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Moby-Dick or, The Whale

Herman Melville

Start date: December 1, 2017

Finish date: February 15, 2018

Discussion: Completed Books

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Completed Books

Thoughts on Contact.
By Sarah , Organizer · 1 post · 2 views

last updated Oct 07, 2013 04:55PM

Thoughts on Hyperion.
By Sarah , Organizer · 1 post · 4 views

last updated Oct 07, 2013 04:53PM

What Members Thought

Oct 28, 2017 James rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, history, book-club

First half:
Now having quaffed half a cup of the richest purple prose with generous helpings of asides and digressions, I now realize that my first drink of Moby was but a thin, bastardized abridgement suited to callow youth, which was a fitting description of myself about a half century previous.

(Have I caught a case of the dreaded purples? Quickly! inject me with the crayon writ prose of a Hemingway!)

Freudians must have a field day with this book, with its weird dream dialogues and strange ima First half:
Now having quaffed half a cup of the richest purple prose with generous helpings of asides and digressions, I now realize that my first drink of Moby was but a thin, bastardized abridgement suited to callow youth, which was a fitting description of myself about a half century previous.

(Have I caught a case of the dreaded purples? Quickly! inject me with the crayon writ prose of a Hemingway!)

Freudians must have a field day with this book, with its weird dream dialogues and strange imagery mixed with the solid nuts and bolts of the whaling trade. And I'm sure those with a salacious mind find the bromance between Ishmael and Queegqueg in the early parts amusing, though I think it more innocent than some though Stubbs' weird, almost obscene, dream lends weight to that argument. As we forage our way through the literary feast, we find the overaged and rancid racist bits that fester in most 19th century American literature, I feel some of the non-white characters are nothing but bad stereotypes.

I'm also not sure if there is any character development, we are dribbled out sketches and nothing seems changed, but then I'm only half way done. A very strange read so far, I'm bringing a copy of American Ship Models and How to Build Them for the whaler plans to our book discussion.

Part 2:
Scattered thru is more about cutting up whales, whale lore and law that even the nerdiest might want to know. The actual process must have been hellish with the fires, blood and fat everywhere. Ishmael crawling inside the whale was a bit nightmarish. We see the carpenter and black smith at work repairing Ahab's body though obviously not the mind. Ahab talks to a dead whale and forges his devilish lance in blood and lightning, very Shakes(lancian?)spearan. There's a dramatic rescue by Queegqueg and a storm but otherwise not much action until the end. The end is intense but fast, it's really surprising how few pages it occupies.

I'm glad I reread this but I may wait another forty years before I read it again! ...more

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