I visited my college town where I’ll be starting my graduate program in two weeks and the secretary for the English Dept. handed me a wad of paper filled with book titles for required reading, separate from reading assigned as coursework. The first 15 titles are books I have to read and the rest I get to choose from. 50 books in all. One of the 15 is Moby Dick. I sighed.
I’m not a fast reader though I can guarantee that after two years, I will be at least a faster reader. I’m a bit out of practice. The idea of reading Moby Dick on the side, in addition to every thing else, gives me a headache. But today I picked up a used copy and have been thinking about how I will approach it. I’ve decided to attempt a Moby Dick Project with this blog, where I write an entry for each bit I read.
So I’ll take the book in chunks. It doesn’t seem to be the kind of book one “sits down to read.” I hope to all divinity the others are… I’m not sure if the chunks will be chapters or what. So this is my first entry for the Moby Dick project.
First, a paragraph dedicated to everything I know about Moby Dick before I started it:
It’s an important book to my brother and my best friend and I’ve heard them discuss it a little. My friend took an entire class based on it, I think, and it might be the cornerstone of her PhD research that she will (also) start next fall. She has told me that it’s diverse–full of philosophy and anecdotes. I think I remember her completing an assignment of adding a footnote to the text, or something like that. So I know it’s full of footnotes. I know it is fascinating and unusual; mysterious and massive as it’s second title: The Whale. I know the book is a whale. It’s 730 pages long.
I know there is a character named Starbuck, which might be the source of the coffee chain’s name.
I know it is considered “great.” It’s one of those that people always have in the back of their mind as a “should read.” Now I have it on my desk as a literal “must read.”
So I’ve decided to take in the book like an element, maybe as a lifestyle, something I nibble on everyday to reflect on and see what comes out of it. In my project, I don’t expect every entry to be an interpretation of what I’ve read, but more like a medium for my reactions to what I’ve read. Maybe sometimes the writing won’t match up much to the content of The Whale. But anyway, it sounds interesting. I might just try it. It might just take two years…
730 Pages? Is it annotated or something? Mine is only 520 pages not counting the criticism at the end. I think (and hope) you’ll be suprised with how easy it is to read, it’s sprawling for sure and packed with a lot to think about but it’s not stuffy or dull.
I hope you’re right. I’m already having fun with it, I think. Yep, it’s annotated. I thought that might make it more interesting when I chose it from one of the three copies at the used book store.
Your approach to Moby-Dick, the novel, is sort of like Ishmael’s approach to The Whale. He takes this massive thing and attempts to define it, not in any concise way, but to capture all the varied things that “whale” means (and also “whiteness”).
Whiteness? Seriously?
Moby-Dick is the White Whale. There is a chapter called “The Whiteness of the Whale.”
I’m so excited I might read it again. If I can get myself to finish Shardik. Or is that too many over-sized metaphorical animal books in a row?
I don’t even know what Shardik is. A shark?
Is Shardik by the author of Watership Down? Are they related or just by the same author? I never read it.
I’m tempted to re-read MD, too. I even dug it out of the box it was already neatly packed in.
this is cool
Good luck with that. I never actually did manage to finish the book. After a while I just couldn’t handle the long, really long, descriptions of different whales and such.
Thanks, Alex. I don’t really have a choice in whether I’ll finish it or not.
Shardik is a bear and is by Richard Adams who wrote Watership Down but is not related to Watership Down in any other way. I think it’s the book he wrote write after.
Do yourself a favor and just skip the whale classification chapter toward the beginning that just makes you want to yawn to look at it. It means absolutely nothing. The story itself is interesting, and the character of Captain Ahab is intense! The scene where Ishmael lodges with (Starbuck?) the aborigine is hilarious. As for all of my advice–Having never actually finished Moby Dick due to consistently finding something more interesting to read instead, you are welcome to ignore all of my advice.
Hey, thanks for the advice but I think part of the fun of this project is to use everything in this book, even the stuff that seems to mean nothing, and find something to write about it. I don’t expect that all the entries will even be directly related to what I read, but all the entries will be a response. But I am the sort of person who would get a kick out of a whale classification.
But it’s true, reading this book is a discipline. That’s one reason I started this project–to add another disciplinary measure to help me stay connected to the text. 
But I am curious as to what else you found to read…
About Shardik…yes it is written by the same author who wrote Watership Down. But a much different book, about a giant, monstrous, almost and actually mythical bear. It has some gruesome parts. Primarily I think it is a fascinating and puzzling examination of the subject of Prophecy and Actual Events, and how the two sometimes seem to converge, or not…It leaves one with even more questions and ponderings when one is finished with than when one starts the book. It would probably make a good subject for a future “Shardik Project.”