Everything Tumblr has told you about Moby-Dick is absolute bullshit, and everything that Tumblr has told you about Moby-Dick is 100% true. It’s a travelogue fantasy. It’s proto-science fiction. It’s cosmic horror. It’s shockingly original and it’s shamelessly plagiaristic. It’s a misotheistic Christian parable in which the whale is the mask of a cruel, uncaring God and Ahab is Satan himself, not as trickster or as tempter, but as doomed hero. It’s the most gripping thing you’ll ever read. It’s boring as shit. But above all else – and I cannot emphasise this enough – it is filled with Facts About Whales.