Well, I'm about 300 pages into Moby Dick, and it's starting to grate on me. I intend to finish it, but it's given me pause on whether or not I'm reading for myself, or reading for people I wish to impress, people like you. I know a lot of us have fun and express ourselves in a silly way, but I do genuinely feel a kinship with a lot of you, I aspire to be like some of you, and I often want respect from you. I just occasionally have moments where I'm not sure if it's truly for myself that I do this. Moby Dick has some of the greatest writing I have ever seen, but I am dreadfully bored by it, and the infinite digressions. I can't see the symbolism, and I'm not sure there is any. Maybe I'm not cut out for all of this. I love to read, but it's getting less and less often that I get hooked on a book anymore. I'm not sure there's a topic to this, maybe it's just general Moby Dick discussion. you guys decide. Just wanted to get some shit off my chest.
If you're not enjoying it then just stop reading it
>>7731076
Don't force yourself to read literature as some kind of self-improvement exercise, read it because you enjoy it. If you don't enjoy it then stop, and continue reading whatever it is you enjoyed beforehand.
It's possible, however, that you simply haven't developed the base level of knowledge regarding literature needed to appreciate novels like Moby Dick. You say that 'Moby Dick has some of the greatest writing I have ever seen', but I suspect you're saying that because you feel it is opinion you should have.
>>7731202
I just do that all the time. I don't want to waste my time on it, but I also don't want to just quit everything I start. Have you ever read it?
Like I said, the prose is absolutely incredible, I respect the man immensely. The problem, I fear, is me.
>>7731076
Maybe put it down for a little while or even a long while. Time and maturity could allow you to better appreciate the novel in the future. Or you might hate it after a future reading. Either way, feeling that you have something to prove while reading a book is just silly.
>>7731205
Perhaps, though, I feel I can appreciate the work itself, maybe not on the level of some, but enough to recognize the difference between it and other works I have read. I won't even pretend that I understand it all. I'm not sure that it's a self-improvement exercise, either. I want to appreciate the work. I genuinely desire to enjoy it as I have so many others. There's just a wall here. I don't think it's understanding so much as impatience?
>>7731217
Is this a problem unique to Moby Dick, or is this a problem you frequently find when reading literature?
>>7731214
When I read Ulysses, I felt the desire to take on a challenge. This isn't the same driving force for me. I don't really care if people know whether or not I've read Moby Dick in particular, I generally do like to be considered well read, but I think comparatively speaking, I already am. It's not the challenge, it's the desire, the willpower to finish that I struggle with. The act of commitment to a novel, to anything, really.
God damn it, do you want us to appease you like a damn child?
Finish the text and then ask for a discussion around its ideas and themes afterwards. Almost all of the metaphors that Melville establishes come to bear fruit at the end of his work. Talking about it before hand would only spoil the piece.
For the "reading for others" topic you brought up in your little self loathing monolog, it applies to two main philosophical schools. Either you are doing it simply for status in society^1 and you think that reading Moby Dick will increase your worth. Or you are a slave to the Big Other^2, in which case you are equally as foolish just in a different way.
1.) Guy, Debord. The Society of the Spectacle, 2nd ed. (1977: Black & Red, 1967), accessed February 22, 2016, https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/debord/society.htm
2.) Jaques Lacan, Ecrits (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1999), accessed February 22, 2016,http://users.clas.ufl.edu/burt/Lacan.pdf
>>7731225
lately, it has been pervasive. Recently, I was reading Saragossa, and I just found myself losing interest, I would have a spurt of interest, then it would just dissipate, and I would trail off to something else. Everything about the work was fascinating to me, but something was holding me back, I'm tired of not just finishing these books..
>>7731232
If you think that was a self loathing monologue, you're absolutely wrong. That's fine, though.
>>7731243
I think you're right, it's not that you're incapable of understanding the works it's that you're impatient. There's not much advice I can offer, you'll simply have to hone your discipline. Perhaps when you get bored you should move on to a new book, but leave a consistent portion of your reading time dedicated to reading your previous, unfinished book.
>>7731286
I guess I just need to buck up and finish it. Maybe it's just my love for the internet. The fast and easy entertainment drug. Always have a sense of fulfillment and satisfaction after reading an arduous novel, but my mind so easily forgets that happiness in favor of shitposting, or what have you.
