Strangely, I think this part you went through today was the part I read the fastest. I just love his prose, with its beauty and being constantly witty and funny.
Sadly I am a little behind but I will finish the book before the end of November! I am enthralled with Melville’s prose and storytelling. It feels like he has so much space and time to flesh out all the nooks and crannies that add layers and texture to a story right down to the words and sentences he uses to craft it all. There is no formula here. These chapters were slower and did not move the plot of the story forward in any hurry, but I enjoyed a lot of the information and the picture of whaling of that time period they painted. For me, I felt the novel following the flow of what life on one of these vessels must have been like. As it says, unlike merchant ships, whaling vessels did not head into many ports. They would have spent many many long periods of time alone out on the vast ocean, self-contained and well away from distractions/entertainment. This leaves a bit of time on one’s hands to think and talk in between whale sightings and the hands on business of capturing and processing them. When I got to the end of this section, it hit me, I am going to finish reading Moby Dick!!! I am so excited! I am ready for the pace to pick up and the action to start. The important sighting is about to happen. I am so thrilled to be on this journey. I really enjoy when you pick out passages to read aloud and share. It sends me back to find them and dig around to follow with you. It sends me back to reread and think from a new perspective and that enhances the enjoyment of the novel. Thank you!
As this is my fourth reading of the book, I have long been completely under the spell of the narrative voice of Melville/Ishmael and no longer find any of the chapters problematic. In fact, I am able to see each chapter as so much more than it appears. Each reading brings new revelations.
Sadly, I am "sailing" a week behind the readalong schedule, but I have just finished the chapter, The Sphinx, and also noted the poetic passage you read. My other favorite chapter, for its poetic nature, was Sunset, where the perspective shifts from Ishmael to Ahab. Once again, Ahab waxing poetically!
I got a late start and I'm obviously behind (seeing how the readalong is over lol), but I'll at least finish before the month ends. I agree there were a lot of sloggy parts in this section, but I can feel the momentum building.
I was glad hearing you say that the part we're reading this week is the hardest part to get through, that's exactly how I felt reading this week. I was worried that reading the book in english might have been a mistake, but when I'm reading an American author I want the original over a translation
That goddamn chapter about rope...as much as I love this book in its entirety (I read Melville's filler chapters like I read Tolkien's songs in LOTR), that one, for me, was a rough sit. I gotta disagree on The Squeezing of the Hand, though. Considering how little sexual innuendos have changed over hundreds of years, there's no way in HELL that Melville didn't intend at least a LITTLE bit of a gay reading.
I got through the doldrums chapters but had a lot of trouble staying awake while reading. Its sort of like trying to drive when you are trying hard to stay awake. When awake I am enjoying it.
When I read these chapters, I mutter “I hate you, Melville” almost constantly - but teasing and derision is my highest form of praise and affection. These feel more than any other part like I’m stuck in a room with my EXTREMELY enthusiastic self-appointed “whale expert” friend who JUST doesn’t know when to stop going on about this thing he LOVES so dearly; and it’s so interesting, but I thank GOD I’m allowed to laughingly roll my eyes at it the entire time, because if I had to politely nod at this ridiculousness for a solid hour, I’d probably kill him. Tho, even laughing, I wouldn’t mind giving him a good knock! Altogether, I deeply love these chapters. Each section is better than the last! I love the steady march! the encountered ships; the literal “entering” into the body of the whale from its distance to its appearance to its outermost then innermost parts, flesh to bone. Melville’s such a structural thinker!! I love the way you feel the book creeping into itself through these chapters. This intensification of voice; the way you steadily and terribly fall more and more helpless within Melville’s grip, succumb to his vision of this unworldly and most worldly world. Forget Ahab’s madness, here’s true obsession! You feel yourself at last being completely whelmed beneath the relentlessly huge narrative, in preparation for the skydive of the end and for the best, most lasting effect of the whole book! These have some of my favorite passages: the spout, Pip’s soul, the spermly brotherhood, philosophers’ fates, the monkey rope, the addresses to the heads, the doubloon, that (sidesplitting) chapter ‘Leg and Arm’! But I hate the butchering and hunting descriptions; they make me physically ill. You pace out these chapters perfectly! I've been constantly amazed how precisely the book seems to divide into the quarters you picked to keep up the greatest possible interest! I cannot WAIT for next WEEK!
