Moby-Dick: “like a true child of fire, I breathe it back to thee”

1/ Moby-Dick is full of symbolism. I must thank Tom of Wuthering Expectations for pointing out that Ishmael is identified with water, and Ahab, with fire. 

“Were Niagara but a cataract of sand, would you travel your thousand miles to see it? Why did the poor poet of Tennessee, upon suddenly receiving two handfuls of silver, deliberate whether to buy him a coat, which he sadly needed, or invest his money in a pedestrian trip to Rockaway Beach? Why is almost every robust healthy boy with a robust healthy soul in him, at some time or other crazy to go to sea? Why upon your first voyage as a passenger, did you yourself feel such a mystical vibration, when first told that you and your ship were now out of sight of land? Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother of Jove?” (ch.1)

Ahab’s shadow and his closest companion—his Mephistopheles?—is Fedallah, a Parsee, a fire worshipper. The fire imagery—the association of Ahab with fire—is most obvious in Chapter 96 “The Try-Works”, and the rest of the book is filled with fire imagery. 

“I do deem it now a most meaning thing, that that old Greek, Prometheus, who made men, they say, should have been a blacksmith, and animated them with fire; for what’s made in fire must properly belong to fire; and so hell’s probable.” (ch.108)

To kill Moby Dick, Ahab wants a new harpoon. To destroy what he sees as the embodiment of all evil, he turns to witchcraft. 

“… “No, no—no water for that; I want it of the true death-temper. Ahoy, there! Tashtego, Queequeg, Daggoo! What say ye, pagans! Will ye give me as much blood as will cover this barb?” holding it high up. A cluster of dark nods replied, Yes. Three punctures were made in the heathen flesh, and the White Whale’s barbs were then tempered.

“Ego non baptizo te in nomine patris, sed in nomine diaboli!” deliriously howled Ahab, as the malignant iron scorchingly devoured the baptismal blood.” (ch.113) 

This is something I didn’t notice in my first reading: Ahab rejects water; he’s later killed by water. 

The quote in the headline comes from chapter 119. 

2/ This is a rather odd passage:  

“It was a clear steel-blue day. The firmaments of air and sea were hardly separable in that all-pervading azure; only, the pensive air was transparently pure and soft, with a woman’s look, and the robust and man-like sea heaved with long, strong, lingering swells, as Samson’s chest in his sleep.

Hither, and thither, on high, glided the snow-white wings of small, unspeckled birds; these were the gentle thoughts of the feminine air; but to and fro in the deeps, far down in the bottomless blue, rushed mighty leviathans, sword-fish, and sharks; and these were the strong, troubled, murderous thinkings of the masculine sea.

But though thus contrasting within, the contrast was only in shades and shadows without; those two seemed one; it was only the sex, as it were, that distinguished them.” (ch.132) 

Moby-Dick is a very strange book. 

3/ I don’t know what it means, but I’ve noticed the bird motif in the last chapters of the novel. 

“… But already the sable wing was before the old man’s eyes; the long hooked bill at his head: with a scream, the black hawk darted away with his prize.

An eagle flew thrice round Tarquin’s head, removing his cap to replace it, and thereupon Tanaquil, his wife, declared that Tarquin would be king of Rome. But only by the replacing of the cap was that omen accounted good. Ahab’s hat was never restored; the wild hawk flew on and on with it; far in advance of the prow: and at last disappeared; while from the point of that disappearance, a minute black spot was dimly discerned, falling from that vast height into the sea.” (ch.130) 

And when the ship goes down, a hawk goes down with it: 

“A sky-hawk that tauntingly had followed the main-truck downwards from its natural home among the stars, pecking at the flag, and incommoding Tashtego there; this bird now chanced to intercept its broad fluttering wing between the hammer and the wood; and simultaneously feeling that etherial thrill, the submerged savage beneath, in his death-gasp, kept his hammer frozen there; and so the bird of heaven, with archangelic shrieks, and his imperial beak thrust upwards, and his whole captive form folded in the flag of Ahab, went down with his ship, which, like Satan, would not sink to hell till she had dragged a living part of heaven along with her, and helmeted herself with it.

Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf; a sullen white surf beat against its steep sides; then all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago.” (ch.135) 

I finished rereading the book yesterday, after over 7 weeks. Shakespeare took possession of Melville, and created Moby-Dick.  

Moby-Dick: “That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate”

“Dissect him how I may, then, I but go skin deep; I know him not, and never will.” (ch.86) 

It often puzzles me that lots of readers don’t seem to notice that there are two quests in Moby-Dick: a physical quest (Ahab’s pursuit of Moby Dick) and a metaphysical quest (Ishmael’s search for meaning). Ahab is not the only obsessive: he’s obsessed with a whale; Ishmael is obsessed with the whale. 

For what is the whale? Leviathan? A sea monster? A personification of all that maddens and torments? A dumb brute? A dish? A poor animal murdered to light the gay bridals and other merry-makings of men? Some inscrutable, unknowable thing? 

“‘All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event—in the living act, the undoubted deed—there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me. Sometimes I think there’s naught beyond. But ’tis enough. He tasks me; he heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him.’” (ch.36) 

Even Ahab does not know—the whale is beyond his reach. 

Thus Ishmael seeks to know the whale, to learn everything he can—from head to tail, from blubber to skeleton—so as to grasp the meaning of Moby Dick, of the chase, of his own survival. Ahab is mad, but is Ishmael not, too, a madman? 

“Here, then, was this grey-headed, ungodly old man, chasing with curses a Job’s whale round the world, at the head of a crew, too, chiefly made up of mongrel renegades, and castaways, and cannibals—morally enfeebled also, by the incompetence of mere unaided virtue or right-mindedness in Starbuck, the invulnerable jollity of indifference and recklessness in Stubb, and the pervading mediocrity in Flask. Such a crew, so officered, seemed specially picked and packed by some infernal fatality to help him to his monomaniac revenge. How it was that they so aboundingly responded to the old man’s ire—by what evil magic their souls were possessed, that at times his hate seemed almost theirs; the White Whale as much their insufferable foe as his; how all this came to be—what the White Whale was to them, or how to their unconscious understandings, also, in some dim, unsuspected way, he might have seemed the gliding great demon of the seas of life,—all this to explain, would be to dive deeper than Ishmael can go.” (ch.41) 

What’s the White Whale to them, indeed? But Ishmael too was part of the chase. Ishmael too went down with the Pequod—and yet he survives. What’s the meaning of that fatal chase? And his own madness? And what does it mean that he alone lives? 

But Ishmael isn’t free; his soul continues to be possessed by the madness of the old man. 

“Almost invariably it is all over obliquely crossed and re-crossed with numberless straight marks in thick array, something like those in the finest Italian line engravings. […] These are hieroglyphical; that is, if you call those mysterious cyphers on the walls of pyramids hieroglyphics, then that is the proper word to use in the present connexion. By my retentive memory of the hieroglyphics upon one Sperm Whale in particular, I was much struck with a plate representing the old Indian characters chiselled on the famous hieroglyphic palisades on the banks of the Upper Mississippi. Like those mystic rocks, too, the mystic-marked whale remains undecipherable.” (ch.68) 

It was only when I got to the chapter “The Doubloon” that I realised that Ishmael’s obsession with meaning—with signs and wonders—came from Ahab. 

"But one morning, turning to pass the doubloon, he seemed to be newly attracted by the strange figures and inscriptions stamped on it, as though now for the first time beginning to interpret for himself in some monomaniac way whatever significance might lurk in them." (ch.99) 

Ahab seeks meaning in a doubloon; Ishmael sees hieroglyphics on the skin of a whale. 

