It gets a bad rep for being hard to read (which it is because of the sea-faring and archaic vocabulary) but it’s surprisingly entertaining with even a casual/jovial tone at times. I haven’t finished it, but so far like 30% of the book is irrelevant to the plot and is just the authors random musings and philosophies on life. He dedicates entire pages to debating what the most comfortable room temperature and position to sleep in is, or his opinions on random countries like Japan or “Affghanistan”. It almost reads like blogposts or diary entries.
He also has surprisingly modern humor and opinions. He makes borderline gay jokes when he has to sleep in bed with an African man “Queequog”, and then describes how he respects him, saying “the man’s a human being just as I am; he has just as much reason to fear me…better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian” and that “It’s only his outside; a man can be honest in any sort of skin”. The two develop this wholesome Rush Hour style partnership that’s pretty funny.
There’s also one part where he states that even though he’s Christian, he respects anyone’s beliefs as long as they hurt noone.
I also really liked how it occasionally shifts to the 1st person perspective of Captain Ahab or Starbuck for a chapter which adds good variety.
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It’s very easy to read considering it’s age
There’s a fun podcast called “Moby-dick Energy.” It’s a nice companion. Don’t forget how funny M-D is.
I love the word counterpane thanks to this book!
LOL that’s funny cause I vividly remember being confused by that word on first read and thinking that’s such a strange way of referring to a blanket.
It’s in my top 3 books of all time. Its reputation is all ‘blood and thunder’ but it’s actually very funny, mad and thrilling.
Note that the opening line isn’t exactly casual or jovial. The protagonist’s name is not Ishmael, he’s referencing the Biblical character Ishmael who was the firstborn son of Abraham by his wife’s servant Hagar. Later Abram had a son, Isaac by his wife Sarah and Ishmael and his mother Hagar were cast out to make Isaac the only inheritor of Abraham.
After being cast out and wandering the wilderness waiting to die, God saved Ishmael and his mother and “made him a great nation” with 12 sons from an Egyptian wife.
So by opening with “Call me Ishmael” the narrator is giving us a lot of assumptions about himself, that he’s been cast aside by his family especially and that he hopes to become great and powerful despite that.
I’ve always enjoyed Moby Dick and don’t get the reputation it has. I’ve read it at least a couple times and listened to the audio once. I like the narrator and the characters and story. Even the extended stuff about whaling that is always complained about was fairly interesting and well done (at least for me).
I’ve never had any interest in reading it until this post! I might actually give it go now.
I hope there are good versions of it with footnotes.
It’s great. It also gets extra points for being kinda gay.
Well, what else did you expect from possibly the best novel ever written?
I’m in the small camp of people who didn’t like it; I didn’t find it hard to read, I just found the whole thing boring
I ended up DNF-ing it
(the opening line is just “Call me ishamel”)
To be fair, that’s a pretty heavy line when it’s taken in context.
It tells you a fuckload about the protagonist:- He isn’t seeking notoriety or celebrity.
- He has effectively nothing to his name, to the point he is comfortable discarding it and starting anew.
- He feels he was cast out, and likely feels that his own origins up to that point have been a burden.
- He’s got guts, or courage, or verve, or cojones, or whatever you want to call it- even if you are destitute it takes some not insubstantial strength of character to discard your own identity.
- Ishmael is not his original name.
- He is at least moderately educated, literate, and familiar with biblical text in some detail.
- He has decided he or his descendants may still have some grand future ahead of them, he hasn’t given up on the idea that he may be destined for some greater purpose or adventure.
- He’s no idiot, The context of Ishmael, son of Abraham and Hagar, isn’t obscure or specialized knowledge, but its application as a sobriquet is subtle and clever.
How difficult would you say it is to read to a non-native English speaker? It’s on my shelf, but I havent dared to read it yet because of its reputation of being difficult.
I felt that the 30% of whale tangents/musings slowed me down while reading but it definitely makes the book better. It feels like it says more about Ishmael that he’s so intent on convincing you the reader how meaningful and grandiose it is to be hunting sperm whales, almost with a desperation of someone trying to convince themselves
“…and I felt saddest of all when I read the boring chapters that were only descriptions of whales, because I knew that the author was just trying to save us from his own sad story, just for a little while.”