The Book it Took Six Years to Read:
I started reading Moby Dick in May of 2002. Jeni and I went on a four day camping trip, and during the lazy afternoons I would read. I got to chapter 54 – not quote halfway through – and life intervened. Summer classes started up, and Moby Dick got placed on the nightstand. When we moved, it went back with the rest of the books. But it was always there – lurking beneath the surface, as it were. I am not compulsive about a lot of things – but I hate not finishing books. So, when I found myself this fall wondering “What to read next?”- I decided it was time to jump back in. Perhaps it was because this book took so long to read, but I found myself very self-aware as I was reading it. The following are three aspects of the experience.
I. As a Work of Literature:
Herman Melville’s most famous work certainly deserves its place in the pantheon of great American literature. From the iconic opening – “Call me Ishmael.” – to the haunting closing image of a coffin as a life-buoy, and in between, the unfolding story of one man’s obsession with wreaking vengeance on what is essentially a force of nature – it is a unique and powerful epic. Apart from utilitarian words like “whale” and “ship,” “monomaniac” may be the most often used word in the novel, which says something.
One thing I was not expecting was just how slowly the story actually unfolds once the ship is loaded and Ahab makes his delayed appearance. Melville has a lot to say about whales, and whaling. He waxes philosophical for pages at a time, and spends even more ink on numerous chapters covering a thorough description of the various technical details of whaling, on the classification and anatomy of whales, the depiction of whales in art through history, and more. There are as many interludes for these kind of topics as there are straightforward narrative. The first part of the book is mainly concerned with the developing friendship between Ishmael (whose name means “God Hears Me” for all the Bible nerds out there) and Queequeg, but this part of the story essentially ends by the middle of the book. It is subsumed under Ahab’s internal monologue, his conflict with the first mate Starbuck, and the various interludes. Perhaps this was intentional on Melville’s part – once Ahab enters the picture, other relationships are important only as they revolve around him and effect his will.
The best of the interlude-style chapters is “The Whiteness of the Whale,” in which Melville examines the various meanings of the color white and its postive and negative connotations in world culture. This chapter succeeds better than some other such interludes, I think, because it applies directly to the story at hand, explaining why this aspect of the titular whale inspires terror in otherwise courageous whalemen. Many other such interludes are information for information’s sake, and while interesting as such, add nothing purposeful to the ongoing drama. The final three chapters detailing the actual combat with Moby Dick seem spare in comparison to some the ancillary information.
Finally, I was often impressed with Melville’s turns of phrase – his ability to poetically express an idea. I listed several examples below.
II. As a Historical Artifact:
I was not the first person to read the copy I had. It is a paperback edition, and one of a series of classics of literature that my wife got from someone, at sometime. The previous reader was armed with a blue ink pen, and like me, was an underliner. The previous reader also had an appreciation for poetic and well-expressed sentences. Our perspectives differed on what to underline, but I could generally see the value in their choices, and occasionally found myself not having to underline – for my predecessor had gone before. Only very rarely did I think, “Why did they underline that?”
Occasionally, instead of underlining, the previous reader would put a blue check beside a paragraph – presumably to indicate the whole paragraph was good. And then there were other times the blue lines would form a “ } ” on the side of the page to indicate “good paragraph.” I appreciated the parentheses a lot more than the check – it reminded me too much of grading, and made me wonder if the previous reader was a teacher – possibly my wife’s grandmother.
The only other facts I could link to the previous reader was that their last underlinings came at page 362, more than 80 pages before the end of the book. I found several more passages worthy of underling from there. Did the previous reader lose interest? The chapter was “The Fossil Whale” – one of those interludes, this time about the whale’s skeleton. And the underlining was off – spaced out over the page and over the paragraph, rather than solid lines under sentences. Did they finish the book? There is no way to know…
III. As an Aesthetic Experience:
Ideally, reading a book is a physical experience, as well as a mental one. There is something very important in the tangible nature of holding a book in your hands, turning the pages, even catching a whiff of the pages from time to time. There is a dynamic to how the book looks and feels that enhances the experience. For example, if a book has a book jacket, I have to take it off. It’s distracting.
