Book review: The first half of "Moby Dick" by Heman Melville

I usually wait to finish a book before reviewing it, but for "Moby Dick" I'm making an exception. I'm halfway through this 1851 Herman Melville work and I'm already bursting with things to say.

In short, "Moby Dick" is a mess.

Yes, I know it's supposed to be a classic. Some even call it the quintessential American novel. But this rambling, meandering work is like a chaotic junk drawer of literary styles.

It's part fiction, part non-fiction. It's told sometimes in first-person (with at least five different narrators) and sometimes as third-person. It even employs the rarely used first-person omniscent. 

There are diversions and digressions galore. Melville spends two chapters explaining why whaling is important to the world. Another chapter — and not a short one, either — is spent on the historic and cultural signifance of the color white. The plot is interrupted occasionally by factual chapters, like a 19th-century Wikipedia, on the different types of whales or artwork that depicts whales. Melville uses soliloquies, inner dialogues, even one chapter written like the script of a play. 

This is not what I expected. I've heard countless references to "Moby Dick" throughout my life and it sounded like a straightforward story about a whaling captain named Ahab obsessively pursuing a white whale named Moby Dick. There is that, but there's a lot more. Ahab doesn't even appear until 28 chapters into the story.

The plot and characters come and go haphazardly. A character named Queequeg is built up early on as the second main character after the narrator, Ishmael. Then Queequeg almost completely disappears from the story.

Melville seems in no hurry to move the plot forward — or anywhere. In the first paragraph, Ishmael says he wants "to get to sea as soon as I can," yet it takes another 22 chapters before his boat leaves the dock. 

He rambles along in twisting sentences of archaic language, which are either beautifully poetic or completely indecipherable. One sentence, I kid you not, clocks in at 467 words

Honestly, I'm not even sure you can call it a novel. It's more of a file folder labeled "Random whale stuff."

With all this negativity, you might wonder why I keep reading it, and so do I. In part, I'm trying to figure out why "Moby Dick" has such a grand reputation. There's gotta be some good stuff ahead, right?

To be fair, when Melville focuses on the plot, the story does move ahead with interesting developments. He captures a certain place in time in the American whaling industry — dreary lodging while waiting to go to sea, the mood of a whaling town, the excitement of chasing a whale. 

While it's true that some of the archaic language can't be decoded, sometimes Melville finds just the right words.

For example, on sleeping in a cold room, he says, "A sleeping apartment should never be furnished with a fire, which is one of the luxurious discomforts of the rich. For the height of this sort of deliciousness is to have nothing but the blanket between you and your snugness and the cold of the outer air. Then there you lie the one warm spark in the heart of an arctic crystal." 

But for every one of those gems there are three or four labyrinthian sentences that would overwhelm the the abilities of a literary puzzlemaster. Here's just one: "With a frigate’s anchors for my bridle-bitts and fasces of harpoons for spurs, would I could mount that whale and leap the topmost skies, to see whether the fabled heavens with all their countless tents really lie encamped beyond my mortal sight!"

I'm not giving up yet, but I will be skimming parts of the second half. 

Book review: "Into the Abyss" by Carol Shaben

The small plane descended through a blizzard of snow in darkness, crashed through the trees, and splintered into multiple parts as it hit the ground. While six passengers died, four men miraculously survived the crash. 

But though they were alive, the survivors of the crash were still in peril. They were deep in the Canadian wilderness on a bitterly cold night. Rescue was far away. Freezing to death was a real possibility.

This is the heart of the story in "Into the Abyss," a fascinating 2012 book by Carol Shaben. It tells the true story of the crash of Wapiti Airlines Flight 402 on Oct. 19, 1984, on its way to Peace River, Alberta.

Three of the survivors the crash were badly injured — pilot Erik Vogel, prominent politician Larry Shaben, and police officer Scott Deschamps. The fact that they eventually did survive the night was largely due to the actions of the fourth survivor, a man who never wanted to be on the plane in the first place. 

That man was Paul Archambault, a prisoner who was on the plane being escorted by Deschamps to be tried for alleged crimes. Archambault was the least injured of the four. He not only freed Deschamps from the wreckage, and certain death, he started and maintained a fire to keep the group alive until rescuers arrived.  

The sttory of Vogel, the pilot, is the spine of the book. Shaben carefully recounts his development as an eager young pilot who found a job with a small carrier to build up the flight hours necessary to move to a larger airline. Vogel clearly made mistakes that led to the crash, but Shaben notes another factor: The pressure his employer put on him to fly in bad weather, or when fatigued, even if it meant bending or breaking safety rules.

For all the main characters —Vogel, Archambault, Deschamps and Larry Shaben — the author paints nuanced portraits of their careers and personal lives. (If you're wondering, yes, author Carol Shaben is the daughter of Larry Shaben.) She clearly did deep interviews and research for the book. Even for less prominent characters, such as the men and women involved in the rescue efforts, Shaben humanizes them with carefully chosen details.

The most intriguing character in the book is Archambault, a troubled young man who had been jailed off and on for theft and vandalism. It was a yet another charge that put him on the plane, handcuffed to Deschamps. But as the flight began, Deschamps conceded to Archambault's request, and removed the handcuffs. That act may have saved both their lives.

After the crash, realizing he was still alive and able-bodied, Archambault at first started to flee into the woods to get away. But a pang of guilt brought him back to help the others, digging Deschamps out of a prison of snow in which he was embedded. (In fact, it is highly unlikely Archambault would have survived a night alone in the wilderness).

I was impressed by the Canadian rescue. Given that the flight crashed early in the night amid a raging snowstorm, I would have fully understood if the rescuers had opted to wait for daylight to begin operations. But as soon as word of the crash got out, in the darkness of the night, rescuers headed out by plane and on foot.

Paul Archambault was the hero of that night, but it took a while for the world to realize that. Immediately after he and the others were rescued, he was taken to a hospital and handcuffed to the bed. Later, as word of his actions emerged, most of his criminal charges would be dismissed. 

As a writer, Carol Shaben shows off skills other writers should envy, giving a masterclass in the use of vivid details to bring the story alive.

Some examples: 

• "When Erik saw the tree in front of his cockpit window, he screamed and threw his arms in front of his face."
• Paul Archambault "smoked his last rolled cigarette down to a roach and when the heat began to burn his fingers, tossed it into the snow."
• Scott Deschamps, trapped in snow after crash, "could taste dirt in his mouth and snow compressed inside his nasal passages."

Given how much I liked the book, I'm almost sorry to point out that the book loses steam in the latter parts, largely because the author stuffs in unneeded details

The crash and the rescue are the dramatic high points of the book, but they are over and done about two-thirds of the way through the book. Carol Shaben follows up appropriately by describing the subsequent crash investigations, which mostly blamed Vogel for the crash, though Wapiti Airlines was also faulted for pressuring pilots into dangerous situations. 

She also follows each of the survivors to see to see how they fared after the crash. This is a bittersweet section as each of them struggle to regain their footing in life. Sadly, Archambault died just six years after the crash in an accident. 

It is interesting to hear these follow-up stories, but Carol Shaben goes too far, adding information that the book just doesn't need. I'm sure Larry Shaben's role in representing Muslims in Canada is important in some context, but not this one. Deschamps' search for, and reunification with a half-sister, is an important story for his family, but is just not necessary here. 

I did like Carol Shaben's choice to end the book with the survivors' 20-year reunion. Though the story was filled with much melancholy, it was good to see that Vogel, Deschamps and Larry Shaben had become lifelong friends.