/lit/ - Literature

>>22974406
Moby-Dick

I need to earn enough money to retire young (~45) and dedicate my life to a hobbyist academic pursuit of reading all great works of literature in their original languages? only then will I publish my first and only novel (a canonical masterpiece that endures the test of time, of course)

>>17106443
Moby-Dick
Cowboy Bebop
I don’t watch anime really.

>>16825512
>I see Moby Dick always rank as #1 according to this board. But what exactly makes it such a masterpiece?
It ranks #1 on this board because it’s a great book in a language that everyone on this board reads, there are very few books as good as Moby-Dick written in English, Moby-Dick is almost certainly not the greatest book ever (though it is my favourite), but it’s probably the greatest of American literature, and also one of the best in English. At least /lit/ puts Moby-Dick at the top rather than a meme boon like IJ.
>Is this one of those works where you are "supposed to" say it's the best, but nobody really knows why and nobody actually enjoys?
No it’s genuinely great. I read it because it was in the house and someone on /lit/ said it was comfy; I expected a decent work of literature that I enjoyed because of maritime setting and the whales but wouldn’t be the deepest thematically and would be a bit autistic. I was surprised because it was incredible, beautiful in composition and meaning, people complain about descriptions of whaling but Melville’s prose is vibrant enough to make it interesting and the activities are all related back to the themes of the work. I couldn’t stop thinking about it for months after I first read it so within a year I read it twice again.
>It was poorly received when released, and according to most reviews from casuals readers, it's long winded and extremely boring.
Casual readers will not enjoy moby-dick, it’s not a book you should read slowly and it requires some prior knowledge about philosophy, the Old Testament, and history to fully appreciate. You can appreciate and even love the book without that knowledge but normalfags won’t get it when Melville makes a joke about whales liking Spinoza or spends a chapter critiquing pantheism. It’s far from dull (it’s even quite funny occasionally) and it’s long but not long-winded, chapters are fairly short and it’s quite varied.
>What is so deeply profound about this book
Exploration of a search for an ultimate singular truth or meaning to reality, and how that search (especially particular methods of going about it) is often destructive and futile, about the joys of the human experience and the openness of reality to interpretation. However there are many interpretations of Moby-Dick (appropriately for the interpretation that I gave you) and so you should derive it yourself, it’s one of the greatest things about it.
>that makes it the best book ever written in human history?
As I said, it’s not the best ever, it’s just one of the best in the only language that everyone on /lit/ speaks.
>Is it the story?
Yes, if you see the story as the story of the narrators exploration of the human experience, which is the point of the book.
>Is it the use of the English language?
Yes, Melville was incredible at poetic prose.
>Is it some profound meaning or revelation?
Yes, a number of them as Moby-Dick is open to interpretation.