What is the point of all the encyclopaedic stuff about the fucking whale?

Because they are interesting and written in a beautiful way.
Also, they often link into some sort of metaphor or philosophizing.
They are the book. The whale revenge plot is just a vessel for Melville to put all this into.

thelectern.blogspot.com.br/2012/03/moby-dick-herman-melville.html

Without some hits touching plain facts, historical and otherwise, of the fishery, they might scout at Moby-Dick as a monstrous fable or still worse and more detestable, a hideous and intolerable allegory.

Because Moby Dick is actually not as great as it's said to be and everyone who says otherwise is a pseud. If anyone can give any reasoning other than "dude you just don't get it I do cuz I'm smart lmao" as to what the cetology shit is good for, I'll eat my own dookie.

>Melville was just bestowing some of his expertise to those of his readers who weren't seamen.
This is only partly true since he often tells things which are untrue and that he knows are untrue. It plays a role far bigger than just contextual knowledge. It has far more to do with aping man's desire to know and understand and the inherent limitations with the models he employs in doing so. It's a book about an overbearing, unknowable, transcendental existence and the ways we choose to engage with it.

Check the other thread

People who say 'give me any reason' when there are countless arguments and reason available are blind to statments that don't confirm their biases. If you've managed to get this far in life without figuring out why moby dick is one of the greatest novels no one here or anywhere will ever convince you. Pity this man for he is destined to live life as a contrarian pseud.

Just because you're too retarded to understand something and people don't want to put up with you is not proof of a vast conspiracy of educated people to make you feel dumb

This

WHITE

WHALE

HOLY

GRAIL

The call of the wretched sea

As I suspected, no legitimate arguments. If there are plenty of reasons, what are they?

Haven't yet read this

Exactly how much of the book is information about the whale?

Because Moby Dick is literally meant to be partially fictional, and partially encyclopedic.

thanks for the rec friendo :^)

jej

I like this analysis

a good third

the best part about moby dick is when it says dick right there on the cover lmao

>Melville was just bestowing some of his expertise to those of his readers who weren't seamen.
I fucking hate this meme. It's as reductive as that Machiavelli-was-satire meme. If he only wanted to exposition all over whales, he could (and would) have done it more gracefully.

>complaining that the author is white, male, cisgendered, or racist

Dismissed.

In the other thread that you conveniently ignored.

Please elaborate on your comments on Melville exposition and Machiavelli

As I suspected, you ignored because it would be inconvenient to consider its existence.

...

I can't help but feel the person who made the comic didn't understand Moby Dick very well.

see and but ill bite. One of the main themes of Moby Dick is the futility of mans quest to conquer nature. The cetology chapters are a direct means of accomplishing this. Ishmael breaks down cetology into a seemingly neat and organized system, but the system is laughably stupid. He's using unrealistic metrics to classify the whales, and he leaves a shit ton of different whales out of his system entirely. This gives is a (pretty funny) example of how we as humans think we are doing some great service to the universe by classifying and naming things, when really we are more or less making stuff up.

I feel like the person who wrote that album doesn't understand Moby Dick very well.

pic unrelated

It's to add extra DEPTH :^)

get it?

what chapter are you on? Tell me then i can open your eyes about the need for that prose

>What is the point of all the encyclopaedic stuff about the fucking whale?
about 90% is info about whaling

it's an encyclopedia with a plot thread fahm

Okay these are all great and whatever but you could get all that shit across without spending fucking 50% of the book or more harping on harpoons and whale guts and shit. There's plenty of interesting, non-boring ways to theme it up. The problem is that Melville is just not that good.

There are only so many ways to say you didn't find something funny. You clearly didn't like those chapters. Fair enough. I can see why, but I and many other people absolutely love them. For many people, myself included many of those chapters are our favourites.

Also to answer your question no, I don't think the purpose of those chapters could have been conveyed very well in a more traditional way.

It's good in the same way reading Proust is good.
His past wasn't any more interesting than whaling.

Is moby dick the Thief: The Metal Age of Veeky Forums?

Is it at least victoriancore (but at sea)?

I'm imagining it as a space adventure with crazy mysterious dangerous monoliths except its the ocean because that's what people thought of the ocean then. I didn't like 20000 leagues, does that mean MD isn't for me?

i fucking love it when /v/ posts on Veeky Forums

fucking hilarious, stay golden dude.

Yes, if you don't like one book about the ocean you won't like any others. It's a fact.

I'd say Moby Dick isn't for you because you sound like an idiot. Not because of your relationship with other books.

Please make an online journal or something, mate. Your worldview is fascinating. I would legitimately watch your manchild let's plays just to hear you ramble.

cuz melville is tryna get you as obsesses with whales as Ahab is duh

it's in the works!

I liked The Last Ship, every other page was pretty much about the sea. It was like "a man isn't a man unless he's a man of the sea. A woman can be a man too as long as she's a man of the sea. holy fuck do you have any idea how long I've been on this fucking ocean?"

I am an idiot, but I'm gleefully aware of it.

thx pal I try.

