Hast read the white whale? (Avast! Spoilers ahead!)

 

I finished Moby-Dick about an hour and a half ago and after sitting somewhat stunned for a few minutes I went in to interrupt Scott (who was trying to accomplish something himself) to say things like, "My goodness! I didn't see that coming! The Pequod! And, and, and . . .  " Which is a little absurd since I did see the movie with Gregory Peck as Ahab not that very long ago so you'd think I'd have remembered--plus, of course, it's sort of a book that one knows the ending of. But still. 

 It's a pretty amazing book with, admittedly, some pretty saggy middle. Oh, I was actually fascinated by some of the technical details about whale skeletons and the like, and truly intrigued by all the "pre-adamite fossil" discussion because I tend to think of the 1850s as a time when the Bible was still taken as literal truth and, clearly, Mr Melville well understands--and expects his readers to accept--that all manner of stuff was going on on Earth before humans showed up so that was somehow quite encouraging in some way. But I did sort of long to know what was happening to Queequeg who disappointingly pretty much disappears for very long stretches even when the focus is back on the Pequod. 

But Ahab's weird soliloquies and Stubb's hysterical ones and the sort of doomed MacBethesque prophecies and the so sad Pip and Starbuck's rigid yet sympathetic morality and the unexpected little playlets and the fact that Moby-Dick himself does not appear until the final thirty pages--it was all so much better and more than I expected. (The detailed descriptions of whale slaughter and the rendering down of whales were also even more disturbing than I'd envisioned.) 

Early on I was making note of some of my favorite quotes but then I dropped that so I offer only a few quotes from early on and then one very brief bit from the final chapters:

Scott points out that Melville had an office job:

"Huge hills and mountains of casks on casks were piled upon her wharves, and side by side the world-wandering whale ships lay silent and safely moored at last; while from others came a sound of carpenters and coopers, with blended noises of fires and forges to melt the pitch, all betokening that new cruises were on the start; that one most perilous and long voyage ended, only begins a second; and a second ended, only begins a third, and so on, for ever and for aye. Such is the endlessness, yea, the intolerableness of all earthly effort." 

--from page 51 of the Wordsworth Classics edition of Moby-Dick by Herman Melville (red letter edition aspect added)

 This bit also seems timely:

"I say, we good Presbyterian Christians should be charitable in these things, and not fancy ourselves so vastly superior to other mortals, pagans and what not, because of their half-crazy conceits on these subjects. There was Queequeg, now, certainly entertaining the most absurd notions about Yojo and his Ramadan;—but what of that? Queequeg thought he knew what he was about, I suppose; he seemed to be content; and there let him rest. All our arguing with him would not avail; let him be, I say: and Heaven have mercy on us all—Presbyterians and Pagans alike—for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending."

 --from page 70, ditto 

And then the long gap until I marked:

"In this attitude the white whale now shook the slight cedar as a mildly cruel cat her mouse."

--from page 449, ibid. (It's the "mildly cruel" that sells this one for me.)

 (And a few additional quotes, added later, are here)

I feel a bit sorry for Jonathan Evison's Again and Again; it's going to be pretty impossible for any book, I think, to compete with Moby-Dick.