see also: Herman Melville, who occasionally, begrudgingly returned to telling a story in Moby Dick in between infodumping Whale Facts on everyone - ThreadSky

rincewind.run • 7 days ago

see also: Herman Melville, who occasionally, begrudgingly returned to telling a story in Moby Dick in between infodumping Whale Facts on everyone

Reposted from Caitlin G. DeAngelis

Everyone in the past was neurotypical, which is how we got things like this single-author, eight-volume encyclopedia of ferns

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luxtheatrum.bsky.social•6 days ago

AND also! Melville basically writes in the prologue, "hey, maybe don't believe everything you read about whales in this book. These whale facts are for dramatic purposes."

morganfahey.bsky.social•6 days ago

Yeah, I’ve long read the “whale facts” bits more as “can’t let the Brits corner the market on inventing postmodern metafiction” than “special interest,” but two things can be true!

kurtweldon.bsky.social•6 days ago

Heh. Son and I were discussing that a few months back. I mentioned that I got as far as the chapter in which Melville decides to explain his own symbolism to us. Turned out my son had gotten exactly that far as well.

Genetics!

cferejohn.bsky.social•7 days ago

Point of order: Those are the best parts.

rds773.bsky.social•7 days ago

Yes! 🐋

shadrachnorth.bsky.social•7 days ago

The right whale is like Locke and the sperm whale like Plato. This makes total sense and I am a normal person for understanding it. Thank you.

keithhoustonvoices.bsky.social•7 days ago

I think that without the myriad of distractions we suffer in the modern age, we could all be great novelists.

txlawyer.bsky.social•7 days ago

Recall that Melville started off writing travelogues.

etcandsoforth.bsky.social•3 days ago

See also: Victor “Let Me Tell You About Sewers” Hugo

podcasttenp.bsky.social•6 days ago

I used to play bass for Herman Melville and the Whale Facts.

derwen.bsky.social•6 days ago

Such fun facts as calling a whale a 'fish'.

teleogougar.bsky.social•6 days ago

The hunchback of notre dame famously became host to victor Hugo’s continuous elucidations about the architecture and sculpture work of the cathedral also

pipsdontsqueak.bsky.social•6 days ago

The people need to know, Micah.

cuddlebair.bsky.social•6 days ago

My favorite example of this is Victor Hugo pausing the narrative of Les Mis to give a multi part essay on why He thinks the battle of waterloo is the most important 'modern' historical event in the world.

etcandsoforth.bsky.social•3 days ago

Also: sewers!

You WILL learn the history of, and my thoughts and feelings about, sewers.

cuddlebair.bsky.social•3 days ago

I'm gonna be honest, i didn't even get that far.

mrmeltjr.bsky.social•7 days ago

there might be a neurotypical explanation for Bartleby the Scrivener, but I can't see it

allanlear.bsky.social•7 days ago

You can't see it? Or you prefer not to?

Sorry, couldn't resist. Of course, Bartleby himself is the only character in BtS whose behaviour isn't explainable by the fact he gets drunk in his lunch breaks

peterwbloom.bsky.social•7 days ago

I only got through half of Moby Dick, but genuinely enjoyed several aspects including understanding why it’s okay to abridge novels. I was also very amused by a book infodumping whale facts that I sensed had not aged very well.

forgottenman.bsky.social•7 days ago

The funniest part is the narrator infodumping whale facts that they knew to be untrue *at the time*

zbk.bsky.social•6 days ago

Ishmael saying that whales are fish sent me.

forgottenman.bsky.social•6 days ago

“Experts around the world claim that the whale is not a fish. However, I believe it is, and we shall start our cytology there.”

feralrobots.bsky.social•7 days ago

Nowadays we call that 'unreliable narrator.' Back then they just called it 'narrator.'

danielmclaury.bsky.social•7 days ago

I don't know how many people here are joking and how many are serious, but just in case: It's not an action movie. The parts where Ishmael discourses on whales are the entire point of the book.

feralrobots.bsky.social•7 days ago

[Victor Hugo enters the chat]

lukebro92.bsky.social•6 days ago

Didn't he write a book mostly because he thought Notre Dame wasn't appreciated enough?

feralrobots.bsky.social•6 days ago

That's what's often said. He was also obsessed with the moral decrepitude of the Church & that book provided a great vehicle for expressing his anger. So I doubt it was a single cause.

bradstreetfarm.bsky.social•7 days ago

I imagine shaking Melville’s book furiously until all the whale sciency pages fall out - and then it becomes a much shorter, more readable story.