“‘There’s another rendering now; but still one text. All sorts of men in one kind of world, you see. Dodge again! here comes Queequeg—all tattooing—looks like the signs of the Zodiac himself. What says the Cannibal? As I live he’s comparing notes; looking at his thigh bone; thinks the sun is in the thigh, or in the calf, or in the bowels, I suppose, as the old women talk Surgeon’s Astronomy in the back country…’” (ibid.) 

Ahab sees signs and wonders on the surface of a doubloon, and on the skin of Queequeg. That remark on Queequeg might only be a passing thought for Ahab, but Ishmael later repeats it: 

“Many spare hours he spent, in carving the lid with all manner of grotesque figures and drawings; and it seemed that hereby he was striving, in his rude way, to copy parts of the twisted tattooing on his body. And this tattooing had been the work of a departed prophet and seer of his island, who, by those hieroglyphic marks, had written out on his body a complete theory of the heavens and the earth, and a mystical treatise on the art of attaining truth; so that Queequeg in his own proper person was a riddle to unfold; a wondrous work in one volume; but whose mysteries not even himself could read, though his own live heart beat against them; and these mysteries were therefore destined in the end to moulder away with the living parchment whereon they were inscribed, and so be unsolved to the last.” (ch.110) 

What are these mysteries in the tattoos of Queequeg, and on the skin of the whale? Do they contain answers? But Ishmael can never know, and the entire book is his quest for meaning, his attempt to strike through the mask. 

Moby-Dick as my Bible

For a few years after I read Moby-Dick the first time, I often picked it up to reread certain chapters or passages. I stopped after a while—there were other books—but continued to carry some passages with me over the years. 

“Oh, man! admire and model thyself after the whale! Do thou, too, remain warm among ice. Do thou, too, live in this world without being of it. Be cool at the equator; keep thy blood fluid at the Pole. Like the great dome of St. Peter’s, and like the great whale, retain, O man! in all seasons a temperature of thine own.” (ch.68)

This for instance has long been part of the blog.

Moby-Dick is one of the books that mean the most to me partly because it’s three books in one: a novel about the obsessive pursuit of a whale, a whale and whaling encyclopaedia, and a philosophical book.

“All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick. He piled upon the whale’s white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart’s shell upon it.” (ch.41) 

O man, beware of becoming Ahab! 

“Look not too long in the face of the fire, O man! Never dream with thy hand on the helm! Turn not thy back to the compass; accept the first hint of the hitching tiller; believe not the artificial fire, when its redness makes all things look ghastly. To-morrow, in the natural sun, the skies will be bright; those who glared like devils in the forking flames, the morn will show in far other, at least gentler, relief; the glorious, golden, glad sun, the only true lamp—all others but liars!

[…] Give not thyself up, then, to fire, lest it invert thee, deaden thee; as for the time it did me. There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. And there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces. And even if he for ever flies within the gorge, that gorge is in the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle is still higher than other birds upon the plain, even though they soar.” (ch.96) 

Great works of art such as Moby-Dick should not be reduced to self-help, but we love some books more than others not just because of literary merit, but because they resonate with us, because they reach something in us, because for some reason they stay with us over the years. Moby-Dick speaks to me. 

PS: Speaking of the Bible, about last month or so, I bought the King James Bible. Going to have to read it at some point.

Rereading Moby-Dick: “so noble and so sparkling”

Not a comforting thought to an ignorant and slow reader like me, but Tom (Wuthering Expectations) was right when he said there’s no reading deeply without reading widely. Moby-Dick feels different—and even better—now that I have read (and immersed myself in) Shakespeare. The influence is obvious: the language, the madness and grandeur of Ahab (in whom we find the rage of Lear and Timon), the play-like chapters, the references, and so on. 

I forgot, for example, that there’s a Shakespeare quote in the “Extracts”: 

“Very like a whale.”—Hamlet. 

References abound, like the chapter titled “Queen Mab”, or: 

“… But I omit them as altogether obsolete; and can hardly help suspecting them for mere sounds, full of Leviathanism, but signifying nothing.” (ch.32)

And plenty of others. 

Sometimes it’s less obvious: 

“Men may seem detestable as joint stock-companies and nations; knaves, fools, and murderers there may be; men may have mean and meagre faces; but man, in the ideal, is so noble and so sparkling, such a grand and glowing creature, that over any ignominious blemish in him all his fellows should run to throw their costliest robes.” (ch.26)

Does that not make you think of Hamlet?

“HAMLET […] What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god: the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals; and yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust?” (Act 2 scene 2)

Both are about the contradiction in man, but Ishmael’s quote is the inverse of Hamlet’s. 

He goes on: 

“That immaculate manliness we feel within ourselves, so far within us, that it remains intact though all the outer character seem gone; bleeds with keenest anguish at the undraped spectacle of a valor-ruined man. Nor can piety itself, at such a shameful sight, completely stifle her upbraidings against the permitting stars. But this august dignity I treat of, is not the dignity of kings and robes, but that abounding dignity which has no robed investiture. Thou shalt see it shining in the arm that wields a pick or drives a spike; that democratic dignity which, on all hands, radiates without end from God; Himself! The great God absolute! The centre and circumference of all democracy! His omnipresence, our divine equality!” (ibid.) 

That makes me think of that moment in King Lear when Lear asks “Is man no more than this?” and realises the shared humanity between himself and a beggar, and wants to take off his lendings. But Melville—shall I say Ishmael?—isn’t just talking about shared humanity; he talks about the dignity of each individual and all humanity. He makes a stronger, more emphatic point about equality. 

____________________________________

I still don’t understand why there’s a hyphen in the title. 

Anyway, reading Moby-Dick, I get that bliss from every line as I get reading Shakespeare. One doesn’t experience that with every writer. Dickens is another one, Bleak House most of all. Nabokov. But especially Shakespeare and Melville. Much as I love Tolstoy, Chekhov, or Cervantes, there’s some barrier, some distance as I read them in translation and don’t have their exact words.  

The Odyssey: “won’t you ever […] abandon your deceptions and the lying tales you adore from the very ground up?”

A Grecian vase depicting Odysseus and the Sirens (why is Odysseus naked though?). 

1/ Here is something interesting Homer does in the Odyssey: we first see Odysseus with Kalypso and know he has been held captive there for 7 years; we see him try to survive in the sea till he gets to the island of Alkinoos (better known as Alcinous) and Nausicaa (Alkinoos’s daughter); Odysseus tells his own story of the journey home over the past 10 years (Books 9-12); after all the hospitalities, the king Alkinoos helps Odysseus go home; upon setting foot on his homeland Ithake (better known as Ithaca), which he doesn’t recognise after being away for 20 years, Odysseus sees a man, who he doesn’t realise is Athene, and makes up a story about himself, only for Athene to reveal herself and tease him. The quote in the headline comes from that scene (translated by Peter Green). 

Note that. Not only does Odysseus make up a story on the spot—who asks?—but it’s richly detailed. 

Does that not make you see the Odyssey in a different light? All the adventures are narrated by Odysseus himself: all the encounters with the Lotus-Eaters and the Kyclopes (Cyclops) and Kirke (Circe) and the spirits and the Sirens and Skylle (Scylla) and Charybdis and the sun god Helios. “Unreliable narrator” may be a modern concept but “liar” is not—perhaps Sophocles and Euripides thought that too as they didn’t seem to like Odysseus (though they also had other sources apart from Homer). I’m not saying that Odysseus makes up everything—this is a world in which gods and nymphs and monsters exist—but surely he embellishes his tales and makes himself look better.

(I should probably read the Iliad before saying much nonsense about Odysseus though). 

