/lit/ - Literature

>>10089148
It's not a hard book to understand?

>>10089176
think about the ability of the average /lit/ poster to come to terms with even the simplest truths in this life tho

now imagine their brain trying to reckon with the final boss of western literature.

makes me laugh tbqh

Read it in my mother tongue and it wasn't that impressive. Guess i'll have to reread it in english.

>>10089148
that's the 1st world boss

>>10089148
I have read it, but I don't really know what it means to understand a book. Could you explain that concept to me, what are the prerequisites for being able to say that I understood a book?

>>10089205
Yeah, I read it in English and the writing was gorgeous. He is clearly influenced by the baroque and archaic style of Shakespeare and KJV Bible, which can't be imitated properly in a language with a different literary tradition. You definitely should try reading the original, it's not that difficult (easier than Shakespeare, at least).

>>10089148
The Mahabharata in original Sankskrit is the real final boss

>read it
15%

>and understood it?
11%

No, it's not the final boss. It's a damn good time though. One of the greatest pleasures of my entire life was reading Moby Dick.

Understood it? Moby Dick has some of the most inscrutable meaning of any book ever written, and that's part of why it's so damn good.

Read it. You're up to the challenge. Perhaps read Typee or Omoo first to get used to Melvilles writing style (you will love his style).

Moby-Dick was very intimidating, until I finally sat down to read it.
It blows my mind that it's such a widely praised and referenced book, yet it seems like very few people have ever actually read it. The more I read, the more I figure out that other people simply don't read. They're happy just assuming they understand what something is about based on generations of references and summaries.

>>10089148
It's a great book but it's no "final boss". Literature isn't a contest, and it certainly isn't a contest with just one winner.

>>10089148
I woke up one morning kind of sleepily, and other people might understand how when you wake up this sleepily you're more sincere, quiet, and closer to your subconscious. Anyway, in this state, it really came to me (in a state that I didn't exactly feel while I was reading it) that Moby Dick represented everything inscrutable, everything unattainable, everything that tortures and baffles us. He represented the impossible uncertainty of God and how we can never directly know Him in this life, the impossibility of knowing the meaning of life, the baffling question of why we suffer and die and why suffering and death exist in general, and, finally, represents everything in life that we pine after impossibly and which desire destroys us --- from wanting someone to be alive again to wanting that chick who doesn't like you. I mean, this is explicitly stated in the book at one point, but it didn't really hit me then.

Thoreau to Emerson: "What you seek in vain for, half your life, one day you come full upon, all the family at dinner. You seek it like a dream, and as soon as you find it you become its prey."

It's doomed to mostly be appreciated by Americans though, it's for some reason not as appreciated in Europe (and not just because it's overly regional, Dostoyevsky has a lot of Russianisms in his books not very applicable to other times and places, I think Europeans are just biased against caring about the American classics), and I find it hard to imagine a translation of it which is totally faithful to the beauty of the style -- that would require the translator to be at least as good a stylist as Melville.

>>10089516
>I think Europeans are just biased against caring about the American classics
>implying
When it was originally published, it was the British readers and critics who praised Moby Dick, while the Americans mostly criticized and ignored it. And Poe would be completely forgotten today had Baudelaire not translated and popularized him.

Finnegan's Wake, IMO,
but since everyone on /lit/ is such a goddamn genius, I'm sure at least one or two of you think it's pleb trash that reads like See Spot Run.

>>10089183
People who spend their time masturbating themselves by telling themselves how stupid other people are usually very insecure, very stupid people. And you probably haven't understood Moby Dick unless you've read Gargantua and Pantagruel and Tristram Shandy first, desu desu kawaii desu.

Goodreads says it's gay porn. I'd expect that sort of comment here not. . . .

>>10089148
Ulysses is much more difficult. So much of the canon culminates in that one book

>>10091368
The first hundred pages is all about two guys playing grab-ass in a New England bed and breakfast

>>10089148
You are like a little baby. Watch this.

>>10091378
With that and chapters on cetology with no direct bearing, I'd have to assume it's time poorly spent, and not boss at all.

The actual final boss

>>10089397
>Understood it? Moby Dick has some of the most inscrutable meaning of any book ever written, and that's part of why it's so damn good.

The fact that you're the only one so far to bring this up is kind of concerning. The chapter "The Whale" outlines just some of the many concepts that Melville wants the readers to tie to the whale without committing to any of them. The idea that it can be fully understood and that one has already done it stinks of hubris.

>>10089148

Not the final boss, but it's a must read.

The final bosses are Ulysses, Gravity's Rainbow, In Search of Lost Time and the Complete Works of Shakespeare. The Cantos and Finnegans Wake are the optional superbosses

>>10091558
I assume this is bait, but the cetology chapters are some of the most interesting in the book. Stop thinking that there is some divide between the "Moby Dick story chapters" and the boring old "cetology chapters." They're the same book. The cetology is outdated and was known to be mostly wrong in its time, that isn't the point of it. They're fun to read, and give fascinating insight and perspective on the chapters that directly move the plot forward.

>>10089790
>>10091376
>>10092636
Kek. Joyce was a colossal fraud.

i read it a while back, wasn't the most difficult book ive read but it was a fairly slow read. anyway i always read incredibly slowly so that isn't really noteworthy

>>10092705

>>10089183
youre retarded
also watch your spacing

>>10089148
>It uses boat jargon instead of simpler words
It violates George Orwell's rules for writing. Therefore it is garbage.

>>10091378
I think this is the first post that has made me audibly laugh in a while. Cheers

>>10091565
How is it so good? Nael has more talent than 90% of the hacks on /lit/

>>10089386
This guy gets it. Even in english it beats most of these shit "classics".

>>10091558
Unironically this.

>>10091565
I agree

>>10094349
>90%

try 100%

>>10091565
Nael will never be surpassed

This or Bottom's Dream or Finnegans Wake

>>10095634

I read moby dick when I was 17 and really missed out on virtually all of it. I thought if I could just read the words I could 'read' it. Its the greatest baroque novel ever written but it isnt easy unless you really know your KJV