Or alternately all the fiction falls out and you are left with an interesting book on 19th century whale science.

monodi.bsky.social•6 days ago

im still barely starting it and it fascinates me how they elaborate that the practice of whaling is the stalwart column of The Illustration (lanterns) and industry (lubricants).

bradstreetfarm.bsky.social•6 days ago

Early on there is a scene where the protagonist is trying to find a certain hotel/inn and he ends up in the wrong place. The wording cracked me up. Not a lot of jokes in the book but a few

ampedinnm.bsky.social•6 days ago

This is how my high school English teacher had us read it. We had a long list of chapters to skip. Still wasn’t my fave read of the year.

chrisll.bsky.social•7 days ago

I just finished rereading 20,000 leagues under the sea and this exactly applies to it

jennknut.bsky.social•6 days ago

if Herman Melville wrote a movie script it would be "The English Patient"

allanlear.bsky.social•7 days ago

Oh yeah, I read Moby Dick recently; I had been under the impression that it was about a madman's quest for vengeance, but that was maybe 8% of the text (and fully 1/8th of that was the possibly ironic use of the word "monomaniacal")

fionawh.im•6 days ago

Oooooh, an excuse to re-up this classic:

ethanv.bsky.social•7 days ago

I like to think of it as “I did all this research and you, the reader, will goddamn appreciate it!”

dutchdoor.bsky.social•7 days ago

The Cetology chapter. Dear lord. Slogging through that is still one of my most formatively painful memories from college.

sdowney.org•7 days ago

Every other chapter of Moby Dick is awesome. Which partition you think I'm talking about is a test of neurodiversity.

whisperingpines.bsky.social•7 days ago

I'd like people to consider for a moment being Charles Darwin's literary agent where he publishes on the origin of species and then The descent of Man and then his next book is a book about barnacles primarily about their genitalia

slygrin.bsky.social•7 days ago

I waded through sooo much outdated, emotionally-charged Whale Facts for the insane screeds of a single-mindedly mad captain. Worth it.

leftcoastracing.bsky.social•6 days ago

Yeah, I like whale facts as much as the next guy, but yeah

junkboxjim.bsky.social•7 days ago

Was just rereading Moby Dick not that long ago. I’d forgotten how much he was really into whales.

drbethany.bsky.social•7 days ago

See also: most of the Israelite prophets

drbethany.bsky.social•7 days ago

Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography (could also be the age-old white male conviction that everything they do is fascinating and worth sharing with the world)

zoestorm.bsky.social•7 days ago

Umberto Eco's "The Name of the Rose" is a treatise on medieval philosophy which at times has a bit of plot in-between.

colbosch.bsky.social•7 days ago

In all fairness, I think Eco was aware and happy with his particular neurodivergence.

zoestorm.bsky.social•7 days ago

Oh yeah hundred percent.

skyblu.bsky.social•6 days ago

"in which I talk about medieval religious sect history some more but it's not me it's a character, and maybe one thing happens"

salvius23.bsky.social•6 days ago

I pointed out to my mother recently that the movie covers the events of the book from start to finish, but probably *adapts* no more than about half the page count.

IIRC, years ago she enjoyed the movie and hated the book. I read the book and Eco immediately became one of my favorite authors.

smilner.bsky.social•7 days ago

https://bsky.app/profile/smilner.bsky.social/post/3lnilxgnotk2a

rincewind.run•7 days ago

“The invention of languages is the foundation. The 'stories' were made rather to provide a world for the languages than the reverse. To me a name comes first and the story follows…”

Tolkien basically created Middle Earth so that he could build a mythology for how his made-up languages evolved

randallsd.bsky.social•7 days ago

See also as I discussed with a friend last night (though certainly less intense), Victor Hugo writing The Hunchback of Notre Dame mostly to talk about this gorgeous church in its heyday that was falling into disrepair and he wanted to save. The story itself was just padding for that.

kithrup.bsky.social•7 days ago

Language was our first Singularity event.

aweller921.bsky.social•6 days ago

literally (ignore tom scott: be like gandalf)
https://youtu.be/eGnH0KAXhCw?si=KJTXRKkUINt6DCF1

verm.me•7 days ago

“Why are there two Elf languages?”

“Well,…”

[two and a half Silmarillions later]

ggold328.bsky.social•7 days ago

people forget he was primarily a linguist at oxford

aangtifa.bsky.social•7 days ago

I think we can say with certainty that Nikolai Tesla and Alan Turing weren't sitting at the neurotypical table.

kylora2112.bsky.social•7 days ago

"Everyone, check out my conlang! I also wrote a little backstory on how it's used!" - Tolkien, probably

sdowney.org•7 days ago

"Not like that Clive Lewis, who probably owes me a round at the pub." - JRRT

stony2000.bsky.social•3 days ago

He built a world for context for his conlang

felixforrester.bsky.social•7 days ago

thealtonobserver.bsky.social•7 days ago

Me: Hey, Brian Jacques! What's this story about?
Brian Jacques: Monks defending an abbey.
Me: That's cool, when..
BJ: The monks are mice
Me: Well, that's...
BJ: They murder rats & foxes with swords
Me: Oh, wow..
BJ: W/ food descriptions so vivid you gain a Pavlovian response to acorns and chestnuts.

skyblu.bsky.social•6 days ago

That man thought about food all the time

mfreeman.bsky.social•6 days ago

Now I, a normie, am going to unravel the deeply marbled metaphors in each of those various facts, to prove, yet again, that Saint Herm has no peers. 1/507,897,492

querdcast.bsky.social•6 days ago

Soo much about types of ice…

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