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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   2838 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 17, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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So, what are you reading?

I'm starting a reread of The Count of Monte Cristo after recent mentions here. I don't remember a lot of the details and perhaps it will seem more profound this time around. The political aspect of Danglars' accusation wouldn't have drawn my interest in the past.

Still on Hurewitz' The Struggle for Palestine.

Four chapters into Moby-Dick (this is probably my fourth or fifth attempt at reading it, the last time when I was in my teens). The last chapter I read consists of "I woke up, my roommate woke up, I watched my roommate get dressed and shave". Aspiring novelists are rightfully advised to avoid morning routine scenes, as they do nothing to advance the plot or convey characterisation and are hence boring. Perhaps the only thing that's more boring and irrelevant is a chapter depicting the protagonist's roommate's morning routine.

Super late reply but I remember really loving a depiction of Watson getting ready in the morning in some Sherlock story I was listening to in audiobook form while working years ago. It has oddly stuck in my mind which is why I mentioned it here.

What struck me the hardest about MD is how modern the writing felt.

I found it funny in chapter 3 when Ishmael describes a set of wainscots as "old-fashioned".

Reminded me of this gag about Assassin's Creed Origins (a video game set in Egypt between 49-43 BC): "I remember feeling profoundly disappointed at the scene when Bayek's missus gives him a hidden blade and says, 'This is a weapon from ancient times.' Bitch, we're in ancient times!"

I really liked the setting of Origins, both because it correctly portrayed Bayek as religious (he's outraged that someone's making crocodile mummies by killing crocodiles not because it's animal cruelty, but because they are Sobek's sacred animals) and because we tend to forget that Ancient Egypt is so fucking ancient it was ancient history back in Cleopatra's times.

When someone told me that Cleopatra lived closer in time to the moon landings than to the construction of the Great Pyramid, I felt like a trapdoor had just opened underneath me.

And yet, Moby Dick is rightfully seen as one of the best novels ever written.

Btw, there's also a pretty famous morning routine near the start of Ulysses.

Les Miserables is also considered one of the best novels ever written, but I don’t think the book would be materially harmed by removing the lengthy digressions on the Parisian sewer system and the Battle of Waterloo.

And yet, Moby Dick is rightfully seen as one of the best novels ever written.

I'm sure with good reason, I'll report back once I've finished it. I'll be immensely surprised if, upon completion, I come away thinking "yeah, the novel couldn't have done without the Queequeg shaving scene", but I'm open to the possibility.

The scene is pretty much unimportant to the story, but the point of the scene (and many others like it) is that instead of the story being linear from start to end, much like life it meanders this way and that, giving the reader a better sense of what it was like to actually be the characters in the text.

On its own the scene is meaningless, but together with other scenes like it it forms a part of the soul of what Moby Dick is, and the novel as a whole would be poorer without these scenes.

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