2/ Apart from being the greatest works of Western literature, what do the Odyssey, Don Quixote, and the plays of Shakespeare have in common? They all feature some kind of transformation: metamorphosis or disguise or acting. (Almost) every single Shakespeare play has some disguise, some acting or pretending, some version of “I am not what I am”: women dressing up as men, noblemen disguising as commoners, sane men acting mad, women pretending to die, and so on; and of course, some characters play a role without putting on any disguise, like Edmund or Iago. In Don Quixote, a hidalgo named Alonso Quixano decides to become an errant knight and transforms himself into Don Quixote; some other characters wear disguise and make up stories to trick him, or play pranks on him and Sancho. In the Odyssey, Athene assumes different shapes as she guides Odysseus and his son Telemachos on their journeys (I didn’t realise till now that the word “mentor” came from the Odyssey); Odysseus famously disguises himself as a beggar upon his return to Ithake, to figure out what’s going on in his household (which reminds me of Henry V), but before that he already pretends to be someone else a few times, such as in his trickery of the Kyclopes. 

Odysseus is an actor as well as a storyteller. 

It probably adds to the vitality and complexity of these characters that they transform themselves, reinvent themselves. 

3/ Speaking of storytelling, I have never understood readers who complain about things which don’t advance the plot or which don’t have anything to do with the main character. That complaint I have seen many times over the years about many of my favourite novels; now I see it in some reviews of the Odyssey. 

Why such a hurry? Take your time, enjoy the journey, get to know the people you meet on the way. 

Moby Dick is such an exhilarating masterpiece because of those digressions, because of those meditations on whales, because of Ishmael’s quest to understand the whale and understand life. War and Peace feels so rich and full of life because Tolstoy fleshes out all the characters, because he gets us to know even the most insignificant characters. The Odyssey feels so vast because all the characters that Odysseus or Telemachos comes across have their own adventures and their own stories. 

4/ One thing that makes me feel uncomfortable—if that’s the right word—about the Odyssey is how much the gods interfere with human affairs and how much is fated. I know it’s the ancient Greece. I know it’s their belief. But I can’t help feeling uneasy—perhaps even slightly cheated—that the protagonist doesn’t come up with everything himself: it’s Athene who tells Telemachos to set sail in search of his father; it’s Athene who guides him along the way; it’s Athene who later tells Telemachos to come back; it’s Athene who gets Zeus to help Odysseus leave Kalypso; it’s Athene who appears as a little girl and guides Odysseus on the island of Nausicaa; it’s Athene who gives advice and disguises Odysseus as he’s back in Ithake; and so on.

I don’t mind that Kirke advises Odysseus how to survive the Sirens, or how to escape the dangerous path between Skylle and Charybdis—how would Odysseus know otherwise?—and Odysseus and his men still have to do everything they can to fight the monsters and survive in the sea. But it makes me feel uneasy nevertheless about the belief and depiction of human beings as so insignificant, so helpless, unable to escape their fate and unable to fight against the caprices of the gods.  

5/ The poster doesn’t make me particularly hopeful about Christopher Nolan’s upcoming adaptation of the Odyssey. The tagline is “Defy the gods.” 

The BBC’s 100 greatest British novels, and some top 5

What’s up with me and lists these days? I don’t know. Getting listless, I guess. But once in a while, I think it’s good to look at some lists and see the holes in one’s reading. 

The premise: “What does the rest of the world see as the greatest British novels?” 

I use a strikethrough for the books I have read. The tick is when I have seen a screen adaptation. 

100. The Code of the Woosters (PG Wodehouse, 1938)

99. There but for the (Ali Smith, 2011)

98. Under the Volcano (Malcolm Lowry,1947)

97. The Chronicles of Narnia (CS Lewis, 1949-1954) ✔

96. Memoirs of a Survivor (Doris Lessing, 1974)

95. The Buddha of Suburbia (Hanif Kureishi, 1990)

94. The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (James Hogg, 1824)

93. Lord of the Flies (William Golding, 1954) ✔

92. Cold Comfort Farm (Stella Gibbons, 1932) ✔

91. The Forsyte Saga (John Galsworthy, 1922)

90. The Woman in White (Wilkie Collins, 1859)

89. The Horse’s Mouth (Joyce Cary, 1944)

88. The Death of the Heart (Elizabeth Bowen, 1938)

87. The Old Wives’ Tale (Arnold Bennett,1908)

86. A Legacy (Sybille Bedford, 1956)

85. Regeneration Trilogy (Pat Barker, 1991-1995)

84. Scoop (Evelyn Waugh, 1938)

83. Barchester Towers (Anthony Trollope, 1857)

82. The Patrick Melrose Novels (Edward St Aubyn, 1992-2012)

81. The Jewel in the Crown (Paul Scott, 1966)

80. Excellent Women (Barbara Pym, 1952)

79. His Dark Materials (Philip Pullman, 1995-2000)

78. A House for Mr Biswas (VS Naipaul, 1961)

77. Of Human Bondage (W Somerset Maugham, 1915)

76. Small Island (Andrea Levy, 2004)

75. Women in Love (DH Lawrence, 1920)

74. The Mayor of Casterbridge (Thomas Hardy, 1886)

73. The Blue Flower (Penelope Fitzgerald, 1995)

72. The Heart of the Matter (Graham Greene, 1948)

71. Old Filth (Jane Gardam, 2004)

70. Daniel Deronda (George Eliot, 1876)

69. Nostromo (Joseph Conrad, 1904)

68. A Clockwork Orange (Anthony Burgess, 1962) ✔

67. Crash (JG  Ballard 1973)

66. Sense and Sensibility (Jane Austen, 1811) ✔

65. Orlando (Virginia Woolf, 1928) ✔

64. The Way We Live Now (Anthony Trollope, 1875)

63. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Muriel Spark, 1961) ✔

62. Animal Farm (George Orwell, 1945)

61. The Sea, The Sea (Iris Murdoch, 1978)

60. Sons and Lovers (DH Lawrence, 1913)

59. The Line of Beauty (Alan Hollinghurst, 2004)

58. Loving (Henry Green, 1945)

57. Parade’s End (Ford Madox Ford, 1924-1928)

56. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (Jeanette Winterson, 1985)

55. Gulliver’s Travels (Jonathan Swift, 1726)

54. NW (Zadie Smith, 2012)

53. Wide Sargasso Sea (Jean Rhys, 1966)

52. New Grub Street (George Gissing, 1891)

51. Tess of the d’Urbervilles (Thomas Hardy, 1891)

50. A Passage to India (EM Forster, 1924)

49. Possession (AS Byatt, 1990)

48. Lucky Jim (Kingsley Amis, 1954)

47. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (Laurence Sterne, 1759)

46. Midnight’s Children (Salman Rushdie, 1981)

45. The Little Stranger  (Sarah Waters, 2009)

44. Wolf Hall (Hilary Mantel, 2009)

43. The Swimming Pool Library (Alan Hollinghurst, 1988)

42. Brighton Rock (Graham Greene, 1938)

41. Dombey and Son (Charles Dickens, 1848)

40. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll, 1865) ✔

39.  The Sense of an Ending (Julian Barnes, 2011)

38. The Passion (Jeanette Winterson, 1987)

37. Decline and Fall (Evelyn Waugh, 1928)

36. A Dance to the Music of Time (Anthony Powell, 1951-1975)

35. Remainder (Tom McCarthy, 2005)

34. Never Let Me Go (Kazuo Ishiguro, 2005) ✔

33. The Wind in the Willows (Kenneth Grahame, 1908)

32. A Room with a View (EM Forster, 1908) ✔

31. The End of the Affair (Graham Greene, 1951) ✔

30. Moll Flanders (Daniel Defoe, 1722)

29. Brick Lane (Monica Ali, 2003)

28. Villette (Charlotte Brontë, 1853)

27. Robinson Crusoe (Daniel Defoe, 1719)

26. The Lord of the Rings (JRR Tolkien, 1954) ✔

25. White Teeth (Zadie Smith, 2000)

24. The Golden Notebook (Doris Lessing, 1962)

23. Jude the Obscure (Thomas Hardy, 1895) ✔

22. The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (Henry Fielding, 1749)

21. Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad, 1899)

