03-15-2017, 01:48 PM
Just reread this again. It just keeps getting better. Melville's musings are the best part, not the plot or the whaling descriptions.
This time I had a companion book - Dive Deeper: Journeys with Moby Dick by George Cotkin. He has one chapter for each chapter of Melville's book. Some are focused on the contents of the chapter in Moby Dick, some take off from there to go elsewhere, rather like Melville's writing. (In my opinion Melville does to the 19th century novel form something like the Grateful Dead does to the song form.) It was interesting to read the criticism he brings in. Oddly, no one that he quotes or mentions says anything about what I consider to be a central point: that Stubb and Ahab are opposite figures. He also introduced me to the art of Matt Kish, who did a series of pictures for every chapter of the book.
This time I had a companion book - Dive Deeper: Journeys with Moby Dick by George Cotkin. He has one chapter for each chapter of Melville's book. Some are focused on the contents of the chapter in Moby Dick, some take off from there to go elsewhere, rather like Melville's writing. (In my opinion Melville does to the 19th century novel form something like the Grateful Dead does to the song form.) It was interesting to read the criticism he brings in. Oddly, no one that he quotes or mentions says anything about what I consider to be a central point: that Stubb and Ahab are opposite figures. He also introduced me to the art of Matt Kish, who did a series of pictures for every chapter of the book.
the hands that guide me are invisible