'Objects In Space'
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."
So I'm about a third of the way through Moby Dick . It's very good, and gives me that jolt you get when you read/hear something which has been widely imitated. Pynchon, in particular, seems to have copped huge amounts of his digressive multi-voice style from Melville
Any Buffistas read it?
I know Hayden has. I, however, have not.
I justify this lapse by the fact that I live in and around Melville's environs, know a fair amount about the whaling business, and could probably mark out the parts where he is making stuff up.
Ironically, I have read the first chapter, aloud -- on a beach. My mother has some strange ideas about beach reading.
Never read it, passed the test on it in high school with flying colors. Our English teacher wrote each test individually based on what we talked about in class, and he filled out the test with questions about the footnotes. All I did was listen to the talks about metaphors and characterization and read all the footnotes.
I've read Moby Dick three times and I'm thinking it's about time to read it again. It's great.
I don't know that Melville made much stuff up, at least in terms of day-to-day whaling. He did work as a seaman for about four years, much of that on whaling ships.
I read it -- kinda -- for a AmLit class, but didn't pay that much attention to it. I was too busy skipping class and getting high, and I was all a BritLit snob.
I read Moby Dick a few years ago. I was amazed at how funny it was. No one had ever told me it was enjoyable and amusing, just important and long.
I read it -- kinda -- for a AmLit class, but didn't pay that much attention to it. I was too busy skipping class and getting high, and I was all a BritLit snob.
me, too Well, minus the high. Although I often skipped class to go shoe shopping.
I went to college in a teeny town in MO. Th eonly place to buy shoes was Wal-Mart.
Remaining as stoned as possible was kinda a defense mechanism.
I was amazed at how funny it was.
Suddenly flashing back to that parody someone did -- DX? Tom Scola? -- which was all about Jonathan becoming morose, following funerals in the street etc., and inevitably heading back to Sunnydale. Perfect!
I did read Moby Dick, some years ago. I thought the writing was very good, but it was ultimately annoying as a story. And after a while the alternating chapters of inaccurate science got annoying as well. I was reading it the same time I was reading The Perfect Storm, which, as a work of fictionalized truth, I thought was a much better read.