NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Bob Goethe
Date: 2019 Jan 9, 14:35 -0800
Years ago, I did succeed in reading through Moby Dick...but it was a struggle. As I recall, the first chapter starts out with a discussion of how men gravitate to running water when they are in a pensive mood. Further, there is a 3 or 4 chapter-long digression in the middle of the book about the classification of whales.
In contrast, that same year I read Frederick Forsyth's book "The Fourth Protocol". It captured for me the difference in writing style between the end of the 20th century and the mid-19th century. As I recall, Forsyth's book starts out with "The man in grey decided to steal the diamonds at midnight." POW. What a beginning! I confess to being a child of the 20th century and preferring Forsyth's style to that of Melville.
Bob