Moby Dick - a poll.

[susnfx]

I own the book Moby Dick. I've never made it past the first two chapters. I've started it countless times, intent on adding this book to my list of "classics" read. I'm an avid reader and can get through almost anything--except this book. What do you think?

Susan

[seisflutes]

I read it a few years ago. I liked it. I must say though, I really don't remember much except the very beginning, the very end, and lots of whale hunting in the middle.

[WhistlingArmadillo]

You have to be in the mood to learn a lot of details about the old whaling industry. If you can work yourself into an "I want a history lesson" frame of mind, it can really be fairly interesting. Besides, you get to find out who Khan was quoting just before he bought it at the end of Star Trek II...

[Steamwalker]

I have the book but never finished it myself. Herman Melville has an unusual writing style in this book. Some of it is told in standard narration, other parts are restricted to dialog much like a play and other parts go into the cetology of whales. I think that the cetology part is where I got stuck.

[Cynth]

We had to read Moby Dick in high school. I couldn't get through it and I always felt very guilty about writing my paper on it without having read the whole book.

Many years later I decided to try again. I came home from work and sat down at my big table. I had a dictionary on one side and the Bible on the other. I looked up every single name, every word I didn't know, just everything, either in the dictionary or the Bible. I made notes in the margins. Progress was slow. However, I ended up liking that book very much. If you look up everything, you'll start to enjoy the layers of meanings. I remember one chapter I just hated in high school---the one describing all the different kinds of whales. Well, if you look up every single thing you can in that chapter it will have a whole different meaning than you get from it on the surface. Don't let anything go by that you don't understand or that seems odd. Think about each sentence until you really get it. If you have trouble, look up words you think you know. That could help.

It was hard work. I just did a certain amount each night. It was more like translating a foreign language instead of reading in some ways. Some people might think this isn't what reading should be, but maybe the people reading the book when it was written were more familiar with the biblical references than I am. I don't know. Anyway, if you think you could stand to approach it more as something you would dissect slowly I would really encourage you to give it another try. Just go very, very slowly and you will start seeing connections and you'll start seeing why he puts things in the story. Whaling is what he is using to tell the story, but it is not really about catching whales.

Edited because I left a word out.

[Walden]

My mother read me an abbreviated version when I was a young child.

[s1m0n]

Melville mad his name writing travel/adventure books like Typee. When Moby Dick was first published, his public was astonished and alarmed, and didn't get it at all.

One contemporary review was entitled, "Herman Melville Crazy!"

[KatieBell]

There have been very few books I couldn't get through. Faulkner's As I Lay Dying was a hard one for me. (My mother is a fish. Anyway...) But Melville's Billy Budd is one I never could do. I read the first several pages over and over and over again. I finally just gave up. Reading a bigger book by the same dude is not something that has interested me since.

[Innocent Bystander]

I echo Cynth's advice: take it nice and slow. Some books have dense passages of description which you can cheerfully skip, and miss nothing. Moby Dick is not one of these. With a difficult book - and Moby Dick can be difficult - there is one litmus test which separates good & bad.

Read it aloud.

Never mind that you don't have someone to read it to. Pretend you do. If that is too much, just read in regular fashion, but when you meet a passage that you are having trouble with: read it aloud. It is astonishing how much difference this makes.

[buddhu]

Liked it eventually, but bloody hard work the first time. On subsequent readings I have skipped the most tedious bits

[brewerpaul]

It's a book that is really worth the effort. I've read it about 4 times now, widely spaced over the years. This is one instance where it may help to have a copy of Cliff's Notes or similar and use it for it's intended purpose as a reading guide (as opposed to a read-instead ).

[emmline]

Since I had to read Billy Budd for high school AP English, I'd had my fill of Melville's page-long sentences, and was never tempted to start another.

I can tell you however, since it was one of my high school teacher's favorite trivia questions, what the opening line of Moby Dick is.

Given that reading and language always fell into my strength category, academically (versus math, e.g.,) I find it interesting how unattracted I tend to be to the classics. Studying/writing about them in school was fine, but I would rarely pick one for recreation. One exception was Pride and Prejudice which I read because I liked the movie so much I wanted to know the source material.

[Innocent Bystander]

"Call me Ishtaroth!"

[izzarina]

I own the book Moby Dick. I've never made it past the first two chapters. I've started it countless times, intent on adding this book to my list of "classics" read. I'm an avid reader and can get through almost anything--except this book.

This totally sounds like me, Susan. I've tried so many times to muddle through it, but I just can't seem to get past the first couple of chapters either. In fact, I'd have an easier time re-reading Wuthering Heights again than getting through Moby Dick...and I absolutely hated Wuthering Heights. I don't think it's that I dislike the book...I just really can't seem to get through it, and in the end have really no desire to.

[WyoBadger]

I think I finished it, but don't remember. I'd like to have another go at it now that I'm a grown up. I might find the chapters on cetology actually interesting now.

My guitar is named Ishmael, by the way. Thought you'd all want to know.

Tom