Review: Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

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This is an epic book, and one that is much more a part of the American tradition than the European one. I get the feeling that while young Americans are reading (or feeling bad about not having read) Moby-Dick, Europeans are reading (or pretending to have read) The Outsider by Albert Camus. (A much shorter book - we Europeans have it easy!)
Like a good undergraduate, I was on the lookout early on for what the Whale 'symbolised' in the story. And early on, Mr Melville had a good chuckle at me by including a whole chapter on the vast number of things the 'whiteness of the whale' represented, and later poking fun at the whole concept of an allegory.
In fact, the whole work is so full of symbols and meanings, that as a whole it acts like a mirror, showing back to you whatever you want to find. The story could work as a meditation on faith, democracy, fate, subjective truth; whatever you like. It is also a straight story of whale hunting, and a fine history of that trade.
Humour is shot through the work like a seam of silver, and I noted a particular irony reserved for purveyors of absolutes. The prose style is golden - every trick in the book, deployed like a master craftsman, pages and pages of it, seemingly produced without effort or strain. And it all sounds so fresh - not a single cliche in evidence. Some images are so shockingly original, they feel like a splash of salt water: "... where the gaunt pines stand like serried lines of kings in Gothic genealogies; those same woods harboring wild Afric beasts of prey, and silken creatures whose exported furs give robes to Tartar Emperors..."
Towards the end, I was convinced that whether or not the whale was found was irrelevant. Which was when Mr Melville confounded me again by completing some of the most exciting passages imaginable, where all the knowledge gained in the rest of the book combines to allow a full understanding of the enormity of what is happening.
Sometimes it seemed, in my mind, to be a less of a book than a writers workshop, where Melville lays out all of his tools and materials, and proceeds to make a story before your very eyes.
This is a book that will present new meanings and perspectives with each re-reading. Something I will try to do in ten years time, when I expect I will find my review to have missed all the most important points. And in the next ten years, the same thing will happen.

Stewart Wills reads this with all his expected skill - in fact it was his reading of 'Lord Jim' that lead me to this recording in the first place. His characterisations seem effortless, with Stubb being perhaps the pick of the bunch, although as I write that, I feel that Ahab should have the crown. The highest praise I can offer is that some of the later, drama-filled passages actually sent shivers down my spine.

By my count that makes 13 books (and what books!) in 14 weeks, so I have a little catching up to make one a week. But not bad progress on the whole.

Next: Tao Teh King

Intimidating Volumes

I am listening to Moby Dick at the moment, and am enjoying it thoroughly. I was always a little intimidated of this book in the past, but am finding it to be very accessible and enjoyable. This makes me wonder - what put me off reading it for so long?
It seems there are a list of books in our heads which we feel we 'ought' to have read. I understand this, and how sometimes this can be useful. Also, as reading is such a democratic thing, open to so many, that some readers feel a pecking order is required.
As a young man, 'Ulysses' was the great unexploded bomb on my book shelf. I tried and failed a few times, but the great literary status symbol was denied me. I compensated with Proust, but literary gentlemen seem to feel that Joyce has a more masculine cache. And more importantly - it's very hard to understand. Pushing 120kg on the benchpress is nothing to breezily discussing Joycean idiom - at least in some circles.
As I have got older I have got impatient with all this nonsense. A story either holds my attention, or it does not. It stays with me, or it does not. And as for symbolism - I find I can discover my own meanings in works without having a cryptic 'message' buried in the narrative for me by the author. I have nothing to prove to anyone, at least not by displaying my bookshelf.
The worry is that all this baggage has prevented me from reading a book I am enjoying so much now. Perhaps I needed to grow up first.