>>7731307
I know what you mean, I either spend my free time reading or shitposting. I can't do both. The internet fucks up my attention span.
>>7731318
it reminds me of my time in solitary confinement. I've read more epics in jail than I have outside, the separation from the free and easy life of entertainment is really all it is. i like to compare it to the old saying "hunger is the best spice".
I get on lit just occasionally, maybe every other day. I see this shit every single time.
If you can't get into it, don't read it right now, there's no point.
>>7731208
Moby Dick was the first "long," "hard" novel I ever read. What I decided to do was simple accept that the novel was going to take me along at it's own pace and wouldn't be rushed no matter how bad I wanted it too, and I just learned to take it on it's own terms and take in the beauty of the prose, the interesting characters (the symbolism does become more apparent the farther you read), and Melville's expanse of knowledge. That change in mindset might work for you, but like other anons have said, if it's really that much trouble, don't worry about it. Read some things that you do enjoy and some things that challenge you but aren't too much of a slog and maybe if you come back to MD, you'll enjoy it more the second time
>>7731237
If you're not getting Moby Dick 300 pages in, the jig is up. It's a particularly polarizing book; the people who get it usually love it, but many people hate it or just don't understand.
With that said don't just give up on lit. You're not ready for Moby Dick, but you can work up to it in a matter of months. In light of your current predicament and your ongoing issue focusing, I seriously recommend you check out at least the fiction section of susan wise bauer's "the well educated mind" (ebook easily found online). It's kind of a crash course in interacting with the books you read, and one of its early suggestions which I think will help immensely with your problem focusing is an insistence that you take brief but regular notes as you read.
It's not going to make you a pro critic, but it'll give you enough theory firepower to approach some real lit with confidence. The recommended reading list is also great; I suggest you commit to it for at least 2-3 books.
I can't stress highly enough how much I owe to this one book. I read Moby Dick ~8 months after first reading Bauer, and had a great time with Melville, but also realized that I would have been totally lost a mere year earlier.
Forgive any typos; I'm on my phone.
>>7731815
well, hey, I love long books. I love getting immersed in a novel. Hell, from the beginning of moby dick, I enjoyed it, I enjoyed the meeting of Queequeg and Ishmael, I've laughed several times while reading it, I even enjoyed the cetology chapter. The problem isn't really the book, it's more what's pushing me to read it, I feel that if it's other people, sure, I may as well quit, and just sit around and watch tv or something degenerate. If it's my personal desire to read a book I know is brilliant, then it's a matter of will and commitment. In moments of wondering whether it's just a popular demand that drives me or my own, I feel that yes, I am strongly influenced by others, and wish for respect from them, however, in the end, it has always been outweighed by my will. Now, my will itself, is not often strong enough to defeat the fast food of entertainment, the succubine internet. My first long novel was when i was 16, in jail, and I was reading The Count of Monte Cristo. It frankly changed my life. I know that if i were to let it, and not let it be interrupted by this empty entertainment, Moby Dick would change me as well. It's just breaking the chains of addiction, really.
The idea that a book should be easy reading the entire way through is very modern. And on top of that you are probably spooked with simulation.
In reality, you need to have a certain amount of trust in a book. The best books won't be nice to you the whole way through, but they pay back the work you put in.
Melville literally spoon feeds you the symbolism at times.
>>7731933
Let me give you an example. I read these first 300 pages within 4 days. then it ground to a halt. I haven't read a page in two weeks since. It's not that I don't enjoy it, I'm just bored of reading after a spurt, now I'm trying to force myself back into it. Keeping on track is the hardest thing, not this brilliant book itself.
>>7731951
Yeah, like the whiteness of the whale and all that, but I'm not convinced I guess.
>>7731958
Do the "read 5 pages a day" meme. If you are making no process normally it will get you moving enough to get back into it.
>>7731994
there's another weird thing, i'll do that, pick up the book, but while i read the same sentence over and over, i'll look at my current book list and shift it, rewrite it, and shuffle it over and over again, an hour or so passes, and i have a mint new list, but i'm still on the same page. I'm always too busy looking ahead.
It's really not a crime to dislike a classic. I got about halfway though Great Expectations and dropped it. I can completely see why people love Dickens, and I enjoyed parts of it, but it just wasn't for me.
You aren't going to love every piece of the Western Canon, and that's fine.