20. Persuasion (Jane Austen, 1817) ✔

19. Emma (Jane Austen, 1815) ✔

18. Remains of the Day (Kazuo Ishiguro, 1989) 

17. Howards End (EM Forster, 1910) ✔

16. The Waves (Virginia Woolf, 1931)

15. Atonement (Ian McEwan, 2001)

14. Clarissa (Samuel Richardson,1748)

13. The Good Soldier (Ford Madox Ford, 1915)

12. Nineteen Eighty-Four (George Orwell, 1949)

11. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen, 1813) ✔

10. Vanity Fair (William Makepeace Thackeray, 1848)

9. Frankenstein (Mary Shelley, 1818)

8. David Copperfield (Charles Dickens, 1850) ✔

7. Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë, 1847) ✔

6. Bleak House (Charles Dickens, 1853)

5. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Brontë, 1847) ✔

4. Great Expectations (Charles Dickens, 1861) ✔

3. Mrs. Dalloway (Virginia Woolf, 1925)

2. To the Lighthouse (Virginia Woolf, 1927)

1. Middlemarch (George Eliot, 1874) ✔

Just about a quarter. But I don’t really feel much guilt, as many titles here are recent and therefore of little interest to me.  

If I were to name the 5 greatest British novels, I would probably say: 

• Bleak House 
• Wuthering Heights 
• Middlemarch 
• Emma 
• Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass (as one book—yes, I’m cheating) 

These are all 19th century novels, I know, that’s my century. Perhaps my picks will be different when I have read Tom Jones and Tristram Shandy—we’ll see. But my choice for the greatest British novel, contrary to consensus, would be Bleak House. I know people praise Middlemarch for its psychological insight, rightly so, but my vote goes to Bleak House for its language, for its metaphors and motifs and patterns, for its multiple strands of stories and the two narrators, for its large canvas and intricate plot—Bleak House is, in my opinion, more inventive and artistically more interesting than Middlemarch. 

As we’re here, I might as well name my choices for 5 greatest Russian novels:

• Anna Karenina 
• War and Peace 
• The Brothers Karamazov 
• Dead Souls 
• The Gift 

The last one is subject to change— I haven’t read Eugene Onegin, I haven’t read Demons, I haven’t read Oblomov, I haven’t read The Master and Margarita, I haven’t read Platonov, I haven’t read Andrei Bely, etc.—we’ll see. But the two Tolstoy novels and The Brothers Karamazov are going to stay there. 

I haven’t read enough to talk about French novels, so here are my 5 greatest American novels: 

• Moby Dick 
• Lolita 
• Invisible Man
• The Sound and the Fury 
• The Age of Innocence 

This is an uncertain list, at least the last two. Moby Dick however is one of the three novels with which I’m most obsessed, and my pick for the Great American Novel. Planning to sail again with Ishmael this year. Lolita and Invisible Man are both great. For the last spot, on a different day, I might swap The Age of Innocence for The Portrait of a Lady, or The Scarlet Letter. But also, there are quite a few important American novels I haven’t read. 

Give me your top 5. We’re talking about greatest novels, not favourites. 

Also tell me about other countries too. 5 greatest Indian novels. Spanish. Italian. French. Japanese. Chinese. Whatever.  

Exemplary Novels, the last 8 tales—is Cervantes a one-book wonder?

This is the Edith Grossman translation of Novelas ejemplares (my post on the first 4 stories). 

5/ “The Novel of the Glass Lawyer”: 

Ah, a madman! This must be Cervantes’s specialty. At first it took me some time to re-adapt to Cervantes after Chekhov—Cervantes also took a while to set things up—but afterwards, what a delightful story! Here is a man who gains wisdom in madness, like Lear. More than the protagonists of previous “exemplary novels”, he is a memorable character, combining the madness and knowledge of Don Quixote and the wit of Sancho Panza. 

Tomás Rodaja in his madness believes himself to be made of glass, and is known as Vidriera. 

“A wasp once stung him on the neck and he did not dare brush it away for fear he would break, but even so he complained. One man asked him how he felt the wasp if his body was glass. And he replied that the wasp was probably a gossip, and that the tongues and mouths of gossips were enough to shatter bodies of bronze, let alone glass.”

“The Novel of the Glass Lawyer” is the second best tale in Exemplary Novels.  

6/ “The Novel of the Power of Blood”: 

If you read this tale as a realistic story, and think of the moral aspect, it’s going to be hard to stomach. The only way to approach it is as fairytale, but even then it’s difficult. The 17th century is a foreign country indeed.

(On a side note, I am so done with the theme of the woman’s honour in Spanish literature). 

7/ “The Novel of the Jealous Extremaduran”:

Cervantes is trying me again. 

““This girl is beautiful, and according to the appearance of this house, she cannot be rich; she is a child, and her youth can assuage my suspicions. I shall marry her, keep her in seclusion, train her to my habits and customs, and in this way she will have no tendencies other than those I teach her…”” 

Like Genji and Murasaki. 

The speaker, Felipo de Carrizales, is the jealous Extremaduran of the title. By my calculations, he is 68, though confusingly near the end of the story, he says he’s nearly 80. The girl—wait for it—is 13-14. 

Did I mention I was ill last week? This wasn’t helping. 

The jealous man imprisons his young wife Leonora in the house, giving her no view of the streets and allowing her to go nowhere but to Mass. Except for the black eunuch at the gates, everyone else in the house is female—apart from seeing her parents at Mass, all her companions are the duenna, the maidservants, and the (female) slaves.   

“Whoever thinks he is more perceptive and circumspect can tell me now what other precautions for his security old Felipo could have taken, for he did not even consent to having any male animal in his house. A tomcat never chased the mice, and a male dog was never heard barking; all the animals were of the female gender. By day Felipo would think, by night he did not sleep; he was the night watch and sentry of his house, the Argos of what he loved dearly. No man ever passed through the door to the courtyard; he did business with his friends on the street.”

Most of the story is enjoyable as one watches the young and handsome Loaysa break through the fortress, with his musical talent and his wit, to get to Leonora. Carrizales is a tyrant! But one reads the ending and again thinks, with vexation, that the 17th century is a foreign country. These novelas are ejemplares apparently because there are some moral lessons, or at least they reflect the moral standards of the day, but the moral values of 17th century Spain are rather dubious, if not downright revolting.  

(It also didn’t help that on 30/7, the same day I read these two morally disturbing tales, I watched The Ballad of Narayama from 1983, one of those films that made me feel like I needed a good long bath afterwards). 

8/ “The Novel of the Illustrious Scullery Maid”: 

Cervantes seems fascinated by the act of transforming, of reinventing oneself: 

“Here it is: we now have—may it be the right time to recount it—Avendaño turned into a servant named Tomás Pedro in the inn, for that is what he said his name was, and Carriazo, with the name of Lope the Asturian, turned into a water carrier; metamorphoses worthy of being placed ahead of those by the sharp-nosed poet, Publius Ovidius Naso.”

Looks like I will have to read Ovid—Shakespeare loved Ovid after all. 

This story also has a pair of friends, but Avendaño and Carriazo are not interchangeable like Rinconete and Cortadillo: both come from rich families but Carriazo is an experienced rogue, drawn to adventures and tuna fishing; Avendaño just steps out in the world and finds himself enamoured of Costanza, the scullery maid. 

If I’m allowed to be a bit petty, I’d note that the ending rather goes against the point about female autonomy that Cervantes makes multiple times throughout Don Quixote. But overall, I enjoyed this story. It’s got a few tropes of Romances, but Cervantes is inventive and a great storyteller—he’s good at captivating the reader’s attention. 

9/ “The Novel of the Two Maidens”: 

Guess what this one is about. Correct! A woman’s honour. Or rather, two women’s honour. 

