For people who have read Moby Dick.

Discussion in 'Books' started by worms, Jun 29, 2013.

  1. worms

    worms Red Card

    Mar 28, 2013
    Club:
    FC Barcelona
    Does this book pick up from page 180 onwards? Because that is where I am right now and I have to be honest, I am finding it a real drag to carry on reading this book. The plot (which is very slow moving by itself) is constantly interrupted with endless whale and marine related terminology, detailed descriptions which sometimes last close to 20 pages. This added to the idiomatic
    language means I am not enjoying this book.

    Please don't post any spoilers, thanks.
     
  2. Val1

    Val1 Member+

    Arsenal
    Mar 12, 2004
    MD's Eastern Shore
    Club:
    Arsenal FC
    Yeah.

    No.

    It was a slog for me, read it between my 3rd and 4th years at college and I kept going just to say I'd completed it. But I never enjoyed the book and I've hated seafaring books ever since. I've read three O'Brien novels and they're not my cup of tea either. I have very little memory of the book and now in my mind I can't separate the book from the Patrick Stewart version I watched just so's I know the story. And that's about the worst I can say about a book. Unfortunately.
     
  3. Auriaprottu

    Auriaprottu Member+

    Atlanta Damn United
    Apr 1, 2002
    The back of the bus
    Club:
    Atlanta
    Nat'l Team:
    --other--


    At the very end, Ahab hooks up with two women from a fishing port in Norway. It's the chapter titled "Moby Peg"...

    The book's from an era where entertainment of almost any sort required discipline and some measure of prior knowledge. The terms are easily translated by any man who's ever built a scale boat, either for sailing R/C or just to put on the mantle.
     
  4. Dr. Wankler

    Dr. Wankler Member+

    May 2, 2001
    The Electric City
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
    There's also chapter 54, called "The Town Ho's Story," where he and Queequeg hook up with, obviously, the town ho.
     
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  5. chaski

    chaski Moderator
    Staff Member

    Mar 20, 2000
    redacted
    Club:
    Lisburn Distillery FC
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    Maybe OP would prefer Chapter 94, "A Squeeze of the Hand".
     
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  6. guignol

    guignol Moderator
    Staff Member

    Apr 28, 2005
    mermoz-les-boss
    Club:
    Olympique Lyonnais
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    if you don't like it yet you likely won't like it later.

    a lot of people love the da vinci code and put down ulysses after 20 pages. i'm convinced that in their heart of hearts a majority of people who have started reading proust think he's crap.

    not all books give the same pleasures. some are less accessible, difficult, even arduous.

    don't read any book because you feel compelled to. it's senseless and it's false.

    still, you may have a feeling there is something in moby dick that you're not quite getting but you sense is there. so you may get into it as you go along.

    but it won't be the book that's getting better.
     
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  7. worms

    worms Red Card

    Mar 28, 2013
    Club:
    FC Barcelona
    You are right guignol, after reading your message and also numerous bad reviews of this novel online (and I use the term "novel" loosely), I have decided life is too short to read something so torturous. I have read 52 chapters which is well enough to tell me that this book is simply another case of 'the Emperors new clothing'. I only bought it because I have seen it near the top of numerous polls of the greatest novels ever written. I also have a problem with the deceptive label of 'fiction' when describing this book, as half of it is dedicated to explaining to the reader every imaginable detail of whales and of whaling.

    There is basically no plot in this book and very little dialogue, which makes the continuous symbolism unbearably pointless. But at least I know a lot about whales now. :rolleyes:

    I think I will be going back to 19th Century Russian Literature. :thumbsup: I'm just sorry I wasted hours of my life on this crap.
     
  8. guignol

    guignol Moderator
    Staff Member

    Apr 28, 2005
    mermoz-les-boss
    Club:
    Olympique Lyonnais
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    to each his own.

    but to some, more.
     
  9. chaski

    chaski Moderator
    Staff Member

    Mar 20, 2000
    redacted
    Club:
    Lisburn Distillery FC
    Nat'l Team:
    Turks and Caicos Islands
    Moby-Dick was still an attempt that didn’t quite come off, it was bigger than one human being could do.” – William Faulkner
     
  10. Dr. Wankler

    Dr. Wankler Member+

    May 2, 2001
    The Electric City
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
    And nobody had more class than Melville. To do what he did in Moby-Dick, to tell a story and to risk putting so much material into it. If you could weigh a book, I don’t know any book that would be more full. It’s more full than War and Peace or The Brothers Karamazov. It has Saint Elmo’s fire, and great whales, and grand arguments between heroes, and secret passions. It risks wandering far, far out into the globe. Melville took on the whole world, saw it all in a vision, and risked everything in prose that sings. You have a sense from the very beginning that Melville had a vision in his mind of what this book was going to look like, and he trusted himself to follow it through all the way.​


    --Ken Kesey

    http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/1830/the-art-of-fiction-no-136-ken-kesey
     
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  11. worms

    worms Red Card

    Mar 28, 2013
    Club:
    FC Barcelona

    What a load of ambiguous, pretentious bullshit. Books are meant to be interesting, funny or at least entertaining in some way- it isn't. There is very little plot or dialogue, of what little narrative there actually is, it is continually interrupted by Melville (or Ishamel? It's hard to tell who the narrator is at times because it is so badly written) droning on about how the boat is structured, what the best way to eat food is or how different types of whales spouts water out of it's hole. Moby Dick is advertised as a novel yet half of the book reads like science papers on whaling, a lot of which has since been proven to be incorrect. I call it for what it is, boring trash that should be only used at toilet paper. I agree with numerous reviews that if it had been written today( even in modern English) it wouldn't be given a second glance by publishers.
     
