5 ms·

The Original 1851 Reviews of Moby Dick

81 points by firasd 9y ago

pussypusspuss 9y ago
What kind of hacking is this
- dang 9y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- khazhoux 9y ago
  There's an implementation in Node if that helps.
quuquuquu 9y ago
>The idea of a connected and collected story has obviously visited and abandoned its writer again and again in the course of composition. Sounds like my attempts at answering complex interview questions in 20 seconds before the recruiter tunes out.
fragsworth 9y ago
Literacy rates in the 1800s were low. Therefore, being literate was a status symbol, and there was more focus on the idea that you could be more literate than someone else. I think what happened in that time was a kind of competition, where critics like these had a tendency to write things that are more difficult to read, in an attempt to prove how much more literate they are. If you wrote something that a plebeian could understand, you're obviously not as literate. So there was a lot of criticism of the superficial aspects of the writing - "bad rhetoric, involved syntax, stilted sentiment and incoherent English". The words and the "English" are excessively focused on. Today we take literacy for granted, and anyone who tries to sound more literate is shunned (/r/iamverysmart).
- eponeponepon 9y ago
  I think that sort of competition still very much exists. It's just that - in the Anglosphere, at any rate - the baseline for literacy is far higher. You need only look at the snobbery involved in choice of newspaper to see it.
- Someone 9y ago
  https://ourworldindata.org/literacy/ https://ourworldindata.org/literacy/ gives literacy rates of around 75% in Great Britain and the USA in 1851. I would guess that's not _that_ low that it would have made an impact on those reading those reviews. Chances are this has more to do with the limited, high-brow, circulation of these reviews. Harper's, for example, seems to have had a circulation of around 50,000 in 1851 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harper%27s_Magazine#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harper%27s_Magazine#History). The USA had a population of about 23,000,000 at the time (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1850_United_States_Census https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1850_United_States_Census), so it would have reached less than 1% of the population.
  - KGIII 9y ago
    Interestingly, the circulation percentage is even lower today.
- ashark 9y ago
  > think what happened in that time was a kind of competition, where critics like these had a tendency to write things that are more difficult to read, in an attempt to prove how much more literate they are. Are... these reviews considered difficult to read or especially overwritten, then? Or did you mean something else? > bad rhetoric, involved syntax, stilted sentiment and incoherent English Are these not legitimate grounds on which to judge a book? To the extent that these are smaller concerns for modern reviewers (are they?) I'd guess it has more to do with our having settled on a style of prose that allows little variation and is very simple, for a large majority of literature. We now expect and receive little poetry in our prose, to put it another way.
  - 9y ago
elhorror 9y ago
Some thought it was the best book ever written, and some thought it was the worst book ever written... and they were all correct! Read the book through, I dare you.
- sireat 9y ago
  In my high school AP English class we had to and it was not that bad for a forced assignment.
- dwighttk 9y ago
  It is very good. Possibly not the best ever written. There is no way it could be considered the worst book ever written. Is it possible you got this book confused with Tale of Two Cities?
firasd 9y ago
I think the the critic who said there is “abundant choice reading for those who can skip a page now and then, judiciously” nails it. This book is a journey, and is like many works mixed together. I like this Twitter profile that posts random quotes from the book: https://twitter.com/MobyDickatSea https://twitter.com/MobyDickatSea A couple quotes I like: 1) “I will have no man in my boat,” said Starbuck, “who is not afraid of a whale.” By this, he seemed to mean, not only that the most reliable and useful courage was that which arises from the fair estimation of the encountered peril, but that an utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward. 2) “How many barrels will thy vengeance yield thee even if thou gettest it, Captain Ahab? it will not fetch thee much in our Nantucket market.”... “Vengeance on a dumb brute!” cried Starbuck, “that simply smote thee from blindest instinct! Madness! To be enraged with a dumb thing, Captain Ahab, seems blasphemous.” 3) “In this world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel freely, and without a passport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers.” 4) The narrator is also pretty open-minded and gracious towards different cultures. “Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.”
- klenwell 9y ago
  It contains multitudes, to be certain. The other aspect of the novel that people familiar with it only by its reputation often underestimate: it's humor. It's a sly often oblique humor, by turns Shakespearian, Victorian, and almost anachronistically postmodern. But it permeates the novel and is there right in the opening paragraph: Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off- then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. By the time I got through that sentence, the fourth in the novel, I was in. Finally, one additional quote from the novel that stuck with me: for a whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.
  - mabub24 9y ago
    The next sentences following your quote are also hilarious: > ...then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. The humor gives Ishmael an everyman quality. Unlike Cato's grand "philosophical flourish", Ishmael "quietly" takes to the sea. Simultaneously, Ishmael has the mind of a poet, such as when he refers to taking to sea as his response to wanting to shoot himself or someone with "pistol and ball." Melville is basically saying that men, like Ishmael, go to sea so they won't go postal.
rhizome 9y ago
Next time you're interviewing someone, remember that Melville died poor.
bmmayer1 9y ago
"But if there are any of our readers who wish to find examples of bad rhetoric, involved syntax, stilted sentiment and incoherent English, we will take the liberty of recommending to them this precious volume of Mr. Melville’s"
gavinpc 9y ago
They're all right, somehow. A film teacher of mine used to always quote Northrop Frye as saying "The category judgement precedes the value judgement." As in: it's a great thriller, but a terrible romance. Moby Dick is hard to classify, and (by this logic) harder to judge. Those approaching it as a novel had every reason to call it a failure. Melville was pushing himself. In jazz I've heard this called "going out." It's something you earn. His lesser-known works like "Bartleby the Scrivener" and "Benito Cereno" are much more coherent and approachable (they stick to a familiar category), but still have much of that slow, mysterious otherworldly quality and are well worth reading (in my humble opinion). https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Benito_Cereno https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Benito_Cereno
- wizardforhire 9y ago
  I'm fascinated by this term "going out". I haven't been able to find anything on it. Do you happen to have any leads or care for discussion?
  - gavinpc 9y ago
    In a group improvisation, I understand "going out" as one person, usually a soloist, exploring another direction (a rhythmic idea, a motif, anything) where there's some risk that you won't come back, i.e. you might derail the whole thing. I grew up in New Orleans knowing lots of musicians and this is just my recollection. The closest documentation I find is about playing "outside," which is more specifically about using extended or unconventional harmonies. I've heard this usage in college settings, but I was referring to the more general concept. "Stepping out" might be a more mainstream version, and it's apparently the title of like fifty albums. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outside_(jazz) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outside_(jazz) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steppin%27_Out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steppin%27_Out
waynecochran 9y ago
The climax of the book takes 500+ pages to get to (at least that is what I remember). Finally Ahab fights the dang whale! Too much about whales.. I get it .. whales are big... get on with it..
coldtea 9y ago
The London Athenaeum reviewer comes out as so provincial as only an Englishman would...
- ttonkytonk 9y ago
  Gotta love the quote, though, "Our author must be henceforth numbered in the company of the incorrigibles who occasionally tantalize us with indications of genius, while they constantly summon us to endure monstrosities, carelessnesses, and other such harassing manifestations of bad taste as daring or disordered ingenuity can devise…"

