Quick Chat: 'Be Good to Yourself,' MOBY DICK #2

After speaking with an elder in my life, whom I respect, I finally decided to fucking give up on Moby Dick. I can't do it anymore. It was killing me. I've been reading it for almost two weeks and have only read 200 out of the 500 pages of the book. I never felt a desire to pick up the book, only an obligation to finish it because a lot of other people think it's a 'masterpiece.' 

I hate not finishing books. I usually hold out to see if the ending will put things into perspective - which is what happened with Lolita - or I'm at least interested enough in wanting to see how the story ends - which is what happened with The Shipping News, a book I enjoyed, but mostly continued to read because I wanted to see how things resolved. So I struggled with giving up on Moby Dick, but here I am. Maybe this is not the right time in my life, and maybe I will pick it up again and I will love it, but for now, I don't like it, and I think the structure and writing is kind of shit. I will still recap some thoughts I had while struuuuggling through the first 200 pages. Also, if I can't get into a book in 200 pages, it's time to give up. 'Be good to yourself,' is the advice I got, and I'm going to take it. There is no righteous mandate that I read this book, or any book. I'm going to be good to myself, and read what excites me and challenges me in ways that enhance my intellectual life, rather than feel like it is slowly bleeding out.

A Few Things About Moby Dick:

• The writing felt so inert. There are some seriously beautiful sentences, but the whole story and plot felt like they were going nowhere.
• I liked the beginning with the homoerotic comedy of manners with Ishmael, our narrator, and Queequeg, the cannibal Ishmael befriends. Honestly, I want the novel of them falling in love, going on dumb whaling adventures together, not the slog of the life on the ship they end up on, the Pequod. 
• The legendary Captain Ahab is a straight up idiot. The whole narrative of man-thinking-he-can-overcome-nature is an interesting one, but not compelling through the lens of Ahab's character. 
• Here's a new recurring segment I will call Interesting or Stupid? In this segment I will try and determine if a stylistic/structural/narrative/etc. choice is actually interesting and meaningful, or if it's stupid. 
• In the case of Moby Dick, there is a portion of the novel, from pages 141-158, where the narration switches from Ishmael to a few other characters, and the way Melville indicates this is through basically what are stage directions. For example, beneath Chapter 37's title 'Sunset,' are the directions 'The cabin; by the stern windows; Ahab sitting alone, and gazing out' (148). At first, I thought to myself, 'Hm, that's interesting. Maybe Melville will embrace the ridiculousness of this whole vengeance on this whale by including aspects of plays or something.' Like, why have a first-person narrator (Ishmael) if you're going to switch between first-person narrators in an awkward way?! Why not use fucking free-indirect speech as employed fucking beautifully by Jane Austen?! And the entirety of Chapter 40 is a scene of the different sailors on the ship, but their dialogue is set up as in a play. And then all of this just never happens again. Maybe it's all interesting, but I'm leaning more towards stupid just because it completely did not fit with the other chapters.
• And another recurring segment: Meta Moment, in which I will discuss a meta moment - *wink wink* - in a book, because usually I think those are cool.
• In the case of Moby Dick, on page 184, Ishmael says, 'So ignorant are most landsmen of some of the plainest and most palpable wonders of the world, that without some hints touching the plain facts, historical and otherwise, of the fishery, they might scout at Moby Dick as a monstrous fable, or still worse and more detestable, a hideous and intolerable allegory.' Really, Melville? Is this your justification to the slog I have trudged through for the past two weeks?!

And that concludes my thoughts on Moby Dick by Herman Melville. Maybe I will read you again one day, maybe not. Either way, I'm moving on.