"Towards Thee I Roll, Thou All-Destroying But Unconquering Whale"

It took me over 6 months to read Moby Dick. And I spent a good portion of that time while not reading Moby Dick, complaining about reading Moby Dick (public apology to those of you on the receiving end of that. That couldn’t have been fun for you). I suppose one approach to writing a novel is to learn everything there is to possibly know about one specific subject (say for example….ooohhh, I don’t know, maybe….whales?) and then write 589 pages all about what you’ve learned about said subject. But back in my day these were called textbooks. Or, maybe you can write 569 pages all about your new favorite subject and then squeeze in 20 pages of storyline and call it a novel. But alas, Herman Melville beat me to the punch on this wickedly brilliant idea for how to write a book.

But that’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy the book. I loved the obsessive, monomaniacal Ahab and his crazy monologues, and how all the other sailors on the Pequod just jumped on board with the pact to kill the white whale in a frenzied mob mentality, dooming themselves to a decision they couldn’t go back on. And I loved the singular evilness of the enigmatic Moby Dick. For as little as you saw him in the actual book, by the time you get to his first actual appearance on page 562, he’s already cemented in your mind as one bad mamajama. And Queequeg is such a strange, badass character, that I just dug him right off the bat, sharpened cannibal teeth and all.

So I did enjoy all that. But allllllll of the other stuff in between….well, let’s just say I did my best. But while I was cuddled in bed under the covers, and supposed to be reading about the most accurate depictions of whales in wood-carvings, or the physicality of a sperm whale’s skin, I would find my drifting thoughts along the lines of, “I wonder if my avocados will still be good enough to put in my salad tomorrow”, or “Wow, I really need to dust my nightstand.” And I’m sure that Herman Melville tackled his beloved topic with vim and vigor and loved writing every painfully long chapter. But alas, I didn't necessarily love reading every chapter. But I can at least appreciate the function of all the chapters as a whole and how every possible discipline was examined to try to understand whales.

So while I wouldn't necessarily give the book to raving, crazy thumbs up, it's worth the read to understand the infamous story of the great white whale. I do however, have the 1956 version of Moby Dick with Gregory Peck in my sites to watch in the near future to compare notes. Somehow I think I'm going to dig the movie more than reading about whale anatomy for 6 months. I'm just guessing.