Herman Melville documentary 

I’m his direct descendant, he is my great great great great grandfather, he had a great grandson, who is my great grandfather Paul Metcalf, I never got to meet him, he died in 1999.

There is nothing quite like the emotion you feel when you come to the last 2 or 3 pages of a great novel. A classical piece of music requires your attention for the duration of the piece. A work of art can be seen in a few moments, longer if you are studying it. But a novel, especially a longer one, requires hours and hours, even days and sometimes weeks of cooperation between you and the author. So, near the end, it feels like a great relationship drawing to a close. The end of a brief Summer romance. It is a tender, nostalgic moment laced with regret. Regret for having to end a thing. But knowing you will carry it with you for life. I felt that at the end of Moby Dick.

Genius author! Unfortunately, Melville didn't get enough recognition during his lifetime.

Thank you! Melville is my hero!

The great American book, the greatest American book. My favorite book. Loved this documentary, thank you.

I've studied MD quite a lot and this little piece seems very helpful to me.

I was in the play "Chapter 40" (2015) Maltese Character. New Bedford Whaling Museum. Right across from Seamen's Chapel. Now, I live right down the street from his house in the Berkshires.

Bro puts so much thought into some sentences that you end up becoming a different person after a couple of reads.

thank you for this

Melville is awe-inspiring which makes him a difficult idol or model for ordinary writers. Moby Dick is the ultimate book of the sea still.

This is wild. I loved it! Such interesting perspectives.

Very good review! Best I've seen! I agreed so many times! Great whaling videos, too! Powerful book! I only wished he had gone deeper; the waves and the keel of the ship were tempting but left me wanting more. The story is always the framework or skeleton for the message, which has to include the Bible and has to leave one wondering, thinking. Let's see Part II !

Liked this one, too! Many Americans think we are personified in Huckleberry Finn. Unfortunately, Americans are also Capt. Ahab. How many Ahabs have we embraced?

Thank you for these. I was wondering if maybe you could find & post a bio on John Cheever? I love his short stories. I appreciate you putting these wonderful documentaries up 👍

HERMAN MELVILLE...An AMERICAN NOVESLIST , SHORT-STORY-WRITER & POET...A MUST WATCH MOTIVATING And INSPIRING DOCUMENTARY .......

Both America's Tolstoy & its Thomas Hardy. The great novelist who turns to poetry when his visionary prose fails to be heard. Are there any documentaries on Melville's verse? His craft and scope are tremendous.

In , ' The White Jacket '.....he informs of the crucial aspects of Sailor life; Food and protective clothing. The main character ,is too young ,really to go to sea. He is not cared for properly in any way on his first ship. What the sailors is have rain gear created by covering course linen clothing with ships ' paint ' , and this is usually black. " Oilcloth ''..is it. There's an opportunity to obtain Oilcloth...but it's like while the is undergoing sparse repair , some of the paint will be allotted for the crews Oilcloth. So the kid , missed this and had no rain protection,and he doesn't have the correct sort of weave to , use...just has one wool weave item , which undoubtedly resembles Revolution War overcoat ( 1790s). So white paint , for some reason is broken out of the locker..to paint a mast , and the wool army coat...gets a dose of white paint . " Duff " is what the sailors eat. It's a bowling ball sized mess of quickly mixed ( water is scarce ) flour & water . It's a blob of unrisen pizza dough. Also any scraps of bacon ,nuts, dried fruit are hastely thrown in the blob. The kids duty is to take the Duff once mixed , to the cook ,( wrapped in canvas it is ) who will toss it into a barrel of boiling water , providing there's room in the barrel...the waters still hot enough..ect. Six men are in a " section " and eat together. The cooked Duff , ( partially cooked hot soggy ...dough ) is thrown down ,out of it's canvas wrap. ..onto a square of Sailor canvas alloyed to each section, on the. deck. The sailors then pull the Duff apart ,like a battle , and hopefully have grabbed a good sized handfull. Also , in the White Jacket , ' Liberty ' is not a thing , not mentioned. Horrors of the sailors life ,is well recorded by Herman Melville........

Thanks for the spoiler.

Okay. We all know that Melville spent many chapters on specific whales and their specific habits in the middle of the adventure. I've skipped them myself but not always in my revisiting the tale.

Love Hawthorne

An adventurers dream (to read) come true.. Except the killing whales part lol

I said my brother in law " Mark, you must read Moby Dick, it's America's greatest literature!" Couple of weeks later I get an angry voice mail" chapter 117, STILL NO WHALE!" Cheers Jeff

I couldn’t make it past the dead whale videos. I’m too soft.

I finally finished reading Moby-Dick after 2 months and I think it’s going to stick with me for the rest of my life (I was a senior when I read it so if has a lot of memories tied to it and the end of high school). I saved this documentary for after I finished it and I’m so excited to start watching it!!

Martin Bickman reminded me of Ben Turpin.

14:59 😂 that edit!

Call me ishmael.

I read these stories decades ago.

Billybud.

Ahab,Ishmael,Owen chase, ?

There was never a mast-man in any of his prose.

Moby-Dick is a magnificent failure of a novel, and Melville was a magnificent failure of a novelist. He should have stuck to ethnography.

A genius