From the Bookshelf of Catching up on Classics (and lots more!)…

Moby-Dick or, The Whale

Herman Melville

Start date: June 1, 2023

Finish date: July 1, 2023

Discussion: Old School Classics, Pre-1915

Why we're reading this: Revisit the Shelf June 2023

2nd Quarter Long Read 2017

Previous Group Reads:
Book of the Month, December 20…more
[close] Revisit the Shelf June 2023

2nd Quarter Long Read 2017

Previous Group Reads:
Book of the Month, December 2010
Revisit the Shelf Group Read, March 2014

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Old School Classics, Pre-1915

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What Members Thought

Mar 21, 2011 Everyman rated it it was amazing

You know you should read it. You know you really should. And you're aware, sadly, that knowing the opening three words doesn't count as having read it.

But you would rather clean out the garage, something else you know you should do, than face chapter after chapter of arcana about whales and whaling. Between which you would rather do, reading Moby Dick or undergoing a root canal, you would have to toss a coin.

I know. I really do know. I was there. I was you.

But my reading group, feeling bravery You know you should read it. You know you really should. And you're aware, sadly, that knowing the opening three words doesn't count as having read it.

But you would rather clean out the garage, something else you know you should do, than face chapter after chapter of arcana about whales and whaling. Between which you would rather do, reading Moby Dick or undergoing a root canal, you would have to toss a coin.

I know. I really do know. I was there. I was you.

But my reading group, feeling bravery in numbers, and all ashamed to admit, once it was suggested, that they really didn't want to read it, picked Moby Dick to read. So I was stuck. No more excuses. No more putting it off (when you've passed 60, putting off both becomes easier and has a more final feel to it.)

Enough palaver. So I read it. And now I can tell you, so should you. Not as a duty, not because it's a classic, but because it's a marvelous read.

Oh, yes, the whale stuff is all there. Why? Well, the 19th century was an age of scientific discovery, an age when there was no Discovery channel, no Sea World, no whale watch cruises. If you wanted to know about whales, you either had to go on a long and dangerous sea voyage, or you had to read Moby Dick. Melville is the Encyclopedia Britannica of whales.

And whaling was a vital industry for the Industrial Revolution. Petroleum hadn't yet been discovered, or at least its meaningful properties weren't known. Whale oil fueled the lamps of the Industrial Revolution. It oiled the machines of the Industrial Revolution. Whalers wee the oil field roughnecks of their day. Think of our world without oil or gasoline. That was the 1850s without whale oil.

Yes, you can skim over those chapters, but you'll be missing some really interesting information and understanding of a vital chapter in American history.

But Moby Dick is a lot more than whales. A whole lot more. It is, on its surface, an adventure story at sea with a cast of characters you have to read to believe. But beneath that, and not very far beneath, it is a philosophical treatise on the values of our developing pre-Civil War nation. It is the ultimate multi-cultural novel. It delves into religion, economics, sociology, psychology -- you name it, it's in there. The chapter on The Whiteness of the Whale is one of the most profound essays on semiotics to be found outside of a linguistics textbook (and in Moby Dick, you can understand it). (If you don't know what semiotics is, go look it up, don't just brush by it -- how do you expect to learn things if you won't look them up?)

Melville deals with the social dynamics of a small group of men cooped up on a small ship facing weeks of boredom interspersed with moments of sheer terror. He deals with hatred and revenge and the sane-madness of obsession. He has created a cast of characters more diverse than and every bit as interesting as I have seen in any other novel I have ever read other, perhaps, than the Canterbury Tales.

So. You can clean out the garage. Or you can read Moby Dick. (Of, if you're an exceptionally disciplined person, you can do both. But that's not likely, is it?) If you clean out the garage, it will stay clean for maybe a month. If you read Moby Dick, it will stay with you for your lifetime. It's up to you. What's more important to you, a clean garage or wisdom?

Choose wisely.

...more

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Sep 15, 2012 Laura rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 1001-books-you-must-read-before-you, read-2013, american-fiction, kindle, fiction-19th-century, mtbr-challenge-2013, e-books, audio-books, animals

I won't miss this one. Also available at iTunes for download and podcasts.

As stated by the Moby Dick Big Read project, Moby-Dick is the great American novel. But it is also the great unread American novel.

This is quite comprehensive, that's why I decided to join Hayes and some other friends in this interesting project which provided a chapter per day from the period of September 15 2012 to January 29 2013. An international body of artwork had accompanied each chapter, a quite huge project which ...more

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Feb 17, 2012 Trisha rated it it was ok

Shelves: classics

This might have been the dullest, slowest, most boring-est book that I have ever read. Ever. Yes, the narration was beautiful, but even that cannot turn 100 pages on whale anatomy into something interesting. The entire story of Captain Ahab and Moby Dick is roughly 50 pages long, the other 430 pages are composed of the history of whaling, the spout hole, the anatomy of every single part of the whale, the evolution of whales and the many uses of the different whale parts. The only thing that woul ...more

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Oct 03, 2018 Pam rated it it was ok · review of another edition

The best part of having read Moby Dick is that I never have to read it again.

