There's an old 1950s science fiction story in which aliens have taken over Earth and now wish to learn everything about the human race. But they can't tell what's important and what's trivial, yet. So to be on the safe side, they employ people to read every single book ever published and summarise its main points. And the story is a day in the life of one of these readers. And he's got Moby Dick. And what he writes on the file index card is : 
 Nineteenth century knowledge about cetaceans, particularly physeter macrocephalus, was inadequate. 
 Another way of summarising this one is boy meets whale, boy loses whale, boy gets whale back. 
 And another way would be : brilliant, terminal, essential, outrageous, infuriating.