Moby Dick

Rating:
Summary: A personal look at the invasion of globalism & capitalism
Review:
A few years ago I spoke with one of the historians at the Mystic Seaport Museum of whaling abourt the Robert W Morgan, the ship used in both of the epic Moby Dick films. He explained to me that particularly for the 19th century man, a whaling voyage was one of the most horrible experiences anyone could imagine. The historian confessed that except for the top echnlon of ship's officers or highly skilled sailors who received significant portions of the voyage's profits "no one with common sense who had been on a whaling voyage would ever do it again." Yet, Melville sailed several times as a common sailor on whaling voyages!

Besides the personal and existential issues that this book poses, we have to also look at this as a book about the first invasions of the global personally indiscriminate capitalist economy into the early 19th century world of Ishmael. The New England villages which he comes from are small collections of independent producers who know each other, following trades or farming earth their parents have passed down in. Barter on most things was just replaced in the crisis of monetization of the New England economy that followed the American revolution which led to the armed revolutions and state civil wars in New England that forced Washington and the other "founders" to establish the constitution and a strong federal government to crush the rebels who wanted to go back to the demontarized past.

Melville's character comes from a world where by and large everyone works for themself, their family, or perhaps someone they know.

Yet, Ishmael is thrown into a new world, where he is simply an employee in one of the first world industries, the whaling industry. Rather than his own master, or learning to become a master in a trade, or learning to run the family farm, he is thrown into a new world where the world market for whale oil, whale ivory, and other products command him. Instead of the regular unfolding of crops on the season and trade activity reflecting that, Ishmael's voyage follows the whales around the globe, and its end is not regular.

The author's use of Ahab and his arbirtrariness and the device of the great white whale, impose these new conditions in a way that emphasizes them and makes them stand out. Beyond the person issues, they represent the subjection of Ishmael and more and more of the world economy to blind, irrational to the average person, forces that will continue to conquer the world from Melville's time to ours, throwing us into periods of boom and bust, depression, recession, unemployment, insecurity, and world wars and rivalries.

Melville's fascination with whaling is also shown by the many chapters which simply relate the many traditions and experience from the ancients until his day of whalers.

Rating:
Summary: An astounding use of language
Review: All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, where visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick. He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it. --Chapter 41 (Moby Dick)

The awesome power of the written word to conjure in the mind a reverential awe for a world you've never experienced is nothing short of miraculous. And nowhere is the wizard's wand better wielded than in the pages of Moby Dick. I agree with many of the reviewers in stating that for those uninitiated in the reading of classical literature, this is going to be arduous, and simultaneously the most superlative literary experience you will ever know.



Rating:
Summary: A complex adventure tale!
Review: The story of Moby Dick, the elusive whale, and Captain Ahab's constant quest for him is one that has been around for a long time, and it has been assimilated into our culture. The book is more than just a quest after a big whale. It is a complex tale that Melville brings a number of disparate elements to. It is an adventure romance, an epic quest. A Faustian bargain and a psychological tale which delves into the mind of Captain Ahab. We see how this quest affects his mental stability, and we see to what extent he will go to achieve his goal. I did find the novel rather long though. Perhaps there was too much moralizing and philosophizing. But it is still an important novel, and should be included in the list of classic literature that should be read.

Rating:
Summary: The Great American Novel has been written, and this is it
Review: This book, quite simply, is the greatest American novel ever written, and a contender for the greatest novel ever written. I defy anyone to read just the first chapter "Loomings" and not be caught up with the book's incredibly profound meaning, which is already evident there in the first 3 pages. Truly a masterpiece and worth every bit of fame it has.

Rating:
Summary: Missing it?
Review: Melville is writing through Ishmael and Ishmael is Ahab. And it might help to stop thinking of the story as man/nature and dig deeper to the roots of what allegory it might have for Melville's life.

The "slow" middle might seem less slow this way and you can apply the message to your own life. It starts to transcend being just literature and more a way of life.

Rating:
Summary: Its Greatness Escapes Me
Review:
I first read Moby Dick many years ago in high school and hated it. I thought I would give it another shot to see if time and age had changed my perspective. Well, sort of. I had always liked the basic storyline - that of Ahab's relentless pursuit of Moby Dick and how (his) obsession, taken to extreme, ultimately destroys. But there were still a few things that kept me from fully appreciating Moby Dick as a great novel.

