Will Hines Dot Net

CONS: It makes you look like a pretentious douche. Or maybe like a tiny-dicked angry person reading Nietzche prominently like Kevin Kline’s character in A Fish Called Wanda. It’s heavy. It’s dense and rambly with lots of big words hanging off of run-on sentences and therefore takes mental energy.

PROS: It’s more fun than you’d think. There’s more funny parts than I remember. The dramatic parts are very cool. Melville seems crazy but he seems to know it. You feel like a smart person. You feel like an American.

If nothing else, you should read the first paragraph if you’re a New Yorker. Ishmael is explaining why he feels the need to go to sea, and the way he describes himself feeling depressed in NYC (wanting to knock people’s hats off of their head, stopping in front of coffin stores) feels accurate to me!

Call me Ishmael. Some years ago — never mind how long precisely — having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off — then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.

Whole book here.