"... and often participating to a considerable degree in its unctuousness. It is a most refreshing, convivial, beautiful object to behold. As its name imports, it is of an exceedingly rich, mottled tint, with a bestreaked snowy and golden ground, dotted with spots of the deepest crimson and purple. It is plums of rubies, in pictures of citron. Spite of reason, it is hard to keep yourself from eating it. I confess, that once I stole behind the foremast to try it. It tasted something as I should conceive a royal cutlet from the thigh of Louis le Gros might have tasted, supposing him to have been killed the first day after the venison season, and that particular venison season contemporary with an unusually fine vintage of the vineyards of Champagne."
Just a fragment of "Moby Dick," pulled up this morning as part of a real-world conversation that I am too discreet to recount.
A royal cutlet from the thigh of Louis le Gros — that killed me.
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21 comments:
How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?!
Quote beautiful paragraphs all you want. I will not again attempt to read Moby Dick.
Sounds like food porn written by Stacy Abrams...kinky!
It did make me think about trying to pick up MD again. It was so enjoyable until I got into the (very) extended discussion of taxonomy . . . .
"Quote beautiful paragraphs all you want. I will not again attempt to read Moby Dick."
I recommend reading paragraphs isolated from the grand task of getting through the whole book. You already know what happens. Read the end first if it's distracting thinking about getting to the end.
If you were barreling through the whole book, you'd probably blow by that sentence and not give the royal cutlet a second look.
In the future, when books provide scent to accompany the text, I will not read Moby Dick again.
Good example of why the book wasn't appreciated and didn't sell when it came out.
When Melville writes vaguely and emotively about parts of whales that he doesn't straightforwardly name, how many modern readers wonder if he's talking about their testicles?
The whales', I mean, not the readers'.
We Americans are (AFIK) the only people who regularly consume aged beef.
The Europeans I talked to thought fresh-killed meat was best.
Moby Dick is a great story, with an awful lot of really bizarre stuff thrown in. Some of it is disguised allegorical social and political commentary, I guess, but much of it is just downright odd.
If you want humor of that sort, "A royal cutlet from the thigh of Louis le Gros," I would strongly suggest Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantegruel. I only understood about half the jokes, which I hope is understandable after this length of time, and still was overwhelmed.
"A royal cutlet from the thigh of Louis le Gros — that killed me." Getting the cutlet probably killed Louis the Gros as well.
I love Moby Dick and have read it at least a half dozen times. You're right, I haven't given the royal cutlet a second look.
I love to deep fry them for the holidays.
"It tasted something as I should conceive a royal cutlet from the thigh of Louis le Gros might have tasted, supposing him to have been killed the first day after the venison season, and that particular venison season contemporary with an unusually fine vintage of the vineyards of Champagne."
I'm trying to work out if it tasted good or bad. No luck yet.
"It is plums of rubies, in pictures of citron."
That is funny, I assume he is referring to the Proverbs "Apples of gold in pictures of silver."
Similar to Twain, as in "information appears to stew out of me naturally, like the precious attar of roses out of the otter."
No one grandly overstates a reference anymore, its a lost art.
"I'm trying to work out if it tasted good or bad. No luck yet."
By its general tenor, I think he's saying it was very good.
"No one grandly overstates a reference anymore, its a lost art."
It used to be everybody knew the Bible. I probably haven't read Proverbs since I was a boy, if ever. My only memory of Sunday school was a cool picture on the wall of St George, the knight, with a lance, killing a dragon. I think that Methodists somehow descended from Church of England, must be.
I read that book only twice, once in high school and once in college, some books I go back as an old man and read again, and I feel embarrassed for the writer, and sometimes I see things in them that I never could have seen in callow youth that make them worth the reading.
I am on kind of a 19th century kick, and have decided in my dotage that James Fenimore Cooper was a greater writer than Mark Twain. An opinion that will probably die with me, now maybe it's time for a square off with Melville for the title.
OK. Had to google plum pudding and whales. This led to a site called the disgusting food museum in which I learned of a delicacy called kiviak. I'll leave it at that as I feel close to having to hurl.
"It is plums of rubies, in pictures of citron."
A new Meme, A Fruit or vegetable... a valuable commodity... in pictures of a less valuable commodity.
A Broccoli of uranium, in pictures of copper.
A banana of barium, in pictures of carbon.
Kate said...
"Quote beautiful paragraphs all you want. I will not again attempt to read Moby Dick."
The difference between men and women. I enjoyed it a lot and have read it a few times.
Call me Ishmael.
Books are the cure for the toxins of presentism, that Pandora's Box alchemizing the airlessness of narcissism with the eternal accusation of trans-historical guilt.
So I'm with the monks of Canticle for Leibowitz.
We should keep books around a while longer.
Not so long ago, many of our best poets and novelists came out of the military and financial trades, and an unlikely number of them were tail-gunners, especially among the poets. What is the connection between Homer and these modern men?
I've lost faith in a lot of things, but not the classical books education I received at a cheap, tiny, public college in West Florida. Without Rabelais there would be no Monty Python. Without Samuel Johnson, there would be no Christopher Hitchens. Without James Boswell, there would be no blogging.
Without Elizabeth Gaskell, there would never have been that fabulous miniseries with the hot doctor from ER. Which also explained all of modern industrialized national economics, but damn he's hot.
Tina
Lessons the left vigorously attempts to unlearn.
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