81 points by firasd 9y ago

pussypusspuss 9y ago

What kind of hacking is this

dang 9y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
khazhoux 9y ago
There's an implementation in Node if that helps.

quuquuquu 9y ago

>The idea of a connected and collected story has obviously visited and abandoned its writer again and again in the course of composition. Sounds like my attempts at answering complex interview questions in 20 seconds before the recruiter tunes out.

fragsworth 9y ago

Literacy rates in the 1800s were low. Therefore, being literate was a status symbol, and there was more focus on the idea that you could be more literate than someone else. I think what happened in that time was a kind of competition, where critics like these had a tendency to write things that are more difficult to read, in an attempt to prove how much more literate they are. If you wrote something that a plebeian could understand, you're obviously not as literate. So there was a lot of criticism of the superficial aspects of the writing - "bad rhetoric, involved syntax, stilted sentiment and incoherent English". The words and the "English" are excessively focused on. Today we take literacy for granted, and anyone who tries to sound more literate is shunned (/r/iamverysmart).

eponeponepon 9y ago
I think that sort of competition still very much exists. It's just that - in the Anglosphere, at any rate - the baseline for literacy is far higher. You need only look at the snobbery involved in choice of newspaper to see it.
Someone 9y ago
https://ourworldindata.org/literacy/ https://ourworldindata.org/literacy/ gives literacy rates of around 75% in Great Britain and the USA in 1851. I would guess that's not _that_ low that it would have made an impact on those reading those reviews. Chances are this has more to do with the limited, high-brow, circulation of these reviews. Harper's, for example, seems to have had a circulation of around 50,000 in 1851 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harper%27s_Magazine#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harper%27s_Magazine#History). The USA had a population of about 23,000,000 at the time (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1850_United_States_Census https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1850_United_States_Census), so it would have reached less than 1% of the population.
- KGIII 9y ago
  Interestingly, the circulation percentage is even lower today.
ashark 9y ago
> think what happened in that time was a kind of competition, where critics like these had a tendency to write things that are more difficult to read, in an attempt to prove how much more literate they are. Are... these reviews considered difficult to read or especially overwritten, then? Or did you mean something else? > bad rhetoric, involved syntax, stilted sentiment and incoherent English Are these not legitimate grounds on which to judge a book? To the extent that these are smaller concerns for modern reviewers (are they?) I'd guess it has more to do with our having settled on a style of prose that allows little variation and is very simple, for a large majority of literature. We now expect and receive little poetry in our prose, to put it another way.
- 9y ago

elhorror 9y ago

Some thought it was the best book ever written, and some thought it was the worst book ever written... and they were all correct! Read the book through, I dare you.

