It gets a bad rep for being hard to read (which it is because of the sea-faring and archaic vocabulary) but it’s surprisingly entertaining with even a casual/jovial tone at times, (the opening line is just “Call me ishamel”) I haven’t finished it, but so far like 30% of the book is irrelevant to the plot and is just the authors random musings and philosophies on life. He dedicates entire pages to debating what the most comfortable room temperature and position to sleep in is, or his opinions on random countries like Japan or “Affghanistan”. It almost reads like blogposts or diary entries.
He also has surprisingly modern humor and opinions. He makes borderline gay jokes when he has to sleep in bed with an African man “Queequog”, and then describes how he respects him, saying “the man’s a human being just as I am; he has just as much reason to fear me…better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian” and that “It’s only his outside; a man can be honest in any sort of skin”. The two develop this wholesome Rush Hour style partnership that’s pretty funny.
There’s also one part where he states that even though he’s Christian, he respects anyone’s beliefs as long as they hurt noone.
I also really liked how it occasionally shifts to the 1st person perspective of Captain Ahab or Starbuck for a chapter which adds good variety.
by Imaginefliescumming
4 Comments
I read it a couple of years ago, and I agree 100%. The sea-faring chapters aren’t dry, boring textbook passages about how whaling works: they’re insightful, satirical, heartfelt, and occasionally hilarious explorations into humanity.
It’s a lot weirder than its reputation would imply for sure. It’s not some dry whale hunting adventure it’s just a bizarre and experimental take on writing. Easily one of my fav novels now.
I would be careful saying the digressions are the author, though. A lot of them are just Ishmael and part of his character, while others are actually probably Melville, and it’s both hard to tell sometimes and kind of important to the analysis of the novel. In theory Ishmael is always narrating but then there’s chapters that portray stuff he can’t possibly know.
“Moby WHAT?!?!”
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We read this in a book group a few years back. Some books are worth the extra effort needed to get through, and this is definitely one of them.
“I stopped eating whale meat cuz of this book” – GoodReads review