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Moby Dick is so encyclopedic and digressive that I'm not surprised that any given random fact about whales might appear in it.
by huxley 13y ago
Moby Dick is so encyclopedic and digressive that I'm not surprised that any given random fact about whales might appear in it.
- maw 13y agoIndeed, and this is my favorite random fact about whales in Moby Dick: "Be it known that, waiving all argument, I take the good old fashioned ground that the whale is a fish, and call upon holy Jonah to back me."
- huxley 13y agoHaha ... true enough, though Ishmael is well established as an unreliable narrator. Here's my favourite fact: the white whale Moby Dick is based on a real-life white whale named Mocha Dick http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mocha_Dick http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mocha_Dick
- anigbrowl 13y agoDid not know that. I echo your advice to people to give the book another go if they haven't finished it. It is so worth it.
- fennecfoxen 13y agoI prefer Ishmael's method for finding water in the middle-of-nowhere American prairies (to wit: select a philosophy professor from your caravan and tell him to just wander around lost in thought for a few hours.) ... Ishmael is a nut. :b
- officemonkey 13y agoA good translation of "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" has the same issue. Verne shoehorns pretty much every interesting fact about the ocean into it. Both books are among my favorites, pretty much because of their dedication to the "medium."