Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Classics Slacker Reads Moby Dick
    The Classics Slacker Reads Moby Dick
    The Classics Slacker Reads Moby Dick
    Ebook137 pages1 hour

    The Classics Slacker Reads Moby Dick

    By The Classics Slacker

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    You probably know the basic plot of "Moby Dick". Deranged ship’s captain seeks revenge on a white whale that ate his leg. Sounds like a great story, right? But you’ve also heard that it’s crazy long and boring? Not to worry. "The Classic Slacker Reads Moby Dick" contains all the whale blubber, all the bromances, and all the amputees that appear in Herman Melville’s classic novel in one slim, easy-to-carry volume. Fully illustrated, too!

    You’ll enjoy "The Classics Slacker Reads Moby Dick" so much, you might even want to read the whole book yourself. But probably not.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThe Classics Slacker
    Release dateOct 11, 2018
    ISBN9780463518083
    The Classics Slacker Reads Moby Dick
    Author

    The Classics Slacker

    Cta Negrón holds a B.A. in literature and a master’s degree in creative writing.

    Related to The Classics Slacker Reads Moby Dick

    Related ebooks

    Literary Criticism For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      How to Stop Crying

      Nov 7, 2019

      How to Stop Crying
      7 min read

    • Article

      Time Out

      Nov 22, 2019

      Alright, I know that Herman Melville isn’t everyone’s cup of tea (or should that be coffee, given that Starbucks is named after a character in Moby Dick?), but anyway, I’m going to argue its case. First up, I realise that the book is as thick as a wh

      4 min read

    • Article

      Perfect Prose II

      May 15, 2020

      Perfect Prose II
      4 min read

    • Article

      Salty Cravings

      Jan 5, 2024

      Salty Cravings
      3 min read

    • Article

      To Catch A Woozle

      Apr 1, 2020

      To Catch A Woozle
      5 min read

    • Article

      Tom Cunliffe

      Nov 6, 2020

      Tom Cunliffe
      5 min read

    • Article

      Tom Cunliffe

      Nov 6, 2020

      Tom Cunliffe
      5 min read

    • Article

      Swansongs And Southern Discomfort

      Oct 27, 2022

      THE BORDERLAND BETWEEN popular fiction and literary fiction is now fertile territory. Once upon a time it was easy to tell them apart. Popular and genre fiction were in small format paper-backs, literary fiction larger: now all have been promoted to

      6 min read

    • Article

      Revengers Assemble

      Mar 3, 2022

      Revengers Assemble
      12 min read

    • Article

      The World Of Writing

      Jun 2, 2022

      The World Of Writing
      3 min read

    • Article

      Books

      Oct 18, 2021

      by Gigi Fenster Text Publishing — $38 Alarm bells may be set off by the first few lines of this novel: “The baby, Michael, grew healthy and strong. Strong enough to be difficult. Strong enough to have tantrums … And it wasn’t so bad for the baby’s mo

      7 min read

    • Article

      Time Out

      May 1, 2020

      Hemingway: a real man’s man; red wine, bulls and wrestling with fish were all central themes of a life of unremitting machismo. Having read a bit of Ernest in my time, I generally find that he spends a good deal of time droning on about death, impote

      6 min read

    • Article

      Time Out

      May 1, 2020

      Time Out
      6 min read

    • Article

      Marooned!

      May 18, 2020

      Marooned!
      3 min read

    • Article

      Competition

      Jul 27, 2022

      IN COMPETITION NO 282 you were invited to write a poem with the title Unpacking. Basil Ransome-Davies, in a poem on the wars between sonic (pretty-sounding) and confessional poets, made me laugh with the couplet ‘Confessionals unpack their hearts, /

      2 min read

    • Article

      The Song Starts In My Body

      Nov 1, 2022

      I wanted to see her body. I’m aware it sounds strange, even lurid. What I wanted was to see her read her poetry, and her body reading it. Something about Rukeyser’s writing made me feel that she was at home in her flesh, and I wanted to see her lovin

      21 min read

    • Article

      The 40 Best Books To Read In Lockdown

      May 29, 2021

      Books, books, books. They will increase your lifespan, lower your stress and boost your intelligence. They will give you fuller, thicker hair. Whatever the breathless claims about reading, one thing is certain: losing yourself in a great novel is one