My copy of Moby Dick started off well. The paperback edition I have was published in 1964, so the pages had a lovely yellow tinge. Both the front and back cover had various notches and creases, and the spine was quite wrinkled. It gave the impression of that this was a relic of a bygone era – an artifact preserved, or saved from a wreck because of its meaning and import. It gave an ancient feel to the experience.
As I retread my steps to the middle of the book, though, I noticed that the spine of the paper cover was peeling away the further I went through the book. If I opened only the front cover it would fall backward slightly from the body of the book. Strangely, this too, I enjoyed. It would require me to be very careful with the book – to always hold it with two hands. But I knew that the situation was ultimately hopeless. That the further I read the more the cover would separate. As Ahab and his crew in the Peqoud approached its final fate, so too would the book not make it through this experience alive. It was wonderful parallel fate.
At about ¾ through the book, disaster struck. For the briefest of moments, I held the book with one hand, and it nearly split in half. There was a tearing sound, and in the exact middle of the book – page 249 “The Whale as a Dish” – the barest shred of paper held the book together. I resolved to be even more careful, and proceeded on. After I finished the book, I set it down and surveyed the final damage. It is now two books. The cover never entirely separated, and is still attached to back half. The introduction, the title page, the table of contents, and page 247/248 (the last page of the chapter “Stubb’s Supper”) are now free floating pages.
So, what to do with a ruined book? It seems wrong just to put it in the trash can. This book has been through a great deal, and deserves a glorious end. If I lived anywhere near the ocean, I might deposit it there. If I had a whale oil lamp, I’d burn it. I am open to suggestion.
In Other Media:
I highly recommend John Huston’s “Moby Dick" from 1956. Gregory Peck as Ahab, Orson Welles as Father Mapple. Screenplay by Ray Bradbury(!). You can watch it here.
There was also a TV movie made with Patrick Stewart as Ahab, and Gregory Peck as Father Mapple. I haven’t seen it, so you’re on your own.
If you go to YouTube and search “Moby Dick”, you’ll get several scenes from both the above, the 1956 trailer, and a LOT of people attempting the guitar and drum solo titled “Moby Dick” by Led Zeppelin.
Quotes:
“Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.”
On the chapel pulpit being shaped like a ship’s bow:
“What could be more full of meaning? – for the pulpit is ever this earth’s foremost part; all the rest comes in its rear; the pulpit leads the world. From thence it is the storm of God’s quick wrath is first descried, and the bow must bear the earliest brunt. From thence it is the God of breezes fair of foul is first invoked for favorable winds. Yes the world’s a ship on its passage out, and the pulpit is its prow.”
“Immortality is but ubiquity in time.”
I liked this warning to future interpreters:
“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 monstrous fable, or still worse and more detestable, a hideous and intolerable allegory.”
- so, whatever else it may be, Moby Dick is primarily a novel about killing a whale.
“There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method.”
“What has the whale to say? Seldom have I known any profound being that had anything to say to this world, unless forced to stammer out something by way of getting a living.”
“Real strength never impairs beauty or harmony, but it often bestows it; and in everything imposingly beautiful, strength has much to do with the magic.”
“Hereby perhaps Stubb indirectly hinted, that though man loved his fellow, man is a money-making animal, which propensity too often interferes with his benevolence.”
“There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness.”
“To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.”
Ahab himself has some near-Shakespearean lines, on a variety of topics:
Ahab on Leadership:
“Look ye, the only real owner of anything is its commander; and hark ye, my conscience is in this ship’s keel – On deck!”
“There is one God who is Lord over the earth, and one Captain that is lord over the Pequod – On deck!”
“Fool! I am Fates’ lieutenant; I act under orders. Look thou, underling, that thou obeyest mine!”
“Ahab never thinks; he only feels – to think’s audacity. God only has that right and privilege.”
Ahab on Human Interaction:
“Cursed be that mortal inter-indebtedness which will not do away with ledgers. I would be as free as air; and I’m down in the whole world’s books.”
“In no Paradise myself, I am impatient of all misery in others that is not mad.”
Ahab on a Certain White Whale:
“God hunt us all if we do not hunt Moby Dick to his death!”
“I’ll ten times girdle the unmeasured globe; yea and dive straight through it, but I’ll slay him yet!”
“Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee!”
