"For small erections may be finished by their first architects; grand ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. God keep me from ever completing anything. This whole book is but a draught - nay, but the draught of a draught. Oh, Time, Strength, Cash and Patience."
I've mentioned before that when I was younger, I struggled to read books in a way that wasn't just playing them as movies in my head. I think this is the natural default setting a lot of people operate under when they read. Which is actually fine, but if you are only reading for plot and character, you are closing off an entire experience of the art form. The book I credit with teaching me how to truly engage with text as a work of art, which is why it's my favorite book, is Moby Dick.
I first read the book in my senior year of high school. A classmate and I had chosen to read it from a list of books you could read and write a critical theory essay on in our AP Literature class. This is a class I had struggled in exactly because I wasn't grasping that I needed to read for form over content.
Knowing this, I should have hated Moby Dick. Instead, I found I loved it. While the plot and characters were sparse, sprinkled between large walls of technical writing about whale ships or scientifically postured (and incorrect) musings on whales, I found it endearing. I didn't understand everything I read but I could gather that I was engulfed in some truly great writing as a craft. Which is not to say there are no enjoyable plot elements either; I distinctly remember standing up, reading the last three chapters of the book (having re-read it, these chapters hold up, absolutely incredible action-packed end, think of when you finally saw the dragons in action in the penultimate season of GoT). I did really well on my essay; the teacher nominated me for student of the month for challenging myself with a difficult book, doing well on the essay, and just generally turning my trajectory around in the class.
At that time though, I couldn't articulate why I liked it. I knew many others who did not. A really formative American Lit teacher I had despised the book, said it was boring and violent. When I got to college a year later, I became an English major right away. I signed up for an American Lit class taught by Professor Jeff Insko.
Insko was, and I imagine is still to this day, a titan in the classroom. He could take a group of students who were already passionate enough about literature to show up to class and get them thinking about what they were reading in ways that never occur to even the most avid readers in their entire lives. His favorite book was also Moby Dick.
This is why in making 2025 the year of my reread journey, I have not only chosen to read Moby Dick, but to read the version with an introduction written by Jeff Insko. Reading his intro transports me back to his office hours, the first one I attended, I asked him about Moby Dick. I told him I loved it, but was confused why exactly I did, why other readers I really respected did not (like my HS American Lit teacher). The sentiment he expressed was exactly the same as he writes in his introduction to the text: Moby Dick is "a love letter to the English language".
Insko taught us that when approaching a work of literature, understanding it was an act of war. You must research the time the piece was written in for crucial context. You have to engage with the form; how is it written, what tools of the craft have been employed and why? It was important to close-read sections; unpack metaphors, think about why grammar and punctuation were used formally or informally. Torturously think over the use of a given word.
Moby Dick was the perfect conduit for learning how to love the learning of a text. The book is densely poetic, it is packed with the political and social contexts of when it was written and allusions that might as well be lost to history, and can be read as a response to similar fictional novels of its time that would try to appear real with a copious amount of minute detail. It is a challenge to read. This is why I love it, because it is not easy. It is not like "watching a movie in your head", it forces you to dwell with the actual words on the page. Some chapters take small physical objects - a cup of chowder, a piece of rigging, a gold coin - and blow them up to massive philosophical proportions. As Insko says, while tedious, these are often the most enjoyable parts of the book.
To demonstrate, I picked a chapter at random: 69. The Funeral. As far as plot action goes, the only thing happening in the chapter is that the crew cuts loose a dead whale's body after extracting the oil from it. Yet the description of this action is two pages long. The first is a deep description of the action; "The peeled white body of the beheaded whale flashes like a marble sepulchre; though changed in hue, it has not perceptibly lost anything in bulk....Slowly it floats more and more away, the water round it torn and splashed by the insatiate sharks, and the air above vexed with rapacious flights of screaming fowls." It goes on like this for at least a page talking about "beneath the unclouded and mild azure sky, upon the fair faceof the pleasant seas...that great mass of death floats on and on, till lost in infinite perspectives". And it's not over; once thoroughly described, a thing or an action is then philosophically mused on at length. The chapter concludes with a wriff on ghosts, clearly haunted by the visage of the whale carcass and the "horrible vulturism of earth".
And here I am in 2025, over 15 years since I first read it (I've read it twice in between), 3 small children, a challenging and mentally taxing white collar job, reading it again. Yes, I was dragging ass and losing focus while reading it, but then there were times - usually I'm sitting by my two-year-old's bed waiting for him to fall asleep or rocking my 6-month-old - where I would be feel incredibly moved by the language. Not even so much what was being said, but just the combination of words used to say it.
A writer and podcaster I admire once said that writing is just trying to pick the most beautiful words to say what you're going to say. And Melville does not miss. Reading books like this is important. We are all constantly consuming content, much of it video-based, and especially now in the age of AI where social media sites have turned into baby YouTube for adults, algorithms have curated easy viewing programmed to trigger chemical addictions in your brain. So to be moved by written words again, even as difficult as it can be to fully engage after a full day of life, feels refreshing. Like getting out of a cold plunge pool.
I'll always be grateful to educators like Insko for gifting me not simply an appreciation for words, but a ravaging passion for truly understanding what I'm reading.
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