Tuesday, June 14, 2005

Thar She Blows

Right now I'm about half-way through Moby Dick, a project I inflicted upon myself purposefully because I remain ashamed of all the books and plays I've never read that The Cannon hails indispensable to literary-minded people. Like, say Walden or the Odyssey or the Iliad or all of Shakespeare excluding Romeo and Juliet, parts of Hamlet and Othello, and the first act of King Lear, which I didn't even have to read anyway.

Okay, I just reread that last sentence and I realize it makes me sound like I've read quite a bit of Shakespeare, which I haven't. Don't let my tricky word-choices and manipulative sentence structure confuse you. It's called SparkNotes and my own personal shame. Dominic and I took a Shakespeare class together in college and unlike my delinquent, short-cutting, shameful self, he actually read everything, and participated in class discussions, all the while stealthily flirting with a girl named Erica (you know who, Dominic--name rhmes with Who's That) who was a star softball player with the highest GPA in the English department. She had what the boys like to call, a rockin' body. I just couldn't like her, people. On principle, you understand.

Anyway, Moby Dick. Wow, it sucks. Except when Melville is being funny, because let me tell you, for a guy that died penniless, morbidly bitter, and estranged from his family, old Melville can be a funny guy at times. It's the grand sweeping gesture at getting at the root of human nature at its most mad and debased that holds him back, and also the chapters that sound in my head as if Charlton Heston were reciting the ten commandments. So what I'm trying to say, is that I guess the book's okay--only that I've been spoiled by reality TV shows that give me instant gratification and sensationalism. They have made the earnest deliberation of the human soul to seem so...passe.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Well, you could always stick a harpoon in it and call it a day.

6:18 PM  

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