A review by joakley
Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

5.0

Damn! Obviously a long overdue read, I am very intrigued by how this book has been presented to me in the past. People will say it’s a great story if I am ok with hearing about random facts and details about whales, and idk I guess I just didn’t process that fully? Or the idea that the back of this book says that this is “a stirring tragedy of vengeance and obsession”… “the greatest sea story ever told”. Like ok yeah maybe? But really what this book very often IS is not a story at all. Half of this book is a story and half of it is not, this is not a story with lots of tangents. It is substantively a tangent. I think Melville, already in 1851, was tired of novels and their typical narrative progressions. He is absolutely SHITTING on the usual method of reading a thrilling story and deriving symbols and metaphors and morals from it. The whole chapter talking about what the “whiteness” of the whale means is total bullshit. Every time there is a moment of suspense he absolutely “you thought”’s the reader and slaps you with four encyclopedic chapters. This is a novel that at the same time that it is a great adventure it is also concurrently a takedown of narrative in general. It’s sweet