On finally reading it...

Started it longtemps ago, but now I started from Page 1. Literaturalliy(sic) influenced by my first love Q, I'd always wanted to read Moby Dick. Tried before, remembering Q's old joking joke about before you can even start to read this turgid mess you have to get through a bunch of pages of quotes about whales, and quit. Had my copy always, bought in Omaha a decade ot two ago.

Something about it being the closest to the great American novel, and the theme of searchingalways drew me. closer and closer, till...

Last week, finally, I made the plunge. I'm about 1/6 done. Ishmael is on the Pequod, but it's still in port. No site of Ahab yet, but I'm guessing soon.

It's good. I'm into it. Loving the nautical humour. In Ulysses, there is a part in the middle of the nite when Stephen and Bloom, looking for one more drink, ty a place where sailors hang out. That part of Ulysses has a lot of nautical stuff thrown about - but nothing like Moby Dick. The terms - i always knew that Skylarking meant making up stories, but again and again here.... The directions to a given place on land were given in nautical terms. And, of course, the sermon given early in the book based on the Old Testement book of Jonah - very applicable to a nautical themed book- in which the chapter is actually longer than the Book of Jonah. Awesomes.