Moby Dick by Herman Melville

"Call me Ishmael." I think that when I was younger everyone knew that that was the first line of Moby Dick, even if they didn't know anything else about the book. I wonder how many people know that know, especially young people.

The thing is, it's not really the beginning of the book. Before we get to the story there are 79 quotes or "extracts" about whales from a wide variety of sources which take up 10 pages in my edition. This ought to be, but probably isn't for most people, a sort of foreshadowing of what is to come in the rest of the book.

Moby Dick is unlike any other book I've ever read. It's impossible to classify. It is fiction, and non-fiction; science, and history; geography, and anthropology; philosphy, and metaphysics; and much more besides with a great adventure novel making sporadic appearances in the midst of it all.

By the time you finish reading Moby Dick, you will know how to spot, harpoon, and cut up a whale; and how to render sperm oil. You will know the name and description, and habits of every sort of whale that Melville, who had been a sailor himself, knew anything about. You will have intimate knowledge of whales from head to toe: what their eyes, ears, spout holes, tails and innards are like. You will know about whaling ships, and the different jobs of the sailors who man the ships. You will know how to make a peg leg and a harpoon. You will know about friendship, and seafaring humor and stories, and fear, and obsession.

I'm not sure if I should have begun this post by telling you all this, because reading it might have put me off the book forever. I remember reading War and Peace which has constant interruptions of the narrative for chapters about Tolstoy's historical/political theories, and thinking, "Just get on with the #$%& story!" But somehow Melville gets away with it. I think it must be due to the enthusiasm of the teacher who loves his subject so much, and transmits his passion to his students.

I'm sure that most of my readers will know the outline of the narrative of Moby Dick, but briefly, in case it has slipped into 21st century obscurity somehow . . . . The story relates the voyage of the Pequod, a whaler out of Nantucket (Oh, you are also going to learn some things about Nantucket.), and its captain, Ahab, who on a previous voyage, lost his leg to the huge white whale, Moby Dick. The crew, including our narrator, Ishmael, signs on for a typical whaling voyage. They know it will be quite dangerous, and that they won't see land for three or four years, but they don't know that in the Captain's fevered mind, it is a voyage for vengeance.

I'm not going to say much about the narrative itself, because the way it unfolds is part of the reader's own voyage, but I want to say a bit about the characters, because they are so important to the book. We get to know several of the sailors on the Pequod very well, and it would be fascinating to sit down with any one of them and hear his story. The first mate, Starbuck, is a very upright man, who just wants to do his job well and get back home to his wife and little boy. The second mate Stubb, is more relaxed and generally of good cheer. We also really get to know Ahab, who sometimes begins to see through the cloud of vengeance that surrounds him sees that he could overcome it, but chooses not to. Because of these changes of mood, he is a much more rounded character than he might have been. Then there is the mysterious Fedallah, about whom we known nothing much, other than that he is a Parsee, and that he knows some secret about Ahab, and Moby Dick, and has prophesied how the captain's story will end.

My favorite character is Queequeg, the island prince, and harpooneer whom we meet at the beginning of the book, and my favorite aspect of the book is his friendship with Ishmael.

Ishmael, having arrived in New Bedford, from whence he will take a ship to Nantucket, is searching for an economical place to stay until the ship arrives. He finally finds the Spouter Inn, where he is told that there is no room available, except for one that he will have to share with another boarder. The landlord is rather mysterious about said boarder, and Ishmael is suspicious, but he has no other choice.

The other boarder has not arrived by the time Ishmael goes to bed, but when he finally arrives, Ishmael is taken aback by this large dark man with harpoon and tomahawk, who is tattooed from head to toe. Queequeg is fairly shocked himself, but they manage to settle down for the night.

On the second evening Ishmael and Queequeg have dinner, and then Ishmael tells us:

Soon I proposed a social smoke; and producing his pouch and tomahawk, he quietly offered me a puff. And then we sat exchanging puffs from that wild pipe of his, and keeping it regularly passing between us.

If there lurked any ice of indifference towards me in the Pagan's breast, this pleasant, genial smoke we had, soon thawed it out, and left us cronies. He seemed to take to me quite as naturally and unbiddenly as I to him; and when our smoke was over, he pressed his forehead against mine, clasped me round the waist, and said that henceforth we were married; meaning, in his country's phrase, that we were bosom friends; he would gladly die for me, if need should be. In a countryman, this sudden flame of friendship would have seemed far too premature, a thing to be much distrusted; but in this simple savage those old rules would not apply.

I love this passage, and whole story of this friendship, but when I think about what it would be like to try to teach this book in a 21st century classroom, I just shake my head. Not only the friendship which would probably be given a very different interpretation in that classoom, and the political incorrectness of much of the book, but the sheer length of the book makes it seem very difficult to do successfully. I wonder if anyone tries.

It is probably obvious by now that I really liked this book, and would highly recommend it. I should caution you, though, that you need to have some good, long stretches of quiet time to spend with it. It isn't light reading my any means.

AMDG

Addendum: Amusing (I hope) disclaimer. I have a really difficult time reading old books with disintegrating pages. Immediately on opening them, my eyes begin to burn and itch, and my vision gets blurry--obviously not the best conditions for enjoying a book. As you can see above, my copy is one of those. So, after putting up with it for a bit, I decided to get a library copy.

Well, this is a big, heavy book, and as I have gotten older, it has been increasing difficult for me to read big, heavy books. The weight hurts my legs, and it hurts my hands to hold them, so I started reading a Kindle version that I've had for a long time, but I didn't really want to do that and I was spending a lot of time in the car, so I finally ended up listening to most of it on an Audible recording. The narrator was Frank Muller, and he was very good, so you might want to try this on your next long trip.