Moby-Dick
Decide its fate
The record
Time
An eveningA season625 pages, about 12 hours: the length of 2.0 typical books on the shelf.
Getting in
Walk right inSteep climbTwo forum readers report stalling before the Pequod sets sail, one in the first ten pages and one in the opening chapters.
What it gives
Plot and actionIdeas to live byIn 11 reviews from critics and book blogs, one credits the plot and 5 credit the ideas or a change in how they live.
One of a kind
Others do thisNothing else doesRecommendation lists group it with other novels of the sea and of obsession.
The case for it
on the whaling voyage
“Melville manages to keep it a real whaling ship, on a real cruise, in spite of all fanatics. A wonderful, wonderful voyage.”
D. H. Lawrence · Studies in Classic American Literature, 1923 on the whiteness chapter
“‘The Whiteness of the Whale’ alone must have launched an infinite fleet of PhD theses”
Kathleen Rooney · Los Angeles Review of Books, 2019 on first mate Starbuck
“Starbuck, the first mate, is maybe my favorite fictional character of all time.”
Katie Daysh · Five Books, 2025 on Melville’s portrait of Ahab
“few better examples of this in literature than Melville’s portrait of Ahab”
Adam Haslett · Five Books, 2010
The case against
on the construction
“This is an ill-compounded mixture of romance and matter-of-fact. The idea of a connected and collected story has obviously visited and abandoned its writer again and again in the course of composition.”
Unsigned review · The Athenaeum, 25 October 1851 on the plot
“The ‘plot’ of the novel is about 100 pages out of 400.”
a book blog on the whaling lessons
“85% of this book is various lessons on whaling”
one star · a book blog on the chapter structure
“the apparent randomness of the chapters, the jumble of fiction and non-fiction”
Philip Marsden · Five Books, 2012