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Apr 05, 2014 Maggie rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: boxall-1001, fiction, adventure, classics, guardian-1000, usa

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. “Call me Ishmael”, and so it begins. Ishmael decides to join a whaling ship, and with his newly met tribal friend, Queequeg, he joins the Pequod, a ship captained by the monomaniacal (as Melville repeatedly describes him) Ahab. Ahab wears a prosthetic leg for his leg was once destroyed by the sperm whale Moby Dick, and he spends the next three years on a quest to hunt and kill Moby Dick. We never meet Moby Dick until the end of the book, but Melville speaking through Ishmael uses the better part “Call me Ishmael”, and so it begins. Ishmael decides to join a whaling ship, and with his newly met tribal friend, Queequeg, he joins the Pequod, a ship captained by the monomaniacal (as Melville repeatedly describes him) Ahab. Ahab wears a prosthetic leg for his leg was once destroyed by the sperm whale Moby Dick, and he spends the next three years on a quest to hunt and kill Moby Dick. We never meet Moby Dick until the end of the book, but Melville speaking through Ishmael uses the better part of the book describing the majesty of the sperm whale, the process of whaling, and various incidents on a whaling journey. Throughout, there is a sense of foreboding, as Ahab drives his crew on with his charisma despite it becoming increasingly clear that the ship stands little chance against Moby Dick. But Ahab is bent on his purpose, and they find Moby Dick, and everything happens as we expect. All are killed, with only Ishmael surviving to tell the tale.

This book is replete with themes. There is the theme of majesty – the majesty of the sperm whale, with his size and power, to the point that he is elevated to almost god-like status by Ishmael, and the the majesty of the sea, with its hidden depths and vast mysteries. There is the theme of choice and fate – does Ahab pursue Moby Dick by choice or is it fate that drives him to his senseless end? There is theme of civility versus paganism, embodied in the Pequod’s multinational crew that includes white Americans, Indians and tribal people, amongst others, with uncivilised Queequeg often idealised as more honourable and selfless than the civilised men. There is the theme of religion, with Melville criticising the hypocrisies of Christians, aligning Ahab with the devil, and scattering his pages with names from the Old Testament.

Yes, Melville’s messages of the futility of obsessions and the inferiority of man to God are clear, but I wish he would convey these messages in a more enjoyable way. I mean, it’s not that I hated the book. I enjoyed the passages describing the whale, because much as they deviated from the action, they conveyed Melville’s passion for whales, and were educational in a compelling way. I enjoyed too the interactions between the characters. The personalities in this book are diverse, from madmen like Ahab to sensible Christian men like Starbuck to happy-go-lucky comic characters like Stubb to pitifully insane characters like Pip, and it was interesting seeing how these characters interacted with one another when thrown together. I especially enjoyed the Pequod’s gams with other ships, and the comparisons inevitably drawn between the Ahab’s objectives and character and those of the other ships’ captains.

But I believe Melville’s greatest shortcoming lay in the fact that he tried too hard for grandiosity. He wanted this to be an epic. As the main subject of the text, the sperm whale’s immensity couldn’t have been emphasised more. The story covered geographical vastness, and hinted at unfathomable ocean depths. The whale was covered from etymological, cetological, anatomical, phrenological, historical and artistic perspectives, just to name a few. There was lots of name-dropping going on, with people like Alexander, Hannibal, biblical characters, kings, sultans and famous navigators mentioned. There were mountains and forests and ruins and wars. Melville’s point was clear – the whale is grand, and he wanted this to be a grand novel. But he couldn’t pull it off coherently, and everything became an overwhelming mess. His language was so verbose that I had to read it slowly to understand it, and yet I didn’t have the patience or interest to muster the energy required to make sense of his writing. I could see Melville’s passion in his subject, but his passion was over-the-top.

I was a little disappointed. I gave The Scarlet Letter 5 stars when I read it last year, and I knew that Melville was influenced by Nathaniel Hawthorne, so I expected to enjoy this more than I did. I’m glad I read it, but only because it is so widely recognised as a classic that I had to experience it for myself. ...more

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Nov 01, 2014 Andreea rated it liked it

For some reason today I felt like reading another classic - also got more classics for this month because I'm really into them.

I don't know exactly what made me reread Moby-Dick but I am glad I did because I changed my opinion about it. It is actually quite a nice book and a lovely read. The descriptions in it are beautiful and the story has really nice themes that as an ignorant teenager I didn't want to see. ...more

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Aug 12, 2015 Nola Tillman rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction-drama, 1001-books-to-read, classics, fiction-action-adventure

I had a difficult time with this, I'll admit. The beginning and end both drew me in, but the middle dragged on and on. There were some points of writing I truly enjoyed in the midst, but overall I felt nearly driven to madness myself. And Moby Dick, that vicious b*stard, took forever to appear. When I hit page 500 and still hadn't spotted him - in a 535-page novel - I was ready to slay him myself. Even Ahab only puts in a passing appearance through most of the middle.
In truth, some of what we le ...more

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