Great essay. I didn't find the "boring" parts you quoted boring in the least, either here or when I listened to the Hootkins audio book. I like learning how people do things, so they were intrinsically interesting to me, but they're also quietly hilarious. People don't talk enough about how funny Melville can be, which Hootkins's excellent narration really brings out.
It's been eight or nine years since I reread it, but MD is a strong contender for my favorite book, and I kind of especially love the whaling chapters. They're not monoliths, they do a lot of different kinds of work, but I think it's helpful to think of them generally as pacing devices, breaking up the action of the book and controlling the tone, regulating the momentum big plot-driven thematic elements.
So in addition to the thematic work you identify, establishing the kind of commercial line that distinguishes the insane Ahab from the sane(r) crew, the "boring" chapters build tension between events. They mirror the punctuated excitement of life at sea - one minute you're trying not to die in a tiny boat pulled by a huge and angry force of nature, the next you're covering your entire body in tattoos or becoming an expert scrimshaw artist because there's literally nothing else to do. In turn, that whiplash alternation between boredom and terror broadly serves the broader nihilism of the novel (cf. war stories, especially Vietnam-era and later).
The other thing about the whaling chapters is they're often funny as hell. Melville is fucking funny, and his humor and playfulness shine through most often when we have a respite from the existential terror bits. Sometimes the humor consists in straight-up jokes or tongue-in-cheek narration, like the overblown exegesis on odor you quote. It serves the tonal regulation function I mention above, and also characterizes Ishmael, giving him a wry self-awareness that offsets his romanticism. The narration follows his own moods and gives him life.
But the whaling chapters also often have a humorous metatextual dimension - it's FUNNY that Melville pauses the plot to drag the reader in detail through the minutiae of the whaling industry. He KNOWS it's boring, at least superficially. He's playing with the reader, using his control over the text to manipulate how the reader feels, and it's funny to pull back the curtain on that manipulation by conspicuously jolting the momentum of a standard adventure book.
That break in the fourth wall also makes you think of the novel as a composed work, driven by an author with his own motives and vicissitudes, which serves the thematics of the novel. The author's manipulation of the reader according to his arbitrary whims serves, I think, as a metaphor for the cruel and angry God (or remorselessly uncaring nature) with whom/which the book grapples. But it also just is good in itself - I find it enjoyable to read, even when I'm sort of bored.
It probably helps that I'm not too bored - at times Melville seems to be kind of kidding on the square, indulging in stuff he knows will be boring to a lot of people but was really important to him when he was at sea, internal discourses on the whale and whaling that amused and fascinated him when he was deadly bored. If, like me, you take a lot of joy in the world in uncovering something new and interesting in stuff you didn't know before, it really takes the edge off the basic unpleasantness of being bored and allows you to enjoy the digressions and ponder their broader function in the work without just putting the whole novel down in frustration.
It's been so long since I read _Moby Dick_ -- I still own that copy and will have to check which version it is, as you explain. The book has never left me. I loved it. I do like to think more about Ishmael who tells the story--so in a way it is his story: observer, teller, survivor.
Yes I read a comment online that said if Pip could be driven mad by two hours alone in the sea, then Ishmael must surely have gone insane after thirty hours! I felt like there was some truth to that, but it was obviously a holy madness (which, to be fair, was also true of Pip)
What a brilliant essay on Moby-Dick! Thanks so much, Naomi. I loved Moby-Dick and have read it several times, but not recently. Melville hints at what is behind the appearances of the world in this book, and he seems to be a little like Schopenhauer in his thinking, that behind appearances is the Will. There is some question as to whether this Will is malevolent, like Ahab and the whale, or rather merely a force that moves everything without a motive other than survival and gratification.
I had that same thought! I actually looked up if he'd read Schopenhauer, and he did, but only in the 1860s, long after Moby-Dick was written and published! Apparently he was fascinated by the resemblances between his own philosophy and that of Schopenhauer.
Thank you for reading and writing about Moby Dick. I came late to it myself but I've reread it at least once a year since. It's become a comfort, my travel companion, what I reach for when everything else no longer holds my interest. It's possible to approach it so many ways: historical, philosophical, science fictional, as mourning for creatures/world lost. In our current moment of madness, Moby Dick may have unique meaning, too.
