{"id":3288,"date":"2006-11-11T21:27:57","date_gmt":"2006-11-12T04:27:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/?p=3288"},"modified":"2006-11-11T21:27:57","modified_gmt":"2006-11-12T04:27:57","slug":"moby-dick-chapters-29-33","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/2006\/11\/11\/moby-dick-chapters-29-33\/","title":{"rendered":"Moby-Dick, Chapters 29-33"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>Chapters read<\/b>:  <a href='http:\/\/www.classicallibrary.org\/melville\/moby\/chapter31.htm'>xxix.  Enter Ahab; to Him, Stubb<\/a>, <a href='http:\/\/www.classicallibrary.org\/melville\/moby\/chapter32.htm'>xxx.  The Pipe<\/a>, <a href='http:\/\/www.classicallibrary.org\/melville\/moby\/chapter33.htm'>xxxi.  Queen Mab<\/a>, <a href='http:\/\/www.classicallibrary.org\/melville\/moby\/chapter34.htm'>xxxii.  Cetology<\/a>, <a href='http:\/\/www.classicallibrary.org\/melville\/moby\/chapter35.htm'>xxxiii. The Specksnyder<\/a><\/p>\n<p><b>Page reached<\/b>:  140 of 522 (26.82%)<\/p>\n<p><b>Status Report<\/b>:  Oh, man.  Chapter 32.  This is probably a strong contender for the title of Most Skimmed Chapter In Classic American Literature.  I would have skipped it myself if I hadn&#8217;t resolved to read this book in its entirety.<\/p>\n<p>Thirteen pages long &#8212; about three times the length of the average chapter &#8212; &#8220;Cetology&#8221; has the narrator giving an impromptu lecture on the nature of the whale, grouping the beasts into fourteen categories and offering lengthy descriptions of each. Here, Melville uses a literary technique known as OMG BORING!  In some other context I might have found this engrossing, but here it&#8217;s like, &#8220;Dude, you got your marine biology lecture in my adventure story!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I wonder how many people have quit reading <em>Moby-Dick<\/em> at &#8220;Cetology&#8221;.  I bet this chapter is a veritable <a href='http:\/\/www.defectiveyeti.com\/archives\/001803.html'>Goodwin Sands<\/a>, with a thousand shipwrecked readers littering its shore.<\/p>\n<p>I could have been one of them, as <em>Moby-Dick<\/em> is perilously close to violating my One-Third Reading Policy, which states that I shall abandon any book that I am not enjoying when I am a third of the way through it.  Unfortunately I am determined to finish this thing, so quitting on page 174 isn&#8217;t an option.  But Cetology has sapped my of all momentum. Chapter 32 is a disabled vehicle in the center lane of this book&#8217;s narrative.<\/p>\n<p><b>Words looked up:<\/b>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><b>Ferrule<\/b>:  A metal ring or cap placed around a pole or shaft for reinforcement or to prevent splitting.<\/li>\n<li><b>Hone<\/b> (&#8220;Sailors put [the oil] on their hones&#8221;):  Whetstone<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Chapters read: xxix. Enter Ahab; to Him, Stubb, xxx. The Pipe, xxxi. Queen Mab, xxxii. Cetology, xxxiii. The Specksnyder Page reached: 140 of 522 (26.82%) Status Report: Oh, man. Chapter 32. This is probably a strong contender for the title of Most Skimmed Chapter In Classic American Literature. I would have skipped it myself if [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nanoremo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3288\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}