More on Moby

One hundred more pages down! Yayayay. This chunk seemed to go faster, because much of it was in Ahab's mind, which is perhaps the most fluid and interesting in the book. (How a first-person narrator gets into another character's mind is another question, which I may address in my closing thoughts on the book.)

Pages 501-600

Queequeg nearly dies, but decides not to. The ship meets another ship whose captain lost a limb to Moby Dick; but that captain didn’t go crazy because of it, whereas Captain Ahab gets crazier and crazier. After a particularly bad storm in which everyone nearly dies because of Ahab, the officers almost kill Ahab in his sleep but don’t because they realize they need him.

Best lines: For whatever is truly wondrous and fearful in man, never yet was put into words or books. And the drawing near of Death, which alike levels all, alike impresses all with a last revelation, which only an author from the dead could adequately tell. [pg 550]

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The sky looks lacquered; clouds there are none; the horizon floats; and this nakedness of unrelieved radiance is as the unsufferable splendors of God’s throne. [pg 573]

(I think the thing that keeps me reading, is the hope that there will be more sentences like these. How a novel with such an exciting story and unbeatably beautiful prose can manage to be so boring is truly a tragedy.)