This is a great post. I think it's key to an epic narrative to have some boring sections. Part of what makes an epic epic is to include those parts of the journey that are just walking, or working or resting.
I adore Moby-Dick, but then I am also at least marginally interested in whaling as a pursuit, so the whaling chapters never bothered me the way that, say, the architectural history sections of Hans Brinker do (though I don't know that anyone is suggesting we should all read Hans Brinker for a great literary experience--I confess I gave up halfway through).
But I also think part of the greatness of Moby-Dick is that you can read it and skip the whaling sections and still read a good book, just as you can read Dante and ignore all the parts that are about Italian city-state politics--or you can focus on those sections, and either way you'll have a worthwhile reading experience.
When I read it at 21, I thought Moby-Dick was HILARIOUS. The whale digressions (I was very into postmodern digressions and their roots in the 19th Century novel -- Les Miserables has almost 200 pages about Parisian garbage disposal, and Notre Dame's elaborate archtectural digressions literally shifted popular opinion about Notre Dame de Paris specifically and gothic/medieval architecture in general from one of disgust to cherishing an old thing) were totally normal-seeming, both in the context of the literature of the time, which often was capacious and vague about "who" was narrating, and also seemed like Melville fucking with the notional reader, either by saying "you have to wait for the good stuff, ha ha ha!" or, more often, as you say, as a kind of chiding, "you can't POSSIBLY understand this story if you don't know how whaling is an integral subculture of its own and a foundation of the imperialist economy of the western world." (Plus there is a definite sarcastic authorial tone to feed this impression)
Maybe now I would think it less funny but I laughed a lot, out loud, while being riveted. If you want to see an enactment of the digression game of 19th Century writers, take a look at Raymond Roussel's mock-epic New Impressions of Africa, which is, formally, all digression, and was written in part in response to the impulse in the novel.
I love Les Miserables. It is wild! I mean from the very first page you're like...this author is completely out of control. Personally I found the digressions in Les Miserables to be a bit more intrinsically interesting than those in Moby Dick, but they're less productive artistically, since they seem less related to the themes of the whole. Thanks for the Roussel rec!
I'd have it open on my phone while reading the book, or sometimes I'd just read the book on my phone instead of, you know, the news. I love that Moby Dick has (generally) such short chapters. It helped me to keep my place, stay focused, read it on a phone, know when I needed to tap out on a chapter and just move on to the next one. I rarely did find myself tapping out, but it was nice that it was an option.
The only books I've read recently that compare to Moby Dick are Bleak House, Norman Rush's Mating, and The Last Samurai. They (mostly) stick with that same structure of short chapters that are focused on one particular idea or theme. They're also all books with moral vision. I admired Mating more than liked it, I reservedly adore Bleak House, and The Last Samurai is maybe the best debut novel since...Frankenstein? I don't know if I can think of a better one.
OMG this is so good. I'll have to post a link to this! I love Bleak House and TLS, but you're into Mating, huh??? Wow I should actually read it, I suppose.
Halfway through "Mating" I was sure it was one of the great American novels, unjustly forgotten after winning a National Book Award, but by the end, I thought it was just ok. A big swing and if not a miss, more like a single or a double. I just thought it was weird that no one had connected it to "Moby-Dick" before, because it's really similar, except the White Whale is a rogue anthropologist camped out in the Kalahari Desert (this is given away in the first four pages).
The problem is that the narrator in Mating is no Ishmael or Ludo or Sib. I mostly admire Rush's courage in diving into a first-person female perspective as a, um...pretty manly-looking man, based on the jacket cover, and I mostly admire the way he has his narrator let it all hang out, but her neuroticism got to be extremely tiring over nearly five hundred pages. I didn't want to hang out with her like I wanted to hang out with those other narrators, or hang out with crazy-ass Dickens and his insane coincidences and subplots.
This made me remember that I think that Thomas Pynchon's "Mason and Dixon" maybe also belongs in this list. Idk how much you like Pynchon in general, but "Mason and Dixon" is not only fun but actually kind of moving and tender, unlike a lot of his novels which are extremely cynical at their heart.
I always say the whaling chapters are the make-or-break chapters. Though that's flip.
