On the Coffee Table: Herman Melville

Title: Moby Dick

Author: Herman Melville

via Amazon

Pull up a chair.  We have a lot to talk about...

Captain Ahab leads the crew of the Pequod, a 19th-century whaling ship.  Most are just trying to make a living but Ahab is out for revenge.  A white whale - THE white whale - chomped off one of his legs.  Ahab means to make him pay.  If ever there were a story to convince you that genius is often wasted on the maniacal, this is it.

Moby Dick is, of course, on a short list of Greatest American Novels - indeed the finest works in world literature.  Melville's masterpiece is a profound reading experience: global in scope, richly detailed, lingually dazzling, expertly cast and ultimately unforgettable.  There are brief-candle caliber passages: Ahab throwing his lit pipe into the sea, for instance.  You read them once and you know they'll be with you for the rest of your life.

I finally made it all the way through for the first time.  It took me six months.  I didn't skip any of the chapters about whales - so many chapters about whales!  There are individual chapters about their classification, their spouts, their bones, their heads (two: one for the right whale, one for the sperm whale), their tails, etc.  There are three separate chapters about whales depicted in art. 

So many damn whales...

And I didn't skim over a single one.

The biological details aren't 100% accurate by 2025 standards.  Little was known in the mid-19th century, for example, about the blue whale - identified by Melville as the sulphur-bottom whale - as it was too fast to be hunted.  Furthermore, the author frequently refers to whales as fish.  That said, there's no denying the whaler of his day had far more intimate knowledge of the animal than most 21st century biologists ever get.  

And boy, was Melville eager to share everything he had learned.  Expertly written though it undeniably is, there is a notebook-dump feel to the prose for hundreds of pages at a time.  I get it.  Like all of his serialized contemporaries, Melville was paid by the word.  If the reader of 1851 was willing to stick with you through all of the minutia, more power to you, Herman.  The action of the story could probably have been told in 150 pages.  Maybe even fewer.  But then it wouldn't be Moby Dick.  This is a book the reader has to earn.  At last, I have.

On one of my childhood visits to The Philosopher's Island (read here), The Philosopher's dad brought a copy of  Moby Dick along to read on the trip.  I have fond memories of this kind, quiet man reading by lamplight with a delighted smile on his face.  The story begins in that part of the world, you see: specifically New Bedford, Massachusetts, then the ship launches from nearby Nantucket.  As a family, we've been to NB - even visited the whaling museum and the famous chapel described by Melville.  Having read the book, I'd love to go back.  The novel makes me curious about Nantucket, too.

The monomaniacal Ahab has become a character template all his own.  After reading, I'm also curious about the legacy of his first mate, Starbuck.  The world's largest coffeehouse chain is named for him, of course, but I wonder more at the literary legacy.  Every stubborn leader needs someone to talk them out of the crazy shit they want to do.  Every Ahab needs a Starbuck, even if he ultimately ignores him.  

Frequent visitors might remember my challenges in pinning down the narrative purpose of Riker in Star Trek: The Next Generation.  I see now, he's Starbuck.  Of course, Picard is no Ahab.  In Star Trek, Khan is the best equivalent.  But Riker is clearly a Starbuck, perhaps best demonstrated in "The Pegasus."

Without a doubt, Moby-Dick is one of the most extraordinary books I've ever read.  However, I'm not eager to read more like it (not that there are many).  At six months per, who has the time?  Even so, I can see myself picking it off the shelf from time to time for a quick fix: "Oh, lonely death on lonely life!  Oh, now I feel my topmost greatness lies in my topmost grief."

So many damn whales...