@@4FYTfa8EjYHNXjChe8xs7xmC5pNEtz There is no way you would be doubting that if you had read any of his novels. He is unquestionably one of America's greatest writers ever.
Call me Ishmael. Some years ago - never mind how long precisely - having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off - then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me. There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs--commerce surrounds it with her surf. Right and left, the streets take you waterward. Its extreme downtown is the battery, where that noble mole is washed by waves, and cooled by breezes, which a few hours previous were out of sight of land. Look at the crowds of water-gazers there. Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by Whitehall, northward. What do you see? Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries. Some leaning against the spiles; some seated upon the pier-heads; some looking over the bulwarks of ships from China; some high aloft in the rigging, as if striving to get a still better seaward peep. But these are all landsmen; of week days pent up in lath and plaster--tied to counters, nailed to benches, clinched to desks. How then is this? Are the green fields gone? What do they here? But look! here come more crowds, pacing straight for the water, and seemingly bound for a dive. Strange! Nothing will content them but the extremest limit of the land; loitering under the shady lee of yonder warehouses will not suffice. No. They must get just as nigh the water as they possibly can without falling in. And there they stand--miles of them--leagues. Inlanders all, they come from lanes and alleys, streets and avenues--north, east, south, and west. Yet here they all unite. Tell me, does the magnetic virtue of the needles of the compasses of all those ships attract them thither? Once more. Say you are in the country; in some high land of lakes. Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in it. Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries--stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region. Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert, try this experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical professor. Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever. ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, or, the Whale
I recommend two books by Nathaniel Philbrick, both very readable and informative about the whaling industry in America: "In the Heart of the Sea" and "Why Read Moby Dick?" Highly recommended. Mr. Philbrick is an expert on these subjects and a very talented writer.
I'm very lucky my Father maybe has read the story of HERMAN MELVILLE. He name his Second Son MELVILLE. My name is Melville Janog Acain, now 72 years old born January 27, 1950.
This man deserved to be honoured for Moby Dick. Strange that this story destroyed so much for him when it should have done the opposite. How crazy that he has written things before Moby Dick that gave him acknowledgement and then with this story which he put so much work into, he fell in disgrace. So much that his lost his entire audience. Man that must have been hard. He must have lived in the wrong century.
Must've been awful to have to sell Arrowhead and uproot his happy home. Son blows his brains out. Family disintegrates. Downward spiral. Melville dies broke and alone and unknown. He had to have wondered, "What was it all for?" "What could I have done differently?"
I exhibit the art of ignorance, Boarn and raised in Pittsfield (now an Octogenarian) I grew up hearing the Melville name hundreds of times, walked down Melville street a thousand times heard the name and the book Moby Dick, thousands of times and yet had not read the book at all. but was a frequent visitor to the library (the Old Athenaeum and had been in the "Melville room many times with no conception to its value) But like many young souls of ignorance eventually I read Moby Dick and became acquainted with Herman Melville at last. As the old saying goes. "Better late, than never" and I humbly submit to society's wrath or plume of fate. ECF
Bartleby acted by crispin Glover was a story by Melville a classics writer. The movie in 2001 was released when I had been jailed for no crime in the USA except to have caught thieves high and low as an auditor and investigator . Years later I ended up in a former HUD subdivision reclaimed after a dump was reclaimed and made into a toxic park with seepage to the sea and the young on the fields Of capstoned garbage. The property is expensive for the moment. I was led there and in the end wondered about Mongol horde warfare I endured and the Attila the hum horde far away destroying my native peace Bartleby reminds me of the Albert Camus play No Exit. After my 3 18 year comas I was mid 50s. War after war after war after war it is time for a dirt nap. Nearing 60 I recalled all of it and welcomed eternal death for all living things for all eternity. If life is a delusion why feign caring if you welcome eternal death. Never work in military if it’s not our war. Never work in finance That was father’s advice. I am older. I take the warning a step further. Never trust another human being on face value due to hidden identity in war and the animals in mankind. Never trust government if it’s not your government. Even if it is yours beware of sock strategy warfare. You may be deluded. As a survivor from a murder attempt at birth and my mother or her alias urging me to suicide after being attacked by my fellow man I have no remorse about death . But I am not sadistic. The hordes of men prefer sadism in the pleasure of maiming. I see delight in death with mercy. The eternal doomed flight of all living things ends that way regardless . Kurt Brown saintrambone Mobile Audit Club
I recommend two books, by Nathaniel Philbrick, about "Moby Dick" and the whaling industry in America: "Why Read Moby Dick?" and "In the Heart of the Sea." Mr. Philbrick is an expert on these subjects and a talented writer, and both books are very readable.
