There is a popular strategy card game called Magic the Gathering that I've played with different levels of fervor over the years.  Think of collectible baseball cards, fantasy stories, and chess combined into one, frequently updated game.  The game was created in 1993 and its reach has increased steadily over the years fanning into leagues, tournaments, fan art, books, and something even akin to it's own stock exchange.  There are different ways to play the game, but in general, two people compete with personal pre-constructed decks of 75 cards, each with spells and lands that work in synergy to bring their opponents life down from 20 to zero - first person with zero life, loses.  
 
Competitive magic is a careful study.  Serious players may spend countless hours researching hundreds of unique cards (out of nearly 20,000) and their effects, how they interact with other cards, and what kinds of decks are in favor with top players.  There's even a list of popular decks and top players that's updated regularly.  I played more seriously for a number of years in a specific format known as Legacy, where players have access to an array of older powerful cards - cards that are not allowed in newer, more popular competitive formats.  Since many of these older cards only saw one print run many years ago, or today only see limited print runs, they garner a high price.  Competitive 75 card Legacy decks can cost over $3000.  The price to pay to compete at this level is prohibitive to some.  Nonetheless, the Legacy format has an ardent following.  Many players, (mostly men), are extremely competitive and often times don't take losing very well.  For some, athletic sports, career success, music, etc., has let them down, but Magic offers a place where they can compete and be successful.  It is a diverse crowd like any, maybe a little biased toward the video gamers, comic book readers, and board gamers, but there are certainly all kinds of successful professionals like engineers, writers, attorneys, doctors, musicians, and yes, athletes that play too.  It's really for everyone. 
 
Part of the beauty in the actual game is the diversity.  A format like Legacy offers upwards of 40 different kinds of competitive decks that can be tried out or tweaked to fit any personality type, or personal inclination for the tournament at hand.  The key is balance.  And for timed, tournament play, another key is speed.  The deck must work fast enough to win a match against an opponent.  On occasion, a player may see a more obscure deck, a kind of oddity, that does some interesting tricks, but may not be efficient, or it may have serious weaknesses to not see a deep tournament run.  One such deck, that comes to mind, is known as Enchantress.  The deck is full of interacting moving parts that slowly build a competitive advantage for the player, over time.  The deck can be very powerful and win games.  The problem is, it takes a lot of time to get up and running.  A person with an Enchantress deck may need twice as much time per turn to activate card abilities, counters, life triggers, library searches, etc., to create a competitive edge.  There are too many moving parts.  On a personal note, it's a very tedious deck to play against.  Decks like these have a term often associated with them - "durdling".  In other words, when someone is playing with an Enchantress deck, they are often "durdling" during their turn, checking and updating their multitude of interacting cards without advancing the game state.  The goal for them is akin to slowly building an impenetrable castle so they can sit inside on a silk pillow without disturbance.  The problem is, tournaments are meant to be fought for and won.  If you want to be a competitive Magic the Gathering player and win Legacy matches, don't be "King Durdle" and play an Enchantress deck.  Pick a quality, efficient, balanced deck, and master it, (try Death and Taxes, Grixis Delver, Infect, Elves, etc.). 
 
If you want to write a quality, efficient, entertaining book, don't be the "King Durdle" of writing...Herman Melville.     
 
If you've ever wondered how to take an interesting premise for a story and make it excruciatingly boring, read Moby Dick.  It's a masterclass in "durdling" a story.  My god, give me the Old Yeller treatment.  This book was an epic snooze.  I tried to like it.  I tried to get into Herman Melville's relentless, wordy prose, but dear lord of all kings, please tell the fucking story.  This book could have been 2/3 shorter, and it would have been twice as good. 
 
And yes, I know - the symbolism of the white whale and Ahab's narcissistic obsession, the biblical references and Jonah, Oedipus, the importance of the shedding light on the whaling industry, all that stuff and more.  That's all fine and everything, but why does Herman Melville have to take a normal event that should take 10 words to describe, and yammer on and on until he's dithering and "durdling" about farming in Nantucket?
 
Take the following passage for example:  "But, as in his narrow-flowing monomania, not one jot of Ahab's broad madness had been left behind; so in that broad madness, not one jot of his great natural intellect had perished.  That before living agent, now became the living instrument.  If such a furious trope may stand, his special lunacy stormed his general sanity, and carried it, and turned all its concentrated cannon upon its own mad mark; so that far from having lost his strength, Ahab, to that one end, did now possess a thousand fold more potency than ever he had sanely brought to bear upon any one reasonable object. 
 
"This is much; yet Ahab's larger, darker, deeper part remains unhinted.  But vain to popularize profundities, and all truth is profound.  Winding far down from within the very heart of this spiked Hotel de Cluny where we here stand - however grand and wonderful, not quit it; - and take your way, ye nobler sadder souls, to those vast Roman halls of Thermes; where far beneath the fantastic towers of man's upper earth, his root of grandeur, his whole awful essence sits in bearded state; an antique buried beneath antiquities, and throned on torsoes!  So with broken throne, the great gods mock that captive king; so like a Caryatid, he patient sits, upholding on his frozen brow the piled entablatures of ages.  Wind ye down there, ye prouder, sadder souls!  question that proud, sad king!  A family likeness! aye, he did beget ye, ye young exiled royalties; and from you grim sire only will the old State-secret come."   

Why not instead try:  "In his monomania, Ahab remained an agent of madness, his intellect still intact.  The potency of his focus now a thousand fold on this singular object."  
 
I changed the passage by making it clear and efficient and dropped the meandering prose.  Some meaning is lost, yes, but precision and flow-of-story is gained.  Meaning is also lost when you "durdle" all day because the connecting images and allusions lose potency!   
 
I'll throw you all a bone.  The whale anatomy and butchering descriptions are interesting.  Otherwise, I'm glad whaling is, for the most part, illegal now.  
 
I really don't want to discuss this book anymore.  It was painful to read, and I have to move on.  Peace and love.  Fin.
 
Summary:  Pretentious blathering snoozefest that bored me to tears.  I wrote more about Magic the Gathering in the full review than I did Moby Dick.  Kisses.        
 
Rating:  2.0

-E.B.
2018-06-01