/lit/ - Literature

>>22274494
How many whaling expeditions have you been on?

>>22274494
How many hours have you spend writing?

>>22274494
Read John Dewey.

>>22274494
he was smart
you are stupid
simple as

>>22274494
He forgot about Bulkington...amateur.

>>22274972
lmao

>>22274494
Moby dick isn't even that good. most "great" artwork is great only because it's considered to be.

>>22274494
What ever could be the explanation

>>22275287
clown ah bih

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WF-zh8f7Uw

>>22275299
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GC4gIdk5GFA

>>22274494
Has anybody read a biography of Melville?
Can anybody recommend a good one?

>>22275287
Uhhh, no moby dick is amazing

>>22274494
Melville was a genius who spent his youth on whalers and man-of-wars freezing his hands off and butchering sea animals. If you want to write good boat books, do the same thing

>>22275287
You just need to find an edition with really good annotations.

>>22275666
Hershel Parker's two-volume biography of Melville is the only one I know.
Herman Melville: A Biography. Vol. v. 1. 1819-1851. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Herman Melville: A Biography. Vol. v. 2. 1851-1891. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

>>22275287
KEK

>>22275287
ill kill you

read a biography, dipshit

>>22274494
He had to suffer through 30+ years of no posting, no porn and no video games to get to that point, I think we all know who the real winner is.

>>22275287

>>22276573
Cheers

>>22275704
>>22274951
>>22274514
He also wrote five other novels first, he had plenty of practice writing

>>22274494
Thomas Mann published Buddenbrooks with 25, a novel he later essentially received the Nobel prize for. Highly mature and measured novel about a family's downfall, the kind of novel where the narrator gets into the minds of very different characters with their individual thoughts and worldviews and life experiences.

>>22275287
Not wrong. None of the other folkx can tell you what makes it good

>>22277285
that is like 500,000 words. Let's say it took him 5 (rewrites) drafts on average for each novel before moby dick, he would have written over 2.5 million words. Let's say it took him 1 hour to write 500 words, that's 5000 hours of writing.

>>22275666
As to another untold story, you might want to check Melville in Love: The Secret Life of Herman Melville and the Muse of Moby-Dick by Michael Sheldon. HarperCollins. 2016. 266pps.

And investigate Hunting Captain Ahab: Psychological Warfare and the Melville Revival by Clare L. Spark. Kent State University Press. 2001. 730 pps.! Hershel Parker gave it a rave for what it’s worth. Here’s the full quote from him on the back of Hunting Captain Ahab: “Hunting Captain Ahab is a delicious concoction, an irrestible mélange of Hannah Arendt, Kermit Vanderbilt, Kitty Kelley, Ronald Radosh-Joyce Milton, and A. S. Byatt. Usual and unusual suspects are tracked down, strip-searched, grilled, and served up. FBI files, private filing cabinets, and great library archives are ransacked for our astonished delight. Who would have thought that so many startling family comments on Melville remained unseen? Who would have thought those secretive, conspiratorial academics would have preserved so many incriminating papers? Anyone who writes on Melville must buy this plump plum pudding of a book, this vast long-considered trifle, this huge fruit-cake of certifiably weird fellow-travelling Melvilleans. Lord, I wish I had known some of them in the flesh.”

>>22275287
(you)
don't spend it all in one place

>>22274494
better schooling
read more books at a younger age
much more time spent writing
simple as
why do you think some kids become chess prodigies and become competent at instruments early on in their life? it's because they started early and had good tutors.

>>22274951
>Allan Melvill described him as "very backwards in speech & somewhat slow in comprehension"

>>22274494
Also, Faulkner wrote TSTAF at 32

>>22278411
Don't spit in Oliver's face

>>22274539
Good rec for understanding one of the thinkers that destroyed Western culture and Western education in particular

>>22274494
Writing was literally his job at that time. You would be a good writer too if you spent 8 hours a day everyday writing.

>>22276739
>no posting, no porn and no video games
Heaven

>>22275287
obvious bait

he was gay and loved reading balzac
mark of a pleb

>>22274494
He lived an interesting life, which furnished him with a subject, namely whaling.
Millennials lead pointless and insulated lives, and so have nothing to write about.

>>22274494
He read The adventures of Sir Duncan Crumb (His Lordship)

>>22279081
>>22278411
>>22276607
>he'd rather gaslight himself into believing its bait than accept that Melville (PBUH) might not be as good as he wants to believe
Sad!

>>22274494
>Melville wrote Moby Dick when he was 31. How is that even humanly possible? He was only a few years older than me now and I struggle to write grammatically correct sentences. Wtf?
>And yet he died unknown and unappreciated, in poverty and destitution. There’s a lesson in there

>>22275287
Yikes

>>22277333
Saw a lecture from a prestigious ivy league program yesterday where the prof said writers like Mann and Rilke are veritable dwarfs compared to Kafka. Thoughts? Also checked.

Melville and Hawthorne were part of the last generation of American children to receive education via the trivium btw.

Why is Moby Dick so praised here?

>>22279430
Post tits.

>>22279430
The whole A Whale is a Fish bit is basically a proto shitpost

>>22279462
we all would have been sailors in another life

>>22279430
It's praised worldwide. This place is part of worldwide.

>>22279430
Because once in a while /lit/ actually has good taste.

>>22279448
kek