The one interesting thing I have to say is that clearly Shakespeare and Cervantes are both inspired by Ovid’s Metamorphoses, but if Shakespeare is generally more interested in disguise, acting, and manipulation, Cervantes is generally more fascinated by the act of renaming and reinventing oneself, though this one is an exception. In this tale, Cervantes largely still refers to Teodosia as Teodosia whilst she’s in disguise as Teodoro (a man), whereas in “The Glass Lawyer”, “The Illustrious Scullery Maid”, “Rinconete and Cortadillo”, and of course Don Quixote, the narrator switches to the new names, the new identities the characters give themselves.  

This tale of Teodosia and Leocadia makes me think of the subplot of Dorotea and Luscinda in Don Quixote, though of course it is different—Cervantes is inventive with plot. The resolution, as in “The Jealous Extremaduran”, feels like an attempt to be “exemplary”, but one could say the untangling of the Marco Antonio – Leocadia knot is unexpected—at least to me. 

Without saying who’s who, so as not to spoil the ending, I’d say I feel second-hand embarrassment for one of the maidens. Before everyone! I just wouldn’t go out in public again if I were her. 

10/ “The Novel of Señora Cornelia”: 

Between the 9th and 10th tales, I took a little break and read “The Displaced Person”, the final story in Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories.

It feels very strange to jump from the 17th century to the 20th century, then back to the 17th, and find Cervantes still treating the theme of a woman’s honour. How many times are you going to do this, Miguel? I have nothing to say—it feels rather pointless a story. 

It is worth noting though that a) Cervantes portrays with sympathy and doesn’t seem to condemn the women who have premarital sex; and b) there is no Don Juan in Don Quixote and Exemplary Novels—the men are either one-time rapists or passionate men who have sex before marriage but do keep their vows.

11/ “The Novel of the Deceitful Marriage”: 

This tale is rather short and under-developed, but it is fascinating for a few reasons. First of all, after numerous strikingly beautiful, good, and chaste women, who all seem alike, we now encounter a woman who is not very beautiful and who turns out to be manipulative. Secondly, it leads to the next—and last—story. And thirdly, a character raises a question about truth and reliability, which brings it closer to Don Quixote. 

12/ “The Novel of the Colloquy of the Dogs”: 

Now this is the height of Exemplary Novels. The story is a conversation between two dogs, Cipión and Berganza— it is closer to Tolstoy’s “Kholstomer” than to Bulgakov’s Heart of a Dog, though Cervantes’s dogs are a bit more human than Levin’s dog Laska in Anna Karenina. 

Berganza talks about his life, about his different masters and diverse careers, thus painting a rather rich and vivid picture of Spanish society in the 17th century. Cervantes’s gift for dialogue, as we see in Don Quixote, is at full strength here. The brilliance and wit and humour of Don Quixote, the double layers of narration and stories within the story can also be found here. 

“CIPIÓN: You call gossip philosophizing? Well, well, well: applaud, applaud, Berganza, the accursed plague of gossip! Call it whatever you like, it will call us cynics, a word that means gossiping canines; and by your life, be quiet now and go on with your story.

BERGANZA: How can I go on with it if I’m quiet?

CIPIÓN: I mean just go straight ahead, without making the story look like an octopus with all the tails you keep adding to it.

BERGANZA: Speak properly; the appendages of an octopus are not called tails.” 

It is wonderful! 

So, is Cervantes a one-book wonder? Just so you get a clearer idea, I shall digress and say that Herman Melville, often assumed to be a one-book wonder, is not one—his novellas and short stories are magnificent, especially “Bartleby”, “Benito Cereno”, “Billy Budd”, and “The Encantadas”; his novels The Confidence-Man and White-Jacket are also brilliant, even if they cannot compare to Moby Dick (but what can?). Cervantes, I would say, has one masterpiece—the funniest and also saddest novel I’ve read—but if you are curious about his other works, “The Novel of the Colloquy of the Dogs” and “The Novel of the Glass Lawyer” are worth reading. 

Reading Redburn

I’ve been to sea with Herman Melville a few times: on a whaler (Moby Dick), on a man-of-war (White-Jacket), and now on a merchant ship. 

Redburn is one of the two books Melville wrote for money after Mardi and (2 years) before Moby Dick, but it’s not an angry book like White-Jacket. Compared to both Moby Dick and White-Jacket, it is plainer, more straightforward, with more of a plot. 

“It was early on a raw, cold, damp morning toward the end of spring, and the world was before me; stretching away a long muddy road, lined with comfortable houses, whose inmates were taking their sunrise naps, heedless of the wayfarer passing. The cold drops of drizzle trickled down my leather cap, and mingled with a few hot tears on my cheeks.” (Ch.2) 

And: 

“Talk not of the bitterness of middle-age and after life; a boy can feel all that, and much more, when upon his young soul the mildew has fallen; and the fruit, which with others is only blasted after ripeness, with him is nipped in the first blossom and bud. And never again can such blights be made good; they strike in too deep, and leave such a scar that the air of Paradise might not erase it. And it is a hard and cruel thing thus in early youth to taste beforehand the pangs which should be reserved for the stout time of manhood, when the gristle has become bone, and we stand up and fight out our lives, as a thing tried before and foreseen; for then we are veterans used to sieges and battles, and not green recruits, recoiling at the first shock of the encounter.” (ibid.)

That of course is not plain prose—we’re talking about Melville—but place it next to Moby Dick and you’ll see what I mean. The first passage however reminds me of “a damp, drizzly November in my soul”. Moby Dick fans may like this: 

“But though I kept thus quiet, and had very little to say, and well knew that my best plan was to get along peaceably with every body, and indeed endure a good deal before showing fight, yet I could not avoid Jackson’s evil eye, nor escape his bitter enmity. And his being my foe, set many of the rest against me; or at least they were afraid to speak out for me before Jackson; so that at last I found myself a sort of Ishmael in the ship, without a single friend or companion; and I began to feel a hatred growing up in me against the whole crew—so much so, that I prayed against it, that it might not master my heart completely, and so make a fiend of me, something like Jackson.” (Ch.12)

“A sort of Ishmael”! As for Jackson, that’s an important character in the novel, I may blog about him later.  

Some of the best passages in Redburn are about the ocean: 

“And truly, though we were at sea, there was much to behold and wonder at; to me, who was on my first voyage. What most amazed me was the sight of the great ocean itself, for we were out of sight of land. All round us, on both sides of the ship, ahead and astern, nothing was to be seen but water—water—water; not a single glimpse of green shore, not the smallest island, or speck of moss any where. Never did I realize till now what the ocean was: how grand and majestic, how solitary, and boundless, and beautiful and blue; for that day it gave no tokens of squalls or hurricanes, such as I had heard my father tell of; nor could I imagine, how any thing that seemed so playful and placid, could be lashed into rage, and troubled into rolling avalanches of foam, and great cascades of waves, such as I saw in the end.

As I looked at it so mild and sunny, I could not help calling to mind my little brother’s face, when he was sleeping an infant in the cradle. It had just such a happy, careless, innocent look; and every happy little wave seemed gamboling about like a thoughtless little kid in a pasture; and seemed to look up in your face as it passed, as if it wanted to be patted and caressed. They seemed all live things with hearts in them, that could feel; and I almost felt grieved, as we sailed in among them, scattering them under our broad bows in sun-flakes, and riding over them like a great elephant among lambs. But what seemed perhaps the most strange to me of all, was a certain wonderful rising and falling of the sea; I do not mean the waves themselves, but a sort of wide heaving and swelling and sinking all over the ocean. It was something I can not very well describe; but I know very well what it was, and how it affected me. It made me almost dizzy to look at it; and yet I could not keep my eyes off it, it seemed so passing strange and wonderful.” (Ch.12)

Wellingborough Redburn is no Ishmael, but in such passages, he does sound like Ishmael, in his sense of wonder and his love of the ocean. This is even better: 

“Yes! yes! give me this glorious ocean life, this salt-sea life, this briny, foamy life, when the sea neighs and snorts, and you breathe the very breath that the great whales respire! Let me roll around the globe, let me rock upon the sea; let me race and pant out my life, with an eternal breeze astern, and an endless sea before!” (Ch.13) 

That passage would fit right in Moby Dick. Ishmael’s voice is one of the reasons I love the book. 

