Moby-Dick Big Read - Chat discussion

Maybe you've come across an interesting tidbit about the writing of the novel Moby-Dick or some interesting bit of information relevant to the story and the writer. He's a place to share that fact or tidbit.

"Two actual events served as the genesis for Melville's tale. One was the sinking of the Nantucket ship Essex in 1820, after it was rammed by a large sperm whale 2,000 miles (3,200 km) from the western coast of South America. First mate Owen Chase, one of eight survivors, recorded the events in his 1821 Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex.

The other event was the alleged killing in the late 1830s of the albino sperm whale Mocha Dick, in the waters off the Chilean island of Mocha. Mocha Dick was rumored to have twenty or so harpoons in his back from other whalers, and appeared to attack ships with premeditated ferocity. One of his battles with a whaler served as subject for an article by explorer Jeremiah N. Reynolds in the May 1839 issue of The Knickerbocker or New-York Monthly Magazine. Melville was familiar with the article, which described:

This renowned monster, who had come off victorious in a hundred fights with his pursuers, was an old bull whale, of prodigious size and strength. From the effect of age, or more probably from a freak of nature... a singular consequence had resulted - he was white as wool!" - Wikipedia

Head over to Google! They're celebrating the 161st "birthday" of Moby Dick with a very nice Google Doodle. I took a screencap, but I don't think I'll be able to post it from work...

Ah! I didn't know it was birthday day. :) Thanks for the tip. I missed yesterday's. I have a screen cap but don't know how to add it to this post.

I saw that this morning and was not-so-secretly thrilled :-)

How did you add it? I added it to our Photo section but didn't know how to get it in the post. :)

Here's a link to the Christian Science Monitor article celebrating Melville and his whale baby published 161 years ago today.

http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/H...

If you right click on the image, any image or photo, and click on "copy image URL" for Chrome, or the analogous thing in your browser, you can then use that to link a picture. Do you know how to do that?

Be right back with a link to the instructions.

ETA: http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/7...

Oh, good! I decided I didn't care if the Powers That Be see me saving pics to the computer, and was just about to come post it!

I didn't think of hotlinking to the picture; I screencapped, dropped it into Powerpoint, cropped it, saved it as a jpeg, and put it in my photos.

Thanks, Hayes! I'm fairly new to GoodReads and don't do a lot with images anywhere so I forgot all about that. :)

Did you know that Ray Bradbury wrote the screenplay for Moby-Dick?

http://authors.simonandschuster.com/R...

Somewhere I have the book he wrote about the experience - Green Shadows, White Whale: A Novel of Ray Bradbury's Adventures Making Moby Dick with John Huston in Ireland. I picked that up ages ago and didn't realize that's what it was about for a long time.

Tracey wrote: "Somewhere I have the book he wrote about the experience - Green Shadows, White Whale: A Novel of Ray Bradbury's Adventures Making Moby Dick with John Huston in Ireland. I picked that up ages ago an..."

I haven't read it but I may have seen something about it earlier when I was first looking into this reading project. I'll have to read it. Bradbury is one of my favorite authors. Thanks for the reminder.

hello guyz.iwant to know what other writers have said about this book (mobydick).i checked in many websites.but i was not able to find it please help me..
it's very important for me.

Sreeraj, Welcome. If you look at the various chapter discussion threads, at the top you'll find links to a blog that is posting an analysis and critique of each chapter. Often there's information about thoughts by other writers on Moby-Dick.

There is also this: http://www.melville.org/letter5.htm
and http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/boo...

i checked it. i got only 2 writers opinion.That also after checking all the discussions. i need 2 more.Can you help me.i need to also find the critical appreciation of moby dick.

Look through some more of the reviews here on goodreads, sreeraj.

If you're doing a project for school you'll have to do some work yourself. Vikk and I have already done ours, and it was a while ago too, so I'm out of practice ;-)

You can try on the Internet, but steer clear of Wikipedia.

Hi Sreeraj, I get the feeling that you are a student who is trying to write a paper. Have you read Moby-Dick? Have you checked to see what his contemporary writers wrote about the book? I can't do your work for you. I can offer some avenues, maybe, to try.

I did Google: contemporary critical appreciation for Moby Dick
https://www.google.com/search?source=...

You might Google the names of writers who lived during the time of its publication with Moby Dick to see what pops up: Longfellow Moby-Dick, same with Hawthorne, Whitman, etc.

I don't know of any other opinion off hand and honestly don't have time to any deep searches. What I've mentioned are some things I would have to do in order to attempt to answer your questions.

I'm not sure I know what you're looking for or why when you want opinions or whose critical appreciation you want but I do think you can use Google to find what you need. If someone else has any ideas, I'm sure they'll chime in.

Iam not asking you to do my work.Like you said i just need tips.I had read moby dick, but it was a long time ago.I don't remember most of the chapters now.I asked you people to help me because ,i thought you have done more study on this novel.I have already done the search on google about the critical appreciation.But the results were about Critical Review ,critical analysis,Critical Essays.
iam really sorry for wasting your time.

Sorry I was a little "short" with you Sreeraj. You're not wasting my time, but as a teacher I get many many requests for this kind of help, so I do get a little impatient sometimes.

This is a first time read for me, so I know even less than you do. I am discovering things as I go along. I think most of us here are reading/listening for the first time.

Good luck with your research.

Hi Sreeraj, This is the first time I've read Moby-Dick so you are ahead of me when it comes to knowing about the book.

Sorry if you were simply asking for your own personal knowledge and are not a student but I have come up against students in the past seeking information that I simply don't have or don't have huge amounts of time. The way you posed your question caused me to assume it was that case. It's not a matter of wasting time as much as it is on whether you are a student who is simply trying to bypass normal avenues of research. I simply believe that students need to do their own work. Since that doesn't fit you it's not a problem. :)

I guess I'm not sure what you mean when you say "critical appreciation." We are reading Moby-Dick as part of the Moby-Dick Big Read one-chapter-a-day marathon where we listen to a chapter a day and then post our responses and talk about the chapters. We're pretty much learning as we go along.

The New York blog link that I post with each chapter thread is simply to help us get a certain type of context to the story. I have the Ignatius Critical Reader edition of the story and we've posted a few versions of Moby-Dick found online in that thread that offer some insight to the text.

I'm still not sure exactly what you are looking for and tried to help simply by sharing how'd I go about it but it seems I don't quite know what you are searching for.

There is another GoodReads group that is reading the book this month. There seem to be people there who know way more than perhaps we do here as this is our first time. We're all exploring together and are reading at different paces.

Here's a link to that other GoodReads chat I mentioned. Maybe some of those participants have more knowledge about the book and can provide you with the resources you need.

We'd be happy to have you continue to remain a part of our group as you reread the book so please don't take this as anything other than an attempt to help you further. I guess I just don't understand exactly what you're seeking. Right now, I'm simply having a great time reading the novel for the first time and sharing my own thoughts and reading those of others.