Herman Melville

[luka]

its not my opinion. its the wrong opinion.

 

[catalog]

What makes it good is the combination of the story/characters with all the stuff about whaling and how the ship works. i dont really know what you mean about the scientific bits. Which bits specifically are you talking about when you say that?

 

[version]

Yeah, the encyclopaedic nature of it's crucial. It can feel like a bunch of superfluous facts at first, but as you go along you realise how rich and layered the picture he's painting is and how much of it's sunk in without you quite noticing.

It's like having a huge, dusty map gradually unrolled in front of you.

 

[luka]

What makes it good is the combination of the story/characters with all the stuff about whaling and how the ship works. i dont really know what you mean about the scientific bits. Which bits specifically are you talking about when you say that?

eg why a whale is a fish and not a mammal. you havent actually read this book though. i know what happens when you 'read' a book. you just sort of go crosseyed in front of each page in turn. then at the end you realise youve got no idea what just happened.

 

[luka]

this is why you cant remember the character of Pip and his fate

 

[IdleRich]

I keep losing sight of the fact the whole thing's being narrated by Ishmael. He's able to recount things he wasn't there for and becomes a standard narrator then he'll directly address the reader or start talking about Queequeg and I'll suddenly remember I'm being told a story by one of the characters.

I had an uber driver called Ishmael the other day. I asked if he had ever read Moby Dick and he said - no, why?

 

[catalog]

eg why a whale is a fish and not a mammal. you havent actually read this book though. i know what happens when you 'read' a book. you just sort of go crosseyed in front of each page in turn. then at the end you realise youve got no idea what just happened.

I liked those bits.

Do you think there's only one way to read a book?

 

[catalog]

this is why you cant remember the character of Pip and his fate

Pips my favourite character, why do I need to remember what happened to him? It's insignificant.

 

[catalog]

The actual ending of moby dick was something I glided over. It ended before the end. That interplay between pip and ahab and their mad conversations was thd best bit.

 

[version]

 

[woops]

i skipped the boring bits of Gravity's Rainbow

 

[version]

'The Try-Works' is easily one of the best sections,

"By midnight the works were in full operation. We were clear from the carcass; sail had been made; the wind was freshening; the wild ocean darkness was intense. But that darkness was licked up by the fierce flames, which at intervals forked forth from the sooty flues, and illuminated every lofty rope in the rigging, as with the famed Greek fire. The burning ship drove on, as if remorselessly commissioned to some vengeful deed. So the pitch and sulphur-freighted brigs of the bold Hydriote, Canaris, issuing from their midnight harbors, with broad sheets of flame for sails, bore down upon the Turkish frigates, and folded them in conflagrations . . .

Opposite the mouth of the works, on the further side of the wide wooden hearth, was the windlass. This served for a sea-sofa. Here lounged the watch, when not otherwise employed, looking into the red heat of the fire, till their eyes felt scorched in their heads. Their tawny features, now all begrimed with smoke and sweat, their matted beards, and the contrasting barbaric brilliancy of their teeth, all these were strangely revealed in the capricious emblazonings of the works. As they narrated to each other their unholy adventures, their tales of terror told in words of mirth; as their uncivilized laughter forked upwards out of them, like the flames from the furnace; as to and fro, in their front, the harpooneers wildly gesticulated with their huge pronged forks and dippers; as the wind howled on, and the sea leaped, and the ship groaned and dived, and yet steadfastly shot her red hell further and further into the blackness of the sea and the night, and scornfully champed the white bone in her mouth, and viciously spat round her on all sides; then the rushing Pequod, freighted with savages, and laden with fire, and burning a corpse, and plunging into that blackness of darkness, seemed the material counterpart of her monomaniac commander's soul."

 

[linebaugh]

Surely it's all in there for a reason though? I can never bring myself to skip things like that.

I think the scientific bits on whales play well with whole 'man as a product of nature' thing. Like invitations to consider what it would be like to have an entirely different nature and how phenomologocal experience depends on taken for granted things like say our eyes being on the front of our head and not the side.

 

[version]

The messiness of Moby-Dick made an impression on me. I had a different one going in. Once I was actually reading it, I pictured it as this stained and battered manuscript, notes and sketches and scraps of paper sticking out all over the place.

 

[linebaugh]

Like the moldy green letters they carry around highly unlikely to ever meet their recipient

 

[linebaugh]

Its a book that rewards long reading sessions. All good books do I think but moby dick in particular has a stark difference in feeling from first opening it for the day and then 30 or so minutes after that point. And it doesnt tire me out like alot of these long dense books do where after a certain point I cant read any more even if Id like too because my head is all static

 

[sus]

Yeah, the encyclopaedic nature of it's crucial. It can feel like a bunch of superfluous facts at first, but as you go along you realise how rich and layered the picture he's painting is and how much of it's sunk in without you quite noticing.

It's like having a huge, dusty map gradually unrolled in front of you.

yes, in the book, you would read a couple sentences like these, and go, "superfluous," as in, "surface over a flowing"—he's hitting on themes of land and sea—and then you'd go, "picture he's painting," wait, I remember the painting in the tavern that opens the novel, it's all about representation and ambiguity—and you'd go "sunk in," sunk to the bottom like Ahab, and "huge dusty map"—yes, cartography, representation, the way these ships navigated.

it's like the book is this marine microcosmos. the ship, the great ark, which in miniature recapitulates larger ecologies.

 

[sus]

it manages to be conceptually vast and densely coherent simultaneously, which is hard, and exactly what you want out of 19th century novels

 

[sus]

illuminated every lofty rope in the rigging, as with the famed Greek fire.

St Elmo's Fire comes up in Tempest too, and Eno's Another Green World. What do you reckon it's about? Why has it captured these imaginations so much?

 

[sus]

These lectures are really wonderful @version @linebaugh. I've only gotten through the first 2ish hours but well worth it