81–90 of 93 posts
I think there is a whole generation of college students that have a visceral hatred of this book, not because of its quality, but because of professors trying to extract more symbolic meaning than was intended.
Melville and Joyce are the two well respected literature authors I can't stand.
If anyone’s looking for a nice and libre ebook of Moby Dick , I produced one for Standard Ebooks: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/herman-melville/moby-dick I also put together a collection of Melville’s short fiction, which includes “Bartleby”: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/herman-melville/short-fict...
https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/herman-melville/moby-dick/...
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.
Thanks, looks like a book I would enjoy, I'll read it now.
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.
> whale classification chapter Thanks, looks like a book I would enjoy, I'll read it now.
Reminds me of some of the stuff I enjoy in Umberto Eco's historical novels where he dives deep into some historical worldview, often one we now know is wrong, though I think in this case Melville was relating the current state of the art of his age, but both do so quite poetically.
Some of the cod-Shakespearean bits were a bit more of a drag for me. Something for everyone maybe.
The language of the reviews is quizzical. I caught myself thinking how high-brow language once was. Then, it dawned on me the sense of intentionality and craftsmanship displayed by each sentence. U up? Who dis? :emoji :emoji :emoji I'm not sure if I'm nostalgic, sad or just a little bit of, "get off my lawn."_
> James Kinneavy is largely credited with reintroducing the importance of kairos into the discipline of Rhetoric and Composition and, thus, the composition classroom. According to Kinneavy, kairos is “the appropriateness of the discourse to the particular circumstances of the time, place, speaker, and audience involved”
If anyone’s looking for a nice and libre ebook of Moby Dick , I produced one for Standard Ebooks: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/herman-melville/moby-dick I also put together a collection of Melville’s short fiction, which includes “Bartleby”: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/herman-melville/short-fict...
Thank you for that, I'm definitely going to check out both. Since I checked out your profile to see what kind of person does these beautiful things for free...can you tell me why it is so hard to order online from ikea?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> HS literature cirriculum having zero relatability to students so they're unable to comprehend why the books are "great" I've called it "an overdose of Dead Poet's Society" before. Shakespeare plays, Steinbeck, Moby-Dick: they'll all make the majority of the class tune out if they're presented as a treatise on the human condition. Shakespeare is meant to be performed on a stage, not read from a book. Discuss his cod…
You're lumping in Steinbeck with Shakespeare and Moby-Dick? His topics are much more relevant to what is going on for many students today and the language is much less dated.
My dislike of how Shakespeare was taught in HS is from a different angle. The problem wasn't that the stories were unrelatable: that was during the peak of my fantasy-reading years. I disliked how much focus was put on the iambic pentameter as some special sauce for "understanding what it means to be human" and other overdoses of the Dead Poet Society ethos.
Recently ran across this interesting guide to Moby-Dick: "The 100 Chapters of Moby Dick You Can Skip - And why you won’t want to" https://baos.pub/the-100-chapters-of-moby-dick-you-can-skip-... The point is that while most of the book is incredibly boring, that's a feature and not a bug.
Recently ran across this interesting guide to Moby-Dick: "The 100 Chapters of Moby Dick You Can Skip - And why you won’t want to" https://baos.pub/the-100-chapters-of-moby-dick-you-can-skip-... The point is that while most of the book is incredibly boring, that's a feature and not a bug.
And yet, this book, along with The Count of Monte Cristo, Grapes of Wrath, and quite a number of other tomes are assigned in high schools by teachers/school districts. Those educators think they are providing some kind of service by trying to force feed young people books that cannot really be understood in a meaningful way by the vast majority of people with ~15 years of life. It wasn't until a decade after college…