I don't think this is a contest. Heart of Darkness, Great Expectations, The
Brothers K, War and Peace, Remembrance of Things Past, Tristram Shandy, The
Good Soldier, Ulysees, Tom Jones, To the Lighthouse, Huckleberry Finn, The
Great Gatsby, Howard's End, Wuthering Heights, Don Quixote, Moby Dick, add
your own, are not in competition. All claim to be novels, they all have
different things in mind (Moby Dick, for one, isn't as interested in
character development, except for Ishmael's, as many on the list, but
neither is Heart of Darkness. [But it's not unusual for novels to be
primarily interested in the character of their narrators.]), they scarcely
resemble each other, and all have claims to greatness. None of them are
particularly good guides top this or that trade. For an American text that
might do it for you I'd recommend, from the same period, Dana's "Two Years
Before the Mast."

Moby Dick hit the big time in the US in 1920, long before anyone in America
but a few friends of Alfred Stieglitz had dreamed of abstract art, and long
before the Cold War. But dupe that I am of the CIA I've always loved it.
You'd think that they would have picked something a bit more jingoistic.

Olson saw King Lear in Moby Dick, and I think it's an apt comparison. That,
maybe with Leviathan (and not just for the name) and Tristram Shandy thrown
in, is as close as the literature of Britain gets to Moby Dick. Note: I'm
not making a value judgement, I'm trying to describe. I think King Lear in
its still very different way is every bit as good as Moby Dick.

We don't have all that much of enduring interest in the US, comparatively,
before the second half of the 20th century. It seems small-minded to
begrudge us our mite.

Mark

At 11:08 PM 8/11/2001 +0100, you wrote:
>As an ex-seaman, I looked on M-D to tell me something about -my- father's
father, and his father's trade (mostly the Australian trades, Ireland,
Canada and, lastly, munitions) - and the copy I bought in Seattle in '81
seemed to answer it - but, of course, it didn't. None of the quietness; too
much neurosis.
>
>I'm not so sure of it's mythic status. I think that M-D was inflated in
the way of the Cold War - I mean, like Modernist Abstraction, American
Literature has to be better than the Russkies, right? Having eventually
read it, it does seem a little - and I grant you its' inventiveness
-overblown-, a parade of caricatures maybe.
>
>I think people give Heart of Darkness an undue swerve here - Conrad was an
ex-master mariner and the cut of his jib is certainly in the right,
sou'west by west. If I were to forward a novel on the same -largeness- of
spirit but with a levelled coolness of eye and technical gravitas, then
Heart of Darkness gets my vote.
>
>Roger,
>
>The Monocled Mutineer.
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: <[log in to unmask]>
>To: <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Saturday, August 11, 2001 22:12
>Subject: Re: Book Review- Moby Dick
>
>
>> Roger writes:
>>
>> >He goes on to describe the Australian whaling and seal-trades - most of it
>> >not very pretty.
>> >
>> >Is there an Australian equivalent (in the literary sense) of M-D?
>>
>> Not that I know of. I suppose the equivalent in terms of iconic status
>> (not popularity) might be Patrick White's Voss, which looks at the myth
>> of the empty interior, the inner sea, rather than the sea around us; a
>> great novel, but nothing like as inventive as Moby-Dick.
>>
>> Best
>>
>> Alison
>>
>