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Bromley's Book Reviews
Moby Dick
by Herman Mellville (1851)
Univ.
of Virginia e-text here
Entered: Mar 13/05
God keep me from every completing anything. This
whole book is but a draught [draft] -- nay, but the draught of a draught. Oh,
Time, Strength, Cash and Patience! (p. 149)
Yes, the old boy had fun writing this one, cash or no.
Don't bother with the reviews or academic dissections. No one
can capture this book. When they do, they reach too far and miss it entirely.
The "study" of Moby Dick is likely why I never bothered with it. I'm only going to it now because my son read a
condensed version when he was eleven, and I am hereby shamed into it. (Next to
catch up to him is The Illiad...). Here's the deal with Moby Dick:
It's funny! Forget the rest, forget it. Just enjoy this one,
and laugh. Here's from page 49, the narrator Ishmael's description of his
roommate Queequeg, a Southern Pacific cannibal prince:
With much interest I sat watching him. Savage
though he was, and hideously marred about the face -- at least to my taste --
his countenance yet had a something in it which was by no means disagreeable.
You cannot hide the soul. Through all his unearthly tattooings, I thought I saw
the traces of a simple honest heart; and in his large, deep eyes, fiery black
and bold, there seemed tokens of a spirit that would dare a thousand devils. And
besides all this, there was a certain lofty bearing about the Pagan, which even
his uncouthness could not altogether maim. He looked like a man who had never
cringed and never had had a creditor. Whether it was, too, that his head being
shaved, his forehead was drawn out in freer and brighter relief, and looked more
expansive than it otherwise would, this I will not venture to decide; but
certain it was his head was phrenologically an excellent one. It may seem
ridiculous, but it reminded me of General Washington's head, as seen in the
popular busts of him. It had the same long regularly graded retreating slope
from above the brows, which were likewise very projecting, like two long
promontories thickly wooded on top. Queequeg was George Washington
cannibalistically developed.
The book was written in 1851, well amidst the Parson Weem's
canonization of George Washington -- can't you just hear Abe Lincoln's howl at
"George Washington cannibalistically developed"! Or at this, of the Quaker ship
owners in Nantucket:
Now, Bildad, like Peleg, and indeed many other
Nantucketers, was a Quaker, the island having been originally settled by that
sect; and to this day its inhabitants in general retain in an uncommon measure
the peculiarities of the Quaker, only variously and anomalously modified by
things altogether alien and heterogeneous. For some of these same Quakers are
the most sanguinary of all sailors and whale-hunters. They are fighting
Quakers; they are Quakers with a vengeance.
(pp. 72-73)
"Quakers with a vengeance"!
And here's my favorite so far, and I'm just cracking into this
book. (Supposedly, the middle of the book is weighed down by descriptions of
whaling; we'll see.) After lecturing the savage Queequag on the dangers of his religious
fervor, for
Now, as I before hinted, I have no objection
to any person's religion, be it what it may, so long as that person does not
kill or insult any other person, because that other person don't believe it
also. But when a man's religion becomes really frantic; when it is a positive
torment to him; and, in fine, makes this earth of ours an uncomfortable inn to
lodge in; then I think it high time to take that individual aside and argue
the point with him.
Ishmael suggested that Queequag's day-long fasting was good for
neither body nor soul, that "hell is an idea first born on an undigested
apple-dumpling; and since then perpetuated through the hereditary dyspepsias
nurtured by Ramadans." Queequag, of course, only once suffered dyspepsias, and
that following a feast his kingly father held upon fifty conquered enemies. A
sailor once told Ishmael of such a feast:
he told me that it was the custom, when a
great battle had been gained there, to barbecue all the slain in the yard or
garden of the victor; and then, one by one, they were placed in great wooden
trenchers, and garnished round like a pilau, with breadfruit and cocoanuts;
and with some parsley in their mouths, were sent round with the victor's
compliments to all his friends, just as though these presents were so many
Christmas turkeys.perpetuated through the hereditary dyspepsias nurtured by
Ramadans.
Queequag replied to the lecture with,
a sort of condescending concern and
compassion, as though he thought it a great pity that such a sensible young
man should be so hopelessly lost to evangelical pagan piety.
(p. 86)
How awful that the academy has claimed this "greatest American
novel." No, no, no! It may be that, and it may be worth a semester's study, but
of all that it is it is too damned funny!
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