sireat 9y ago
In my high school AP English class we had to and it was not that bad for a forced assignment.
dwighttk 9y ago
It is very good. Possibly not the best ever written. There is no way it could be considered the worst book ever written. Is it possible you got this book confused with Tale of Two Cities?

firasd 9y ago

I think the the critic who said there is “abundant choice reading for those who can skip a page now and then, judiciously” nails it. This book is a journey, and is like many works mixed together. I like this Twitter profile that posts random quotes from the book: https://twitter.com/MobyDickatSea https://twitter.com/MobyDickatSea A couple quotes I like: 1) “I will have no man in my boat,” said Starbuck, “who is not afraid of a whale.” By this, he seemed to mean, not only that the most reliable and useful courage was that which arises from the fair estimation of the encountered peril, but that an utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward. 2) “How many barrels will thy vengeance yield thee even if thou gettest it, Captain Ahab? it will not fetch thee much in our Nantucket market.”... “Vengeance on a dumb brute!” cried Starbuck, “that simply smote thee from blindest instinct! Madness! To be enraged with a dumb thing, Captain Ahab, seems blasphemous.” 3) “In this world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel freely, and without a passport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers.” 4) The narrator is also pretty open-minded and gracious towards different cultures. “Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.”

klenwell 9y ago
It contains multitudes, to be certain. The other aspect of the novel that people familiar with it only by its reputation often underestimate: it's humor. It's a sly often oblique humor, by turns Shakespearian, Victorian, and almost anachronistically postmodern. But it permeates the novel and is there right in the opening paragraph: Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off- then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. By the time I got through that sentence, the fourth in the novel, I was in. Finally, one additional quote from the novel that stuck with me: for a whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.
- mabub24 9y ago
  The next sentences following your quote are also hilarious: > ...then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. The humor gives Ishmael an everyman quality. Unlike Cato's grand "philosophical flourish", Ishmael "quietly" takes to the sea. Simultaneously, Ishmael has the mind of a poet, such as when he refers to taking to sea as his response to wanting to shoot himself or someone with "pistol and ball." Melville is basically saying that men, like Ishmael, go to sea so they won't go postal.

rhizome 9y ago

Next time you're interviewing someone, remember that Melville died poor.

bmmayer1 9y ago

"But if there are any of our readers who wish to find examples of bad rhetoric, involved syntax, stilted sentiment and incoherent English, we will take the liberty of recommending to them this precious volume of Mr. Melville’s"

gavinpc 9y ago

They're all right, somehow. A film teacher of mine used to always quote Northrop Frye as saying "The category judgement precedes the value judgement." As in: it's a great thriller, but a terrible romance. Moby Dick is hard to classify, and (by this logic) harder to judge. Those approaching it as a novel had every reason to call it a failure. Melville was pushing himself. In jazz I've heard this called "going out." It's something you earn. His lesser-known works like "Bartleby the Scrivener" and "Benito Cereno" are much more coherent and approachable (they stick to a familiar category), but still have much of that slow, mysterious otherworldly quality and are well worth reading (in my humble opinion). https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Benito_Cereno https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Benito_Cereno

wizardforhire 9y ago
I'm fascinated by this term "going out". I haven't been able to find anything on it. Do you happen to have any leads or care for discussion?
- gavinpc 9y ago
  In a group improvisation, I understand "going out" as one person, usually a soloist, exploring another direction (a rhythmic idea, a motif, anything) where there's some risk that you won't come back, i.e. you might derail the whole thing. I grew up in New Orleans knowing lots of musicians and this is just my recollection. The closest documentation I find is about playing "outside," which is more specifically about using extended or unconventional harmonies. I've heard this usage in college settings, but I was referring to the more general concept. "Stepping out" might be a more mainstream version, and it's apparently the title of like fifty albums. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outside_(jazz) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outside_(jazz) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steppin%27_Out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steppin%27_Out

waynecochran 9y ago

The climax of the book takes 500+ pages to get to (at least that is what I remember). Finally Ahab fights the dang whale! Too much about whales.. I get it .. whales are big... get on with it..

coldtea 9y ago

The London Athenaeum reviewer comes out as so provincial as only an Englishman would...

ttonkytonk 9y ago
Gotta love the quote, though, "Our author must be henceforth numbered in the company of the incorrigibles who occasionally tantalize us with indications of genius, while they constantly summon us to endure monstrosities, carelessnesses, and other such harassing manifestations of bad taste as daring or disordered ingenuity can devise…"