After reading The Art of Fielding, I felt compelled to re-read Moby Dick. It had been quite a few years since I read it last, so I’d forgotten a lot. One of the main things people complain about when it comes to this book are the supposedly endless descriptions of whales and the technical details of whaling. There is, in fact, a lot of that, but not as much as I had remembered there being. And some of it is pretty interesting, though plenty of times it does seem to drag on.

But another thing the book has a lot of, and that you hardly ever hear anyone giving it credit for, is a sense of humor that was far ahead of its time. Take a look at this passage, which is from the very first page of the novel:

Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball.

I started reading this book on the way to work one morning, and if anyone, on the way to work, hasn’t ever felt like “stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off,” then congratulations, you lead a charmed life.

Another passage that made me laugh was when an innkeeper believes that one of her tenants has locked himself in his room and committed suicide:

[i]t will be the ruin of my house. Has the poor lad a sister? Where’s that girl?—there, Betty, go to Snarles the Painter, and tell him to paint me a sign, with—”no suicides permitted here, and no smoking in the parlor;”—might as well kill both birds at once.

So if all the whale and whaling talk has kept you away, know that you’re going to get at least equal measures of (perhaps) unexpected entertainment out of the novel as well. This is not some dreary tome about an old dude looking for a fish, it is a lively adventure and a serious dramatic masterpiece. There is dramatic dialogue in this book to rival anything in any of the best American plays (many of the chapters are written almost as if for the stage, containing only dialogue and stage directions). There’s so much that is so good, but the passage that sticks with me, and has stuck with me for years, is the one containing Ahab’s final words as his climactic encounter with the white whale comes to an end:

Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins and all hearses to one common pool! and since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces, while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale! Thus, I give up the spear!”

“From hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee” – these have got to be the greatest last words ever uttered by any character in American literature.

If you haven’t read Moby Dick, you should take the time to do so.