But no one answered my questions about Moby Dick being like Thief or victoriancore. I saw in the heart of the sea and it was mostly lame except the scene just after the first whaling where it's all dark and they're cutting up the whale and the kid has to go inside and it's kinda 2spooky but with whales. Also the connection of that difficulty of the oil harvest to financial markets. Like "shit was hard back in the day, yo we ventured into the mines of the monsters to get the unobtainum that our society runs on but we're basically stealing fire from the gods except the gods are 2spooky whales." I would watch/read about that for hours and hours and hours

Not nearly as much as people itt are making it out to be. If I recall correctly, the hard cetology bits make up only a chapter, albeit a pretty long one. The rest is peppered in with the narrative. It's not an encyclopedia at all. In fact, it's pretty damn funny and you'll realize that only a few pages in.

This. The first chapter has a fart joke.

Is that the pythagorean one?

Yes. I actually always thought that was some shit about triangles but i'm reading a different version now with a footnote about the pythagorean maxim

If you don't think there could be a better way to convey those ideas than rambling encyclopedic tedium then I understand why Moby Dick is appealing to you. :^)

>Melville was just bestowing some of his expertise to those of his readers who weren't seamen

They were all semen at some point, idiot

>Falling for the bait
>This bait made me respond

If you don't like that stuff, read his other books. The prose is as good and the stories are interesting. But the reason Moby-Dick is considered the best American novel is because of those parts.

These are the worst threads on Veeky Forums. Not the shitposting, not the Tao Lin or Mira Gonzalez threads, not the women or minority hating threads, not the "I'm a literary genius threads," but these. The threads with a underlying feeling of "I'm so special because I read books" while barely understanding anything about them. The fact that you only got into the encyclopedic stuff of Moby Dick before making a stupid thread about it, and having to tell everyone about it demonstrates this. Yeah you try to cover yourself with ironic jokes, and little buddy-buddy remarks like "fucking whale" but I know you think you're smart and "cultured" for reading Moby Dick. You don't understand anything about the importance of art. Oh maybe you like a few phrases here and there, and get a little tingle occasionally, but you ultimately use art for yourself. Because you think it adds an interesting side to your personality. You love thinking about having read books, but have no idea of what their actual significance is. You probably enjoy saying that "the prose is good." You act all innocent, telling yourself and trying to give off the impression that you don't take yourself too seriously, that books are just a fun hobby for you.. And you are what is killing literature, you and your ignorant, self-aggrandizing whoring of the only secular means of saving the human soul.

autism

This.

Melville was writing about a topic that was completely alien to most of his intended audience, so he took the time to give them the background required to understand the book. Kinda shit that he foreshadowed Ahab's death so hard though.

DESTROYED

DESTROYED

...

You didn't read the book did you? As it is only one chapter. People like to pretend that ever chapter that wasn't about the narrative was the cetology chapter.

Someone had to say it.

he thought whaling was cool

that's the main reason for everything
asides from all the symbolism and drama and whatever

melville just thought whaling was incredibly interesting and badass and wanted everyone to share in it. and because he's so enthusiastic and such a good writer, it's fun to read and you actually start to believe him

or at least i did

>he thought whaling was cool
>that's the main reason for everything
>asides from all the symbolism and drama and whatever
Jesus Christ. All you said is asides from all the actual important reasons why he did it he did it for fun. If we pretend that the actual primary motivations aren't important then sure we can make anything to be motivated by anything.

>Who the hell do you think you are? Who the hell do you think you are?! You any kind of artist? Anybody know who you are?! Maybe everybody else wants to enjoy the peace and quiet! This is one of the most important places in all of North America, who are you?! WHO ARE YOU?! You miserable, presumptuous no talent. You're no artist. An artist respects the silence, it serves the foundation of creativity. You OBVIOUSLY don't have the talent. You don't have enough respect for yourself or other people OR what it is to express yourself, in music, or ANY OTHER form of creativity. And I'm an NYU Film School graduate, SUCKA. At the school of visual arts and the Academy of Art University San Fransico. YOU SUCK! You're a no talent! If you really had talent you'd go practice and then get yourself a gig, instead of ruining the end of the day for everybody down here. You DISGRACE! You are everything that's gone wrong in this world. You're a self-consumed, NO TALENT, MEDIOCRE piece of SHIT, and I've earned my right to say it. OKAY? I walked Bob Dylan up on stage, who the fuck are you? I knew The Grateful Dead from 1966, WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU? You're nothing! YOU'RE NOTHING! You are nothing. And you will never be anything. NEVER. How dare you? How dare you?! You miserable, mediocre nothing. Shame on you. You crack that stupid little smile, you pimp. Go learn to play. Go learn to play. You're FLAT. You can't even carry a fucking note. I don't care about your little horn-lip. It doesn't mean that you know how to play. You're FLAT. I'm trained CLASSICALLY, I'm trained contemporaneously, you suck.

Welcome to the thread. Instead of making stupid reductive posts why don't you read the insights from the people here who used their brains to read this book.

>encyclopaedic stuff

Just as the Bible has boring facts, so does Moby Dick.

Leviathan was better.

Wrong.

So you didn't enjoy arguably the best english language novel ever written. That's okay. It's time to move on.

