Moby Dick

May I be next in line to out myself in being still virginal in not having read Moby Dick.

But my desire has been aroused and shaped today with a reading of the LOA blog

http://blog.loa.org/2011/11/nathaniel-philbrick-asks-why-read-moby.html

"...My best advice is, if you’re going to read the book, read it. Skimming over chapters like “Cetology” has been a tradition for generations of students, but reading 90 percent of Moby-Dick is like running 23.5 miles of a marathon: you get all the exhaustion with none of the thrill of having done the thing. Worse, you don’t fully appreciate—in the Stockholm syndrome fashion described by Mark O’Connell—those passages in which Melville suddenly rewards you beyond all expectation, with a moment of offbeat pathos or a sentence that knocks you back in your chair."

Having read and appreciated, in a sense of endurance, Joyce's 'Ulysses', my curiosity has been stimulated: Moby Dick has always been there for me to read. Indeed, it has always been on my 'to be read' pile. Like Wuthering Heights or the Epic of Gilgamesh, I just haven't gotten round to reading the thing.

The excerpt above also reminds me of a favourite of mine, Les Miserables: the meandering chapters, specially those around Waterloo, which have been omitted I believe in some 'abridged' versions) (!) add completeness to the work and for the purist, they remain essential, like a foundation stone or the like.

One to be read before Christmas.

2> Now Les, I really don't mind that you haven't read Moby Dick or Gilgamesh or anything else of that sort, but I really must object to your failure when it comes to my dear sister, EllisBell! I expect you to have read Wuthering Heights by no later than Christmas or it will mean a good lashing for you from Miss Scatcherd.

> 2

Duly chastised :-)

LesMis, I too will confess that I have not read Moby Dick either. I have been thinking a lot about it lately though. I recently came across an new short book called Why Read Moby Dick? by Nathaniel Philbrick. I skimmed it a little but didn't read too deeply for fear of spoiling any plots points. I think it might be the next big book I read.

Speaking of the novel Les Miserables, I've been thinking of that one over the weekend. I've never had much desire to read it, but after having just finished Umberto Eco's Prague Cemetery, it's really heightened my interest in Hugo, Dumas, etc... Can you recommend a translation?

And since we're making confessions, I've never tackled War and Peace or Anna Karenina either. For shame!

Though I do love a big novel, The Brothers Karamozov being my favorite.

> 4

I have just lately gotten hold of the new unabridged Les Miserables, translated by Julie Rose which has great reviews. I will be reading that soon. The only other unabridged edition I have read is the Fahnestock/MacAfee translation. Great book.

War and Peace and Anna Karenina are both brilliant. I never read abridged novels so I can testify that these are justly deserving of their fame: if I was to choose a favourite from these two it would be the former.

I have not read The Brothers Karamozov :-(

>5 LesMiserables:

>I never read unabridged novels
Uhm... you mean the opposite, right? :)

If you liked War and Peace, I suspect that you will like The Brothers Karamozov as well. Or Dead Souls. Or Crime and Punishment actually - for some reason this one always goes together with War and Peace in my mind. :)

> 6

Thanks, sorted.

>5 LesMiserables: & 6. I agree with you both. Abridged novels are a crime.

Especially when they are edited by those who 'know better' (than the author) themselves. '...The editors felt that the chapters on XXXX were superfluous and detracted from the underlying thread of the narrative...' ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Well - there is a market for abridged novels - some people want to read some of the classics just so they say they read it (or just for class or something) -- and for them some of those chapters are just a drag.

For me most of those are probably the best parts of the books - if I do not like this kind of chapters, why would I read that author at all? Because he/she is considered classic - well...

PS: As a native speaker of a somewhat minority language, I had seen more abridged books than the English speakers - to the point where I had had to reread a book in English before I can read a sequel. Any editor/translator that skips passages from books need to be punished to eat all the copies of the crippled book!

> 10

An exception to my last would be a recent purchase of mine: Marx's Capital by Oxford. The mechanical intricacies of the economics would be too much for me I think in the original work.

We were discussing novels after all :)

Works of science are... different. When they are outside of your usual domain, abridgment is probably the way to actually read it.

The Melville House blog had a neat little post about Moby Dick today, with links to a reproduction of Melville's original contract for The Whale, and to a list his lifetime literary earnings (just over $10K).

http://mhpbooks.com/43564/160-years-of-moby-dick/

I read the unabridged Moby Dick when I was in high school some 45 years ago (on my own -- not a school assignment). I don't remember much of the book, but I have a very vivid memory of my feeling after finishing it -- a sense of an overwhelming experience of a stunning work of art. I felt exhilarated. I cannot imagine that I would have felt the same had I read an abridged version. I've been seriously thinking of reading it again, and this thread has added to that resolve. I had a similar feeling after having read the unabridged Brother's Karamazov and Milton's Paradise Lost at about the same age. I've similar, though lesser, reactions to other long works that I have since read,among them David Copperfield, A Portrait of a Lady, the Iliad and the Odyssey, the Aeneid, and the Histories of Herodatus. Long and superb nonfiction works can similarly provide a sense of overwhelming exhilaration, such as I have experienced after finishing Lewis Mumford's two-volume The Myth of the Machine, Samuel Eliot Morison's Oxford History of the American People (both authors should be included in LOA in the future), and Derrick Jensen's two volume Endgame.

