Hey, 52 was my number in football!

Spent today cleaning and reorganizing for the most part. Put up new shelves downstairs for additional books. I’m taking a great deal of pride and pleasure from the sheer volume of books in this house. Is that wrong? I mean, attachment to material possessions isn’t a good thing, right, but books are different … aren’t they?

Good books, I mean? And educational ones? And some that are twisted and scary but well written? And some I just like?

Boy, that went well. Seems like I just got underway, and already here is my two-cents’ worth of analysis – Three Things to Love about The Sun Also Rises:

1. The Hapless Romantic. Our hero doesn’t get the girl. Sure, he’s with her at the end, but he knows he can never have her, keep her, please her; he watches as those who love her less get more of her attention and affection; and time and again he helps her to hurt him (and herself, as well). Now that’s love – sort of …
2. Great Conversations. I’m always impressed with people who write great dialogue. Tarantino, for example, writes witty exchanges that can make brutal, nearly unwatchable, movie scenes engaging and memorable. Hemingway does something different. He dares to write close to the way people talk – not dialect or slang so much, although that’s there, too – but the random, repetitious, and often interrupted flow of social interactions between acquaintances. He often doesn’t tell you who’s speaking, and sometimes even counting back through the quotations doesn’t clear it up. But just like barstool conversations in real life, at the end of the night, most of “who said what” doesn’t matter – and in those cases when it does matter, it’s invariably clear.
3. Write What You See. People often talk about Hemingway’s simple, declarative sentences. He does things my high-school writing instructor drilled out of me – stringing a serious of sentences together with multiple conjunctions. Starting sentences with “There was …” and “There were …” And you know something? The effect is that of seeing things through Jake’s eyes, just as they appear to him.

Next is East of Eden – I figured on reading Steinbeck, but didn’t know which one, until I met Hubba of Hubba’s House. His last name is Trask, which was too big a coincidence to overlook at the time. Jacqui of Jacqui’s Room and Deacon Tyler at Future Priests of the Third Millennium both loved it. Can’t wait!

So I’m well off the pace now for reading 15 classics in 15 weeks. Ah, well. The Sun Also Rises is next. Far shorter, and the sentences should require less untangling. But first – here at long last – 3 Things to Love about Moby Dick:

1. Call Me Ishmael. Seriously – a romantic lubber like me, who becomes enamored with the odd details and intricate histories (useful or not) of whatever he is engaged in (useful or not), whose imagination runs away with him even as a grown man, who loves to share what he knows and run long in the telling, and who finds a somewhat sad but universal humor in the strange spinning of the world, has found a kindred spirit in this narrator.
2. All Hands On Deck! Ishmael is surrounded with characters colorful, sorrowful, raging, noble and tragic – Stubb, Pip, Queequeg, Starbuck, Flask, and even Ahab. Each one spoke to me in a different way. There were no extras to speak off, or rather, no named extras …
3. Above All, Wit. This I did not expect, given the general groaning I’ve heard thus far about the book. There is wit and humor throughout, but take a moment to (re)read the scene in which Ishmael lies silent in unwitting Queequeg’s bunk, too frightened and entranced to say hello … and the scene in the morning, in Queequeg’s embrace. How many movies and TV shows have used this? And I laughed harder here, because I wasn’t expecting funny!

Maybe it’s a guy thing, but I loved it. I’d also note that again, the author toys with the reader, all but giving away the ending. You know it ends badly – he tells you throughout – but he makes you wait. Keep in mind that Melville’s contemporaries couldn’t google “sperm whale” and get a fair rendering and specs. All the whaling history and detail the reader wades through enables a quick three concluding chapters in which the White Whale comes in a rush, and no excess explanation is necessary. The end is all froth and fury, as it should be.