I read this in a week, on a trip to Tokyo. I started it on the plane over, finished it while I was there. There was something about the way being submerged in a foriegn language while reading it made it more intense.
I found it weirdly thrilling for how it seemed to me to be this whole novel about the handsome tattooed Queequeg, and the strange beautiful relationship he and the narrator have, and then wham! The whale.
In some ways, the long aria-type chapters about whales strike me as being a way to support the ending, and at first I found them frustrating, but over time, afterwards, I understand them and find them necessary, though I do always wish there was a way the novel could have been more about Queequeg and the "bridegroom's embrace" the narrator finds himself in on that first night they meet and end up in bed together.
I found it weirdly thrilling for how it seemed to me to be this whole novel about the handsome tattooed Queequeg, and the strange beautiful relationship he and the narrator have, and then wham! The whale.
In some ways, the long aria-type chapters about whales strike me as being a way to support the ending, and at first I found them frustrating, but over time, afterwards, I understand them and find them necessary, though I do always wish there was a way the novel could have been more about Queequeg and the "bridegroom's embrace" the narrator finds himself in on that first night they meet and end up in bed together.
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"I wish there was a way the novel could have been more about Queequeg and the 'bridegroom's embrace" ... you should explore that and see what comes of it.L
Lisa: I might just. My first reaction was, Doesn't my career sort of already do that? But the answer was... no. Maybe it'll be my homage to Wide Sargasso Sea.
If I do it, I'm giving you the credit.
Marie: I used to attend a Unitarian-Universalist church in New York that had a framed note from Melville's widow, asking to be excused from the pew tax because of their extreme poverty.
This is one of my favorite American novels; reading it was perhaps *the* reading highpoint of grad school for me. I love its lavishness, how it seems as if Melville gave everything to it. If you live in Western Mass. or are visiting it, you should go tour Arrowhead, the house in Pittsfield where Melville wrote /Moby Dick/. He was contained and frustrated, mightily, by the hectic life of his extended family with whom he lived, and it's easy to wonder if he poured all that energy into the novel.To complicate your reading of Ishmael's relationship with Queequeg, read /Rites and Passages/ by Margaret Creighton, a wonderful, short social history of 19th century whaling industry based on the diaries and letters of whalemen. If nothing else, read the parts about gender identity, romance, and sex. A student, in fact, showed this book to me about a year ago, and reading it has expanded by sense of /Moby Dick/.
I started reading a bit of this at work in the last few days, and reading the last part of your review about wanting the novel to be about a romance between Queequeg and Ishmael, together with the 'rumor' that Melville felt very close to Nathaniel Hawthorne, made me want to attempt a sci-fi punk/queer hybrid of Moby Dick and The Scarlet Letter story/novel today.
Went to New Bedford this summer to pay homage to the master, even went to the little chapel. I slipped into the backmost pew to contemplate it all...the docent said that was also Melville's favorite pew. He liked to sit in the fringes and observe as well.
Good read!
ml