I was pleasantly surprised at how faithful the movie adaptation was, having just read it last year. Still like the book better, but there is something about Steinbeck that really works for me. Haven’t been disappointed yet.
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Not sure what you mean. What idea exactly?
Yes, and yes.
I concede it’s sometimes a difficult read, but so is Shakespeare.
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For those having trouble with Moby Dick, but who want to try it… read Billy Budd, Sailor first, wait 3 weeks, then start Moby Dick. But only start it - promise yourself to read 100 pages, because once you get that far into it, with BB,S as your background to his style, you’ll be engrossed. Or you’ll hate it and know there is no hope of ever enoying the novel, in which case you’ve read a great short book (BB,S) and only 100 pages of Moby Dick, not the whole thing.
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Why have I never seen an actual edition of Tolkien with “Oh fuck. Not another elf!” as an advertisement?
Are they panning it or recommending it here?
Today’s SMBC is a timely meditation on Moby-Dick:
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The issue wasn’t spying, nor was it political in a closer sense. Grass and Reich-Ranicki were both sharp-tongued and opinionated, but the feud was a literary one. And a long one it was!
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You haven’t read Dan Brown then?
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This book is the reason I will not ever read Moby Dick. I had to ride an exercise bike while reading Billy Budd (required reading for AP American Lit) in order to stay awake enough to get through it.
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Yeah. Benito Cereno – a novella about a slave ship revolt and the blindness of the white male eye – would be a better Melville gateway, I’d think.
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I know but I don’t see any issue here. RR disliked Grass, that’s well known. Anyone with a deeper interest can look up the details and it’s not really important, really. Everyone has his own associations and that’s fine with me.
It’s a certainty that you’re not the only one, but try going further into it and you may be rewarded, although I can’t make any promises there. Speaking for myself, dogged perseverance paid off.
Then there’s Martin Luther’s epiphany while sitting on a “privy” and how that led to the Protestant Reformation.
Something about defecation and insights.
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You little rascal, you!
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Ha! You called it!
btw-- I recently read an critical essay on “virtue signaling”.
https://iasc-culture.org/THR/THR_article_2018_Summer_McClay.php
It seems so easy to apply to soulless corporations who hope to market themselves by seeming more human. When the term is applied to individuals, it seems a grave insult.
Well, looking up details in a language foreign to the majority of the forum is probably not going to happen, and eastern block spies aren’t exactly something carrying the best connotations in the US and the UK.
Also, as I tried to point out, there is a whole world of literary criticism behind that there is a whole world of literary criticism behind that. And another of personal vanities. No-one is going to look that up.
So, in short, I think this anecdote is a bit misleading, if not short of inadvertent character assassination. 
But hey, YMMV, and we don’t have to agree on that.
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Look, my point is: it’s really not important. The anecdote is self-explaining in its context and there’s no need for background to understand why it appears within this context. Do you know every autor within the article? Because honestly, I don’t. Nevertheless, the snippets speak for themselves and require no further information to carry over their messages. Same thing with mine. The nationalities and cultural contexts are secondary.
That’s where we disagree. Context matters.
Toldya, YMMV.
Disclaimer: MRR was one of my childhood heroes, his way of writing and especially public speaking were a strong influence on my style of discussion. I see this rather critical now, but I am still inclined to celebrate him as one of the most important literary critics and rethors of the FRG.
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What a Wuthering critique!
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