/lit/ - Literature

a less gay version of pic rel, writing-wise

>>16371530
Pierre by Chadville

>>10374393
>So ignorant are most landsmen of some of the plainest and most palpable wonders of the world, that without some hints touching the plain facts, historical and otherwise, of the fishery, they might scout at Moby Dick as a monstrous fable, OR STILL WORSE AND MORE DETESTABLE, A HIDEOUS AND INTOLERABLE ALLEGORY.

Chapter 45, Moby Dick

>>10374630
>>10374814
>>10374425
>>10374404
these

hmmm

“He challenged the world with his genius, and the world defeated him by ignoring the challenge and starving him. He stopped writing because he had failed and because he had no choice but to accept the world’s terms: there is no mystery here. This was not insanity, but common sense.”

:'(

This man

THIS

MAN

WROTE

THE GREATEST BOOK

EVER WRITTEN

MOBY 'MOTHERFUCKING'' DICKHEAD

FUCK YEEHHHHHHH

What did he read?

Can someone explain Herman Melville to me? I read Moby Dick a while ago and was blown away, predictably, and I figured now I'd read Typee because I'd heard it was his next most acclaimed novel, and because it's interesting to see the evolution of an authors style.

However I cannot figure out what makes Typee so great, and if it's the best novel other than Moby Dick he wrote (not including his short stories or Billy Budd), how the fuck did he manage to write Moby Dick in the end? Was it his ridiculous reading of Shakespeare? His meeting with Hawthorne? Typee seems like a quaint, cheerful travel memoir bookended with an adventure story, two genres I have not read enough of to know how ahead of his time he was with them.

Maybe my copy was abridged? It's a 100 year old hardback I found in a used book store, like 210 pages long, average density of around 375 words per page, I do know that old books were more often censored if something was deemed offensive, is that what might have happened to me? Cheers lads.

Best American author, right here.

Was Melville a gay?

Reading Typee and it seems like he might have some tendencies.

Also the whole "legs intertwined" scene in Moby Dick.

That being said, I really like the way Melville writes.

Any opinions?