> 14
My son has recently finished Moby Dick (He has just turned 13 and I home-school him) and he really enjoyed it, whilst my daughter, slightly older, is some way through the same book.
Needing some escapism, I am starting it now!

"There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life, when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the with thereof be but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own."

I've read most of the great western novels from Tolstoy to Dostoevsky to Proust, but no passage has stuck with me more than this one. I've read it at least three times and it is still my favorite.

I felt that Moby Dick was a great work of art, and I am very careful about how I use the word great. The theme of the story was for me a combination of a Biblical epic and a Greek tragedy. One of my greatest difficulties in reading the book was erasing the images from the movie from my mind as I read the book. I was also fascinated by the explanation of the details of the New England whaling industry.

> 17

I have not seen any movie related to Moby Dick and have been spared therefore that annoyance.

Well, not to get political as I know that is not popular in these forums but I've always considered whaling synonymous to slavery and so find Moby Dick very special on a personal level.

LesMis how wonderful that your children have read (and are reading) this novel. That is awesome and they are very fortunate to have bring these great works into your home.

4: It was Nathaniel Philbrick who brought me to Moby Dick with his In the Heart of the Sea which I recall (it's been a few years) as one of those life changing books that I loved so much.

I didn't know he'd published a book on Moby Dick and so I am now off to Amazon.com to order.

> 20

This reminds me I must get around to reading Hugo's Les Travailleurs de la Mer Toilers of the Sea.

>19 Texaco: Texaco, I see no need to apologize for political remarks. Gratuitous political remarks may be one thing, but yours are integral to the topic and, as far as I am concerned, are totally appropriate. You've made me even more want to reread Moby Dick, which I previously read as an adolescent and now look forward to reading it with more experienced (politically as well as otherwise) eyes.

Thank you euphorb and I very much appreciate your remarks.

Since the subject of this thread is Moby Dick I should like to recommend the LOA's American Sea Writing which includes an excerpt from Owen Chase's Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale Ship Essex.

This book, published in 1821, would inspire Herman Melville to write Moby Dick.

> 23

I have formed a definite love-hate relationship with this forum.
I love how much I can tap into the intellectual wealth of my fellow readers.
I hate how they induce me into parting with my material means.

24: The design features (paper, dust-jacket and boards) of this volume American Sea Writing are exquisite as well.

This in addition to the incredible stories and essays (edited by Nathaniel Philbrick) make this another LOA masterpiece.

You realize though that this was not meant to induce you to part with your material means :)

Peter Niell edited the excellent sea writing volume.

My bad, sorry all!!

>19 Texaco:

Well, not to get political as I know that is not popular in these forums but I've always considered whaling synonymous to slavery and so find Moby Dick very special on a personal level.

Yes times change and fortunately for the better sometimes. My homeland Scotland, has had many of the wealthier classes during the era of American slavery go the Americas and be slave owners on plantations. Just as we had a booming whaling industry on the East Coast of Scotland during that time.

LesMis how wonderful that your children have read (and are reading) this novel. That is awesome and they are very fortunate to have bring these great works into your home.

Thanks. It's wonderful to see the avenues that open in their minds when they read quality literature.

Well I'm around half way through Moby Dick now and it's certainly a well written, informative novel.

I love the way (curiously, as this oft times puts people off) that we pause through the novel to explain the background on whaling, the types of whales etc.

I have also added a new word to my vocabulary: gam.

Well this really is a decent read. Lengthy too. Does anyone know the word count of Moby Dick.
My knowledge of the whale has mushroomed too: the book should have been named pandectes ceti

By the way, not finished yet: up to Chapter 105

30> By my count, Les, it's 211,477, but that may vary from one e-edition to another. I used Gutenberg, did a quick copy-and-paste into a text editor (EditPlus), deleted Gutenberg's licensing boiler plate, and then took an electronic word count.

> 31

Thanks. Seems longer (though not in a negative sense)

I wonder what the 'average' novel word count is?

Well I have finally finished Moby Dick. What a masterful novel: the intense build up and the fateful ending. A real gem.

You should now find and read In the Heart of the Sea the story of the Whaleship Essex which, as it turns out was stove and sunk by a whale and is the inspiration for Melville's plot. I hesitate to say Melville's book because Moby Dick is so much more than just a good yarn about a ship sunk by a whale.

