Tag Archive: Moby Dick


LIFE AND DEATH ON THE OCEAN WAVE

Filed under: Books, Fiction, Movies — Leave a comment
December 6, 2012

MOBY DICK directed by John Huston (USA, 1956)

220px-moby_dick434There’s is some dispute about screenwriter Ray Bradbury’s experience of Herman Melville’s epic novel. According to Wiki he confessed to John Huston that he’d never managed to get through the whole book, echoing the feelings of many readers, including me.

However, a strongly contradictory perspective is given by Philip Hoare. Writing in Leviathan, Hoare claims that Bradbury “read the book nine times and wrote fifteen hundred pages of script to reach a final one hundred and fifty”.

I suspect the truth may lie someway in between these two accounts. Huston is credited as co-writer and my gut feeling is that the director had a more intuitive grasp of the source material than the Sci-Fi author.

Either way, reducing the scope and complexity of the novel to a feature length film is a daunting and nigh on impossible task. Continue reading →

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LEVIATHAN – GOLIATHS OF THE DEEP

Filed under: Books, Poetry, Politics — 1 Comment
December 5, 2012
Cover of "Leviathan"

Cover of Leviathan

LEVIATHAN OR, THE WHALE by Philip Hoare (4th Estate, 2008)

The Natural History of the Sperm Whale by Thomas Beale was published in 1839, a work which Philip Hoare refers to as “a wide-ranging and eclectic work, part scientific study, part adventure story”.

This same description could easily apply to Hoare’s own study although you would need to add that it is also an extended appreciation of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick combined with a personal account of a lifetime’s fascination with water and whales.

Melville began writing his great American novel in 1850 and the timing of the work is seen by Hoare as significant for a number of reasons. Not only did it coincide with the period when the issue of slavery was coming to an end but he also believes whaling is a telling metaphor for America’s obsession with the wilderness and that Melville’s epic tale of Captain Ahab’s quest for the white whale therefore stands as a kind of “wild west of the sea”. Continue reading →

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