Herman Melville

[Ason]

I just re-read Bartelby the Scribner & Billy Budd to get an idea of Melville's work and I'm halfway through Moby Dick ...I'm not sure how I feel about Melville yet, I hated Billy Budd , but I enjoyed BTS & so far Moby Dick has been a bizarre and neurotic narrative. Has anyone else read Melville lately and found his writing to be really odd at times? I guess I need another opinion as a touchstone.

[knightss]

Melville can be overly descriptive at times. although i love description in literature, i think it's part of the art form, he gets carried away sometimes. i have yet to read any of his long works but i have read excerpts and short pieces by Melville. He's often hard to understand, a bit enigmatic.

[blue_doona32]

So much detail, it made my head nearly explode. I had to read it for a class and I ended reading sparknotes just to get through the book! I like detail, but not to the point where its nothing but describing the planking f the ship and you lose the point of what he's trying to get across to the reader.

Most definatly, not one of my favorite authors!

[jonasparker17]

I am reading, Moby Dick right now also and it is my first of Melvilles' stories. I agree with the overly descriptive at times. I feel like I could go straight into whaling and be good at it. When Melville gets to the story of the crew and the pequod I can't put it down. It is the fillers that kills me

[jonasparker17]

I just finished Moby Dick too. I thought it was a good book but it seemed to me like much of his efforts went into describing his supporting elements of the book than the actual main story.

[Moore]

Yes, the book is rather hard for unprepared reader, but it's wonderful if you catch it. I agree the descriptions are rather heavy and difficult to grasp, but if you manage it, you are happy to enter a marvellous world of Melville's images!!

[SoggyPeanutPatrol]

His "overly detailed" descriptions are often more than what they seem. Mellville was way ahead of his time. Some people consider Moby-Dick to be the fist modernist novel, written about 40-50 years before anything else we call modernist (Crane is usually next, in the 1890's; modernism peaks in the 1920's). It's certainly bizarre and neurotic, but it's a thickly woven text and a pleasure for anyone who's willing to pick it apart.

[Classical is Classy]

I tried reading Moby Dick at some point, got about halfway through. It seemed like at times I was reading a text book about whales lol. If I remember right anyway.

I'll go back someday, I imagine. But yeah I agree with people saying hes overly descriptive.

[globalvision]

Moby Dick is worth the effort. It might take some time to read but it will stay with you for life. There never has been nor ever will be anything like it.

[wiggicc]

well i just got through with blood meridian by cormac mccarthy and read some of mccarthy's interviews. they state that moby dick is mccarthy's favorite book so it's next on my list. i love description and detail in writing. i'm fascinated when someone can write a page about a blade of grass and it not be boring. i'm kind of excited and afraid and apprehensive all at the same time about this book. we'll see....i just gotta go buy it first.

[zifranka]

So much detail, it made my head nearly explode. I had to read it for a class and I ended reading sparknotes just to get through the book! I like detail, but not to the point where its nothing but describing the planking f the ship and you lose the point of what he's trying to get across to the reader.

Most definatly, not one of my favorite authors!

I completely agree with you. I mean, sure, the lengthy descriptions have in them important insights and quite beautifully worded phrases that may or may not have been intentionally funny. I think he sounds like one of those old men you meet in seaside pubs with a tall pint of ale in one hand and a beardful of stories. You need to literally sit down with him.

[thsavage2]

He's a god writer but Moby Dick was the one of the maybe three or four books I haven't finished in the last 5 years. I'm usually pretty obsessive about finishing books and a forgiving reader when things don't start off too quickly, but I read something like 200 pages and they hadn't even gotten on the boat. I remember liking the relationship between the narrator and his even more eccentric friend, but that was about it. My mom read a much, much abridged version to me when I was pretty young, and that hit all the salient plot points and did not require me to read all about the lantern in the hotel room, and lots of other random details.

[the biblophile]

Melville was unappreciated in his time, and aside from Moby Dick is still largely underrated. Bartelby is a great story, he wrote it after reading Bleak house. He was inspired by the opium addled Mr. Nemo, and his tragic end. and who can say that names like Turkey and Gingernuts are not Dickensian? his book Red Burn is also a wonderful seafaring coming of age story, with the ship being a kind of macrocosm of the wider world.