Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
Recently I found myself thinking of the books I’ve read, and the books I have yet to read. Looking at the former, I realized that there are many “classic” works that I never got around to reading. I found myself thinking that I might someday regret not making these more of a priority in my reading journey. After all, there’s a reason that these books have become such a critical part of our literary tradition, in many cases for a hundred years or more–so I’m deliberately trying to devote more attention to them. Hence, reading Moby Dick.
I was expecting this book to be a bit of a slog–and it kinda was. I don’t think I’ve spent this long reading a book (probably 3 weeks) since I was in my early teens. Maybe ever.
But. I was shocked by how entertaining it is. Even as I found myself forced to put down my Kindle, found myself almost exhausted from the volume of words I was reading, I drew back to it over and over again, throwing myself into the task because of how enjoyable it was.
There are some absolutely beautiful passages in Moby Dick: lyrical descriptions of Ahab’s madness and Starbuck’s doomed loyalty to him; incredibly evocative naturalistic writing of the oceans and their denizens.
There are incredibly lengthy (but surprisingly interesting) digressions on the anatomy and habits of whales and other sea creatures. Almost like Ishmael was trying to marry the lens of a Jacques Cousteau documentary with a Wikipedia entry, or perhaps an overly enthusiastic Reddit post.
There are comedy bits which left me flabbergasted at how they mirror common tropes you can still see nowadays. People who are douchebags about how much vermouth is in their martinis will see themselves mirrored in one particular chapter (but replace gin with whale steaks). Puns, wordplay, foreign language interpretation gags: you’ll find them all here.
The way Moby Dick is assembled is just so modern. The language really isn’t difficult; picture Cormac McCarthy, but somehow more easily readable. Every word is just so perfectly chosen and placed. Melville seems to know exactly what notion he is driving at, and he never picks a word that is even 10% less descriptive than it could be.
What can I say? I am so glad I read this. Moby Dick is just comprehensively awesome. I gotta check out “Bartleby the Scrivener” at some point. But more books to come, first.