My name is Herman Melville. I wrote the greatest novel of all

also, yknow, a shitton of fascinating and exhilerating life experience

>compilation of wikipedia articles on whaling + some meaningless shit about mad captain
GREATESTESTSEST BEWK EVER

>>9259133
He also had life experiences that most wouldn't, but you NEETs keep trying to write a great novel about being a NEET, im sure it will be amazing

Yeah, well he thought whales were fish, so who's the real retard, huh?

>>9259143
It's especially sad since a confederacy of dunces already exists and is the only thing remotely close to a neet novel that will ever result in any sort of success

>>9259143
What life experience did he have?

>>9259162
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Melville+biography

>>9259143
>mfw i was starting my 3rd novel, that like all the others, was about a neet that is in love with some girl that don't even know he exists

i j-just write because i l-like it, i was not thinking it would be a literally masterpiece or anything like that, believe me

If you had actually read Moby Dick, you would have seen that there are also several oblique (and sometimes direct) references to Kant, Berkely, Locke, Plato, etc.

Reminder that Cervantes, writer of the truly greatest novel of all time (The Bible), never read Shakespeare.

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>>9259162
>what life experience did Melville have

Smh desu

When will a female author write Moby Vagina?

Your name is Herman Melville. You are a big fat liar because you basically grew up on KJV, read a lot, not "a bit" of Shakespeare and also a shitton of other books, which is proven by your ridiculously erudite writing. Also hunted whales and lived with cannibals to get additional experience and writing material.

He was an avid reader of philosophy, particularly the utilitarians.

Stop making shit up.

Why are so many chapters of Moby Dick basically unnecessary to the story, as in moving the plot along?

Why do we need a 10 page chapter on mast heads that he read about?

he was also secretly gay

>>9259162
He has actual experience whaling, for example.

>>9259437
because it's an experience as much as it is a story.

>>9259441
And black.

>>9259437
>Why are so many chapters of Moby Dick basically unnecessary to the story, as in moving the plot along?
How did you find this board?

>>9259458
>muh prose

>>9259641
>muh shitpost

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It wouldn't have been possible without this man

>>9259275
Literally the first 5 or so pages are direct quotes from a myriad of works

>>9259647
Yeah fuck reading a story for the STORY

>>9259437
Hugo went on a 30 page in depth description of the history and reasoning behind Paris's sewers for 6 pages of plot-driving story in Les Miserables

>>9259953
What are you trying to prove by presenting another bad book as an example?

>>9259953
Ur point?

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>>9259145
No, he didn't at all, you fucking idiot. Why do I even browse /lit/ anymore? Almost everyone here is an underaged dumbass.

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>>9259441
this

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>>9260031
>being this ill-attuned to irony

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>>9260036
>this damage control

Go back to rebbit, faggot. You don't belong here. You're cancer.

>>9260031
>>9260036
>>9260038

wow... who is baiting who?? i cant even...

>>9260038
I'm not the same anon. That "fish" comment is flatly ironic. I mean, even people who haven't read a word of Melville know that "fish" as an archaism means "any animal that lives totally in water." He even ended it with "huh?" Maybe you should read more so as to have a better grasp of written irony, instead of getting furious about nothing on 4chan

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>>9260046
>Maybe you should read more so as to have a better grasp of written irony
>thinking that anon has even read Melville
>thinking his post was ironic

>I mean, even people who haven't read a word of Melville know that "fish" as an archaism means "any animal that lives totally in water.
Maybe if you're an idiot, sure.

>>9260051
The Old English "fisc," from which the modern word is derived, literally meant "any animal that lives entirely in water." That's why we have words like shellfish, starfish, etc. They're linguistic holdovers from when the general sense was more widely in use.

I'm not assuming he has read Melville, hence the comment about people who "haven't read a word of Melville." But you can't deny he (Melville) uses the word "fish" to describe Moby-Dick, and in this context it most assuredly is meant in the esoteric sense.

I don't know why you're so frustrated. It's not a funny ironic comment, it's hamfisted in my estimation, but it's still irony.

