The endless non-fiction whale chapters are actually very funny. You have to imagine Ishmael saying everything in such a dry droll way that you're almost, but not quite, certain he is kidding.
They were my favorite part of the book! Maybe that's why.
Everyone's getting spanked but me.
Willow ,'The Killer In Me'
Literary Buffistas 3: Don't Parse the Blurb, Dear.
There's more to life than watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer! No. Really, there is! Honestly! Here's a place for Buffistas to come and discuss what it is they're reading, their favorite authors and poets. "Geez. Crack a book sometime."
Polter-Cow - May 26, 2011 1:40:07 pm PDT #14940 of 28288
What else besides ramen can you scoop? YOU CAN SCOOP THIS WORLD FROM DARKNESS!
JZ - May 26, 2011 1:55:02 pm PDT #14941 of 28288
See? I gave everybody here an opportunity to tell me what a bad person I am and nobody did, because I fuckin' rule.
Hee! I am still not done with Moby Dick (maybe on the trip to Ireland!) but I love it. It's so FUNNY. Nobody ever told me Moby Dick was funny.
Have I somehow neglected to ever post my rant here about how everyone treats Moby Dick like some horrible Doorstop Of Great Significance before which you should cower and tremble, when in fact it's really fucking funny? Because it is, and I've been delivering that rant since I read it for AP English in 1985. Really fucking funny.
Where's Corwood or Hayden or whatever he's calling himself these days? He'll back me up on the funny!
And, ha, so will P-C! Didn't we have this exact conversation a couple of years ago when you were first goaded into reading it? Someone is perpetrating a terrible fraud on the reading public, scaring them away from a really fucking funny book.
Hil R. - May 26, 2011 1:59:31 pm PDT #14942 of 28288
Sometimes I think I might just move up to Vermont, open a bookstore or a vegan restaurant. Adam Schlesinger, z''l
For Irish literature, I'd say some Seamus Heaney and some mythology, maybe the Tain.
erikaj - May 26, 2011 2:04:24 pm PDT #14943 of 28288
Always Anti-fascist!
Sorry, JZ, I tried. But for me, it's still a hideous doorstop. Although it's probably not good for my sanity to argue with a dead guy about Darwin.
Connie Neil - May 26, 2011 2:20:42 pm PDT #14944 of 28288
brillig
I was reading "The Odyssey" on the bus and snickering regularly, and I glanced up to see half the bus riders staring at me in consternation and dismay.
A couple of week's later I was intently studying "Calculus for Beginners," and was likewise being stared at. I kind of miss the bus.
Ginger - May 26, 2011 2:28:21 pm PDT #14945 of 28288
"It didn't taste good. It tasted soooo horrible. It tasted like....a vodka martini." - Matilda
Moby Dick is very funny indeed.
You don't like Synge, flea? Not Playboy of the Western World or The Aran Islands?
Lady Gregory's retellings of Irish myths are interesting.
javachik - May 26, 2011 3:20:09 pm PDT #14946 of 28288
Our wings are not tired.
Flea, all the Oscar Wilde stuff should amuse you.
Laga - May 26, 2011 3:21:47 pm PDT #14947 of 28288
You should know I'm a big deal in the Resistance.
Pity my love could not withstand the endless "non-fiction" chapters in which we learn that whales are fish, and so forth.
I love that part! People will tell you they're mammals, but I've seen a lot of mammals and these are fish. You can tell by the fins.
hippocampus - May 26, 2011 3:23:35 pm PDT #14948 of 28288
not your mom's socks.
Seconding Wilde and Heaney. Listen to some Yeats if you can find it. And some of the myths.
Hayden - May 26, 2011 5:06:56 pm PDT #14949 of 28288
aka "The artist formerly known as Corwood Industries."
Oh, I'll definitely double-down about how funny Moby-Dick is. I live my life by the loose-fish vs. fast-fish rule.