For some reason--mainly that Melville has earned my attention already, I am COMMITTED to going where this narrator takes me--I've always quite loved the 'informational' chapters. I have never been bored with them, nor even that bewildered/mystified, the way I definitely was with some of Dana's language (which amounted to, for certain 3- and 4-page stretches, me being all "Oh, so he's hooking the shfuidbsd to the sididhnfn and then hoisting the bhghoido so these other guys can go up to the cchswodkj located behind the pqodkjdfh and heave the bubukslz so the ship can finally sldkfjfle--GOT IT." (Though don't get me wrong I loved Two Years Before The Mast as well, though for entirely differnt reasons; it does not compare with MD on a like, grabs-me-by-the-soul type level)).
I would argue, also, that you can't really be a Moby-Dick appreciator UNLESS you are on board (ha ha) with the less-narratively-intense chapters. The massiveness of this whale, and of the spiritual/psychological/emotional effects of this whale, can only be conveyed by the massiveness of the story. One would do better to consider WHY NOT long catalogues of whaling practice, rather than WHY. Overreach, yesssss, DO IT.
Oh there's definitely some boring stuff in Dana. I listened to him in audio, and my attention wandered for much longer sections than it did for Melville.
Your illustration is from the California Edition which I'm not sure is still in print or not but is the handsomest edition of Moby Dick ever made. Strongly recommend that edition if you can find it.
Yeah I never bought it as a physical book - was sorely tempted back in 1985 when it first came out, but it was $50 paperback - and today I have an ebook copy of it.
It's basically Cards Against Humanity but the white cards are all quotes from Moby Dick, and it's *brilliant*. It's not just appreciation, gives you a huge appreciation for the book's language. A friend of mine had found Moby Dick an absolute bore when he read it, but after playing an evening's worth of the game, he proclaimed "Melville's a genius."
Yes, always default to the Norton editions. But its always better to rawdog the works of the canon the first time you read them, as the original readers did -- no context, no consulting the footnotes, let it hit you in the face. Also, as you learned, don't read them when you're too young -- not intellectually prepared or mature enough. Like many of the truly great works of literature, Moby Dick is, among many other things, a nekyia: a voyage into the underworld. But it is above all else one of the great works of the Romantic period, which is why Melville started with the whale stuff: here's EVERYTHING we know about whales, including about their whiteneness. He offers a purely Enlightenment understanding of whales. Then he says in effect, you think you know about whales? I'm going to show you what there is to know. With that, he enters into the realm of the transcendent, where God rules and science cannot help you.
It's not a question of what's right for you at a given age; it's a question of what you're the right age for. There's an excellent example of this in the Mar 5 NYT review by Dwight Garner of the Helen Garner diaries. He says that for years he bounced off her fiction. With the diaries, however, he was finally old enough to bring the necessary level of patience and attention to her work, and it's greatness suddenly opened to him. Here's how you know: if you're fighting a great work of literature, arguing with it and resisting it, you're not ready. Too much about whales! Boring! Stop wasting my time! Too young. There's always Karenina and Pip, wonderful and accessible at any age.
Fantastic reflections on this classic text! I won’t reread it, too many unfortunate memories in high school English (when we had zero personal context to apply to the concepts you mention) so returning via your post was a delight. Thanks for the thoughtful insights and intriguing takeaways.
Understood. I have had that same reaction to many texts, including this one, honestly--there's a reason I read so many of Melville's other books before re-reading this one.
I have not read Moby-Dick, but I hope to this year. I did not read your post to avoid being too influenced by your reading, which I hope you'll take as a compliment. I'll come back after I read it.
Great essay. I didn't find the "boring" parts you quoted boring in the least, either here or when I listened to the Hootkins audio book. I like learning how people do things, so they were intrinsically interesting to me, but they're also quietly hilarious. People don't talk enough about how funny Melville can be, which Hootkins's excellent narration really brings out.
I know! I was surprised too, on this re-read, by the humor. And the narration really does it justice.
It's been eight or nine years since I reread it, but MD is a strong contender for my favorite book, and I kind of especially love the whaling chapters. They're not monoliths, they do a lot of different kinds of work, but I think it's helpful to think of them generally as pacing devices, breaking up the action of the book and controlling the tone, regulating the momentum big plot-driven thematic elements.
