----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark Weiss" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, August 11, 2001 23:39
Subject: Re: Book Review- Moby Dick
> 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."
>
I probably left out some vital information.
I went to sea because, I think, of the "idea" rather than anything else - of course, when I got there, it was extremely factory-like. I looked to books like M-D to fill the humdrum-ness but, when read, seemed too remote from my existence at sea (yes, I know this is contradictory). There were a fw captains who were right bastards, but none came near the mysticism or pantomimeness of Ahab - or his crew. (Yes, I realise there's more to it than that - but I was looking at it from the wrong end of a small telescope). I could say some similar about "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner".
"The Heart of Darkness" seemed - and still seems to me - nearer to my sea-going experience and larger in it's themes. No contest here for me - just something I feel.
I guess most of this isn't making too much sense. I haven't worked it out fully myself yet.
The imaginative leap to the Cold War can only be blamed on a nice bottle of tempranillo, for that I apologise. Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Roger.
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