I'm a non native english speaker trying to read this book, sort of gave it up around (i think) half to read other books in the waiting list. Most of the interludes are not that engaging to me (whale classification chapter comes to mind), which is a pity since I enjoyed the actual narrative.
Original 1851 reviews of Moby-Dick
31–40 of 93 posts
Re: Original 1851 reviews of Moby-Dick
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why? Surely you agree that different people have different tastes. I couldn't get through the first chapter of Infinite Jest, but I don't think people who say they love the book are being insincere. There are large numbers of people who would find the tech jobs that many people on this site enjoy to be incredibly tedious and boring.
Because I read it and it was a slog. There are large portions of the book that are unrelated to the story and are painful to get through. But saying that makes you look dumb, whereas asserting how much you love it makes you look like a fabulously cultured and intelligent connoisseur of high literature. Whatever, though.
I think you should consider the possibility that other people sincerely like this book, even the portions you found tedious, and aren't just pretending in order to show off their culture and intelligence. What does 'zabzonk' have to gain from proving his culture and intelligence to 'yuuu' and 'allturtles'?
Re: Original 1851 reviews of Moby-Dick
#33My review: A brilliant book, possibly my favourite of all the books I have read, which is a lot, and certainly one that I have enjoyed re-reading time and again. Tragic that it wasn't more widely appreciated in Melville's lifetime. A must read.
I am skeptical of anyone who has read Moby Dick and not admitted how much of a slog it is.
The key is to read one chapter aloud before bed each night for 4.5 months. You're not reading it for the plot.
Re: Original 1851 reviews of Moby-Dick
#34> The idea of a connected and collected story has obviously visited and abandoned its writer again and again in the course of composition.
I have to agree with this. The book certainly has its merits, but story isn't one of them...which is sad because I think there could be something interesting in the vendetta story, but 90% of it was spent discussing whaling (which is interesting on its own).
Re: Original 1851 reviews of Moby-Dick
#35My review: A brilliant book, possibly my favourite of all the books I have read, which is a lot, and certainly one that I have enjoyed re-reading time and again. Tragic that it wasn't more widely appreciated in Melville's lifetime. A must read.
Yes, it is if every sentence in it is a thoughtfully crafted poetic fragment. And many of the chapters essentially nonfiction, a sort of encyclopaedia of Whales and Whaling. "Swerve me? The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run. Over unsounded gorges, through the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents’ beds, unerringly I rush! Naught’s an obstacle, naught’s an angle t…
>…thoughtfully crafted poetic fragment.
Lots of good Victorian writing is like that
Charles Dickens - Any of his works
Rudyard Kipling - Remembered now for children’s books but also wrote some amazing novels and poetry for adults. He has written some pretty trippy stuff too. I remember a poem about all the structural parts of a ship talking to each other in a storm and another short story about an engineer that’s a sort of fever dream mixed with a monsoon flood at the bridge he’s building.
Oscar Wilde - e.g. The Nightingale and the Rose is a masterwork of pathos. http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/NigRos.shtm...
A lot of literature from that period paid attention to the the rhythm and flow of the sentences, if you read any of it aloud it rolls off the tongue compared to modern writing.
Re: Original 1851 reviews of Moby-Dick
#36My review: A brilliant book, possibly my favourite of all the books I have read, which is a lot, and certainly one that I have enjoyed re-reading time and again. Tragic that it wasn't more widely appreciated in Melville's lifetime. A must read.
I am skeptical of anyone who has read Moby Dick and not admitted how much of a slog it is.
Whether a book is enjoyable or not depends at least as much on who reads the book as on the book.
When I was a child, I have read Moby Dick and I have enjoyed every part of it very much, including the so-called boring parts about the history of whaling and so on.
At that age most of what was described in the book were new things for me, so they were interesting.
Half a century later, I would never have patience to read any similar book, as it is extremely unlikely that any such book could contain anything that I have not read before.
Re: Original 1851 reviews of Moby-Dick
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because I read it and it was a slog. There are large portions of the book that are unrelated to the story and are painful to get through. But saying that makes you look dumb, whereas asserting how much you love it makes you look like a fabulously cultured and intelligent connoisseur of high literature. Whatever, though.
I think you should consider the possibility that other people sincerely like this book, even the portions you found tedious, and aren't just pretending in order to show off their culture and intelligence. What does 'zabzonk' have to gain from proving his culture and intelligence to 'yuuu' and 'allturtles'?
[deleted]
Re: Original 1851 reviews of Moby-Dick
#38Re: Original 1851 reviews of Moby-Dick
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're comparing highbrow literature reviews in leading magazines to short instant messages, which are a significantly different medium designed to be read by one or two people once, and then thrown away. Your best comparison is telegram style[0], which is not dissimilar to today's texts—complete with its own slang and shorthand. Nobody's writing "u up" in the New Yorker. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegram_s…
I can't help but think that telegram style was more a function of the exorbitant cost and pricing model of sending a telegram. https://newatlas.com/last-telegraph-message/28314/#:~:text=I... . Relative to wages in the 1860s, telegrams were very expensive. https://www.portablepress.com/blog/2016/10/where-the-money-w...
Composing a text message on a touchscreen keyboard has its own cost. Not monetary, but still something to minimize.