4 ms·

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 Whale

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.

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.