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"Moby Dick isn’t overrated, and it’s not overrated"

Should one of these be "underrated"?

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Yes, thanks for the correction

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Made it to "And Moby Dick is the track where he gets to hog the stage." before I realized you were talking about the song and not the book. Did you do that on purpose?

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Yes, the trickery is intentional. This post started as an exercise in playful skulduggery, but in the process, I stumbled upon an interesting idea: the fact that I could summarize my thoughts on Moby Dick (1969) in a way that could be mistaken for commentary on Moby Dick (1851) says a bit about both about the song and the book. (And, of course, it also says a lot about my own subjective frame.)

There’s something about good essay-writing that feels playful in the same way a good joke does, in the sense that you’re playing with ideas and trying to connect them in surprising ways. To quote Paul Graham:

"I have a hunch you want to pay attention not just to things that seem wrong, but things that seem wrong in a humorous way. I’m always pleased when I see someone laugh as they read a draft of an essay. But why should I be? I’m aiming for good ideas. Why should good ideas be funny? The connection may be surprise. Surprises make us laugh, and surprises are what one wants to deliver."

On a certain level, it seems “wrong” that a person’s relationship with Led Zeppelin’s Moby Dick could plausibly be mistaken for their relationship with Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. After all, a 5-minute track and a 200,000 word novel are completely different things; they shouldn't be interchangeable. But, viewed in a certain way, they're actually quite alike, if you only engage with them as "a cultural artifact that I want to have the 'correct' opinions about."

I didn't explicitly intend this when I wrote the post, but I don't think it's an accident that my relationship with the track is easily mistaken for my relationship with the novel when described in the frame of my 15-year-old, 20-year-old, and 25-year old self, because at those ages, most of my experience is shaped by cultural context and my own self-consciousness and desire to build my own identity in relation to this famous piece of art. It's only in the final act -- describing the reaction of my 30-year-old self -- that I really start to examine Moby Dick (1969) on its own merits, rather than being obsessed with what the culture says about it. I can finally say, "that drum solo is skillful and fun to listen to," and that's the point at which the commentary is clearly about the music itself, and not about the culture that surrounds it.

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Thanks for the detailed response.

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