.Liberal suffering from BDS"From hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee. Ye damned whale".
......
Posted on 07/08/2008 4:22:18 AM PDT by Apollo 13
Can't resist it - I was raised on American culture and am all the happier for it. It formed me culturally and made me what I am. Since I come into contact with Americans professionally on a frequent basis, it's always a great pleasure to have 'common ground', so to speak. Today I started reading 'Moby-Dick' for the fifth time. And believe me, I do have an exceptional memory. But this book is so rich that you can spend a lifetime with it and still miss out on some things. The pretty pragmatic, relativistic Ishmael embarks on a boat trip to go whaling. But even before the first miles are made at sea, you have volumes of philosophic wisdom, good humour, and, erm, clam chowder in your stomach. And even if the book is rather short on female participation, all human life is there, as they say. The monomaniac (obsessive-compulsive) Captain Ahab; the strange trio of harpooneers who go by the names of Queequeg, Daggoo, and Tashtegoo (my theory is that there's a hidden reference to homosexuality in their names... they sound too much like 'Queer', 'Dagger', and 'Testicle', to be based on sheer coïncidence). The very down-to-earth Stubb and all other seamen... I could go on forever. The Prophet; the Preacher in the Pulpit, warning about Jonah, etc. For me it is THE American book (as the Germans like to call it: 'Das Buch Als Welt', which translates as: 'The World Contained In One Book'. As much as I advise it to friends, everyone seems to be indoctrinated by the idea that Joyce's 'Ulysses' is the better of the two, which it most certainly is not. 'Ulysses' is trickery, albeit highly intelligent trickery. But 'Moby-Dick' is tragedy, comedy, farce, drama, loads of knowledge, all rolled into one volume. In other words: six stars out of five. And that is why I, after having worn out three paperback copies, finally purchased the Everyman Bound Edition with a real silk ribbon, for the rest of my lifetime. And then I will pass it on to my children or my friends. Lesser known but equally good: Melville's 'The Confidence-Man', a strange allegory about American life in the middle of the nineteenth century. It requires enormous concentration, not to mention knowledge about Ancient Greek and Roman authors, Biblical material, the wheelings and dealings in a then young and emergent super-energetic nation (complete with the downside of all this: trickery, deceit, and the vigilance needed to not fall into those traps). Then: 'Pierre, Or The Ambiguïties', unfairly dismissed by lesser minds as a parody on a kitchen maid's novel for boring pastimes. It's mandatory for its rich language alone. I was so lucky to acquire the Herschel Parker edition with illustrations, for the equivalent of some $ 10.00 - a ridiculous snip, and it's worth five times as much nowadays, I think. Last, but not least: the short stories. 'Bartleby' equals everything ever done by the great Russian writers of the same time, e.g. Gogol. The office clerk Bartleby is the quintessential nay-sayer of all times. He knows only one line... a highly effective one. Oh yes, also Franz Kafka comes to mind, or even Mark Twain. To this reader it is a great and perhaps unsolvable riddle why literature the world over reached such unprecedented heights in the middle of the 19th century. Perhaps it just was the possibility of using the art of printing on a mass scale and distributing it everywhere at an affordable price point. Any more fans out there? Any hints I forgot are most welcome, by the way.
Just re-read billy bud. It is a book that does not translate well over time with terms like ‘manly beauty’. Still a book about an honorable man, and that should be enough to keep it going through the years.
Jack Londons’ The Sea Wolf should be considered next.
One of my favorites.
I always got a chuckle over Stubb I think, ordering his whale steak rare, where he tells someone to hold the steak in one hand and a flame in the other, and that is all the cooking he wants done to it.
Cheers for that! I know the title but never knew that it would fit into my categories. I’ll provide myself ASAP with a copy (i.e. today).
If you think those names sound homosexual to you, I would suggest you get out more, and stop reading so much.
I read that book at 12 and again at 27 after I had worked a couple of years on snapper boats in the Gulf, one of them under sail, and yet again at 55. It was three different books.
Perfectly put. May I quote you (with the original source, of course?)
Any Lit professor would be proud to voice it this way to his students, I am sure.
The nice thing about Melville was he used paragraphs. :-)
Another thing, when you read Moby Dick the second time, Ahab and the whale become good friends!
One of the best lines ever-If my chest were a cannon I would shoot my heart at him (paraphrasing). Powerful stuff.
Hmmm... you think I might encounter masculine heteros in bars who go by the names of Queequeg, Daggoo, Tashtegoo?
On second thought, it might be.
Probably not this day and age, but back then, who knows?
Oh yeah mon -
I once met a guy named Daggoo. Hairy chest and big bulge in his trousers. He courted a blonde and talked her into the sack within minutes. Perhaps you are right after all....:)
If you get to hang out in mid-19th cent whaling bars with foreign and native American harpooners, then I you’re a lucky guy.
Allow me:
ROTFLOL LMAO :) :) :) ...and the whole of Holland is shaking on its foundations with laughter!
.Liberal suffering from BDS"From hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee. Ye damned whale".
......
Great images man! Cheers for that. I must rent or buy the movie sometime soon.
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