You shouldn't be allowed to post on this board if you haven't read Moby-Dick

Yep

try and stop me, moby dickhole

Read it. Thought it'd be boring and a drag as I mostly read westerns and historical fiction but i loved every bit of it and the boring whaling parts everyon complains about really weren't that bad either. I also read and loved Don Quixote though.

Nothing America has produced is anywhere close to essential.

>letting Veeky Forums decide your tastes

the bible is not even that good

u're not alowed to psot in this board if ur never read [insert personal favorite book ] XDDD hello redit

why is Moby Dick held in such high regard?

Naruto
Bleach
DBZ
my top 3, not sure about if second place should be Bleach or DBZ

It is quite good, probably the best.

1.) Melville's Prose is top-notch. He stands alongside Shakespeare and Joyce in his aesthetic ability and I would argue there is really no one outside of the other two aforementioned writers who can compete with Melville's ability to turn words into unrivaled art. Without Melville, the aesthetic style of writers like Faulkner, McCarthy, Pynchon, Hemingway, and many others doesn't exist. After Shakespeare, he is arguably the most important stylist in the English language. I personally prefer the monologues and soliloquies of Ahab, Ismael, et al over any of Shakespeare's famous monologues. Ahab's monologue in The Symphony is, in my mind, the single greatest monologue in the English language.

2.) Thematic Cohesion. There is not a chapter, paragraph, or word that is wasted in Moby-Dick. It is all carefully crafted to tie into the core themes of the novel. Namely, the unconquerable of nature of Nature itself (and therefore, God), the Byronic quest conquer nature, and the noble, if ultimately futile, pursuit of defying fate/God. All of those chapters you find 'boring'-the ones related to cetology and whaling--they exist to serve the thematic purpose of the limits of human knowledge and the ultimately powerlessness which we as humans possess. We can classify and quantify and acquire unlimited amounts of knowledge about something but ultimately we hold no real power over our final destiny. As Ahab proclaims,

>"Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who that lifts this arm? But if the great sun not move of himself; but is as an errand boy in heaven; nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible power; how then can this one small heart beat; this one small brain think thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I. By heaven, man, we are turned round and round in this world, like yonder windlass, and Fate is the handspike"

The themes and ideas presented in Moby-Dick are universal and eternal. Moby-Dick is indeed an epic, but in this epic our heroes aren't waging war against gods or men but rather the idea of God and man itself. The epic quest which Ahab embarks upon is a quest for something which cannot be achieved or even properly understood, yet he carries forward nonetheless, thereby dooming himself and his men. The white whale can never be slain because the white whale is ultimately what lies beneath 'the mask', the core driving force of the cosmos. This force is something which can never truly be understood, and therefore can never be defeated, and mankind will continue 'striking at the mask' until his ultimate annihilation.

3.) Meta-narrative and literary form manipulation. Melville is the first writer to successfully integrate and utilize different literary forms. He utilizes literary structures reserved for plays, mythology, narrative poetry, and academic writing throughout the novel--predating the modernist who would come to utilize these techniques extensively by 60+ years. Modern and Post-modern aesthetics owes an incredible debt to Melville, who preceded these movements by over 50 years. The techniques which Melville employs throughout Moby-Dick pop up again in Joyce, Faulkner, Pynchon, and many others. You could argue that he was, in aesthetic form, the first modernist writer. The concept of a 'meta-narrative' literature was largely obscure and even mocked at the time of the publication of Moby-Dick and Melville himself was panned and shunned for it by his contemporary critics. Without Melville, you probably don't have the modernists or post-modernists and the idea of meta-textual works may have never come to fruition.

4.) Moby-Dick is the first (and possibly only) "American Epic"--It is the best attempt by an American writer, so far, to establish a national epic. The form, narrative, and structure establish Moby-Dick very distinctly as a traditional quest epic. It's characters, linguistics, and cultural themes are distinctly American. I would go as far as to say that Moby-Dick may very well be the only successful prose epic in English, as all other major epics exist in poetry form. Melville establishes and creates an American tapestry of distinctly cultural mythology. The concept of Manifest Destiny, the idea of the liberated and individualistic American, the emphasis on a distinctly American venture which seeks to conquer nature (whaling)--all of these Melville raises to mythical heights which has now successfully been integrated into the fabric of American history and culture. There are some other strong candidates for an "American Epic" (Huck Finn most prominently comes to mind), but nobody has match or rivaled Melville so far.

Mo be nimble
Moby dick
Mo be a really neat reading pick

TS Eliot, bitch

Melville thought it was good you faggot

So basically the theme is for wimps and losers.

I can't see myself enjoying it at all. I'm really not fond of water. In real life or film, so I really doubt literature us any different.

i think that you are saying this just to seem very smart
>melville
>faulkner
>o'connor
>pynchon
>mccarthy
>gass
these things are good
does "essential" mean a part of studied literary cannon, internationally renowned and influential like greek epics or dante or willy shake
because those things were a long long time ago. and it takes that time for things to be "recognized" in the sense that you mean
these authors will be studied for a long long time after they die but you have this dumb, objective perspective of what is "correct" in literature as if you couldn't possibly maintain a perspective of your own on what books are good. unless you think there is not a single good american book. i doubt that

this x1000000000

*bangs drum*
They call me fish whale, CAT.
**bango bongo**
We wuz whalers n shit.
New Bedford.
Patrick Stewart starring.
The whale is meaning and God.
*drumming lots*

But user, water and meditation are wedded forever.