September 2017 Discussion: "Why Read Moby-Dick?"

[Shea]

Please share your thoughts.

[Julia]

(I posted this earlier, before this thread was up--thanks, Shea, for being so organized!)

I'm thrilled that the Sept. selection is Why Read Moby-Dick?; here is my 5 star goodreads review:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

"Chap. 15: Here's the crux of why I love this book and why so many don't. Philbrick says: "MOBY DICK is a novel, but it is also a book of poetry. The beauty of Melville's sentences is such that it sometimes takes me five minutes or more to make my way through a single page as i reread the words aloud, feeling the rhythms, the shrewdly hidden rhymes, and the miraculous way he manages consonants and vowels." The only chapter I used with my seniors in Advanced Placement literature was "The Whiteness of the Whale", and we'd take 3 days on it just to study all the allusions.

I'd suggest adding that powerful chapter, just to have a real experience of Melville's style and power. I've created a word document of the chapter, which runs a bit over 8 pages. I'll email that to everyone--and be prepared to google A LOT, while checking the allusions made by Melville.

One major citation about the albatross is from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in which an innocent albatross is killed by one of the prideful sailors, bringing a curse on the ship. I had a class set for my students of this version, illustrated by Gustave Doré. I'll bring my copy to the meeting:
https://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Marine...

Here is my review of the entire novel, just FYI:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Kallie]

I want to read Moby Dick again, and for the reasons Julia suggests. I love Melville's writing. Even in Pierre, which is so dark and a bit disjointed, the writing, the evocation of characters and place (New York in early 18th century, and not Wharton's or James' New York) are marvelous.

[Shea]

My review:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Kallie]

Shea wrote: "My review:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show..."

My impression is that Melville had a complex view of whaling, as he did of life and society and individuals in general. But maybe just skip those whaling parts and read the straight-ahead Ishmael narrative because it is gorgeous. You wouldn't the first, I'm sure.

[Julia]

This Melville site give the chapters it is possible to cut and still follow the main storyline:
http://www.melville.org/diCurcio/cont...

I really disagree with his NOT including "The Whiteness of the Whale" which I sent to everyone--the only chapter I tried with my AP students. Kallie, I don't have your email--so the chapter is here:
http://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/42/moby-dic...

[Patty]

I began reading our next book discussion book, Why Read Moby-Dick? and really find it very easy and insightful. But I needed a book to listen to in the car on a short trip that my husband and I were taking so I checked out the CD copy of the book from the library. It is only two CDs and read by the gifted author, Nathaniel Philbrick.

His book has a marvelous amount of just enough history, information and facts condensed into a short dissertation about Whaling and Herman Melville that Philbrink hopes will entice you to read even a few words of the the classic, Moby-Dick. Philbrick states, "that instead of being a page turner, the book is a repository not only of American history and culture but also of the essentials of western literature. It has a voice that is one of the most nuanced in all of literature: at once confiding, funny and an outpouring of irrepressible eloquence that soars into the stratosphere even as it remains rooted to the ground. The book is so encyclopedic and detailed that space aliens could use it to re-create the whale fishery as it once existed on the planet Earth in the middle of the nineteenth century."

Moby-Dick is a long book and time is short but Philbrick has convinced me that I need to give Melville a chance to get me to say, "Wow!" But first I want to read Philbricks "Why Read Moby-Dick". The book discussion should be interesting.
I gave this book 4 stars

[Kallie]

Julia wrote: "This Melville site give the chapters it is possible to cut and still follow the main storyline:
http://www.melville.org/diCurcio/cont...

I really disagree with his NOT including "The Whitene..."

Thanks, I will check this out, Julia. Have you read Delbanco's Melville bio? It is excellent. I was very curious to know more about H.M. after reading Pierre (such a strange story; weirdly modern), and now want to re-read Moby Dick with the bio at hand because the analysis of M.B. is fascinating.