  12. Dr. Wankler

    Dr. Wankler Member+

    May 2, 2001
    The Electric City
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
    You convict yourself. Not in the way that will get your posts deleted (this time), but you show enough.
     
  13. chaski

    chaski Moderator
    Staff Member

    Mar 20, 2000
    redacted
    Club:
    Lisburn Distillery FC
    Nat'l Team:
    Turks and Caicos Islands
    It has been proven that you can't catch a whale by trolling with a baited hook.
     
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  14. guignol

    guignol Moderator
    Staff Member

    Apr 28, 2005
    mermoz-les-boss
    Club:
    Olympique Lyonnais
    Nat'l Team:
    France
    i have no idea what books are meant to be, but of the great many things a book can be... "interesting"? that depends on what interests you innit? but i'll grant that as not being too far down the list. funny? entertaining? you mean like benny hill? or like crime and punishment? a laugh a minute, that!

    do quote us some of these numerous reviews. i'm sure they're high flyers as well.
     
  15. worms

    worms Red Card

    Mar 28, 2013
    Club:
    FC Barcelona
    Is that you Meville? You seem to struggle with English too.
     
  16. worms

    worms Red Card

    Mar 28, 2013
    Club:
    FC Barcelona
    No.

    What interests me is a book with good dialogue and an interesting plot, while the book must be written in a coherent way. The subject matter doesn't necessarily matter to me, I will read anything if it is entertaining. If the book I buy is advertised as a novel yet is only half a novel then I have a right to be pissed, I am not interested in learning so called "facts" about whales and ships that I have no use for or interest in.


    Have you ever actually read Moby Dick? If not then I have no time for you.
     
  17. Dr. Wankler

    Dr. Wankler Member+

    May 2, 2001
    The Electric City
    Club:
    Chicago Fire

    Then you have no time for yourself, either.
     
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  18. guignol

    guignol Moderator
    Staff Member

    Apr 28, 2005
    mermoz-les-boss
    Club:
    Olympique Lyonnais
    Nat'l Team:
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    this is one of the richest things i've ever heard. try this: tell me right now the source of my present sig.

    do you know anyone here? have you gone through any of the other artistic or literary threads on BS? just to get a feel of the level of general culture of people you might be having an interesting debate with? your OP promised such a discussion.

    but you've advanced no ideas, shown no insight or sensibility. every post, almost every sentence you write disappoints.

    you're not even...

    entertaining.
     
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  19. Ismitje

    Ismitje Super Moderator

    Dec 30, 2000
    The Palouse
    Club:
    Real Salt Lake
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    United States
    Try the public library next time.
     
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  20. worms

    worms Red Card

    Mar 28, 2013
    Club:
    FC Barcelona

    And you're not even clever, which you try desperately hard to be which makes you look pathetic.

    Posting ambiguous crap like this because you didn't like what I said about the book I am going to wipe my backside with next-

    "to each his own.

    but to some, more."

    If I think it's a shit book, which it is, you have no right to mock my opinion unless you've read the same book. Your absence of opinion on the book means you haven't read it. Even if you did and disagreed with me I would own you so hard like you were little more than a piece off shit that I scrape of my shoe. Now don't dare talk to me again until you read the book.
     
  21. Ismitje

    Ismitje Super Moderator

    Dec 30, 2000
    The Palouse
    Club:
    Real Salt Lake
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Worms, you were okay in my book until you went off the rails here. Polite disagreements and gentle barbs are a far cry from what you gave in return - and it's far from acceptable in this forum where goodwill rules the day.

    EDIT: I instituted that weird "discourage troll" setting on your account, since infractions don't seem to be doing the trick, for this and a host of recent problematic posts.
     
  22. chaski

    chaski Moderator
    Staff Member

    Mar 20, 2000
    redacted
    Club:
    Lisburn Distillery FC
    Nat'l Team:
    Turks and Caicos Islands
    Maybe we need a Books Rivalries Forum.
     
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  23. guignol

    guignol Moderator
    Staff Member

    Apr 28, 2005
    mermoz-les-boss
    Club:
    Olympique Lyonnais
    Nat'l Team:
    France
    not read moby dick? moi? shirley you jest.
     
  24. Val1

    Val1 Member+

    Arsenal
    Mar 12, 2004
    MD's Eastern Shore
    Club:
    Arsenal FC
    "You're so dim, you couldn't understand 50 Shades of Grey...."

    Funniest post I've read in a while...
     
  25. guignol

    guignol Moderator
    Staff Member

    Apr 28, 2005
    mermoz-les-boss
    Club:
    Olympique Lyonnais
    Nat'l Team:
    France
    ahem v1. have you read 50 shades of grey? don't dare talk to me unless you haven't read 50 shades of grey.
     
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