Moby Dick

I did it! I finished reading Moby-Dick, a book I discovered in grad school for the 50-book exam (Penn's weird version of comps, which is even weirder because the year my cohort took it, it was more like 75 books and we were the only group subject to what every agrees was a mammoth failure of a list) and of which I only read a handful of chapters because who has the time to read the whole thing when we also had to read Leaves of Grass, Little Dorrit, Canterbury Tales (maybe all?), Emily Dickinson (all), Middlemarch, Ulysess, and so much more? But I loved those few chapters and have meant for decades to go back and read the whole thing and finally, inspired by Hester Blum's new edition and my trip to New Zealand, I started in on it for real in December 2022 and have been slowly working my way through since. It is a hella weird book, so much more weird than I was expecting. I read a lot of it while on planes and while stoned in bed, so that may have shaped my reaction, but it's actually a great way to read this, where you just kind of zoom in on the language that's right in front of you and lose track of the plot and big picture. And is there a plot here? I mean there is, but it's not really the point. Anyway. I still don't know how to think about this book, but I'm so glad I read it. And I am still always thinking about it