Moby-Dick; or, The Whale by Herman Melville

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"This is an odd book, professing to be a novel: wantonly eccentric; outrageously bombastic; in places charmingly and vividly descriptive." - Literary Gazette, 1851.

Moby-Dick is as odd a book as it was when it was first published in 1851. It's a big, sweeping novel that circles the globe. But it's also quite intimate, diving into the details of character's daily lives and motivations. It's a fictional story of one man's obsession with revenge on a whale and a historical chronicle of the times. When Herman Meville wrote Moby-Dick the oceans were crossed by whaling ships, merchant ships, navy ships, pirate ships, and slave ships. Whales were still thought to be fish. Melville paints a detailed, textured mosaic of the life of seamen and those around them.

Although Melville didn't rise above the times, he denounced hypocrisy but not slavery, he identified strongly with the common man and men of all positions and colors. At the beginning the narrator, Melville's voice in the novel, starts a bromance with an aboriginal prince from the south seas. But Captain Ahab is a classist, believing in democracy for everyone of his station and higher but disregards the humanity of those under him.

The prose of Moby-Dick is lyrical, liquid, almost poetic at times making it a joy to read. Though a long novel, the chapters are short and easily digestible. Melville was highly intelligent, read widely, and drops names and references throughout his text. In the past I've preferred reading hard copies of novels, but this book is actually a good one to read on an electronic device. Reading it on my phone gave me the ultimate annotated edition. Looking up all of the archaic terms and obscure geographical references helped bring the novel to life and revealed the scope and sweep of the story. But I am thinking a nice hard back edition from the Library of America will be my Christmas present to myself this year.

I loved Moby-Dick and I'm looking forward to reading it again and again, uncovering details I missed the previous times. This novel is to be read and re-read. Read it as many times as you've read Lord of the Rings. Read it like you've read Harry Potter.





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Impenetrable Japans

Herman Melville describing the Pacific Ocean:
" The same waves wash the moles of the new-built Californian towns, but yesterday planted by the recentest race of men, and lave the faded but still gorgeous skirts of Asiatic lands, older than Abraham ; while all between float milky-ways of coral isles, and low-lying, endless, unknown Archipelagoes, and impenetrable Japans." - Moby Dick

For All His Old Age

Chasing an old, blind whale that's missing one of its side fins:

" For all his old age, and his one arm, and his blind eyes, he must die the death and be murdered, in order to light the gay bridals and other merry-makings of men, and also to illuminate the solemn churches that preach unconditional inoffensiveness by all to all."
- Herman Melville

Moby Dick

I've started reading Moby Dick and loving it. Why have I not read this before?

stove:  stōv/
past and past participle of stave.

stave:  stāv/
verb: break something by forcing it inward or piercing it roughly.
"the door was staved in"

" In fact take my body who will, take it I say, it is not me. And therefore three cheers for Nantucket; and come a stove boat and stove body when they will, for stave my soul, Jove himself cannot." - Herman Melville