“I must now run back a little, and tell of my first going aloft at middle watch, when the sea was quite calm, and the breeze was mild.

The order was given to loose the main-skysail, which is the fifth and highest sail from deck. It was a very small sail, and from the forecastle looked no bigger than a cambric pocket-handkerchief. But I have heard that some ships carry still smaller sails, above the skysail; called moon-sails, and skyscrapers, and cloud-rakers. But I shall not believe in them till I see them; a skysail seems high enough in all conscience; and the idea of any thing higher than that, seems preposterous. Besides, it looks almost like tempting heaven, to brush the very firmament so, and almost put the eyes of the stars out; when a flaw of wind, too, might very soon take the conceit out of these cloud-defying cloud-rakers.” (Ch.16) 

I love that: “tempting heaven”. 

Now look at this passage about fog: 

“What is this that we sail through? What palpable obscure? What smoke and reek, as if the whole steaming world were revolving on its axis, as a spit?

It is a Newfoundland Fog; and we are yet crossing the Grand Banks, wrapt in a mist, that no London in the Novemberest November ever equaled. The chronometer pronounced it noon; but do you call this midnight or midday? So dense is the fog, that though we have a fair wind, we shorten sail for fear of accidents; and not only that, but here am I, poor Wellingborough, mounted aloft on a sort of belfry, the top of the “Sampson-Post,” a lofty tower of timber, so called; and tolling the ship’s bell, as if for a funeral.

This is intended to proclaim our approach, and warn all strangers from our track.

Dreary sound! toll, toll, toll, through the dismal mist and fog.

[…] A better device than the bell, however, was once pitched upon by an ingenious sea-captain, of whom I have heard. He had a litter of young porkers on board; and while sailing through the fog, he stationed men at both ends of the pen with long poles, wherewith they incessantly stirred up and irritated the porkers, who split the air with their squeals; and no doubt saved the ship, as the geese saved the Capitol.” (Ch.20) 

Redburn is more straightforward and Melville himself didn’t think much of it, but in passages such as these, the book approaches the greatness of Moby Dick. 

10 favourite novels and some other lists about books

- 10 favourite novels (updated): 
The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu 
Anna Karenina by Lev Tolstoy
War and Peace by Lev Tolstoy
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton 
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert 
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison 

- 3 favourite writers: 
Jane Austen 
Murasaki Shikibu 
Lev Tolstoy 

- 10 novels I feel worst for not having read:  
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky 
Don Quixote by Miguel De Cervantes
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe 
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman 
The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass
Hunger by Knut Hamsun 
To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf 
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo 
The works of Emile Zola 

- 10 novels I very much want to read though won't read any time soon: 
Ulysses by James Joyce
In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust 
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov 
Dream of the Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin
Eugenie Grandet by Honore de Balzac 
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco 
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray 
Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne
My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk 
The Red and the Black by Stendhal  

Compare to my lists from 4 years ago.

Update on 27/12/2020: Less than half a year later, my top 10 favourite novels have been updated. 

2 kinds of big novels

I’m going to get it out of the way by saying that Moby Dick doesn’t fit into this way of dividing big novels, because Moby Dick is more than a novel—it is 3 books put together (a novel, a whale encyclopaedia, and a philosophical book), and the story is only a small part of the book. 
Some recent articles and posts about big novels have made me think about them and storytelling, and I’ve come to the conclusion that big novels can be roughly divided into 2 types. 
The 1st type is the multiple-strand novel, which is essentially several novels put together. An example is Anna Karenina, in which we have the Anna strand and the Levin strand. Some characters belong to both sets of characters, such as Kitty or Oblonsky, but the Anna plot and the Levin plot are separate. 
Middlemarch is similar, which has 3 main plots: Dorothea- Casaubon, Lydgate- Rosamond, and Fred-Mary. Again, they sometimes intersect, but each of these plots can function as a novel on its own, even though the Fred-Mary one is thinner in comparison. Daniel Deronda is a better example, in which the Gwendolen Harleth plot and the Daniel Deronda plot only touch. 
Little Dorrit is less clear, but once I wrote that there were 4 strands of story in it: the Marshalsea prison, the Clennams, the bureaucrats, and the Marseilles prisoners. The line is more blurred, compared to Anna Karenina or Daniel Deronda, and Arthur Clennam connects all 4 plots, but they are separate—the world of the Clennams is distinct from the world of the Marshalsea prisoners and the Dorrit family, for instance, and the plot of the Marseilles prisoners is the one that stands out the most. 
Now look at War and Peace, it is different. It is the 2nd type, the one-big-story novel. War and Peace has 5 families and about 500-600 characters—they are all inter-connected and their lives are intertwined. Some readers speak of the War part and the Peace part, but they are just separate by location and action—they are not separate in the sense that they could be different books put together, especially if we look at characters such as Andrei and Nikolai. Andrei and Nikolai are not points of intersection of different strands the way Arthur Clennam is in Little Dorrit—their lives unfold in both the War part and the Peace part. 
A better example is The Tale of Genji, which is longer than War and Peace but tells a single story of Genji with his women and children. I’ve been told that about 2/3 or 3/4 through the book, Genji would die and the author would move on to tell the story of his children, but that would be a continuation. The entire book tells a single story—there are about 400 characters in the book but most of them relate to Genji one way or another. At least till he dies, Genji is always the central character, even if Murasaki Shikibu switches between perspectives. 
I think the 2nd type is harder to write. With the 1st type, you’re essentially writing 2 or several novels at the same time—you have to move back and forth between the plots, but generally speaking you’re focusing on one set of characters at a time. In contrast, when you write the one-big-story novel, the characters are not divided into different sets and you have to juggle with everyone at the same time. In The Tale of Genji for instance, Murasaki Shikibu must have full control over her 400 characters—what they’re doing, where they’re living, how old they are, when they move from one residence to another or how they move from serving one person to another, and so on. She has to keep track of passing time, age, seasons, festivals, amount of mourning time after a loved one dies, etc. and has to keep track of everyone’s age and changing titles as well as their relationships with each other. 
There may be some works that are hard to categorise, but I think big novels can be roughly divided into these 2 types.
What do you think?

