Back from the Deep

Moby Dick was not what I had expected.  Previously any references to the story had always conjured visions of a fantasy, about a man and his friendship with a mighty whale. The real adventure is far from this image.  This as a serious, almost non-fiction style story about whaling in the 19th century.  The images conjured of whales being caught and slaughtered are especially confronting in this age of animal rights and Green Peace.
Although the story is highly regarded in literary circles, I was not particularly impressed with it.  I suppose partly because whaling is not really within my field of interests, but mainly because it was such a long book with extensive descriptions that were hard to follow.  Descriptions seemed to describe descriptions. A sentence would begin with a clause indicating what Melville was talking about, but by the end of the sentence I had forgotten what this was.  I struggled to keep the narrated images in my mind as clause after clause or sentence after sentence would convolute the illustration.  I will admit that I possibly have not developed the habit of visualising words well and a better and more intelligent reader would have gotten more out of it. 
I have at least extended my vocabulary and I followed the story enough, but I am sure I missed really interesting segments, just because I couldn't get a true gist of what Melville was saying. I also found there were long segments of disconnected elements.  The scientific descriptions of the different types of whales seemed unnecessary and might as well have been an appendix for all the attachment they had to the rest of the storyline.
There were definitely points where I thought, wow, that was cleverly written. I can really picture that or I get that metaphor. Although the book isn't going to make a favourite list of mine, I acknowledge the art of the author and his place among the ranks of brilliant authors.