"Doom! Doom! Doom! Something seems to whisper it in the very dark trees of America."

- D.H. Lawrence (in his essay on Moby Dick)

I spent this summer reading Moby Dick, while I was taking care of my daughter as she recovered from surgery. I have some thoughts. Do not expect a review or anything resembling literary criticism. I don’t think you need to have read the book.

When I was a kid, I got a picture book of Moby Dick for Christmas. Awesome illustrations, very abridged. I remember excitedly pouring through it with a friend, and I even brought it to school for show-and-tell. That book captured my imagination for years. I think the book below is the edition, though I can’t be sure; I remember the tail on the cover distinctly.

My next encounter with Moby Dick was the cartoon, Moby Dick and the Mighty Mightor. Our whale had to share billing with Mr. Mightor. My only memory of this show is that he carried the 12-year-old protagonists around in his mouth, which even as a child struck me as a little creepy.

I first tried to read the novel, Moby Dick, when I was a young man, living in Brooklyn, NY. I remember reading the book on the subway, mostly going to and from work. My thoughts about the book at that time in my life centered around what the great white whale, Moby Dick, represented. Our worst impulses, if left unchecked, will lead us to ruin. Nature doesn’t care. It just does its thing, while we pretend we are in control of our behavior. As best I can recollect, that’s what the book meant to me the first time through. It’s typical of a young man’s view of the world.

I got about halfway through the book that first time. On this second read, I spotted the exact spot where I stopped reading (I still remember the subway stop I was at when I quit the book). It was, to the surprise of no one, in the long section in the middle of the book where Melville talks about types of whales and whaling. I’m guessing it’s where the book lost quite a few readers.

The second time through, that boring middle section was my favorite part. Moby Dick starts out briskly and with a sense of hopeful adventure (although that opening sentence casts a tone of dread over the whole tale, hanging over everything, like that big tree in Ethan Frome). The handful of scenes with Queequeg at the beginning almost steal the show; they’re so well-written and unexpected.

The book ends with a **spoiler alert** shockingly short, but very exciting, closing battle with the whale, Mr. Dick. My honest reaction to the book’s closing was this: It’s over already? The Peaquod goes down in the space of one paragraph. In fifteen minutes of reading, the hunt is over.

I imagine now that Melville made the scene short because in real life, that’s how it went down. Sailing ships are easily broken and sink quickly. Death is sudden. Ishmael (and Melville, I think) was a pretty literal observer. He watches and tells us what he sees.

And that brings me to the long middle section of the book. We don’t just learn about types of whales. Melville tells us how the ship works and the particulars of life at sea. We learn what it’s like to skin a whale, at sea, on the boat, even before the chase is fully over. We watch as they cut off a whale’s head and hang the head over the side of the ship. We feel and smell what it’s like to leap down into the hollowed head of a whale to scoop out the precious spermaceti. We learn how sperm whale heads are different from right whale heads, and what it’s like to sail with two whale heads slung over the bow, one on each side (as the Pequod does, another arresting image). Ishmael describes it all in exacting detail. Even when things get mystical, like the sighting of the “soul spouts” of the whale, the St. Elmo’s fire, the compasses that refuse to work, the sharks chomping on the oars, all is described with literal detail. Ishmael tells it as he sees it.

Reading that long middle section felt to me what it must have felt like to be at sea on a sailing ship like the Pequod. Boring, sure. Years at sea. Months of inaction between whale sightings. What else to do after all the gear is stowed, and preparations for the next whale hunt are done?

You tell stories. And if you are riding with Ishmael, you listen to them. That long middle section is as vast as an ocean, and reading it is like sailing that ocean. The reading of the novel mimics the voyage. So, you sit back, abandon any need for speed in the narrative, and just let the journey take you. It’s like sitting on the deck of the Pequod, killing time, listening to the stories of the crew.

Ahab doesn’t even show up until halfway through the book. No knock on Melville, but I find Ahab tiresome. Perhaps it’s the political moment we live in. Ahab is consumed by loss, convinced that Moby Dick purposely stole away his leg, and has committed his life to revenge. He egomaniacally commits the lives of everyone aboard the Pequod to his personal need for revenge. He’s a cliche. He’s an asshole. He’s more than a little Trump-ian. The most interesting new detail I learned about him is that they drilled a hole in the deck so Ahab could stick his peg leg in the hole and keep his balance on deck.

Moby Dick shows up at the very end of things. It’s an entrance I will not spoil, but the description is one of my favorite things in American literature.

The whale doesn’t care. The only piece of criticism I read after reading the book was D.H. Lawrence, but boy, is it a fun piece of writing. My big takeaway from D.H. Lawrence is an obvious one, though it didn’t occur to me: Moby Dick is a mammal. He’s warm-blooded. He doesn’t bite. He doesn’t hunt men. Men hunt him. And when they catch him, they are crushed. Not by the whale’s need for vengeance. The whale has no such need. Moby Dick is the unknowable, uncaring, blank wall of nature. He doesn’t represent anything. He simply is. And when Ahab comes at him, the whale bashes him into the sea, almost as an afterthought.

I no longer have many white whales in my life to fight. Most of the Ahab in me has been worn away by time and experience. What I’m left with is an appreciation for Ishmael’s company during that long voyage, and a strong mammalian kinship with Moby Dick.

Long live Ishmael. Long live whales.

Peace.