      14 min read

    • Article

      The 40 Greatest Books To Read Before You Die

      Apr 25, 2021

      Books, books, books. They will increase your lifespan, lower your stress and boost your intelligence. They will give you fuller, thicker hair. Whatever the breathless claims about reading, one thing is certain: losing yourself in a great novel is one

      14 min read

    • Article

      Reader's Letter

      May 31, 2023

      SIR: I was astonished to read (Spring issue) that Hunter Davies believes he may be the only person left in the UK who has milk delivered in glass bottles every morning. Oop ’ere in t’north, we have milk delivered in this way. We also have Ringtons Te

      6 min read

    • Article

      Nine Haunting Postapocalyptic Novels

      Feb 3, 2022

      The paradox of imagined apocalypses is that they’re always more about the present than the future. Here's a list of a few haunting and evocative titles. The post Nine Haunting Postapocalyptic Novels appeared first on The Millions.

      4 min read

    • Article

      Love Thine Enemy The Fox

      Jun 23, 2021

      Love Thine Enemy The Fox
      2 min read

    • Article

      Book Club

      Apr 27, 2022

      Book Club
      5 min read

    • Article

      Books

      Feb 20, 2022

      by Maria Samuela Te Herenga Waka University Press — $30 The opening story in this debut collection, “The Promotion”, is an ambitious one. In just a few pages, its parallel narratives describe the adjustments to New Zealand life made a generation apar

      7 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Classics Slacker Reads Moby Dick

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      The Classics Slacker Reads Moby Dick - The Classics Slacker

      tmp_fcb6a6fbc70d4915d580a0cb02d9692c_6018Uz_html_m71dd8e4b.jpg

      THE CLASSICS SLACKER

      READS

      MOBY DICK

      Copyright © 2018 by Cta Negrón

      Illustrations by Kris Wraight

      Cover design by tslapointedesign.com

      Slacky drawing and spine logo by Eliza B.

      Book design: Y42K Publishing Services

      https://www.y42k.com/bookproduction.html

      tmp_fcb6a6fbc70d4915d580a0cb02d9692c_6018Uz_html_m2ad871d2.jpg

      The Classics Slacker gratefully acknowledges the original Slacker fans (the Slackies) for their steadfast support and encouragement: Amby Burfoot, Olivia Negrón, Sara Pritchard, Deb Martin, Jen Van Allen, and Michelle Hamilton.

      "I grin at thee, thou grinning whale!"

      Table of Contents

      Introduction

      Meet and Greet

      Sleeping with the Cannibal

      Calm before the Storm

      Showboating

      Dearly Beloved

      Mmm, Mmm, Good!

      Ishmael Gets Laid

      Greet and Eat

      Only Christians Need Apply

      No Explanation Needed

      Beyond All Seasoning

      The Boys in the Boat

      Call Him Ahab

      School of Whales

      I’ll Take Whales for $100, Alex

      Pole Dancing

      Breaking News

      Exhale and Inwhale

      Dancing Queens

      You Don’t Know Dick

      A Whiter Shade of Whale

      Ahab’s Men-o-pause

      Case Closed

      Razzle-Dazzle ’Em

      The More the Merrier

      Just Say Row

      Ishmael Gets Wet

      Once Upon a Midnight Dreary

      Like Ships Passing

      The Town-Ho’s Story

      Ho

      Ho, Ho

      Ho, Ho, Ho

      But I Digress

      The Subplots Thicken

      Sperm! Sperm! Sperm!

      Fish and Ships

      If I Were a Carpenter

      Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off

      Last Gasps

      Postscript

      Introduction

      Remember the Mayans? Remember when they predicted the world was going to end on December 12, 2012? When I heard that, my first thought was, "Oh my god! I never read Moby Dick!"

      I planned to read it someday, of course—and lots of other classic books. I didn’t know I had a specific and literal deadline. So as the clock ticked down to doomsday, I opened up Moby Dick and started reading. Fell asleep right after Call me Ishmael.

      When I woke up on December 13, 2012—noticing that I and the world still existed—I rolled over and went back to sleep. Five years later I still hadn’t read Moby Dick. I had to face the truth: I was a classics slacker. The Classics Slacker.

