is moby dick really touted to HS students? i can't see it as a common senior english lit read. it would be a big mistake anyway. a few small excerpts in an anthology maybe.
now if they started opening up queequeg coffee shops you might catch guignol in one! when you see'um 'quid, then you quick see'um 'parm whale! which reminds me of what g-boot said about colorful characters... i mean, i love wemmick, but queequeg's the boss.
by this i didn't intend to say melvile was purposely boring the reader. everyone is different but i didn't find the dilatory chapters boring. they all add their piece to the edifice, even if i admit i'm not enough of a melville scholar to have found out where they all fit. but the book is so loaded with symbolism that it pays to be attentive at all times.
I believe it is assigned in many AP English Literature classes. When I was in high school some years ago—never mind how long precisely—I read it as outside reading.
While I wonder (OK, no I don't) it's got nothing to do with this. Not liking to read starts much earlier than when someone is going to read Moby Dick, or my particular torment: The Scarlet Letter. I seriously doubt there are many aid readers in grade and middle school who suddenly developed a distaste for reading because they had to read Melville or Brontes or even had to over analyze Twain.
Personally, I can't believe "The Scarlet Letter" is assigned in high schools. The psycho-sexual dynamics especially, combined with the different social mores of the culture depicted, make it pretty hard to imagine a 16 year old able to really get it. Salinger works better. If you want to keep it 19th century, go with Dickens. Or if you want to Read American first... Go with Clemens
dickens is good children's reading (not to say that he's useless for adults) because his portrayal of victorian england speaks to us clearly and easily. trollope's is far more realistic, acute and insightful both sociologically and psychologically*, but requires some background to understand. i also would put huck finn in the hands of adolescent readers long before moby dick (or anything by hawthorne). between these two i would also probably vote for it as the G.A.N.©, because it is more particularly American than MD, though perhaps slightly less Great. and though in hindsight we can say that it was melville who first gave american literature its lettres de noblesse, at the time it wasn't thought so, as has been pointed out. if however, i was forced to choose in the pointless debate between pele and maradona, i would choose platini: john dos passos' USA trilogy. i know i'm on very shaky ground here; many might not consider it in the same class as the two aforementioned heavyweights. it also comes much later, but this is precisely why i pick it. if the XX century was the american century then the great american whatchamacallit should be a XX century novel. and none narrates better how that century and this nation forged each other than USA. *a similar comparison can be made between hugo and zola; i can't see anyone making a musical of le ventre de paris, but it's far more useful for understanding the epoch.
That's a great set of novels, no doubt about it. Hard to assign, given their lengths. Though I remember my older brother reading "1919" for his freshman English class at a junior college, along with something by Saul Bellow. As far as good and teachable, "Winesburg, Ohio" help up well last time I taught it.
now you're getting to the heart of the matter... though in parts you run into the scarlet letter problem you evoked.
oh, well, him too. in the faceoff between kezman and quaresma for biggest imposter ever, i think gio is a very presentable dark horse.
Is whale watching with drones next big trend? Endangered fin whale is videotaped via unmanned aircraft off Southern California, raising questions and concerns about how this might affect the mammals http://www.grindtv.com/outdoor/nature/post/is-whale-watching-with-drones-next-big-trend/ "The Fin-Back is not gregarious. He seems a whale-hater, as some men are man-haters. Very shy; always going solitary; unexpectedly rising to the surface in the remotest and most sullen waters; his straight and single lofty jet rising like a tall misanthropic spear upon a barren plain; gifted with such wondrous power and velocity in swimming, as to defy all present pursuit from man; this leviathan seems the banished and unconquerable Cain of his race, bearing for his mark that style upon his back." - CHAPTER 32. Cetology