According to Google, it’s the 161st anniversary of Moby Dick by Herman Melville. I’ve read Typee, Omoo, Bartleby the Scrivener… yet I’ve never been able to finish Moby Dick. People elbow me in the ribs and say, “It must be your white whale.”
I don’t know what they mean.
~Graham
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Graham,
You are not alone. I’m a (recovering) English major who will gladly read almost anything in print, and Moby Dick stands with only a couple of other books in my life that I couldn’t finish. I hated that book.
*sigh* 161 years of torturing high-schoolers, eh? Don’t tell my teenager. She’s gonna have to read it next year, and I have to radiate enthusiasm.
Regards,
Kelly
I’ve tried to get my boys to read some of the classics: Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, Horatio Hornblower — things that boys tend to like. But those books too old for them it seems (as in, written too long ago).
As for Melville –I actually like his writing, but for some reason Moby Dick didn’t take.
My eldest just started high school, so we’ll see what interesting stories he gets to read next semester when he starts English…
~Graham
Moby Dick? Somebody wrote a book based on the movie?
While we’re confession, I could never make it through Don Quixote (the digressions alone were enough to induce catatonia), and I mostly wanted to slap Holden Caulfield.
In truth, I currently find myself in full flight from a lot of what’s labelled as literature. I admire someone who can stand the language on its head as much as the next person, but communication has to count for something, and multi-page description of a two-block walk still fail to excite.
TC/Writer Underground’s most recent blog post: Coke Zero/James Bond Contest Video Creates Lots Of Laughs, But Also Asks A Question
Ha, I’m the same way. Kind of embarrassing for an English major, no? But a lot of it I just don’t like. Hemingway, for example — I’ve read all (most of) his stuff, trying desperately to see what the big deal is. I can appreciate his economy of words — and how hard he worked to get rid of every possible adjective — but then the book “The Man and the Sea” just wouldn’t have had the same ring to it…
~Graham
How timely. Atwood and Doctorow talk about the “real” meaning of Moby Dick…
TC/Writer Underground’s most recent blog post: The Literary Classic T-Shirt (or, Wearing What You Read)
There’s a name for that, though I can’t remember what it is — when you convey symbolism on something that can’t possible exist. Like if you said that Shakespeare was referring to communism — he couldn’t have been, because it wouldn’t come into existence for another 250 years or whatever.
Thanks for the link — I’ll have to put that on my reading list!
~Graham