I am still not a big fan of Melville's writing style. I found his writing to be erratic - very slow in some sections then very rapid in others. And the manner in which he switches from Ishamel's first-person narrative to third-person narrative was somewhat awkward. Then throw in a couple of chapters that are scripted like a stage play and you have a book in which I could not find any true cadence. I found myself battling (then and now) through the chapters futilely trying to get into a flow where the pages would just sweep me along.

Secondly, as noted, many chapters were devoted to describing the whaling industry and the whales in great detail. I understand that in Melville's time it was common to write novels that educated as well as entertained. But the extent to which Melville elaborated in those chapters really disrupted the storyline's momentum which had to be kick-started in later sections. The transition from a fictional narrative to a lengthy non-fictional discourse was a little too stark.

Finally, Ishmael's/Melville's continual philosophical meanderings were somewhat stretched. As Ishamel stands upon the mast-head relating the operations of whaling with the whole history of mankind or when during a thunderstorm Melville draws parallels between the unrest in nature with the unrest on the Pequod.....well, those seemed to be a bit of an overreach.

There was much about Moby Dick that I liked and there is much about this Melville work to be admired but I still found it to be a labor to read. Better the second time around. For me, Moby Dick is good novel but one in which I could not find greatness.


Rating:
Summary: Most deliciously and entirely excellent, none better
Review: Embellished and imbued with light yet piercing thought, and rolling in the opiate waves where all things man wants most swim fated never to be caught, you catch sight of MOBY DICK just before it disappears--a wondrous marvel, a collection of prose poems pounding out with brilliant sparks some chain of eerily, obscurely, indisputably connected (with much a symbol and a never-prior-scented smell from lands close and unexpected that will never bear a human foot) themes and necklaced on a plot that through a whirlwind to a WHIRLPOOL runs through words that flex like honey, pound like GUNS, challenging as bravely as words have ever dared the WHITENESS that all words abhor and where, no matter what a quantity of brilliance mad captain MELVILLE spends, all words and (hark, you critics!), words about words meet their END!


AND it'll turn your conversations with your friends into THIS for a long time after you read it:

"Arr! Come over here, mate. Hast seen The Whale?"

"What?"

"Lo--listen close, now, 'What?' is all he says! Now hear this, sailor, art thou the dust that settles in the shadow of an ape? What ears hast thou been lent by long and crude progressions of a wretched birth? Has ever man spoken more clearly than in the plain and English syllables I have cast thy way? To the pleasant and monotonous heavens I declare again: Hast seen The Whale?"

He he he.

Rating:
Summary: A literary leviathan
Review: I just finished reading this breathtaking masterpiece which somehow eluded me until now, though I think this is a book one enjoys more when you come to it with some life experience under your belt.
I became fascinated with it while reading about Melville in Daniel Boorstins The Creators, and I have to say that I'm even more flabbergasted now that it was so lightly regarded when it came out and that Melville spent most of his life after writing it working as a clerk in NY city. But then, how often this is the fate of the great creative visionaries.

It is truly a colossus that interweaves so many elements in a way that defies categorization. First off it's one of the greatest adventure stories and maybe the greatest sea adventure story ever written. There's great humor and parts where I laughed out loud (a rarity in itself) the philosophical elements are some of the best in literature and then of course there's the language. Beautiful prose that often rises to the level of poetry with so many fascinating allusions. Just an amazing creation that stands alone amongst the milestones of literature.
And even though it is long and I found myself getting a tad impatient at times with the chapters describing whales and whaling, this is more the fault of the reader who's been a little too influenced by the age of instant gratification. As a matter of fact, some of the passages that I marked for their unsurpassed artistry and depth were in those very chapters.
It seems our lives become more accelerated everyday, sadly it seems at the expense of our inner lives.

And such a great reminder that one of the most moving and profound entertainment experiences one can have is also one of the most inexpensive and accesible to all. And such riches for the imagination and soul the literary masterpieces have to offer, and none more than this one.