I agree that this week's chapters were pretty well the doldrums of the book. But, to me Melville in his doldrums is better than a lot of other authors at their best. I did chuckle at the sperm squeezing chapter. What struck me this time round though was his description of the infernal tri-works at night. And then Pip going overboard. They way he describes Pip's misadventure and its effect on Pip made me think of Plato's Republic. I wonder if Melville was thinking of the shadows in the cave when he wrote that. Pip sees the truth of the world and when he comes back aboard the ship everyone believes he has gone crazy.
A couple of chapters behind,but everything is enjoyable in this book.i was even enthusiastic about the rope chapter where I learned how much whalesman can get entangled. Also learned the rope came to be made out of manilla.Then nerdiest of realizations, heh Steve gets many of his books sent using manilla envelopes. Now a tiny bit of my brain has linked an envelope with Melville. Ain’t reading funny that way..
Strangely (maybe), I found the chapters from last week much harder to get through than this week's chapters. Too much seafarer yarn for my taste last week. I guess I like the allegorical Moby Dick-book better than the romantic sea-novel The Whale...
for me, all the chapters that don't move the story along are frustrating and can be boring, but I sort of feel like they're important to make me want moby dick more. When I read those chapters, I sort of feel ilke Ahab. When he asks the other captains if they have seen the white whale and they say no or to move on and avoid the white whale, he has exactly 0 time for them. I don't ignore the chapters in the same way Ahab ignores those captains, but the chapters make me hone in my focus on what I want to encounter: Moby Dick.
I found that this was a tough stretch but not for the lack of momentum in the story. I enjoy good prose for its own sake but a lot of the time the poetry is excessive such that I didn't understand what was being said. I felt that I could do with an English translation of the book. My inability to understand many sentences made me very frustrated to the extent that the novel is not enjoyable.
I like Melville's writing, but the four consecutive chapters about whale heads broke me a little. I guess I have the sense of humor of a 12 year old, but the pasaage that you mencioned and another one (that they are chancing a whale and the dialogue is just a lot of interjections and asking if they like sperm) had me in fits of giggles.
Strangely, I think this part you went through today was the part I read the fastest. I just love his prose, with its beauty and being constantly witty and funny.
Sadly I am a little behind but I will finish the book before the end of November! I am enthralled with Melville’s prose and storytelling. It feels like he has so much space and time to flesh out all the nooks and crannies that add layers and texture to a story right down to the words and sentences he uses to craft it all. There is no formula here.
These chapters were slower and did not move the plot of the story forward in any hurry, but I enjoyed a lot of the information and the picture of whaling of that time period they painted. For me, I felt the novel following the flow of what life on one of these vessels must have been like. As it says, unlike merchant ships, whaling vessels did not head into many ports. They would have spent many many long periods of time alone out on the vast ocean, self-contained and well away from distractions/entertainment. This leaves a bit of time on one’s hands to think and talk in between whale sightings and the hands on business of capturing and processing them.
When I got to the end of this section, it hit me, I am going to finish reading Moby Dick!!! I am so excited! I am ready for the pace to pick up and the action to start. The important sighting is about to happen. I am so thrilled to be on this journey.
I really enjoy when you pick out passages to read aloud and share. It sends me back to find them and dig around to follow with you. It sends me back to reread and think from a new perspective and that enhances the enjoyment of the novel. Thank you!
As this is my fourth reading of the book, I have long been completely under the spell of the narrative voice of Melville/Ishmael and no longer find any of the chapters problematic. In fact, I am able to see each chapter as so much more than it appears. Each reading brings new revelations.
Sadly, I am "sailing" a week behind the readalong schedule, but I have just finished the chapter, The Sphinx, and also noted the poetic passage you read. My other favorite chapter, for its poetic nature, was Sunset, where the perspective shifts from Ishmael to Ahab. Once again, Ahab waxing poetically!
I got a late start and I'm obviously behind (seeing how the readalong is over lol), but I'll at least finish before the month ends. I agree there were a lot of sloggy parts in this section, but I can feel the momentum building.
I was glad hearing you say that the part we're reading this week is the hardest part to get through, that's exactly how I felt reading this week. I was worried that reading the book in english might have been a mistake, but when I'm reading an American author I want the original over a translation
That goddamn chapter about rope...as much as I love this book in its entirety (I read Melville's filler chapters like I read Tolkien's songs in LOTR), that one, for me, was a rough sit.
