I hope I'm not sounding bossy or overbearing here. Of course you need to do whatever you need to do; and if quitting MD is necessary, then you should quit. It's not an easy book; there's no question about that.
But I'm still going to finish it. I don't think it's beyond me, not like Joyce's Ulysses or Pope's Essay on Man or anything. I might die of couplet overdose if I tried copying out all of Essay on Man.
Don't worry, though: I'm not going to wander off into another book tangent here. I have to go outside and clean the chicken house. Shoveling shit takes precedence over art.
8 comments:
Dawn, I was humming along in MB, but got bogged down around chapter 76. Lots of extraneous chapters! I feel like I'm running a race with a bungee cord tied to me - I was doing well at first, but it's a struggle, lately. A Russian novel may look easy after Moby-Dick.
My word verification CAPTCHA: arcerc.
Arcerc is the last sound a careless electrician makes.
I'm still hanging on and determined to see this reading through. I've only just hit the Whiteness of the Whale so have not been able to chime in as I would like to. Once the seas of end-of-term grading have finally ebbed, I hope to steer forward toward the whale.
N.B. I've discovered (via my six year old's desire to find a fishing video game) a fantastic video game "version" of Moby Dick. I've never been a video gamer, but this one is a treat. The combination of cheery calypso music, the shrieks of capsized sailors, and the frisky grin of Moby make this a winner in my book.
http://www.onlinefishinggames.net/mobydick.php
Tom
Yes, I am still reading albeit rather slowly as the term and the BIG 5TH GRADE RESEARCH project (their first big one!) grinds on.
Scott: my captcha word is "vatchae," which is the sound that an elderly great-aunt of Eastern European extraction makes when you step on her bunion.
Tom: I will pass along the Moby-Dick video game link to my household experts, who will review it for us.
To all: I also feel as if I'm reading very slowly, and I'm beginning to wonder if that's the nature of this book. It's not designed to be a page turner but a slow pondering. "The Whiteness of the Whale" is a tough chapter, in more ways than one. I'd be interested to hear what you have to say about it.
White of ghosts and polar bears scare us, with good reason. White is indeterminate, all colors mixed, to be broken à la Saruman.
There are more modern Scary White Things: Teddy Roosevelt's Great White Fleet (although it was a peacetime operation) probably startled fishermen when the ships loomed out of the sea fog. The storm troopers in Star Wars wore gleaming white.
CAPTCHA: braph: Beer production graph
Well, our reading isn't as slow as a whaling trip would be. Perhaps that is one of the points of this book.
The White Witch in the Narnia books; the way people respond to albinos . . . on the flip side, white racial dominance, plus fair, untanned complexions as a sign of beauty and class superiority (that's changed) . . . white is strange, isn't it?
I rather bailed, which is at least a somewhat appropriate term for giving up on the second read of Moby Dick. The first time I read it I brought it on a bike tour in France where it was my only English book (and I don't read French). Though I begged books off of other riders, I did actually finish it, but this time too many other words attracted me more. I just have to admit that Melville's novel The Confidence Man and his short story, Bartleby the Scrivener, are my preference.
I am in support of you all, but can't quite lift the book.
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