A friend had decided to read Moby Dick. I'd read it before and had been thinking that, as time's winged chariot had appeared in my rear view mirror, it was time to read it again...in fact, I'd bought an old (February 1968) paperback copy in preparation for that last cookie round-up...and I knew that reading it with someone else would be advantageous, so I offered to read along with her. It would be a little tricky, since my Daily Devotional Reading was my first priority, but I thought that I could keep up.
Pretty much from the get-go my reading partner was struggling with the text. Understandable, as (1) it's not an easy book and (2) she had a lot on her plate, but I started wondering if there was something I could suggest that would help her to get over the hump (whale pun intended) and start swimming with the current. My first thought was that László Krasznahorkai's The Manhattan Project would be a perfect catalyst, since it is short enough to read in an hour or two, very personal and interesting, and chockfull of love for Herman Melville's masterpiece. *
I was going to re-read TMP before I formally suggested it, though, and in the meantime I kept looking for something else that might serve as a good boost for reading Moby Dick. Which is how I happened upon Melville: A Novel by Jean Giono.
I don't remember where I did this happening upon. My guess is that I was perusing the webpages of New York Review Books **, as I am prone to do regularly, and my eye was caught by the word Melville. It sounded like my 🍵, but the list price was $14.95, and even The Pirates of Amazon weren't giving a discount (though they did have a Kindle version for $9.99). So I went to see what I could see at LFPL.org. And our survey said...nothing. Nada. Duck egg.
So I did something I rarely do: I went to the Suggest a Purchase tab and typed in the information about this novel. And then I kind of forgot about it. Until January 5, 2022, when I got a notification that Melville: A Novel was being held for me at my local library branch. Man, how can you not love the public library?
I picked it up, read the first few pages...and put it down.
I read other things. And when the book came due, I renewed it. Read a few more pages. Renewed it again. And again.
I don't know how many times I renewed it, but finally the end loomed up out of the waters: the book would be due on April 12, and I had no renewals left.
So I decided it was time to bear down, and I read the book in a couple of days. (It's only 108 pages, so this is no extraordinary feat.)
I really had to grind it out, though, because...though it pains me to say it...I don't think this is a good book.
It's basically a little fancy about Melville making a trip to his British publisher, getting stuck in England, then deciding to wander about until it's time to go home. He gets on a coach, meets a woman, and they have a strange, non-sexual affair. They part, and Melville goes home and writes Moby Dick. The End.
I found pages 99 through 105 moderately interesting. This is the part where Melville comes home and writes his great novel. So far as I can tell (having read a little bit about Melville and Moby Dick), it's almost completely factual. But the other hundred-ish pages of this book were just tedious and pointless. In fact, there were only two lines which I though were worthy of consideration from those pages:
“He saw God’s foot upon the treadle of the loom, and spoke it; and therefore his shipmates called him mad.”
That's a direct quote from Moby Dick (Chapter 93), though.
"Window displays for God the Father's storefront, that's my life work."
That's from page 47 of Melville: A Novel, and so far as I can tell is a Jean Giono original.
And that's it.
It didn't inspire me to want to read Moby Dick. It wasn't interesting in and of itself. It didn't make me want to read anything else by Jean Giono.
And as for Moby Dick...well, my friend pooped out some time ago...around Chapter 9, I think. I kept going, but tried to drag my feet a bit, hoping that Friend would be compelled to pick the book back up and not wanting to get too far ahead of her. As I started Chapter 45, however, it was clear that I was now alone on a wide, wide sea.
If I'd known better (on two counts), I would have skipped the Giono book and read another 100 pages of Moby Dick. As is, I've got about 400 pages to go. But you know...this book brings me much to think about and truly enriches my life...especially since I'm reading it now as an old guy who only has a limited number of pages left to read.
Not all books do that.
* Yes, friends have made fun of me in the past for suggesting books to be read before a book. Fuck 'em.
** One of my favorite publishers. Also, one of only two publishers who wrote back to thank me when I told them that I'd encountered a couple of proofreading errors in one of their books. (Didn't offer me a job, though, which I still hold against them at times.)
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