So in addition to the thematic work you identify, establishing the kind of commercial line that distinguishes the insane Ahab from the sane(r) crew, the "boring" chapters build tension between events. They mirror the punctuated excitement of life at sea - one minute you're trying not to die in a tiny boat pulled by a huge and angry force of nature, the next you're covering your entire body in tattoos or becoming an expert scrimshaw artist because there's literally nothing else to do. In turn, that whiplash alternation between boredom and terror broadly serves the broader nihilism of the novel (cf. war stories, especially Vietnam-era and later).
The other thing about the whaling chapters is they're often funny as hell. Melville is fucking funny, and his humor and playfulness shine through most often when we have a respite from the existential terror bits. Sometimes the humor consists in straight-up jokes or tongue-in-cheek narration, like the overblown exegesis on odor you quote. It serves the tonal regulation function I mention above, and also characterizes Ishmael, giving him a wry self-awareness that offsets his romanticism. The narration follows his own moods and gives him life.
But the whaling chapters also often have a humorous metatextual dimension - it's FUNNY that Melville pauses the plot to drag the reader in detail through the minutiae of the whaling industry. He KNOWS it's boring, at least superficially. He's playing with the reader, using his control over the text to manipulate how the reader feels, and it's funny to pull back the curtain on that manipulation by conspicuously jolting the momentum of a standard adventure book.
That break in the fourth wall also makes you think of the novel as a composed work, driven by an author with his own motives and vicissitudes, which serves the thematics of the novel. The author's manipulation of the reader according to his arbitrary whims serves, I think, as a metaphor for the cruel and angry God (or remorselessly uncaring nature) with whom/which the book grapples. But it also just is good in itself - I find it enjoyable to read, even when I'm sort of bored.
It probably helps that I'm not too bored - at times Melville seems to be kind of kidding on the square, indulging in stuff he knows will be boring to a lot of people but was really important to him when he was at sea, internal discourses on the whale and whaling that amused and fascinated him when he was deadly bored. If, like me, you take a lot of joy in the world in uncovering something new and interesting in stuff you didn't know before, it really takes the edge off the basic unpleasantness of being bored and allows you to enjoy the digressions and ponder their broader function in the work without just putting the whole novel down in frustration.
I agree with most of what you've written here. This is a good comment! Glad to hear from you
It's been so long since I read _Moby Dick_ -- I still own that copy and will have to check which version it is, as you explain. The book has never left me. I loved it. I do like to think more about Ishmael who tells the story--so in a way it is his story: observer, teller, survivor.
Yes I read a comment online that said if Pip could be driven mad by two hours alone in the sea, then Ishmael must surely have gone insane after thirty hours! I felt like there was some truth to that, but it was obviously a holy madness (which, to be fair, was also true of Pip)
What a brilliant essay on Moby-Dick! Thanks so much, Naomi. I loved Moby-Dick and have read it several times, but not recently. Melville hints at what is behind the appearances of the world in this book, and he seems to be a little like Schopenhauer in his thinking, that behind appearances is the Will. There is some question as to whether this Will is malevolent, like Ahab and the whale, or rather merely a force that moves everything without a motive other than survival and gratification.
I had that same thought! I actually looked up if he'd read Schopenhauer, and he did, but only in the 1860s, long after Moby-Dick was written and published! Apparently he was fascinated by the resemblances between his own philosophy and that of Schopenhauer.
Thank you for reading and writing about Moby Dick. I came late to it myself but I've reread it at least once a year since. It's become a comfort, my travel companion, what I reach for when everything else no longer holds my interest. It's possible to approach it so many ways: historical, philosophical, science fictional, as mourning for creatures/world lost. In our current moment of madness, Moby Dick may have unique meaning, too.
You're welcome! Once a year? I too have found it surprisingly consoling, honestly. Was the right book for this moment.
Once a year since 2014!
This is a great post. I think it's key to an epic narrative to have some boring sections. Part of what makes an epic epic is to include those parts of the journey that are just walking, or working or resting.
Agreed
I adore Moby-Dick, but then I am also at least marginally interested in whaling as a pursuit, so the whaling chapters never bothered me the way that, say, the architectural history sections of Hans Brinker do (though I don't know that anyone is suggesting we should all read Hans Brinker for a great literary experience--I confess I gave up halfway through).
