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"Thar she blows...."
Published: 10/18/2012 4:33 PM
Last Modified: 10/18/2012 4:33 PM

Those of you who check out the Google logo will have noticed that today's is done in the shape of a whale, to mark the 161st anniversary of the publication of "Moby-Dick, or The Whale," by Herman Melville.

"Moby-Dick" is today considered one of the great American novels, with elements of this challenging tale about a fateful voyage of a New England whaling ship becoming deeply embedded into the American culture (Starbucks, anyone?).

It's not an easy read -- I sometimes wonder if I would have ever made it through the book had it not been the only thing I had to read on a long automobile trip from Tulsa to northern Illinois, which I spent folded up in the back seat of the family's Honda. But make to the end I did, and some passages (the sermon before the voyage, for example) still have a way of haunting the mind.

But not everyone's reaction to "Moby-Dick" has been positive, as this review form 1852 makes clear:

“Mr. Melville is evidently trying to ascertain how far the public will consent to be imposed upon. He is gauging, at once, our gullibility and our patience. Having written one or two passable extravaganzas, he has considered himself privileged to produce as many more as he pleases, increasingly exaggerated and increasingly dull…. In bombast, in caricature, in rhetorical artifice — generally as clumsy as it is ineffectual — and in low attempts at humor, each one of his volumes has been an advance among its predecessors…. Mr. Melville never writes naturally. His sentiment is forced, his wit is forced, and his enthusiasm is forced. And in his attempts to display to the utmost extent his powers of “fine writing,” he has succeeded, we think, beyond his most sanguine expectations… We have no intention of quoting any passages just now from Moby-Dick. The London journals, we understand, “have bestowed upon the work many flattering notices,” and we should be loth to combat such high authority. But if there are any of our readers who wish to find examples of bad rhetoric, involved syntax, stilted sentiment and incoherent English, we will take the liberty of recommending to them this precious volume of Mr. Melville’s.” — New York United States Magazine and Democratic Review, 1852

It was reviews such as this that sent Melville into a personal tailspin. And it would be some 30 years after his death before critics and the public would begin to realize what an achievement "Moby-Dick" is, and that it was truly the masterwork Melville thought it to be.


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ARTS

James D. Watts Jr. has lived in Oklahoma for most his life, even though he still has people saying to him, "Don't sound like you're from around these parts." A University of Oklahoma Phi Beta Kappa graduate, Watts has received the Governor Arts Award, Harwelden Award and the National Conference of Christians and Jews Beth Macklin Award for his writing. Before coming to the Tulsa World, Watts worked for the Tulsa Tribune.

Contact him at (918) 581-8478.

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