A call to be more humble

25 most hated classic books, 10 “great” books best left unread, 5 classic novels not worth the time it takes to read them, 10 most overrated classics, 15 books we give you permission not to read, etc. etc. The internet can often be a depressing place for (serious) literature lovers. I keep coming across such lists.  
What, after all, is the point of these lists? Only to voice opinions? To express hatred of books? Or to find other people who also hate them as you do, and feel that if you’re not alone, you can’t be mistaken? 
Whenever I see someone denigrate a book that is 100 years old or more, and scornfully call it bad, boring, and overrated, I can’t help wondering why they can’t be a bit more, you know, humble. I wonder why they don’t think, perhaps I approach the book the wrong way, perhaps I dismiss the author for not doing something but they were trying to do something else, perhaps I fail to see the literary merit of the book and should try harder, or perhaps it has some value I can’t quite see but it’s just not my thing. I wonder why they don’t ask themselves, why is the book still read over 100 years later, what am I missing. 
When it comes to films, it can be difficult because cinema, compared to everything else, is a very young art (cinema also has the misfortune of depending on technology, which has been developed rapidly and can easily make a work appear dated and fake, especially to someone not used to it and not willing to embrace it). In literature, it’s easier to see when a book has stood the test of time.   
When I first read Jane Austen, it was Emma, and I hated it. I didn’t understand why she was so popular, and so highly acclaimed. But the book’s 200 years old. The film adaptations may explain Jane Austen’s place in popular culture, but not her place in the Western canon, nor the high esteem among critics and writers. The assignment of her books at schools and universities in English-speaking countries can’t explain her reputation outside the West—around the world. I didn’t understand the praises, so I persevered—I read Jane Austen’s other works, and reread Emma, and then realised that I had been approaching Emma the wrong way, reading it with the wrong mindset. I started to see her brilliance, subtlety, and depth. I used to hate Jane Austen and dismissed her as the mother of chicklit, like lots of people do, today she’s my favourite female writer. 
Of course, not all writers I initially don’t like end up becoming favourites. I still struggle with Henry James. I have reservations against Charlotte Bronte, and doubt I can ever warm to George Eliot. People do have personal taste. 
However, people should look beyond personal taste. There is a difference between enjoying a book and recognising its literary merit—you may find a book boring, challenging, or difficult to get through, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a bad book. People should also expand and develop their taste—after all, taste is not immutable, at 25 you don’t like many of the things you loved at 15, then at 35 you come to like different things. 
Some books need a different approach. Some books demand rereading. Some books require readers to throw away their preconceptions about what a book should do, and go along with it. Some books demand readers to work harder and look deeper. But in the end, they’re also more rewarding. 
I’m not saying that we have to like everything in the canon, I’m not saying that we have to follow literary critics (they don’t even agree with each other). But as I said, there’s a difference between liking a book and recognising its literary qualities, just as there’s a difference between calling something a bad book and recognising that it’s just not your thing. Some humility would be good. 
I’ve seen it all the time, but it still surprises me to see people use words such as “awful” and “shitty” and “trash” for canonical works, or scornfully dismiss influential, widely acclaimed and recognised authors as talentless hacks. Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights are called upmarket Twilight, Jane Austen’s seen as mother of chicklit, Charles Dickens’s books are described as soapy and sentimental, Tolstoy and Melville join each other over and over again in lists of books best left unread, and so on and so forth. 
To me, Tolstoy and Melville are giants, towering above almost everyone else in literature*—when facing Anna Karenina, War and Peace, or Moby Dick, I’m overwhelmed, I’m in awe of their genius. When I see a reader express not only dislike but also disdain towards them, part of me is amused—these books need no defence. But at the same time, I’m appalled at the arrogance. 
Why do these readers not entertain the thought that maybe they’re missing something? 
One day you and I will be gone. But Melville and Tolstoy and many of these so-called overrated writers will stay, they will outlive us all.




* addendum in 10/2021: that was me, in 2019, being a fangirl. In 2021, I'd say Shakespeare and Tolstoy, but you get the idea. 

Late celebration of Melville’s 200

I’ve just realised that I didn’t write a word on this blog when it was Herman Melville’s 200th birthday in August this year. Shocking, I know. 
But I shall not write about Moby Dick. It is no wonder that Moby Dick overshadows everything else—it is a phenomenal book, it is a book borne out of genius and madness, and there’s nothing else like it. But I do wish that people know more about Melville’s other works. 
I’m starting to think that maybe the best form for Melville was the novella or short story, not the novel. Well, depends on what “best” means, you say. Or even, what “good” means. But then Moby Dick isn’t even a novel. Is White-Jacket? The Confidence-Man definitely isn’t. 
After Typee and Omoo, Melville changed—he got inspired and found his own style, and made his 1st attempt of a Melvillesque book with Mardi, which was a failure, a crazy, confusing mess of a book. Then he wrote 2 books for money, Redburn and White-Jacket, before embarking on Moby Dick. If Redburn was more about the story, the adventures and development of the main character, and White-Jacket leant more toward journalistic and expository writing, examining life, rules, and hierarchy on a Navy ship, Moby Dick was where Melville found the perfect balance between the story and the expository, and reached the peak of his genius. After Moby Dick, Melville experimented again with the form and explored the possibilities of “the novel”, in Pierre: or the Ambiguities, Israel Potter, and The Confidence-Man, but failed and failed, and never again achieved the greatness of Moby Dick. Melville was called crazy. 
Don’t take that too seriously, by the way, I’m basing most of it on hearsay. Out of those big baggy books, the ones I’ve read so far are White-Jacket and The Confidence-Man.    
Anyway, after Moby Dick, Melville’s best works are his novellas and short stories—let’s call them all short stories for convenience. Some of them are perfection, and the best are the 3Bs, and “The Encantadas”. 
The 3Bs are what to go for if you want “pure fiction”: “Benito Cereno”, “Billy Budd”, and “Bartleby”.  
“Billy Budd, Sailor” comprises of 2 parts. The 1st part is an examination of envy. The 2nd part is an examination of the law, specifically the court-martial. It is a rich work, and readers of “Billy Budd” fall into 2 camps surrounding the character of Vere—is he a good man trapped by a bad law, or is he a tyrant, acting as witness, prosecutor, judge, and executioner? 
“Benito Cereno” is also a complex work, and readers fall into 2 camps—is it a portrait of human depravity, or a condemnation of slavery? In both “Billy Budd” and “Benito Cereno”, Melville touches on the theme of innocence and the inability to recognise evil, but in the latter, he goes further, and tells the story from the perspective of a character who misunderstands and misinterprets everything he sees.   
“Billy Budd” and “Benito Cereno” are perfect, they are well-written, tightly structured, and full of meaning.    
The 3rd B is “Bartleby, the Scriver”. I want to give higher praise to “Benito Cereno” and “Billy Budd” because they’re more neglected whereas “Bartleby” is Melville’s most widely taught and read work, but it is for a reason—it is Melville’s finest short story. Bartleby has escaped Melville’s story and become a concept in popular culture, as a worker who refuses to work and responds to everything with “I would prefer not to”. “Bartleby” has layers and layers of meaning, it can be approached from different angles and interpreted in multiple ways—Marxist/ social, philosophical, psychological, autobiographical, etc. Like Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis”, “Bartleby” is rich and elusive, and cannot be pinned down—no single interpretation can be seen as definitive. Rereading gives more clues and leads to more questions, instead of providing with an answer. 
In that sense, “Bartleby” is like Moby Dick. Perhaps the only meaning is that there is no meaning. 
Readers who don’t like the bagginess of Moby Dick*, or love Moby Dick but don’t like the confusion and madness of Melville’s long works should read his short stories, especially the 3Bs. 
What about “The Encantadas” then, you say. I mentioned it as one of Melville’s best works after Moby Dick. “The Encantadas, or Enchanted Isles” is made up of 10 sketches about the Galapagos Islands, and is compared to Melville’s early travel writings, but I think in a few ways, it’s the closest thing to Moby Dick, in the short form. The blend of fact and fiction, the vividness of detail and richness of language, the hyperbole and mock-heroic prose, the rich symbolism, the way Melville turns the most ordinary and mundane things in nature into something philosophical, that you find in Moby Dick can all be found in “The Encantadas”—just replace whales with tortoises. Like Moby Dick, it has genius fused with madness. 
I haven’t done these works any justice. I’m often in awe when it comes to Melville**. 
Happy Melville bicentennial! 