      Maybe you’re a classics slacker, too. Here’s how to tell: When you come across those lists of 100 Greatest Books of All Time, are you shocked to discover that you’ve only read three? Or maybe you’ve read ten, but can’t remember anything except carriage rides, bonnets, and couples exchanging meaningful glances over embroidery.

      Anyway, if this sounds like you, and it probably does, you will likely respond in one of two ways:

      With shame and self-loathing (especially if you were an English major, as was The Classics Slacker). To cope with these feelings, you pour a large glass of wine and, instead of reading something—anything—you watch When Harry Met Sally for the 103rd time.

      With renewed ambition. You drive to your nearest used bookstore and buy a pile of classic novels such as Ulysses, War and Peace, A Tale of Two Cities, Madame Bovary, Wuthering Heights, etc., etc., etc. (That’s the Latin abbreviation for Wow, how many of these books are there, anyway?) Back home, you slide them onto your bookshelf, assuming you have one. There they will taunt you every day, increasing your already Les Miserables-sized self-contempt to the height and width of the British Library.

      But no more, my fellow well-intentioned, literature-impaired friends! There is another way! The Classics Slacker is reading the classics so you don’t have to. No longer will you feel unworthy every time you encounter a list of Books You Should Have Read or You Are an Idiot.

      One of those books is invariably Moby Dick, long chosen by high school students everywhere as the most detested novel in the history of literature. For that reason alone, it is the first selection in The Classics Slacker series.

      Written by American novelist Herman Melville, Moby Dick was published in 1851. Reading was one of only two forms of indoor entertainment back then; the other was attending parties where you were forced to listen to the host’s teenage daughter play the pianoforte for hours.

      Nonetheless, Melville’s novel was not well received. Just about everyone hated it. Especially the parts about whales, which, sad to say, make up large portions of the book.

      Despite its lackluster launch, Moby Dick ranks way up there among the greatest books of all time. It’s certainly the fishiest. True, some scholars argue for Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea. But Dick is seven times longer than Old Man, and whales are way bigger than marlin. Thus, The Classics Slacker must give the nod to Dick.

      You might have noticed that The Classics Slacker spells Moby Dick without a hyphen. It often appears with a hyphen. The Classics Slacker has meticulously researched this hyphen/no hyphen question and still hasn’t reached a definitive conclusion. The decision to go hyphenless in this volume was made really only to save ink.

      With or without a hyphen, Moby Dick has 135 chapters. Among them: Of the Less Erroneous Pictures of Whales, and the True Pictures of Whaling Scenes; The Great Heidelburgh Tun; Ambergris; A Bower in the Arsacides; and Measurement of the Whale’s Skeleton.

      By comparison, The Classics Slacker Reads Moby Dick has only forty chapters (along with cute illustrations). Among them: Ishmael Gets Laid; Call Him Ahab; You Don’t Know Dick; A Whiter Shade of Whale; and Sperm! Sperm! Sperm!

      Which book would you rather read?

      The Classics Slacker couldn’t agree more.

      ⚓

      Meet and Greet

      The first sentence of Moby Dick goes down real easy, like swallowing a goldfish. After all, it’s only three words: Call me Ishmael.

      tmp_fcb6a6fbc70d4915d580a0cb02d9692c_6018Uz_html_12c60533.jpg

      The second sentence isn’t too bad, either, although considerably longer (forty words). Basically Ishmael says he’s decided to go out to sea. He says when he feels depressed—or as Ishmael puts it a damp, drizzly November in my soul—he figures it’s time to head for the water.

      Who can’t relate to this? Beyond lifting moods, the sights and sounds of the ocean can silence mindless brain chatter. Notes Ishmael: Meditation and water are wedded forever. Or, as The Classics Slacker’s mom used to say, I do my best thinking in the bathtub. That works pretty well, too, if you can’t get to the ocean.

      Poor Ishmael can’t afford a bathtub or a boat ride. But that’s okay with him. He prefers to get a job on a ship. Passengers get sea-sick—grow quarrelsome—don’t sleep of nights—do not enjoy themselves much, as a general thing;—no I never go as a passenger.

      Smart guy. Having once endured the horrors of a cruise vacation, The Classics Slacker understands completely.

      But before Ishmael can find a ship he can work for, he has to fish around for a place to

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1