Moby Dick

What's so good about it?

It's the greatest novel written by an american, a complete anomaly compared to the rest of american literature.

It's the greatest novel ever written, with the possible exception of P R O U S T

Come on, user. You don't like any other American work? I mean, really? ... Really?

ahem...

>a woman
dropped

it would be the poetry of americas bible

nothing; it's fag erotica

Proust isn't amazing all his work is nice purple prose with no deeper meaning.

>didnt get the deeper meaning

Moby Dick is the ultimate american novel.

Moby Dick, in its length and depth, in the subjects it touches and the things it references is vast like america is, geographically, vast like the american dream and vast like americans are (kek).

Ahab's mad quest to chase the whale across the entire world reminds one of manifest destiny and the diverse crew of the Pequod recalls the usa's immigrant background.

For anyone interested in using Melville's novel as a tool to discuss race, class or american culture, Moby Dick is rich in things to talk about and the diverse interpretations they offer.

However it's a lot more than that. Moby Dick touches on universal themes (Man vs nature, man vs god, what can man truly know about the ultimate nature of reality, etc..) and does it in spectacular fashion. It's also not unaware of what has been said before regarding those things, just take a look at the long list of references, citations and quotes that are present in the novel.

Lastly Moby Dick is also an incredible esthetic achievement. Simply put, it has god tier prose which serves to support its (literal) god tier themes. The writing always serve a purpose.

One idea for example is that the tediousness and clunkiness involved in the Cetology chapter and others like it is a way to remind us through metaphor and by text of mankind's heroic but perhaps ultimately fruitless effort to classify and understand the natural world.

What's the deeper meaning?

>it would be the poetry of americas bible
along with cormac mcarthy, pynchon, david foster wallace, thomas jefferson/benjamin franklin/george washington, walt whitman, emerson, and maybe more, (all the textbooks)

>purple prose
Inigo Montoya.jpg

I unironically enjoyed the cetology chapter
Good analysis though

>Proust isn't amazing all his work is nice purple prose
reading for prose...user i..

and tom clancy

and 50 shades of grey

close, but no close enough
dick still trumps it

>hating based eliot
what a pseud

Good prose, it's funny, and it's comfy.

>What's so good about it?
It's the greatest americ-
Kill yourself

>david foster wallace
which is why he killed himself, because he believed he deserved more praise and celebration