*: I refuse to say digressions. Digressions from what? The story? Moby Dick is not about the story. 
**: Here are my past writings about these works: 
“Benito Cereno”: 
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2016/06/write-about-benito-cereno-without.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2016/06/benito-cereno.html 
“Billy Budd”: 
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2016/06/billy-budds-character.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2016/06/the-2-halves-of-billy-budd-sailor.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2016/06/vere-tyrant.html 
“Bartleby”: 
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2016/06/revisiting-bartleby-questions-and-more.html
“The Encantadas”: 
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2016/05/tortoises-in-encantadas.html

2010- 2019 in books [updated]

Soon we will enter the 2020s, so let’s talk about our reading over the past decade, shall we?  
1/ I came to Norway in 2009—before this, I only read literature in Vietnamese. Slowly I started to switch, and now read almost exclusively in English. 

2/ My years in Norway, 2009-2016, especially after I entered University of Oslo in 2012, will without doubt be seen as my formative years in reading.
(I will, forever, be grateful to HumSam-bibliotek of University of Oslo, and Deichmanske bibliotek—Oslo public library). 

3/ My favourite writers are: Lev Tolstoy, Jane Austen, Vladimir Nabokov, Herman Melville, and Gustave Flaubert. 
I also like: the Bronte sisters, especially Emily Bronte, Charles Dickens, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Nikolai Gogol, Anton Chekhov, Robert Louis Stevenson, Lewis Carroll, Toni Morrison, William Faulkner, P. G. Wodehouse… 
George Eliot is a great writer I have immense respect for but don’t love. Henry James is another I struggled quite a lot with, but I’m warming to his works. 

4/ I started to have a love for literature in the English language at the IB (International Baccalaureate). 
However, most of my favourite writers from this period I’m now indifferent to: F. Scott Fitzgerald, J. D. Salinger, Milan Kundera, Franz Kafka, George Orwell, Isabel Allende…  

5/ I discovered Nabokov and Tolstoy in 2012, Jane Austen in 2013, and Melville in 2016 (before coming to the UK). 

6/ I love British literature and Russian literature. 
The most important reading challenge I did on this blog was Russian Literature Challenge in 2014. Here’s the wrap-up: 
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/01/russian-literature-challenge-2014-wrap.html

7/ Here are some top 10 lists about books, from 2016: 
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2016/08/some-top-10-lists-about-books.html
The list of favourite books is now different (what do you expect? It’s been 3 years!), but the other lists remain more or less the same. 

8/ My new list of 10 favourite novels: 
Anna Karenina by Lev Tolstoy
War and Peace by Lev Tolstoy
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte 
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert 
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier 
Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens 
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner 

9/ My favourite Jane Austen novel is her least popular and most misunderstood work, Mansfield Park: 
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/12/reading-misreading-mansfield-park.html
This is a book about which I often fight with people. The blog post above is a collection of my writings and arguments about Mansfield Park, from 2014 and before. 
I wrote a bit about Mansfield Park on Jane Austen’s 244th birthday: 
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2019/12/jane-austens-birthday-16121775-16122019.html 

10/ Another novel about which I also often fight with people is Lolita. Here are my final arguments when I reread the book in 2017: 
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2017/05/lolita-chapter-29.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2017/05/lolitas-tears.html
I also wrote about motifs in Lolita that I didn’t notice earlier, such as: 
Dogs: https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-dogs-in-lolita.html 
Birds and butterflies: https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2017/05/butterflies-and-birds-in-lolita.html
In 2019, I read The Enchanter, which is known as the proto-Lolita, and compared the 2 here: 
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2019/04/from-enchanter-to-lolita.html 
Also, if anyone accuses Nabokov of plagiarising Henz von Lichberg’s short story, here’s my response:  
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-other-lolita.html 

11/ On my blog, the label “writers and readers” is devoted to discussing the art of reading, good readers vs bad readers. 
Some important posts are: 
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2013/08/3-wrong-attitudes-in-reading-novels.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/02/poshlost-according-to-nabokov.html 
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/05/philistines-and-philistinism-vladimir.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2019/08/on-idea-of-relevance-and-relatableness.html 
Nabokov, as you can see, has huge influence on my thinking and reading. 
Also, this is a post about top 10 “Are we reading the same book?” moments: 
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/08/top-10-are-we-reading-same-book-moments.html 

12/ I have written a few times about feminist literary criticism, especially The Madwoman in the Attic:
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/03/the-madwoman-in-attic-george-eliot.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/06/the-madwoman-in-attic-on-middlemarch.html

13/ 1 of my best series on my blog is about George Eliot’s Middlemarch: 
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/06/characters-in-middlemarch-and.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/06/get-out-of-way-will-you-or-george-eliot.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/06/lydgate-sexist.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/06/middlemarch-paintings-and-miniatures.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/06/middlemarch-taking-wife.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/06/chapter-42-and-casaubon-or-how-i-learn.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/06/experience-and-growth-dorothea-brooke.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/06/the-2nd-plot-of-middlemarch-and.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/06/george-eliots-moral-lessons-in.html 
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/06/middlemarch-each-unhappy-family-is.html 
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/06/on-fred-vincy.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/06/last-thoughts-on-middlemarch-tingle.html 

14/ Another good series is about Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady:
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/09/experience-and-reading-p2-readers-in.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/10/the-portrait-of-lady-signs.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/10/the-portrait-of-lady-time.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/10/the-portrait-of-lady-characters-and.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/10/the-portrait-of-lady-more-on-time-and.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/10/metaphors-in-portrait-of-lady.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/10/silence-in-portrait-of-lady.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/11/the-greatness-of-portrait-of-lady.html 

15/ Here’s my series about Charles Dickens’s Little Dorrit, from earlier this year: 
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2019/07/starting-little-dorrit.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-houses-in-little-dorrit.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2019/07/repetition-in-little-dorrit.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-story-strands-in-little-dorrit.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2019/07/on-character-of-little-dorrit.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2019/07/little-dorrit-rivals.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-themes-in-little-dorrit.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2019/07/on-amy-dorrit-or-how-dickens-improves.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2019/08/little-dorrit-some-random-observations.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2019/08/on-finishing-little-dorrit.html 

16/ I think my recent series about Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca is not bad. 
However, I’ve noticed that I’ve not written any good series of blog posts at all about Tolstoy or Jane Austen or Melville. 

17/ Here I explain why I don’t use the star rating system: 
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2019/04/why-i-dont-use-star-rating.html 

18/ To lots of people, 2010- 2019 is just another decade, but to me, it has been an important decade: I read a lot more than before, switched to reading in English, discovered Russian literature, discovered writers who shaped my taste and thinking and who would most likely remain in my personal canon, learnt to read a literary work, learnt to analyse and write about it, shaped my views and aesthetics in literature, got a degree in language and literature, created a blog that focused mostly on literature, and got blogger friends. 
Here’s to another good decade in reading!


__________________________________________

Update: 
In the earlier version of this post, I didn’t link to any of my writings about Moby Dick, because at the time of reading and writing about the book, I was in awe and had nothing intelligent to say. The posts were more like notes for myself than finished and polished blog posts to share with the world. However, it’s not really fair to go on and on about Lolita and Mansfield Park but not say a word about Moby Dick, a book of genius, a book that I’m sure will always remain in my top 3 (together with Anna Karenina and War and Peace). 
Here’s a blog post in which I stated why Moby Dick is a book about everything: 
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2016/04/moby-dick-is-book-about-everything.html
Some of my posts were about the whale chapters:
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2016/03/moby-dick-chapter-32-cetology.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2016/03/the-whales-skin.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2016/04/the-whales-eyes-structure-of-moby-dick.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2016/04/the-noble-sperm-whale.html
My view regarding Moby Dick is an “extreme” view: the book is perfect as it is and does not “need an editor”; it is several books in one, it is about everything, and therefore it is the way it should be; readers should not skip the whale chapters and should not read for only the story, but should read Moby Dick with the right mindset, i.e. with curiosity and a sense of wonder; an abridged War and Peace might still be War and Peace, but an abridged Moby Dick is not Moby Dick.
When will I again experience the aesthetic bliss of reading something incredible like Anna Karenina or Moby Dick?