Moby Dick

TL;DR

I recently read Melville's *Moby-Dick* or, The Whale. I will not do it justice writing about it so I am going to keep this brief to organize some of my thoughts.

Key points

• Dense, detail-rich writing that rewards patience.
• Business and leadership lessons sprinkled throughout.
• Read when you want depth, not just plot.

What this is / Who it’s for

This is a short reflection on Moby-Dick through a business/leadership lens. It’s for readers who like dense, idea-rich classics and don’t mind detours. God knows there will be lots of detours in this book.

It clicked this time

I tried to read Moby-Dick when I was in my early 20s and put it down after 50 or so pages. This time I let it pull me in and it did not let go even after I finished. It’s to the point that I can’t look at the ocean without thinking of the book. Yes it’s that good!

The founder’s book angle

Hollis Robbins mentioned on Conversations with Tyler that Moby-Dick is a good book on founders. I think this sparked me to read it with a lens that this is a business book. It doesn’t disappoint here, there’s more business wisdom in a couple of chapters of Moby-Dick than a shelf of airport lit business how-to books. Leadership, legal interpretations, morale of teams, finding a north-star, appreciating the journey. Ahab is the founder that lets the mission take over his psyche and ultimately leads to his demise, Starbuck the cold, analytical lieutenant (first mate in this case) tries with all his might to reach Ahab, unsuccessfully.

Near the end:

“Oh! Ahab,” cried Starbuck, “not too late is it, even now, the third day, to desist. See! Moby Dick seeks thee not. It is thou, thou, that madly seekest him!”

You could approach this book from any angle though if you let it reach out to you. Environmentalist, philosophical, classicist, theological, aesthetic etc. I suspect I will get much more out of it on my second read.

The “boring” chapters

I’ve read a lot of reviews that complain about the excruciating detail Melville goes into. I can see this if you are solely along for the plot ride (the adventure is good enough that I wouldn’t blame anyone for this). To me it didn’t feel like a slog, Melville writes with as much passion in the encyclopedia chapters on cetology as he does musing on philosophy through Ishmael and Ahab’s monologues.

The detail is the feature, not a bug. If you don’t like that, you probably won’t be convinced to power through. It helps to read Moby-Dick at a point in your life when you can appreciate it. It’s a book for infovores. Melville will treat you, if you let him.

Local connection

I spend most of my time in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. A town that as it turns out, has a surprisingly specific whaling story. I knew of this a bit before picking up the book but I assumed most towns on the Atlantic had some history of whaling.

Imagine my surprise when I found out the same Quaker whalers of Nantucket (like some of the Pequod crew) brought their fleet to Dartmouth for a brief decade to avoid a tariff imposed by the British on the newly independent United States. It was short-lived, by 1790 most of these Quaker families ended up moving to Wales. Still, it’s hard not to start seeing the book everywhere once you’ve read it.