But I also think part of the greatness of Moby-Dick is that you can read it and skip the whaling sections and still read a good book, just as you can read Dante and ignore all the parts that are about Italian city-state politics--or you can focus on those sections, and either way you'll have a worthwhile reading experience.
You're interested in whaling? Are you a boat person? My parents have gotten so into boats lately. Maybe they should read MD.
When I read it at 21, I thought Moby-Dick was HILARIOUS. The whale digressions (I was very into postmodern digressions and their roots in the 19th Century novel -- Les Miserables has almost 200 pages about Parisian garbage disposal, and Notre Dame's elaborate archtectural digressions literally shifted popular opinion about Notre Dame de Paris specifically and gothic/medieval architecture in general from one of disgust to cherishing an old thing) were totally normal-seeming, both in the context of the literature of the time, which often was capacious and vague about "who" was narrating, and also seemed like Melville fucking with the notional reader, either by saying "you have to wait for the good stuff, ha ha ha!" or, more often, as you say, as a kind of chiding, "you can't POSSIBLY understand this story if you don't know how whaling is an integral subculture of its own and a foundation of the imperialist economy of the western world." (Plus there is a definite sarcastic authorial tone to feed this impression)
Maybe now I would think it less funny but I laughed a lot, out loud, while being riveted. If you want to see an enactment of the digression game of 19th Century writers, take a look at Raymond Roussel's mock-epic New Impressions of Africa, which is, formally, all digression, and was written in part in response to the impulse in the novel.
I love Les Miserables. It is wild! I mean from the very first page you're like...this author is completely out of control. Personally I found the digressions in Les Miserables to be a bit more intrinsically interesting than those in Moby Dick, but they're less productive artistically, since they seem less related to the themes of the whole. Thanks for the Roussel rec!
Naomi, I would guess ChatGPT is drawing from Power Moby Dick:
http://www.powermobydick.com/
I'd have it open on my phone while reading the book, or sometimes I'd just read the book on my phone instead of, you know, the news. I love that Moby Dick has (generally) such short chapters. It helped me to keep my place, stay focused, read it on a phone, know when I needed to tap out on a chapter and just move on to the next one. I rarely did find myself tapping out, but it was nice that it was an option.
The only books I've read recently that compare to Moby Dick are Bleak House, Norman Rush's Mating, and The Last Samurai. They (mostly) stick with that same structure of short chapters that are focused on one particular idea or theme. They're also all books with moral vision. I admired Mating more than liked it, I reservedly adore Bleak House, and The Last Samurai is maybe the best debut novel since...Frankenstein? I don't know if I can think of a better one.
OMG this is so good. I'll have to post a link to this! I love Bleak House and TLS, but you're into Mating, huh??? Wow I should actually read it, I suppose.
Halfway through "Mating" I was sure it was one of the great American novels, unjustly forgotten after winning a National Book Award, but by the end, I thought it was just ok. A big swing and if not a miss, more like a single or a double. I just thought it was weird that no one had connected it to "Moby-Dick" before, because it's really similar, except the White Whale is a rogue anthropologist camped out in the Kalahari Desert (this is given away in the first four pages).
The problem is that the narrator in Mating is no Ishmael or Ludo or Sib. I mostly admire Rush's courage in diving into a first-person female perspective as a, um...pretty manly-looking man, based on the jacket cover, and I mostly admire the way he has his narrator let it all hang out, but her neuroticism got to be extremely tiring over nearly five hundred pages. I didn't want to hang out with her like I wanted to hang out with those other narrators, or hang out with crazy-ass Dickens and his insane coincidences and subplots.
This made me remember that I think that Thomas Pynchon's "Mason and Dixon" maybe also belongs in this list. Idk how much you like Pynchon in general, but "Mason and Dixon" is not only fun but actually kind of moving and tender, unlike a lot of his novels which are extremely cynical at their heart.
I always say the whaling chapters are the make-or-break chapters. Though that's flip.
