5 ms·

My review: A brilliant book, possibly my favourite of all the books I have read, which is a lot, and certainly one that I have enjoyed re-reading time and agai

My review: A brilliant book, possibly my favourite of all the books I have read, which is a lot, and certainly one that I have enjoyed re-reading time and again. Tragic that it wasn't more widely appreciated in Melville's lifetime. A must read.

billfruit 5y ago
Yes, it is if every sentence in it is a thoughtfully crafted poetic fragment. And many of the chapters essentially nonfiction, a sort of encyclopaedia of Whales and Whaling. "Swerve me? The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run. Over unsounded gorges, through the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents’ beds, unerringly I rush! Naught’s an obstacle, naught’s an angle to the iron way!"
- bombcar 5y ago
  It's apparently the style of the time - Les Miserables spends a decent amount of time talking about sewers iirc.
  - billfruit 5y ago
    And minutiae about court cases, legal precedent of the era. Similar with Count of Monte Cristo as well, the details of the Mediterranean smuggling trade it goes into is simply amazing.
    - derbOac 5y ago
      20000 Leagues Under the Sea also came to mind.
      - yissp 5y ago
        Ha, so many pages of exhaustively cataloguing aquatic species.
      - billfruit 5y ago
        Perhaps, but I do remember it being smaller than Les Miserables, Monte Cristo etc which are massive, almost 1500+ pages of material in each of them.
    - jxcl 5y ago
      I don't know about the other books off the top of my head, but Count of Monte Cristo and Dumas' other works were published as serials in a newspaper, where I'm pretty sure he was paid per word. Such a system really encourages going into detail with things that are not exactly relevant to the plot :) (I love all of Dumas' works)
- zokier 5y ago
  > And many of the chapters essentially nonfiction, a sort of encyclopaedia of Whales and Whaling Which certainly did not improve it as a novel.
- willyt 5y ago
  >…thoughtfully crafted poetic fragment. Lots of good Victorian writing is like that Charles Dickens - Any of his works Rudyard Kipling - Remembered now for children’s books but also wrote some amazing novels and poetry for adults. He has written some pretty trippy stuff too. I remember a poem about all the structural parts of a ship talking to each other in a storm and another short story about an engineer that’s a sort of fever dream mixed with a monsoon flood at the bridge he’s building. Oscar Wilde - e.g. The Nightingale and the Rose is a masterwork of pathos. http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/NigRos.shtml http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/NigRos.shtm... A lot of literature from that period paid attention to the the rhythm and flow of the sentences, if you read any of it aloud it rolls off the tongue compared to modern writing.
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  I must be stupid because I read that line you quoted and I have no idea what it means. If I need to study and deliberately parse every sentence, and think about archaic idioms or word meanings, it's just too much effort. Give me a Tom Clancy or John Gresham novel.
tkgally 5y ago
I agree that it’s a brilliant book, but it’s also a very strange one. Those reviews suggest to me that some of the earliest readers did in fact appreciate both aspects of it.
jimbler 5y ago
Fun to see this on HN. What an incredibly strange, amazing and beautiful book. Ambition as wide as the ocean. I think both Ishmael and Mellville were nuts. I'm attempting to finish it right now (again). I've tried multiple times to get all the way through. I've joked that Moby Dick is actually my Moby Dick.
- ghaff 5y ago
  While some of the basically factual whaling information is fascinating, some of it is also perhaps dealt with by skinning.
yuuu 5y ago
I am skeptical of anyone who has read Moby Dick and not admitted how much of a slog it is.
- allturtles 5y ago
  Why? Surely you agree that different people have different tastes. I couldn't get through the first chapter of Infinite Jest, but I don't think people who say they love the book are being insincere. There are large numbers of people who would find the tech jobs that many people on this site enjoy to be incredibly tedious and boring.
  - ericmcer 5y ago
    Why cant a book be a slog and be loved? Being somewhat painful to get through is the price of admission for most classic works. Even the most diehard David Foster Wallace fan wouldn't challenge someone who said Infinite Jest was a slog to get through.
    - yuuu 5y ago
      Thanks for putting this more eloquently than I could. This is an important point that I didn't state. There are passages in Moby Dick that are indeed beautiful, but the first thing I think of when I hear Moby Dick is how painful it is to read.
  - yuuu 5y ago
    Because I read it and it was a slog. There are large portions of the book that are unrelated to the story and are painful to get through. But saying that makes you look dumb, whereas asserting how much you love it makes you look like a fabulously cultured and intelligent connoisseur of high literature. Whatever, though.
    - allturtles 5y ago
      I think you should consider the possibility that other people sincerely like this book, even the portions you found tedious, and aren't just pretending in order to show off their culture and intelligence. What does 'zabzonk' have to gain from proving his culture and intelligence to 'yuuu' and 'allturtles'?