I gotta disagree on The Squeezing of the Hand, though. Considering how little sexual innuendos have changed over hundreds of years, there's no way in HELL that Melville didn't intend at least a LITTLE bit of a gay reading.
I got through the doldrums chapters but had a lot of trouble staying awake while reading. Its sort of like trying to drive when you are trying hard to stay awake. When awake I am enjoying it.
When I read these chapters, I mutter “I hate you, Melville” almost constantly - but teasing and derision is my highest form of praise and affection. These feel more than any other part like I’m stuck in a room with my EXTREMELY enthusiastic self-appointed “whale expert” friend who JUST doesn’t know when to stop going on about this thing he LOVES so dearly; and it’s so interesting, but I thank GOD I’m allowed to laughingly roll my eyes at it the entire time, because if I had to politely nod at this ridiculousness for a solid hour, I’d probably kill him. Tho, even laughing, I wouldn’t mind giving him a good knock!
Altogether, I deeply love these chapters. Each section is better than the last!
I love the steady march! the encountered ships; the literal “entering” into the body of the whale from its distance to its appearance to its outermost then innermost parts, flesh to bone. Melville’s such a structural thinker!! I love the way you feel the book creeping into itself through these chapters. This intensification of voice; the way you steadily and terribly fall more and more helpless within Melville’s grip, succumb to his vision of this unworldly and most worldly world. Forget Ahab’s madness, here’s true obsession! You feel yourself at last being completely whelmed beneath the relentlessly huge narrative, in preparation for the skydive of the end and for the best, most lasting effect of the whole book!
These have some of my favorite passages: the spout, Pip’s soul, the spermly brotherhood, philosophers’ fates, the monkey rope, the addresses to the heads, the doubloon, that (sidesplitting) chapter ‘Leg and Arm’! But I hate the butchering and hunting descriptions; they make me physically ill.
You pace out these chapters perfectly! I've been constantly amazed how precisely the book seems to divide into the quarters you picked to keep up the greatest possible interest!
I cannot WAIT for next WEEK!
I agree that this week's chapters were pretty well the doldrums of the book. But, to me Melville in his doldrums is better than a lot of other authors at their best. I did chuckle at the sperm squeezing chapter. What struck me this time round though was his description of the infernal tri-works at night. And then Pip going overboard. They way he describes Pip's misadventure and its effect on Pip made me think of Plato's Republic. I wonder if Melville was thinking of the shadows in the cave when he wrote that. Pip sees the truth of the world and when he comes back aboard the ship everyone believes he has gone crazy.
A couple of chapters behind,but everything is enjoyable in this book.i was even enthusiastic about the rope chapter where I learned how much whalesman can get entangled. Also learned the rope came to be made out of manilla.Then nerdiest of realizations, heh Steve gets many of his books sent using manilla envelopes. Now a tiny bit of my brain has linked an envelope with Melville. Ain’t reading funny that way..
I am well behind, but will keep on.
Strangely (maybe), I found the chapters from last week much harder to get through than this week's chapters. Too much seafarer yarn for my taste last week. I guess I like the allegorical Moby Dick-book better than the romantic sea-novel The Whale...
for me, all the chapters that don't move the story along are frustrating and can be boring, but I sort of feel like they're important to make me want moby dick more. When I read those chapters, I sort of feel ilke Ahab. When he asks the other captains if they have seen the white whale and they say no or to move on and avoid the white whale, he has exactly 0 time for them. I don't ignore the chapters in the same way Ahab ignores those captains, but the chapters make me hone in my focus on what I want to encounter: Moby Dick.
I found that this was a tough stretch but not for the lack of momentum in the story. I enjoy good prose for its own sake but a lot of the time the poetry is excessive such that I didn't understand what was being said. I felt that I could do with an English translation of the book. My inability to understand many sentences made me very frustrated to the extent that the novel is not enjoyable.
I like Melville's writing, but the four consecutive chapters about whale heads broke me a little.
I guess I have the sense of humor of a 12 year old, but the pasaage that you mencioned and another one (that they are chancing a whale and the dialogue is just a lot of interjections and asking if they like sperm) had me in fits of giggles.