Bag O' Books: MOBY DICK

A spoiler or two follows, but kids: The book is 170 years old. It's not my fault if you get spoiled.

There are some works of art that I am slow to getting to because the weight of their reputation makes them seem -- forgive me, teachers -- like homework. I didn't watch "The Godfather" for years for precisely that reason: It just seemed like too much. Then I watched it and fell in an obsessive kind of love.


"Moby Dick" turns out to be a similar experience. I didn't read it for a long time, because in addition to the weight of the book's reputation, there was the sheer damn size of the actual physical novel. It's not small! But the pandemic slowed my life down a little, and I have resolved to tackle some works of literature I'd skipped before.

Things about "Moby Dick" that I didn't expect:

* That it would be so gay. 

* That it would be so funny.

* That it would be so much fun to occasionally read out loud to my wife and son. Some of Ahab's speeches are batshit!

* That it would steal so much dialogue from "Star Trek II."

* (That's a joke. But it's true that I walked into a video store once that had Gregory Peck's version of the "Moby Dick" movie playing on TV, right when he was giving the "round perdition's flame" speech and cracked wise: "They stole that from 'Star Trek II.'" And the clerk said: 'Really?")

* That the tedious cetology parts of the book would be soooooo tedious. 

* That I would realize it's OK to skim through those parts.

* That (spoilers) the whale doesn't actually show up until the last three chapters or so.

* But that's ok -- it really is the journey that matter, kids!

* That this book would be so similar to "Heart of Darkness."

* That I would be so glad to have read it. And to have finished it.

It's worth tackling "homework" art, I find again and again. It's not art's fault that it gets turned into homework -- it's often the result of being so good that it's worth handing along to new generations and new readers and viewers. "Moby Dick" reminded me of that.

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