Daniel’s Reviews > Moby-Dick > Status Update

Really interesting that Moby-Dick features heavily in Fox & I. It’s apparently the author’s favorite book. She references the protagonist’s relationship with the whales a lot when discussing the wildlife near her place in Montana. I’d like to read it, but not sure I could stomach it. Too sensitive these days. How’s it going?

Huh, that's interesting. I've got about a hundred pages to go. I guess would not describe Ishmael as having any real relationship with the whales except a scientific and commercial one, which is arguably a great weakness of the novel: he's fascinated by whales, particularly sperm whales, in the kind of terrible way a European colonist gets fascinated by most things, that is, with an intensity and self-serving skill that lacks a sufficient kind of respect or sense of majesty. Quote me a passage, as an example?

I see references to this book everywhere, which is mostly why I wanted to read it. I'm not entirely sure why so many people feel compelled to pay homage to it constantly, honestly. There are some remarkable things about it, for sure. Still, sometimes I think this kind of thing happens with formal training. There are certain signs one can use to signal membership in a learned class, and to those on the outside it can be a bit of a mystery to sort out which of those members of the learned class actually believe what they're saying. Do they all really understand, or did they just learn to say the right things? In philosophy: Aristotle, not Plato; in music: Bach, not Mozart; in American literature: Moby Dick, not [your favorite American novel]. There are some good reasons, of course. But people should maybe think more about whether they really accept those reasons rather than some others.