Found it in a op shop, I don’t know the value

Moby Dick had been calling for me, and when I tore my ACL recently I had (forced) downtime. I felt a connection to the book due to my leg injury and the constant icing to my knee, which reminded me of the coldness of the ocean.

I'd never read it in school -- I just knew that it was a classic, that it was long, there were some chapters about whaling, and that Ahab thirsted for revenge.

Beautiful book. Melville's prose is *chef's kiss*. It was surprisingly approachable. Granted, I needed to check my understanding of what I'd read quite a few times, but I went in with the aim of experiencing a story.

I actually enjoyed the whaling chapters, but that's because I love nerding out with people who are passionate about their craft. Probably about two-thirds of the way through, I realized that these chapters were actually doing a lot of pacing work: whalers are out at sea a lot, and not a lot happens, until it does. And when it does, it's so sudden and messy.

That's how I felt about the ending, too. This whole narrative builds for the entire book only to be smashed and sunk suddenly in three chapters. But I found the chaos vortex that sinks the Pequod to have been the real antagonist, not Ahab or Moby Dick. The chaos vortex extends its tentacles back throughout and manifests itself through the madness of the whaling systems, e.g., the whaling lines surrounding everyone, harpoons everywhere, slippery, dangerous, and absurd work conditions, all the way to the madness of the characters, like poor Pip, and of course Ahab. The Try-Works chapter was my favorite and best illustrated this for me -- it was this macabre, mad scene, made perverse by the fact that the whale's body fueled the fire that rendered it. And then Ishmael almost capsizes the Pequod because he's so transfixed by that scene.

But then on the other hand, there's this subtlety of love, grace, and tenderness being the things that cut through the chaos, like Pip extending a hand to Ahab is the one thing that threatens his monomania. And Queequeg’s coffin, an artifact of love, built for a man who somehow defied death, gets repurposed into a life preserver.

I'm sure I'll pick up more upon further re-reads, but man, not hard to understand why this novel is like, one of the best ones.

Hat hier jemand in Deutschland schon die Faksimile-Ausgabe in Händen? Ich habe bei Thalia und Amazon bestellt und beide sagen, das Buch sei noch nicht lieferbar.

It’s very good. It is one to one with my 1930 print. I wish the paper was slightly less white but It’s quite good. One note of caution the dust jacket is nice butwill definitely need a Mylar or Brodart protection. Mine got smudged in transit and it does not come off, I will get a replacement tomorrow but wrap it before you use it. Great value for the money in my opinion.