'Tis no man, 'tis a remoreseless reading machine

I’m reading Moby Dick right now, and I'm about 190 pages in. It was clearly a mistake to start such a heavy book so soon before my wedding, as all the planning and discussions have left my little time for reading. Also, it’s a hard book to get into with periodic short fits of reading 5-10 pages at a time - the language is too rich and the ideas too integral to the narrative to be able to dip in and out frequently without missing a lot.

I do have complaints about the book – like how Melville periodically diverts from the story to give essays of moderate interest and (to this point, at least) minimal relevance to the action – but overall I’m enjoying it, and it offers plenty to think about, from its almost poetic language and descriptions to the religious references and themes. In short, there are plenty of interesting aspects worth writing about but, as usual, time limits me to just a short comment, which is what this post will be.

So for now, I'll just point out this quote I liked, from the end of chapter 44 (they’re short chapters), obviously. It’s about Captain Ahab’s madness while lying in his cabin, and his internal torment in pursuit of Moby Dick. The Prometheus reference makes it clear what Melville's going for here, but since this passage describes Ahab’s torments as internal and self-created, to me it felt similar to an obsessive author creating a character that drives him insane.

Therefore, the tormented spirit that glared out of bodily eyes, when what seemed Ahab rushed from his room, was for the time but a vacated thing, a formless somnambulistic being, a ray of living light, to be sure, but without an object to color, and therefore a blankness in itself. God help thee, old man, thy thoughts have created a creature in thee; and he whose intense thinking thus makes him a Prometheus; a vulture feeds upon that heart for ever; that vulture the very creature he creates.