IMO the sheer diversity of content and stylistic approaches in Moby-Dick is one of it's most compelling strengths. What attracts you to literature in the first place if your pragmatic, utilitarian approach only leads you to question why these sections were "necessary"? They are fascinating and often humorous. Certain tangential chapters (e.g. the playful musings on the first civilization to sit in the crow's nest) were unironically some of my favorite sections in the entire book.

>doesn't see the false equivocation

>cisgendered

Be gone mortal. Respect my right to be a dragon god.

One other reason: It's a counterpoint to Ahab's overriding obsession. The whaler is a foundry, workshop, butcher, refinery, tannery, and refinery on the ocean. When Ahab starts ranting about a harpoon forged from horseshoe nails he's tempered in blood and lightning to kill the white whale, it's supposed to be in sharp relief to the mundane business of whaling that the book describes.

...

there are a few reasons:

>elegy for the dying whaling industry
>vessel for Melville to meditate on philosophical themes of the novel that are more actively demonstrated in scenes of dialogue. "the whiteness of the whale" is a very good example of a seemingly expendable chapter that actually hashes out tons of themes seen elsewhere in the novel
>huge and boring middle section replicates ishmael's experience of learning about whaling and living on the ship for several years
>inclusion of tons of stupid shit demonstrates ishmael's attempts to deal w/ life's struggles by (often unsuccessfully) attempting to explain and analyze them - Ishmael is a pretty inactive character, even compared to Pussy-Starbuck, his way of dealing w/ Ahab and his fucked whaling voyage is to "write" Moby Dick, or narrate the story to someone (maybe a random person at a bar) if you want to take the direct address to the audience "Call me Ishmael" literally - the rambling nature of Loomings adds to the idea that Ishmael is trying to understand the rest of the book by conversationally rattling off anything he can think of related to Whaling in order to somehow conquer whats going to happen later. Whole idea of trying to conquer life by analyzing / explaining / writing is probably also one of the frames of thought that Melville used when he was writing Moby Dick so the encyclopedic stuff can also be seen as Melville's attempt to conquer all the pain in the novel by going way overboard on explanation / analysis - as if to truly understand the novel's themes we also have to understand exactly how whaling works. arguably a futile effort on the part of writers who do this (Ishmael doesn't seem to get any closure), but seeing it in action is pretty cool IMO. When Melville died, Moby Dick was still unappreciated which sort of adds to the coolness of this element of the novel IMO.

continuation of my post, on that last point:

also seems likely that Melville knew that writing / explaining would never lead anyone to a greater understanding of unknowable and transcendental concepts that we deal w/ everyday. Explanation / analysis cant ACTUALLY conquer anything in an absolute sense. Ishmael tries to do it thru writing. Melville is arguably trying to capture or explain some human struggle through writing, albeit in a much more self-aware way than Ishmael is.

*this human struggle

me again. Idk, if anyone is confused why all the stupid shit is included in the middle of the novel, go read Loomings a bunch of times. Almost all of this stuff is suggested in there. Ishmael wanting to be "friendly w/ monsters" - his way of conquering struggle is to "know" it. Is this worthwhile even if its a doomed pursuit? one of the big questions of the novel in my eyes.

>elegy for the dying whaling industry

Probably this. Moreover, it is a record of hard-won knowledge that was doomed to become defunct. He probably wanted to record it before it was lost forever.

i'm sorry, i didn't realise the book was no fun allowed

the book isn't very fun tho. reading it is a huge fucking chore. probably a waste of time if you don't want to put in the work to really understand it. lots of books that are more enjoyable, more accessible, and more cathartic if you want to read something just for fun. just reading moby dick cover to cover to say that you've read it is a huge waste of time. you just put yourself thru hours of boring, dense and often confusing prose for no good reason. if you do this you'll probably forget anything you liked about it after a month. you'll just remember "the first 140 pages were funny and Ahab was fucking insane"

like if you want to read a long and influential classic that you can enjoy and get something out of w/o spending too much time on it read anna karenina or potrait of a lady or invisible man or something.

I thought Moby Dick was a very fun reading for a 135 chapters book. As i am not an native speaker and i don't care about whales, it was very pleasing and an easy read.

The encyclopedic thing in the chapter 32 was interesting and amusing...

Pleb
Pseud

but which one's better?

frankenstein had the same themes without being 90% exposition; why does Veeky Forums have such a hardon for moby dick?

it's a casual filter

I don't think that's true.

Also I guess you missed it because it doesn't confirm your biases but most posters here defending the dick are big fans of what youre calling exposition

The real chapter what they oughtta have cut out was this gay one after they're all drunk on oath-swearin juice and the French sailors and the Maltese sailors and the St. Jagos sailors all dance cause there's no ladies to dance with.

It falls right between the narrative chapter in which Ahab makes them swear to kill the whale and the two exposition chapters where the narrator reveals to us the madness of Ahabs mind and then speculates on the property of whiteness. The dancing is a real momentum killer.

>Moby Dick
>Frankenstein
>The same themes
Please do point out all the examples of Gnosticism in Frankenstein. I'll wait right here.

Psst...user. Your lack of reading comprehension is showing.