I agree that Moby-Dick [1] is “far funnier, weirder, and gripping than you likely imagine.” But that is in contrast not only to contemporary novels that might—o

I agree that Moby-Dick [1] is “far funnier, weirder, and gripping than you likely imagine.” But that is in contrast not only to contemporary novels that might—or might not—have been influenced by television. The vast majority of English-language novels published in the 19th century were also driven by plot and character and lacked long digressions about the author’s obsessions. Thousands of such novels, most of them no longer read, are now available at the Internet Archive [2]. Some of those might be worth reading, too. [1] There’s a hyphen on the title page of the first edition but not in the body text or page heads: https://archive.org/details/mobydickorwhale01melv/page/n7/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/mobydickorwhale01melv/page/n7/mo... https://archive.org/details/mobydickorwhale01melv/page/196/mode/2up?q=Moby https://archive.org/details/mobydickorwhale01melv/page/196/m... [2] https://blog.archive.org/2021/07/14/forgotten-novels-of-the-19th-century/ https://blog.archive.org/2021/07/14/forgotten-novels-of-the-...