Itt

Autism

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>>9260066
>but it's still irony

>octopusfish
>eelfish
>sealfish
>planktonfish
>crustaceanfish

I'm frustrated because Melville specifically states, in Moby Dick, that whales aren't fish. But, of course, you wouldn't know that, considering that you obviously haven't read it. Please fuck off, you wank.

>>9260076
His narrator also calls Moby-Dick a "spouting fish with a horizontal tail."
>I'm frustrated because Melville specifically states, in Moby Dick, that whales aren't fish.
That's what irony is, ya fuckin git. Implication of the opposite through order of expression or tone.

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>>9260095
>he's still posting

Enough with the damage control, kiddo. It's getting trite.

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>>9260099
>no more arguments
>shout "damage control!"

>>9259133
I hate Moby Dick, not because I don't like the story itself but because it has a great story that is buried between pages and pages of completely irrelevant shit.

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>>9260106
>defending another's anons ignorance as irony
>doesn't want to admit his mistake
>incessant damage control

wew, lad

>>9260099
Ah, I see you're rolling over because you're out of fuel. The insecurity of /lit/ is astounding.

>>9260076
No he doesn't
He decides that whales are fish

>>9260107
Pleb

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>>9260113
Reread Moby Dick, faggot. You probably skipped all the chapters on cetology.

>>9260112
>I see you're rolling over because you're out of fuel
>deciding to stop discoursing with someone who's unwilling to admit their faults is running out of fuel

>>9260117
Call me whatever you want faggot, I read novels for the story, not to get 45 chapters of whale and whale hunting trivia shoved down my throat despite 90% of it being just Melville trying to show off how much he knew about those topics.

>>9260124
well you read the wrong book then

>>9260134
Obviously but it won't stop me from complaining about how much I hate that.

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>>9260124
>Melville trying to show off
Who is he trying to impress? What a retarded statement. Herman Melvile wrote whole chapters of a book just to make himself seem more impressive. What would he have to gain? I'm trying to think of a witty comment to end this post, but the fact that your own insecurities made you actually believe that Melville is trying to show off to some unknown person is just an impressive bit of ego projection

>First: The uncertain, unsettled condition of this science of Cetology is in the very vestibule attested by the fact, that in some quarters it still remains a moot point whether a whale be a fish. In his System of Nature, A.D. 1776, Linnæus declares, ‘I hereby separate the whales from the fish.’ But of my own knowledge, I know that down to the year 1850, sharks and shad, alewives and herring, against Linnæus’s express edict, were still found dividing the possession of the same seas with the leviathan.
>The grounds upon which Linnæus would fain have banished the whales from the waters, he states as follows: ‘On account of their warm bilocular heart, their lungs, their movable eyelids, their hollow ears, penem intrantem feminam mammis lactantem,’ and finally, ‘ex lege naturæ jure meritoque.’ I submitted all this to my friends Simeon Macey and Charley Coffin, of Nantucket, both messmates of mine in a certain voyage, and they united in the opinion that the reasons set forth were altogether insufficient. Charley profanely hinted they were humbug.
>Be it known that, waiving all argument, I take the good old-fashioned ground that the whale is a fish, and call upon holy Jonah to back me.

>>9259441
proof? this might change my life if true

>>9260140
To the people reading the book, obviously.
It's not even something no else has ever done, a shitton of authors waste chapters and chapters trying to show how much they researched about some irrelevant topic. Someone in this thread even brought up Victor Hugo, who does exactly the same shit in Les Miserables.
The worst part is that if the story was shitty then I could just throw the book away with no regret but the actual story in Moby Dick is interesting enough to catch my attention which makes me curse Melville every time I am forced to read 4 chapters about whale semen before I can get back to the story. And no, I can't skip the trivia bits, my autism prevents me from skipping parts of a book, no matter how irrelevant they might be.

>>9260148
i don't think it's so much showing off as it is him just really fucking liking whaling. he wrote a big book about how rad he thinks it is and the story is just a bonus

Whales are fish

>>9260156
I admit that's possible too since I have no way of knowing what was his motivaton for including so many trivia chapters.
Even so, he should have toned it down a it or just written an encyclopedia.
Fuck, I'm not even saying he should have removed all the chapters that don't focus on the story, some of the trivia is pretty interesting and it contributes to the story but there are also chapters where he goes on and on about things that are pretty much irrelevant to the story and don't improve it in any way.

