(I am also in awe of his knowledge, his poetic skill, and his humour- if one recognises the variety of ways Melville is taking jabs at all of literary history, that narrator is really very funny!) More than anything, though, Moby Dick breaks my freakin' heart in so many places, I'm sorry there are readers who miss out on experiencing such a complex and profound sensation.On a street before Baptista Minola's household, Lucentio appears, accompanied by his faithful servant Tranio.
The awesomeness with which the white whale appears, the mind-blowingly massive rage and power of its depiction- I am in awe of Melville's abilities to take a reader to such (emotional, psychological) places. He must have been doing something effectively, as he caused even me- a lifelong animal-rights advocate- to develop, like Ahab, a totally irrational enmity for that dang whale.
THE CLASSICS ACT S A BAD IDEA HOW TO
Rdbot (Reese): gotta defend my boys! o) Grapes of Wrath taught me how to cook with only pennies in my pocket (really!)- turns out I'm quite good at it and so I feel compelled to "give back" in whatever way I can to Mr. Why On the Road, and not, say, Visions of Cody (isn't this pretty much the same book?), or Burroughs's Junky? (Disclaimer: I barely remember the former and haven't read the latter, but I offer both titles to underline my impression that On the Road seems a rather arbitrary choice as The Classic even from within its own genre). but other than the mythology of circumstances under which this was written and submitted for publication, I still do not understand why THIS book- of all that qualifies as beat-generation literature, or even of Kerouac's own bibliography- is the go-to classic of that era I would have expected the phase which elevated this book to the reputation it enjoys would have passed (or at the very least, the sheer quantity of people who by now have read it and found it overrated, obnoxious, vacuuous, etc- you think word would be out by now), but I guess pre-Art School enrollees still need something safe to hold in front of their faces in coffee shops to give the appearance of being quasi-rebellious/ like everyone else. On the other hand, I did vote for On the Road (my only vote, in fact), which I read as little more than a spastically-written account of one man's tendencies toward racist exotification, pedophilia, alcoholism, and poseur intellectualism. So, I did not vote for it because this is not "classics I don't like", but something more like "books which I don't understand why they are standing the test of time" (which begs why Eat, Pray, Love, at only four years old, makes an appearance.)
For instance, Catcher in the Rye dulls my senses so completely I just want to claw my eyes out when anyone praises it as thoroughly relateable however, I can understand why it has continued to stick out: it is a record of a certain mood, melancholy and anxiety, particular to a certain age and perhaps era, and certainly captures something specifically American, and so will continue to be read for these (and other) reasons.
I don't know that we all have our own list of classics. just didn't stick it out to that very last word.Įdit: cuz Melville would have written he is smarter than we o) People who get hung up on "whale details", I suspect they just didn't have what it takes to fight, struggle, and survive that journey, with poetry in their soul still left intact, no less. There's a rhythm in this book that mirrors exactly the events and subjective experiences of the characters- do readers really have the impression Melville is just a dumb guy who doesn't know how to write? No, he's smarter than us, he's doing something to us, and even if that thing he's doing is unpleasant, it serves a purpose.
THE CLASSICS ACT S A BAD IDEA FULL
If there is one thing I wish I could get the people who say Moby Dick is "boring full of useless details" to see, it is that when the reader is thinking that things are going "on and on, nothing is happening, this is going nowhere and there's no end in sight, we don't understand why we're supposed to care about this", Herman Melville is giving you a pretty damn good idea of what the guys on the ship are going through, too.
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