Studio8 - Uniting the Arts

I had heard that this is a boring book, so I'm reading it to decide for myself. There definitely is a sense of humour present; but so far, it is rather dull (and I'm reading abridged).

Moby Dick will seem boring to people brought up on a diet of pulp, porn, and potboilers, soundbites, mp3s, and Ho-wood flix...

The opening comical scenes with Queequeg and Ishmael or the later scenes with Ahab, Starbuck, etc on the Pequod are
not exactly entertainment---more like a bleak, bizarre symphony, with strange fits of beauty--such as Ishmael in the Crows Nest-- and a catalog of reasons against Jehovah..........

Not a book for the tame or the spineless...if yr a cafe hepcat ya ought to just set it aside and go back to On the 'Roid

I tried to read it a long time ago.

I found it slow moving and very boring, and contrary to perezoso's reply, I wasn't brought up on a diet of pulp, porn, potboilers, soundbites, mp3s and Ho-wood flix.

I remember in school they assigned Moby Dick to the guys and The Scarlet Letter to the girls (9th or 10th grade.... can't remember... maybe it was 8th.)

Why? I donno. Maybe they wanted the boys to read something adventurous and the girls to learn not to commit adultery when they grew up. LOL! Stupid, if you ask me.

The Scarlett Letter was similarly boring.

I'm just not too hip on the style of writing in either book. It's archaic and, though I do like some older styles of writing (I'm a diehard Shakespeare fan, for instance), reading both of these books was a chore, not a pleasure.

But they are both classics and given that, classics don't become classics for no reason, so I imagine there's literary value in them. But the themes simply didn't appeal to me at all and wading through them was like what I would imagine doing time would be like. I couldn't wait until I was finished.

*shrug*... to each his own.

Come back and offer your impressions after you finish the darn thing (if you can hang in there that long.)

Aw ,you may, dear, have Melville's great tome confused with Moby Prick, which, after the first "money shot" on page 2 was a bit of a letdown for you?

heh heh heh

LOL!!! Moby Prick.

That's rich, Mizzter Perezono.

No, I never read that one.

But I did read a really funny novel called, "Under the Boardwalk," by Seymour Butz.

Check it out! You might like it.

Really? Perhaps you could plagiarize him for yr autobiography


I betcha just skimmed the Chuffsnotes......



CHAPTER 66

The Shark Massacre


When in the Southern Fishery a captured Sperm Whale, after long and weary toil, is brought alongside late at night, it is not, as a general thing at least, customary to proceed at once to the business of cutting him in. For that business is an exceedingly laborious one; is not very soon completed; and requires all hands to set about it. Therefore, the common usage is to take in all sail; lash the helm a'lee; and then send every one below to his hammock till daylight, with the reservation that, until that time, anchor-watches shall be kept; that is, two and two for an hour, each couple, the crew in rotation shall mount the deck to see that all goes well.

But sometimes, especially upon the Line in the Pacific, this plan will not answer at all; because such incalculable hosts of sharks gather round the moored carcase, that were he left so for six hours, say, on a stretch, little more than the skeleton would be visible by morning. In most other parts of the ocean, however, where these fish do not so largely abound, their wondrous voracity can be at times considerably diminished, by vigorously stirring them up with sharp whaling-spades, a procedure notwithstanding, which, in some instances, only seems to tickle them into still greater activity. But it was not thus in the present case with the Pequod's sharks; though, to be sure, any man unaccustomed to such sights, to have looked over her side that night, would have almost thought the whole round sea was one huge cheese, and those sharks the maggots in it.

Nevertheless, upon Stubb setting the anchor-watch after his supper was concluded; and when, accordingly Queequeg and a forecastle seaman came on deck, no small excitement was created among the sharks; for immediately suspending the cutting stages over the side, and lowering three lanterns, so that they cast long gleams of light over the turbid sea, these two mariners, darting their long whaling-spades,* kept up an incessant murdering of the sharks, by striking the keen steel deep into their skulls, seemingly their only vital part. But in the foamy confusion of their mixed and struggling hosts, the marksmen could not always hit their mark; and this brought about new revelations of the incredible ferocity of the foe. They viciously snapped, not only at each other's disembowelments, but like flexible bows, bent round, and bit their own; till those entrails seemed swallowed over and over again by the same mouth, to be oppositely voided by the gaping wound. Nor was this all. It was unsafe to meddle with the corpses and ghosts of these creatures. A sort of generic or Pantheistic vitality seemed to lurk in their very joints and bones, after what might be called the individual life had departed. Killed and hoisted on deck for the sake of his skin, one of these sharks almost took poor Queequeg's hand off, when he tried to shut down the dead lid of his murderous jaw.

*The whaling-spade used for cutting-in is made of the very best steel; is about the bigness of a man's spread hand; and in general shape, corresponds to the garden implement after which it is named; only its sides are perfectly flat, and its upper end considerably narrower than the lower. This weapon is always kept as sharp as possible; and when being used is occasionally honed, just like a razor. In its socket, a stiff pole, from twenty to thirty feet long, is inserted for a handle.