Whales are mammals. Mammals aren't fish. It's simple logic. But I wouldn't expect /lit/ to understand that, as no one here is STEM.

>>9260177
get out nerd, whales are fish and you won't do shit about it

>>9260183
Do fish have lungs? Do fish give birth to offspring like mammals? Do fish have blowholes? I thought so, faggot.

Whales are birds you fucking retards.

>>9260177
>i am better at putting things into boxes, behold my power and kneel.

Did he really get such magnificent prose from only reading Shakespeare?

>>9260188
>implying whales can't be both mammals and fish
Fucking brainlet

>>9260216
Probably not, but I don't think it would be an overstatement to say that he relied on anything stylistically, he was a genius

>>9260172
Lad, you simply didn't understand the book. Read it again when you have transcended beyond reading for plot or prose

>>9260018
>>9260029
It's romanticism. All the extra details give you the same sense of understanding as some of the central characters of the work to give you a more full experience. Also, you might learn something too, which is nice for even very obscure knowledge.

>>9260148
You're missing major aspect of transcendentalism and romanticism. One of the major focuses is finding and putting great meaning in the insignificant. The details make it a more interesting and full experience and hopefully make the whole thing a more grand experience overall

>>9259133
>>9259137

This. Also, I don't give a fuck how long he spent on whaling vessels, the level of detail in the chapters on cetacean biology wasn't achieved by looking at whale carcasses, he had to fill in the gaps with studying.

>>9260031
he litterally says whales is fish in the bõok

>>9259146
Oblomov? Notes from the underground?

>>9260031
He did multiple times, have you even read the book you faggot?

>>9259133
He read spinoza......so it's probably fair to deduce that he read Descartes too

>>9260216
No, he was extremely well read. He likely read all of the major greeks, literary and philosophical, in their own language.

>>9259133
>prose ficiton
lmao

>>9259162
how new

>>9260333
And making shit up

i read the hershel parker biographie of melville, i think hes the scholar who edited the northwestern-newberry versiosn of his work, which i think is considered the standard, so when you buy a melville book, if its not directly from northwestern university press, check the copyrite to see if they're using the definitive version of the text that scholars consider the best. anywho, i read parker's biographie of the guy (herman melville) and parker p much said what the op said, only a little different. what happened was that america was a new country, green valleys and blue skies and everything, it was like the new hotness, like a brand new baby that everybody wanted to fuck, but there was one problem and that was that it didnt have any good literature. europe was like: umm, yeah, america, your literature is sort of, its not the best-- you know, we have shakespeare, we have dante, we have cervantes, you know, we're gonna have joyce in a little bit, your literature's just not up to snuff, it's a bit primitive you know. a bit shit if im allowed to say that. so herman melville and nathaniel hawthorne got together and they were like man fuck europe. these guys are a bunch of pricks. so what they did was hawthorne wrote some stuff, and melville liked it, so he was like ok what im gonna do is im gonna pretend im not melville, just some random guy, and go in the newspapers and call you "the american shakespeare." im gonna say fuck shakespeare, he's not even that good, hawthorne is the new shakespeare. praise hawthorne. hawthorne was liike, yeah, thats good, good thinking, melly (called him melly, read the bio); and so melville did that, but then something unexpected happened, that he didnt expect. he became jealous of hawthorne's success and he went over to hawthorne drunk one night and he was like "youre not even that good, youre not the shakespeare" and hawthorne was like "youre the one who said i was shakespeare, i didnt say i was shakespeare, you saiad it, im not shakespeare, i never said it, melly" and melville said "dont call me melly anymore, you turncoat bastard" - and so their friendship deteriorirated and melville was like im gonna write my own shakespeare. but he had never read shakespaere, so he went to nyc and went into the boook shoppe and was like gimme your finest shakespaere editions, and he went home with like eighteen complete shakespares, didnt realize they were all the same. to make up with hawthorne he brought him a shakespeare, he was like i bought eighteen, hawthorne was like "whyd you buy bloody eighteen?" he said "idk, do you want one?" hawthorne said "fine, melly, leave it here, thanks, off with you now" and melville went home and read shakespeare, and read him, and read some of the kjv too, and he was like these guys are pretty good, i think i'll try my hand at my own shakespeare/bible thing, and that was moby-dick. moby-dick cmae out, nobody read it, except hawthorne.