It’s amazing Mark Twain’s great Huckleberry Finn was recognized right off and he made a lot of money. Melville’s Moby Dick didn’t get recognized for its greatness until after his death. Both masterpieces, but recognition & financial rewards were completely different.
Granted it didn't make him rich, but Moby-Dick got lots of good reviews in 1851-2: 82/100 = 68.3% favorable. One newspaper critic in Syracuse NY raved, "Melville is a true genius... a poet and a dramatist, as well as a novelist and historiographer...seldom have we read a more fascinating book, or one that exhibits a wider scope of power, ranging from the most abstruse speculations of the philosopher, to the wildest imaginations of the poet. The story is one of intense interest, but we hardly know whether to regard Captain Ahab, or that great Sea-Satan, Moby Dick, the hero; and it matters little which, for power and daring and unconquerable energy are alike illustrated in both--the King of Leviathans hunted in his olden seas, and the hardy whaleman urged on to the chase by a monomania that makes himself at once terrible and sublime." melvilliana.blogspot.com/2020/02/moby-dick-widely-praised-in-1851-2.html
Kirby Evans “Pierre; or, The Ambiguities” was published in 1852, a year after “Moby-Dick.” It was not Melville’s last book but his seventh. He died in 1891. “The Confidence-Man,” Melville’s ninth book and final novel, was published in 1857 before he took a job as a Customs officer.
Lot of Melville fans here and I only want to plug the excellent eight hour lecture by Hubert Dreyfus on Moby Dick: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-eq5LDSZDr2E.html
before the invention of the electric bulb. whales were butchered en mass for the oil for the lights in the villages homes, taverns, churches and wherever else...
“While you take in hand to school others, and to teach them by what name a whale-fish is to be called in our tongue, leaving out, through ignorance, the letter H, which almost alone maketh up the signification of the word, you deliver that which is not true.” -Hackluyt.
Nor our unique slang term for bullying our peers at school here in Liverpool by dragging their underpants high up their backs until they ripped, often termed a *Wedgie but we labelled it as the *Melville 📚👍😉🇬🇧🍀
Gritos Incoherentes “Pierre” was published in 1852, a year after “Moby-Dick.” It was not his last but his seventh. His final novel (and ninth book) was published in 1857. It was titled “The Confidence-Man.”
2018 Version of The Raven for our oppressed minority students can enjoy it too...... "It came up on my ass one midnight drug deal clear....I herd the sound of the 9mill go Bang Bang Bang at my do......I askes....What be dat?....The Ho on my side said....NEVER MO....."
hermen was a swwonderful man he created queequeg the indiann hopefully the future seeing stones that he rolled are eniogmatic with todsays world iwill roll these stones and predict the outcome of vthe ukraine war............thus 20/8 /23 signals the end and beginning of natos disaster as putin launched tactical nukes aagainst natoo fortunately the retort failed and nATO WAS DISSOLVED FOR BEING THE NUCLEAR DISASTER UNDER JBIDEN THE END.
"In the opinion of most literate people (Moby Dick) is the greatest American novel of the 19th century." I know plenty of literate people, Hemingway for example, who would vote for "Huckleberry Finn," and plenty more who find much of "Moby Dick" to be virtually unreadable.
The claim that "most" people say that is ridiculous, but Moby Dick is hardly unreadable. There are specific reasons for the novel's structure and style--it has its place in the canon (not Bloom's bullshit canon) for a reason. In fact, I'd call it the first modernist novel even though it predates modernism by half a century.
Say, "definitely one of the greatest novels" and I, and probably D. M. Bell, will agree. But the absolute superlative is a bit, well, hyperbolic, isn't it?