> 34

Thanks for the recommendation. After reading a classic, I often consult a compendium of classics to ascertain the reception and analysis of the one I have just read.

It is interesting to see how this novel was more or less shunned as mediocre and subsequent novels similarly so. But they come back into vogue, as does poetry.

When reading Moby Dick I definitely sensed a strong Shakespearean influence: in fact the 'asides' gave the whole book a dramatic sense of presence.

LesMis, did you also pick up a copy of Why Read Moby-Dick? http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2011/10/18/141429619/why-read-moby-dick-a-pas...

> 36

No, I have not got that, but that article, per se, is interesting.

By the way, I went ahead and placed an order for this new 2008 translation of Les Miserables you mentioned (http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0099511134). I wasn't aware of it, but I really enjoy reading the classics in new translations. The new translations of The Count of Monte Cristo and Don Quixote are amazing, and I'm always on the lookout for others like that. I know this is getting this thread off-topic, but can anyone suggest some new translations of classic novels, or whether there maybe is a website where to look them up and to keep in the know about any new and upcoming translations?

> 38

Don Quixote is one I am always threatening to read, and to a lesser extent The Count of Monte Cristo.

I'm not sure of a relevant website on new translations: I cam across the Julie Rose translation just through reading about Hugo.

There are two, maybe three unabridged Cristo translations. A few years ago I read the modern library edition, it wasn't very special. I've read quite a bit of Dumas since then and in hindsight it didn't feel typical of his prose styling. The Everyman's Edition is a revised translation (I'm guessing of the one I read) by Peter Washington. Then there is Robin Buss.

Are you sure Julie Rose translated Cristo? She translated Dumas' The Knight of Maison-Rouge...

*This is interesting, the Peter Washington intro (there may be spoliers, but it acknowledges the weakness of Dumas' writing in Cristo):

http://books.google.com/books?id=A_qohVGKmLcC&lpg=PR2&dq=count%20monte%2...

> 40
Are you sure Julie Rose translated Cristo?

I'm almost certain she did not. We were talking about her recent translation of Les Misérables.

Gotcha, thanks.

I was talking about the great translation by Robin Buss. Too bad it's only available in paperback. Hopefully it will be republished as part of that Penguin Hardcover Classics series.

I read today on another LT thread that someone was 'skimming' - rereading Moby Dick. :-)

http://www.librarything.com/topic/129645#3156043

Unless they are very familiar with it they would do better to read the Reader's Digest version. I don't know if you are familiar with Reader's Digest books in Australia, but they are a series of abridged versions of the classics (and much else). Skimming may get you the story, but The White Whale is way more than just a simple story. It is one of the most complex pieces of art ever assembled. Once through will only leave you scratching your head.

And the "skimming" in question is rereading of highlighted moments from the previous time she read it :) So don't be so fast to send people to RD (which are good for getting your fire going and nothing else if you ask me).

Yes, I did note that it was a re-read. My fascination stems from the fact that there is so much in each page: a turn of phrase, a look etc, which would completely rule out anything but a word for word read. I have tried in the past to skim articles and documents but books never works for me.

What is RD?

Reader's Digest ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reader%27s_Digest_Condensed_Books ) - the biggest travesty that had ever been published - if you want to read the book, read the book, don't go for a condensed version (especially for current bestsellers...). Quite popular though.

> 48

I am with you on that one. 'RD' makes me weep. I'm not sure what they are like in the US but once you have subscribed to their magazine in the UK, it is easier to thread a camel through a needle than it is to extract yourself from their marketing, subscriptions, databases etc

>49 LesMiserables:

Would not know. :) They would not have accepted a subscription from Bulgaria even if I wanted to have one; after I moved I am a bit more careful than giving them my address :)

Now - this is a good thing to do with these books: http://justsomethingimade.com/2011/12/readers-digest-condensed-books-crafts/ :)

I donated a whole shelf of those condensed books to the local VA when I helped clean out my grandparent's house.

Perhaps they would be enlightening for someone that wouldn't otherwise pick up a 'classic'.

Just not this crowd...

From my experience working with Friends of the Library used-book sales, you literally cannot give those condensed books away.

Well, YOU can. You can give them to your library and they wont say no, because they try to be nice, but they will immediately pass it on to their Friends of the Library Group and the Friends will say oh no, not more of those. They'll put them in their used book sale, then pack them up after the book sale. Then they'll sit in the trunk of a Friends member's car for a while because that person will have a thing about not throwing books away, and that box will sit in that person's car until he is on a roadtrip in another state and will find himself driving by a library, and he will think a-ha!, walk in and say, "Hi, do you take donations?" And the story begins again...