>>9259441
bi**
(like every other patrician)

>>9259437
I get that this is bait and all but what most people don't understand is that Melville's style in general is digressive as fuck

he spends whole chapters in Typee explaining how they cook their breadfruit, marriage customs

not saying they aren't necessary to the story and not denying that it can sometimes a bit annoying but that's Melville's style

>>9260333
whalers knew a shit ton about whales, my friend.
he spent 8 years at sea

>>9261727
Excellent story

>My name is Ishmael and today we will be hunting Moby Dick, or The Whale.

Fucking really?

>>9260124
>I read novels for the story
Wow, I did not know Moby-Dick was such a pleb filter.

>>9259133
>write a book called My Dick, make multiple obvious references to how intellectuals will completely miss the intent and value of the work by obscuring its exoteric nature, and even write a forward about how a sub-sub librarian (a person writing critical texts on critical texts on literature) will be forever doomed to never know the beauty of My Dick.
>there are people to this day that still argue the whale chapters have some deep insightful commentary when its just Melville padding out the novel for laughs and talking about what he's interested in
>next chapter opens with a dick joke and no one catches it because they are still stuck on the fucking whales

You all are such fucking idiots, jesus christ.

>>9265072
What a peculiar post.

>>9265085
Read the book without coming into it expecting some massive, intellectual endeavor. You might actually be able to catch that there are dick jokes on practically every other page. The inspiration by Shakespeare is obvious: the glowing philosophical musings is just window dressing for the meta-humor of laughing at idiotic intellectuals too "smart" to realize the intent of the work was dick jokes.

>>9265145
give us three examples of these dick jokes.

>>9265145
Who the fuck are you even talking to?

>>9261727
I enjoyed this post. Please write more.

>>9261727
Very good.

Now please stop doing drugs and learn punctuation.

>>9265677
its cormac mccarthy, show some respect

thomas browne.

milton.

charles dickens.

emerson.

has anyone on /lit/ ever actually read [herman melville]?

>>9266197
me

>>9266197
Confidence man is great

>>9259437
>plot plebs.

>>9260051

Wut.

He literally discussed what whales were, acknowledged that some people thought whales were mammals because of he very reasons we classify them as such today and then goes "lol no ,dey fishes"

>>9259133
How does it feel to have written a long as poem no one cares about?

>>9261727
Pretty good, nice post.

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My name is Ahab. And I hate every single one of you. All of you are fat, retarded, no-lifes who spend every second of their day looking at stupid ass pictures. You are everything bad in the world. Honestly, have any of you ever gotten any pussy? I mean, I guess it’s fun making fun of people because of your own insecurities, but you all take to a whole new level. This is even worse than jerking off to hand drawn portraits.
Don’t be a stranger. Just hit me with your best shot. I’m pretty much perfect. I was captain of the Pequod, and starter on my harpooning squad. What sports do you play, other than “jack off to naked drawn Japanese people”? I also get straight A’s, and have a banging hot girlfriend (She just blew me; Shit was SO cash). You are all faggots who should just kill yourselves. Thanks for listening.
Pic Related: It’s me and my bitch

>>9269278
How fucking lazy can you get?

>>9265319
I'm replying to the person that made a comment obviously to the effect that he didn't believe me.

>>9265286
Practically everything with the whale and Ahab (Arab, lmao, another joke), its very obvious. I don't have the book on hand but it shouldn't be difficult for you to read passages at random and find dick jokes.

>>9269278
Should be 'fish' but with Moby Dick instead of woman

>>9259441
He had a love affair with a married woman in new york state tho

>>9259437
They're on a fucking boat for a year, what do you think the characters are thinking about besides what's immediately surrounding them and the associations they make. Plot plebs are the fucking worst. Have you never tried examining your surroundings?

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alright /lit/, you've convinced me

i'm buying this book today