I'm out of the loop on this one but I will seize the opportunity to say all the bad things I think about that book.
First, the writing is overly complicated with no other apparent objective than to confuse the reader with extremely long and circumvented sentences.
Second, the story is constantly chopped with long and boring chapters that are solely informative on various aspects of sperm whale anatomy, ecology, behavior (riddled with dated errors andmisinterpretations), as well as whaling specifics, ranging from the work of the carpenter to the process of removing the head of whales.
The first duty of a story is to entertain, its second is to instruct. Good writers manage to do both seamlessly. Melville makes a total messout of it, breaking the fourth wall when explaining how hard it is to collect accurate information, citing his sources in the body of the texte, and completely losing the interest of the reader in the process.
There.
I'm trying to finish it for the sake of it. It is painful.
