the big Dick and the little Ulysses

so it's finally happened...after years of avoiding it, wishing to read it but having no time, and using it as a means of anchoring my apartment to the ground, I've started reading Moby Dick.

How did this happen? (anybody who keeps reading after this is an inveterate masochist, or an unimaginative procrastinator, or maybe unaware of what is the Moby Dick..."is it porn for technophiles? lots of weenie shaved-head guys wearing prosthetic schlongs the size of Georgia?)...

like most people out there, I confess to summer book fever, where the combination of guaranteed vacation, mixed with heavy drinking and long nights makes for the ideal conditions to consume lots and lots of books, of all kinds, in immoderate amounts. This can vary from the horror/mystery/fantasy genre, to non-fiction, to plain old 30-something life-drama narratives. The only kind of book to avoid, normally, is the heavy literary types, with which one likes to punish oneselves in winter. In fact, one might say that summer reading is the antithesis of winter-reading...I'm not sure is there's a marketing strategy that's giving me this impression...and it very well maybe that I've been programmed from my youth to read schlock and comics in the summer, and homework-type books in the winter. However, back to the main story.

Turns out this phenomena is worldwide, with tons of people recommending books for the mandatory vacation period in July and August, in franceland. Just the other day, on the television, there was a show featuring 8 writers, each talking talking talking their heads off. There were four non-fiction writers, doing their best to be serious, and selling their books on the guilt of the western world...then there were four fiction writiers, all of them in their thirties. One of them decided that he would rewrite some book, I can't remember, by Flaubert, but replace the setting in the modern age. And then they got into some pseudo intellectual conversation about the superficialities of Flaubert and relevance to the pop culture artifacts referenced in the book. I almost tipped into snoozeland by the end. The most pretentious of all the books the one "the erotic adventures of my wife (not an autobiography)" I had to laugh a bit though...the guy had a wicked natural sponge haircut. Finally, the speaker came to the end of the show, and he pulled out his recommendation for the summer, Ulysses, by James Joyce. a real headwringer, and one that will keep you "passionate" all summer long.

hardee har har I can only imagine all those french pretentious dingbats, who probably already have one copy of Ulysses boiling away somewhere, rushing to put their best pants on so that they can get this "passionate" book. That's by far the funniest summer recommendation I've ever heard...in fact, it was a rather courageous recommendation since, given french obstinacy, there might be many a frenchperson having their summer completely ruined by trying to decipher and analyse the moby dick of english lit. It was required reading in university...my class spent two months on it, at which point attendance dropped spectacularly. Being quite a voracious reader myself, and having been a huge fan of The Dubliners (which has some of the most elegantly overwrought short stories ever written), I was anxious to start on that "brotherjumper." However, everytime I tried to jump in, my eyelids fell down. weird. the phenomena still continues...I can read odd pages, here and there, and there are moments that are just a pleasure to savour, from an aural point of view, however, it remains, for me, the Greenland of Literature, Beautiful, Mystical, utterly impenetrable.

but, going back, I suppose I should say that for me Ulysses represents the thing in literature not so far from what Ahab felt for Moby Dick: a representative of all that frustrates and enthralls in literature, the most beautiful and terrifying cipher. (oh boy, I can feel a thesis rising up). And, if I say that my explorative nature leads me naturally closer to Ishmael, than to Ahab, I can also so that the temptation of the challenge, the unbeatable foe, the conquering, is also close, and that, therefore, I keep a spare copy of Ulysses on deck, as a reminder of what I have failed but would like to have boasted about.

However, at the bookstore, things happen much more naturally. One is seduced by covers, packaging, prices, positioning...which makes it all the more strange that my hand wavered and finally picked Moby Dick, amidst all the other gooey new stuff out: Auster's prestigitation, Zadie Smith's new temptation, and even the Olivia whashisname book by ex-bridget jones writer. well, the price was one: 6Eu, cheap for foreign books, and secondly, I started reading it, cracked the first page, and it sucked me in. So strange...Melville's voice seduces one in the search of voyage and adventure, and quickly turns gothic. But then, quite suddenly, the religious aura becomes less of a stylistic hindrance, so much as a bearer of his "niagara roar" of a voice. What authority and sheer passion! Gahhhh....

Well, I'm not done the book yet, and it remains to see what will happen, if it will join the dusty pile under my bed, or the crinkled covers beside the bed. But, that's my big Dick story...and I think there's a sequel on the way.