"Queequeg no care what god made him shark," said the savage, agonizingly lifting his hand up and down; "wedder Fejee god or Nantucket god; but de god wat made shark must be one dam Ingin."

LOL!!!... you usually make me laugh, Rickles.... But *shrug* not this time. I know you tried to be funny, but I think you need to brush up on yer comedy material. That didn't make much sense.

Where's the funny part?

Even if I *were* so unethical to plagiarize someone, why in the heck would I want to include words from Seymour Butz in MY autobiography? How's that funny?

I do highly recommend Seymour's novel. It's cheeky and well-rounded. And hip, to boot. It cracks me up. Sy's an ass, but what did you expect by such a title?:roll: He's got a leg up in the literary world.

Thanks for posting this excerpt.

Proves my point.

Boring as hell.

boy that was almost enough to get me back reading that book. oh i wonder where it is... under the bed... top of the tall bookshelf... hmmm... a search is to begin... not to diminish the fact that my present reading is precisely pulp. and has been for a couple months. scifi, western, potsaboilin.

moby dick is a great book. ponderous, certainly. so is a whale. MD was published in 1851. madame bovary was 1856, another masterpiece of literature. if you had the money for a book in the 1850s you had the time to read something like madame bovary or moby dick. (i dont think anna karenina is worth the time. bovary is better) but these are books written floridly for reading in time of leisure. when one might spend the better part of a day reading.

as to the scarlet letter: blecchh.

i've done 200 pages of moby dick. i'll skim that portion and fall back in. it's been lurking in the back of my mind lately.

madame bovary is a little boring too. sometimes that's ok.

not that i've ever been able to stomach thomas wolfe or karohack's first novel...

but thomas pynchon... there's a genius for you. all 740 pages of gravity's rainbow were worth it. the toilet diving scene you might recall from trainspotting has origins herein when a man has no choice but to go after his dropped harmonica...

which reminds me of wanting to read mason & dixon.

i guess it's a matter of epic-making. like stephen king's dark tower series (mind you i only read the first 4) he manages to make an epic... or orson scott card's 'ender' series... or robert a. heinlein's stranger in a strange land...

but it's hard to make a long damn book worth reading. and what about re-reading?

the recognitions by william gaddis... very hard to read. sad. dark like paintings of dutch potatoes.

Doe:

I guess the problem of "evil" or malevolence as manifested in the natural world (and reconciling that malevolence with any notion of a just or omniscient deity)--- --a common Blakean and romantic theme as well--- is a bit boring for some....perhaps you ought to stick with Jane Seymourbuttski....

MB: thanks for insightful comments. It's ponderous and even boring in spots--so is Beethoven...........

I'm roughly half-way through the novel, so I'm not quitting now.

And dear perezoso,
I do love the cynic.
I didn't say I did not enjoy Moby-Dick
Just that it was rather dull.
Yours truly,
nato

Here's a list of my favorite books -

"Brushed Canvas" - by Al Fresco

"98.6" - Ben Dover

"Poisoned!" - by Sal Manilla

"Discovering the Milky Way" - by Candy Barr

"Fenced In" - by Barb Dwyer

"Law & Disorder"- by Sue Yu

"Island Sailing" - by Crystal Claire Waters

"The age of enlightenment in paintings" - by Art Major

"Contemporary Landscape Archetecture" - by Dan D. Lyons

"Drill This!" - by Dr. DeKay, DDS

"Iraqi Reconstruction & the Historical Significance of Democratic Virtues" - by Warren Peace

"Carnival" - by Ferris Wheele

"A Thorn in my Side"- by Rose Bush

"Hardball" - by Harry Johnson

"Color Me Envious" - by Kelly Green

"Italian Cooking for the Amateur Chef" - by Al Dente

"The Funniest Riddles & Puns on Earth" - by Joe King

"No Time to Diet?" - by Eaton Wright

"The Ultimate Louisiana Tourist Guide"- Marty Graw

"Midi Orchestration for the Tone Deaf" - Paige Turner

Scarlet letter gets two thumbs down?
I think of all the required reading I had to do, (much of which i don't remember), Scarlet letter was most memorable, in fact, I liked it alot. I could read it, and understand it, while I was listening to music.
The others required having the record player turned off if I wanted to understand them.
NO WAY!



PS. (Perezee, pass me your copy of Moby Prick would ya?
It sounds kinda good........)

hey, hest

not everybody can like everything and though i respect the book for standing the test of time, it just wasn't my cuppa tea... *shrug*

but i love the ideal of the character and i love you, too ....

gotta be careful what you say on the internet, i guess, unfortunately

or anywhere, for that matter

i'm feeling a sense of futility again... all that humor down the drain

puns don't work maybe... what works?

oh... i know! a copy of Mopey Prick! That'll do it! LOL! It's limp, but what the heck?

thanks for the starchart yesterday... i may become a believer afterall... ya nevah know...

doreen peri,
I enjoyed your puns immensely. They made me laugh, thanks.

Yes, Doe is quite the Punster--Hot Cross Puns


She ought to enter those gems in
the next "You too Can Be Art LankLitter" contest.....



Heifster, didn't you memorize Moby Prick at an early age.....