Moby-Dick, finally

Third attempt, first finish. The trick was to stop fighting the digressions.

I have started Moby-Dick twice before. Both times I made it to the chapters on the classification of whales and quietly put it back on the shelf. This winter I finished it, and the difference was not discipline. It was permission.

The book is not a thriller with interruptions. It is an encyclopedia that occasionally remembers it has a plot, and once I read it that way, the digressions stopped feeling like obstacles. The chapters on rope, on whiteness, on the anatomy of the whale’s head are where the narrator lives. The chase is almost an excuse.

What surprised me most was how funny it is. Ishmael is warm, curious and frequently ridiculous, and the early chapters on land read like a buddy comedy. I had remembered the book as solemn because I had only ever read the beginning of it in a hurry.

A practical note for anyone on their own third attempt: read it in short sittings, one or two chapters a night, and do not try to remember all the nautical vocabulary. You will absorb enough. The ship does not sink because you forgot what a halyard is.

I closed it on a grey Sunday afternoon and sat with it for a long time. Not many books earn that.