I could never make much headway with Moby Dick, though I remember being

thrilled by the movie. A pal in Lakewood, Calif. offers an explanation:

“Derb: Since Moby Dick is being mentioned in The Corner, I offer this quote

from the late, magnificent, English pianist Gerald Moore (1899-1987): ‘I

read every word of Moby Dick and it nearly killed me. The preparations for

the sailing and the protracted voyage take an eternity but at last the

reader’s pulse is quickened by the sight of a whale’s silvery jet. “There

she blows,” calls the lookout. This is the moment that Herman Melville

corks up the fountain of the whale and of your excitement and gives you a

long chapter beginning, “It is some systematized exhibition of the whale in

his broad genera, that I would now fain put before you…”

“‘Again and again the author does this. No sooner is something exciting to

be seen on deck, than you are taken below to be lectured on the monstrous

pictures of whales, and on the less erroneous pictures of whales. I confess

I lost my boyish enthusiam, found myself inhaling the sultry atmosphere of

the museum or laboratory instead of the salty tang of the sea.

“‘They all tell me that Moby Dick is a great book, for Melville is an

honourable man…’”

“From: Am I Too Loud?: Memoirs of an Accompanist (London: Hamish Hamilton,

1962), page 185.”

There is a nice collection to be made — you know, one of those Christmas

joke-quote books — of people just not getting great works of literature.

Head of the pack must surely be Farmer George on Shakespeare.