billfruit 5y ago

Yes, it is if every sentence in it is a thoughtfully crafted poetic fragment. And many of the chapters essentially nonfiction, a sort of encyclopaedia of Whales and Whaling. "Swerve me? The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run. Over unsounded gorges, through the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents’ beds, unerringly I rush! Naught’s an obstacle, naught’s an angle to the iron way!"

bombcar 5y ago
It's apparently the style of the time - Les Miserables spends a decent amount of time talking about sewers iirc.
- billfruit 5y ago
  And minutiae about court cases, legal precedent of the era. Similar with Count of Monte Cristo as well, the details of the Mediterranean smuggling trade it goes into is simply amazing.
  - derbOac 5y ago
    20000 Leagues Under the Sea also came to mind.
    - yissp 5y ago
      Ha, so many pages of exhaustively cataloguing aquatic species.
    - billfruit 5y ago
      Perhaps, but I do remember it being smaller than Les Miserables, Monte Cristo etc which are massive, almost 1500+ pages of material in each of them.
  - jxcl 5y ago
    I don't know about the other books off the top of my head, but Count of Monte Cristo and Dumas' other works were published as serials in a newspaper, where I'm pretty sure he was paid per word. Such a system really encourages going into detail with things that are not exactly relevant to the plot :) (I love all of Dumas' works)
zokier 5y ago
> And many of the chapters essentially nonfiction, a sort of encyclopaedia of Whales and Whaling Which certainly did not improve it as a novel.
willyt 5y ago
>…thoughtfully crafted poetic fragment. Lots of good Victorian writing is like that Charles Dickens - Any of his works Rudyard Kipling - Remembered now for children’s books but also wrote some amazing novels and poetry for adults. He has written some pretty trippy stuff too. I remember a poem about all the structural parts of a ship talking to each other in a storm and another short story about an engineer that’s a sort of fever dream mixed with a monsoon flood at the bridge he’s building. Oscar Wilde - e.g. The Nightingale and the Rose is a masterwork of pathos. http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/NigRos.shtml http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/NigRos.shtm... A lot of literature from that period paid attention to the the rhythm and flow of the sentences, if you read any of it aloud it rolls off the tongue compared to modern writing.
throwawayboise 5y ago
I must be stupid because I read that line you quoted and I have no idea what it means. If I need to study and deliberately parse every sentence, and think about archaic idioms or word meanings, it's just too much effort. Give me a Tom Clancy or John Gresham novel.

tkgally 5y ago

I agree that it’s a brilliant book, but it’s also a very strange one. Those reviews suggest to me that some of the earliest readers did in fact appreciate both aspects of it.

jimbler 5y ago

Fun to see this on HN. What an incredibly strange, amazing and beautiful book. Ambition as wide as the ocean. I think both Ishmael and Mellville were nuts. I'm attempting to finish it right now (again). I've tried multiple times to get all the way through. I've joked that Moby Dick is actually my Moby Dick.

ghaff 5y ago
While some of the basically factual whaling information is fascinating, some of it is also perhaps dealt with by skinning.

yuuu 5y ago

I am skeptical of anyone who has read Moby Dick and not admitted how much of a slog it is.

allturtles 5y ago
Why? Surely you agree that different people have different tastes. I couldn't get through the first chapter of Infinite Jest, but I don't think people who say they love the book are being insincere. There are large numbers of people who would find the tech jobs that many people on this site enjoy to be incredibly tedious and boring.
- ericmcer 5y ago
  Why cant a book be a slog and be loved? Being somewhat painful to get through is the price of admission for most classic works. Even the most diehard David Foster Wallace fan wouldn't challenge someone who said Infinite Jest was a slog to get through.
  - yuuu 5y ago
    Thanks for putting this more eloquently than I could. This is an important point that I didn't state. There are passages in Moby Dick that are indeed beautiful, but the first thing I think of when I hear Moby Dick is how painful it is to read.
- yuuu 5y ago
  Because I read it and it was a slog. There are large portions of the book that are unrelated to the story and are painful to get through. But saying that makes you look dumb, whereas asserting how much you love it makes you look like a fabulously cultured and intelligent connoisseur of high literature. Whatever, though.
  - allturtles 5y ago
    I think you should consider the possibility that other people sincerely like this book, even the portions you found tedious, and aren't just pretending in order to show off their culture and intelligence. What does 'zabzonk' have to gain from proving his culture and intelligence to 'yuuu' and 'allturtles'?