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.

Quick Chat: MOBY DICK #1

I am now inaugurating Quick Chat, a segment of this blog where I will check-in periodically with a book I am reading. So rather than writing just one post after I've finished a book, I will write several posts - there is no set number - as I am reading a book. Hopefully this will create a richer reading experience for me, and foster some conversation on here, which has not happened so far. If you're reading, and feel so inclined, leave a comment!

In case you're wondering: yes, the backdrop
of this picture are my childhood Barbie sheets.

This inaugural Quick Chat, will be about Moby Dick by Herman Melville. I started this book a few days ago, and am only on like page 60-something. Now, what I want to focus on for this post is 'expectations.' Moby Dick is a very well-known book, people have claimed to have been utterly changed by it, it is a staple in the Western Canon, and its characters and story elements are a part of the cultural consciousness. I have waited a very long time to read this book, and so over time I have absorbed a lot of perceptions and ideas about what this book will be. What is most ingrained in my mind about this novel is the character of Captain Ahab going on an insane and destructive odyssey to find and kill a certain whale, so I kind of assumed the novel would be from his perspective. But on reading the first page, I find out the narrator is a man named Ishmael - which I guess should have been a clue that it was from a different perspective considering the whole famous opening line of 'Call me Ishmael' but I guess I've just conflated the two whenever I heard or read about the book. This is all to say that rarely do we begin reading books with no expectations or pre-conceived notions, and there is always an adjustment period of not only getting used to the logic of a novel, but to the perspectives, and especially, the perspective to take on as a reader. As books become 'classics' and age, there is the possibility that the experience of them becomes more and more filtered. Is that a bad or good thing? Is it useful? Does it add more or take away from a story? Is it possible to overcome those filters? We want reading a novel to be an intimate experience, specific to the reader, because then the experience is special. 

These are some questions and thoughts I have beginning this novel. And I will follow-up on them in future Quick Chat segments. Stay tuned! Have any of you read Moby Dick? Did it change your life?