Books need to transcend the main topics or plots that they cover to be relevant enough to keep in the canon (or add to it). What makes Moby Dick transcendent (as far as I've read) is also what makes it so, so long and dense. Ishmael cannot just go about his day without stopping to muse on everything he sees.
Ishmael's major musings thus far:
- Why do people mourn for the dead in church? Don't they believe that they are in a mystically happy place?
- What could the painting in the inn possibly be, or mean?
- What makes someone savage or civilized? Is it better to sleep beside a drunk Christian or a sober cannibal?
I think this is why the book has been generally considered a novel more than anything. It isn't just informing us about whaling, which is why it isn't classified as a nonfiction book. It isn't just about the myth we create by telling the story of hunting the white whale and how it inevitably ends. Even though these are elements to the story, I think the main point of the book itself is to consider these themes you've pointed out with Ishmael's pondering and musing. Take the word "novel" apart and you get from Latin "novellus," from diminutive of "novus," which is "new." So because "Moby Dick" is new in the sense of combining all these elements of stories, from allegory to nonfiction, that's why it is a novel. That's what makes the book transcend beyond a simple novel and become a classic.
ReplyDeleteMoby Dick's place in the canon does raise the issue of what we value in literature, and I think you are touching on a key value here. Amber, your comments are excellent! Is the novel the genre of novelty? Perhaps so.
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