For some reason--mainly that Melville has earned my attention already, I am COMMITTED to going where this narrator takes me--I've always quite loved the 'informational' chapters. I have never been bored with them, nor even that bewildered/mystified, the way I definitely was with some of Dana's language (which amounted to, for certain 3- and 4-page stretches, me being all "Oh, so he's hooking the shfuidbsd to the sididhnfn and then hoisting the bhghoido so these other guys can go up to the cchswodkj located behind the pqodkjdfh and heave the bubukslz so the ship can finally sldkfjfle--GOT IT." (Though don't get me wrong I loved Two Years Before The Mast as well, though for entirely differnt reasons; it does not compare with MD on a like, grabs-me-by-the-soul type level)).
I would argue, also, that you can't really be a Moby-Dick appreciator UNLESS you are on board (ha ha) with the less-narratively-intense chapters. The massiveness of this whale, and of the spiritual/psychological/emotional effects of this whale, can only be conveyed by the massiveness of the story. One would do better to consider WHY NOT long catalogues of whaling practice, rather than WHY. Overreach, yesssss, DO IT.
Oh there's definitely some boring stuff in Dana. I listened to him in audio, and my attention wandered for much longer sections than it did for Melville.
Your illustration is from the California Edition which I'm not sure is still in print or not but is the handsomest edition of Moby Dick ever made. Strongly recommend that edition if you can find it.
It got republished! I should've linked to it, sorry. https://www.ucpress.edu/books/moby-dick-or-the-whale/paper. I own a copy, but admittedly I mostly read this as an ebook.
Yeah I never bought it as a physical book - was sorely tempted back in 1985 when it first came out, but it was $50 paperback - and today I have an ebook copy of it.
It's hard to find now, but if you can ever find a copy of Dick the board game, snap it up: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/183145/dick-a-card-game-based-on-the-novel-by-herman-melv
It's basically Cards Against Humanity but the white cards are all quotes from Moby Dick, and it's *brilliant*. It's not just appreciation, gives you a huge appreciation for the book's language. A friend of mine had found Moby Dick an absolute bore when he read it, but after playing an evening's worth of the game, he proclaimed "Melville's a genius."
I also recommend the annual Moby Dick marathon reading in New Bedford, Massachusetts: https://www.whalingmuseum.org/program/moby-dick-marathon-2025/
Yes, always default to the Norton editions. But its always better to rawdog the works of the canon the first time you read them, as the original readers did -- no context, no consulting the footnotes, let it hit you in the face. Also, as you learned, don't read them when you're too young -- not intellectually prepared or mature enough. Like many of the truly great works of literature, Moby Dick is, among many other things, a nekyia: a voyage into the underworld. But it is above all else one of the great works of the Romantic period, which is why Melville started with the whale stuff: here's EVERYTHING we know about whales, including about their whiteneness. He offers a purely Enlightenment understanding of whales. Then he says in effect, you think you know about whales? I'm going to show you what there is to know. With that, he enters into the realm of the transcendent, where God rules and science cannot help you.
So what should people read when they're young?
It's not a question of what's right for you at a given age; it's a question of what you're the right age for. There's an excellent example of this in the Mar 5 NYT review by Dwight Garner of the Helen Garner diaries. He says that for years he bounced off her fiction. With the diaries, however, he was finally old enough to bring the necessary level of patience and attention to her work, and it's greatness suddenly opened to him. Here's how you know: if you're fighting a great work of literature, arguing with it and resisting it, you're not ready. Too much about whales! Boring! Stop wasting my time! Too young. There's always Karenina and Pip, wonderful and accessible at any age.
Are those not works of the canon?
They most certainly are.
Brilliant as always, Naomi. I found this useful as an introduction https://www.nathanielphilbrick.com/why-read-moby-dick
Thanks for the rec!
Hope you find it useful, Naomi
Fantastic reflections on this classic text! I won’t reread it, too many unfortunate memories in high school English (when we had zero personal context to apply to the concepts you mention) so returning via your post was a delight. Thanks for the thoughtful insights and intriguing takeaways.
Understood. I have had that same reaction to many texts, including this one, honestly--there's a reason I read so many of Melville's other books before re-reading this one.
I have not read Moby-Dick, but I hope to this year. I did not read your post to avoid being too influenced by your reading, which I hope you'll take as a compliment. I'll come back after I read it.
No problem! Excited to hear your thoughts