Any Direction’s Reviews > Moby-Dick or, The Whale > Status Update

TIL the expression “cool as a cucumber” is older than this book.

Every chapter in this book has been short, (2-5 pages) which really helps with the supposed tedium. Then suddenly we have a chapter that’s 21 pages (a rambling story of mutiny and WHALES), and now we are back closer to our regularly scheduled programming… Ismael criticizing whale paintings, which is silly, but also relatable.

Sometimes books read your mind. Here I was thinking that Ishmael was making things up, and then he hits me with a whole chapter telling me that he is, in fact, not making things up, reminding me that he knows more about whales than me, and giving me a very persuasive speech with a blend of personal experience and cited additional sources. The note disparaging allegory made me laugh. Melville be meta.

I like to talk about the meaning of colors! This was fascinating, as among other things, it shows how humans can pack so much arbitrary meaning into something like color, and ultimately how having multiple arbitrary meanings becomes contradictory when considered as whole. Which then makes me think about how symbolism should be considered within the bonds of a text because otherwise anything can mean anything. Oh no.

I am officially into the long boring descriptions about whaling part. I am shocked how little we’ve seen of Ahab. It is taking me even longer to get through because I keep stopping to google facts. We started with phylogeny which is always dated, and now I don’t trust any of it. Did people know that whalebone is referring to just the baleen of the whale and not like the actual skeleton? Because I didn’t.

“Take that ye loyal britons! we whalemen supply your kings and queens with coronation stuff!” I thought maybe I was getting to the boring part but then that quote happened. The next chapter starts talking about Starbuck. Who I like to imagine angrily wandering through this century screaming, “No the coffee shop was named after me!” When everyone, present company included, refuse to take him seriously.

Oh, another character with a biblical name! I suppose there could be more nuance to this but a man, sharing a name with a prophet, warning you to protect your souls, gets his own chapter despite seeming insignificant, and proclaimed a humbug. Doesn’t feel ominous at be all.

There’s this bit about Canadian thistle being able to grow where nothing else can and having it imported. Totally not super relevant, but it feels like a snapshot of past thinking. Canadian thistle, now being an invasive, these passing phrases ring true. Take note of this weird passage environmental literature scholars!

What a time jump? traveling on the sea so mundane we don’t get to hear about? It feels weird to find a time jump in this incredibly noodlely book after complaining about long sea descriptions in wizard of earth sea, which is very short.

In case you were wondering (you probably weren’t, but I was) this book was written many years after Rime of the Ancient Mariner, a few years before the Civil War, and many years before Heart of Darkness. It has both RotAM and HoD vibes. Always thought that Melville was a Romantic, but it’s late Romantic era. Definitely, feels like a bridge to Realism.