Practically Assailable

Dad gave me an audio book commentary on Moby Dick. It's been enjoyable. I read Moby Dick in 1996 (almost ten years ago now) -- and I'm interested all over again. To this day I haven't read fiction as stirring as this:

That intagible malignity which has been from the beginning; to whose
dominion even the modern Christians ascribe one-half of the workds; which the
ancient Ohites of the east reverenced in thier statue devio; --Ahab did not fall
down and worhip it like them; but delirioulsy transferring its idea to the
abhorred white whale, he pitted himself, all mutilated against it. All that most
maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with
malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle
demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly
personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick. He piled upon the
whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole
race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his
hot heart's shell upon it.