Originally Posted by
REALnothings@co
Do people unanimously agree on that, nowadays?
I'm sixty years old. I "read" Moby Dick in high school, but as it was too abstruse for me to REALLY read it (and I've spent a lifetime as a literature major, writer, and reader), I thought I would try it again.
I just finished listening to a set of 18 CDs. Took me over a month. I told my wife, "If I were an editor and someone sent Moby Dick to me as a manuscript, I'd say, "Cut out the 600 pages of didactic information about whaling, and you've got a 'whale' of a 200-page story there!"
Does anyone agree? Even if I'm humiliating myself in front of every Western Literature aficionado, I want to say this. I did not feel that way when I re-experienced, after many years, The Great Gatsby or Cry, the Beloved Country or Tender Is the Night, to give three examples.
Besides the encyclopedic essayism about whaling, I found Melville's way of using metaphors to be sometimes overblown and a little irritating--his penchant for saying "the were 'Japans' of so-and-so". I don't know if I can articulate this clearly.
There were some very moving passges in the last several hundred pages, the relationship between Starbuck and Ahab, Pip and Ahab, all the elaborate foreshadowing, etc...although even here it sometimes seemed a little consciously "Shakespearian" to me.
That's my considered opinion, spoken just after finishing the book and before I've had time, or read enough essays, to alter my genuine response.
Please tell me what you think about what I've said.
Sincerely,
Max