Goodbye Dreiser. Hello Melville. And thank you Project Guttenberg, Manybooks.net , EbookTakeAway.com, OnlineBooks.Library, ibiblio.org Longreads.com …just to name a few and ClassicalGuitarTab (classtab.org)

NY Times had a review of a book by historian Nathaniel Philbrick entitled Why Read Moby-Dick. But unfortunately for Mr. Philbrick the review succeeded in motivating me to pick up Melville’s book and not Philbrick’s. Now, if you write a book and title it Why Read Moby Dick, and then people go read Moby-Dick, do you consider your book a success even if they didn’t read your book? Hope he doesn’t quit his day job. Anyway, I’m about 150 pages into the whale sized classic and having a dandy good time. Whouda thunk? If you’re looking for prosaic, ponderous, heavyweight prose delivered in stentorian tones of profound and serious purpose then look elsewhere. It’s not in this whale tale. It’s practically spritely in tone and positively playful in places. Maybe it’s too early, but so far I don’t feel that oppressiveness that one associates with some other pre-20th century classics…in fact, I’ve had a harder time with some of Cormac McCarthy than with this century and a half old saga. I remember starting it (and not getting too far) back around my (aborted) college days, and I was struck then by the same realization that the book’s reputation as a weighty and burdensome read was ill-founded. Back then I probably put it down because I was too busy being my own Ishmael to be bothered reading about another…but I sure ain’t no Ishmael today…so I’m down with the big read and looking forward to at least another month of high sea adventure.


At the very beginning Ishmael muses about the lure and attraction of the sea…and of water in general, and having taken my own shot at describing the appeal of water back in the early days of this blog, I was particularly drawn to Melville’s wonderful way with the topic:


But look! here come more crowds, pacing straight for the water, and seemingly bound for a dive. Strange! Nothing will content them but the extremest limit of the land; loitering under the shady lee of yonder warehouses will not suffice. No. They must get just as nigh the water as they possibly can without falling in. And there they stand--miles of them--leagues. Inlanders all, they come from lanes and alleys, streets and avenues,-- north, east, south, and west. Yet here they all unite. Tell me, does the magnetic virtue of the needles of the compasses of all those ships attract them thither?


Were Niagara but a cataract of sand, would you travel your thousand miles to see it? Why did the poor poet of Tennessee, upon suddenly receiving two handfuls of silver, deliberate whether to buy him a coat, which he sadly needed, or invest his money in a pedestrian trip to Rockaway Beach?

And one of the other pleasant surprises of journeying along with such a classic is the discovery of particular lines and thoughts that have endured as memorable quotations. Watching a production of The Importance of being Ernest by Oscar Wilde provides at least a dozen such surprises, and Melville has already thrown off a few of his own, among which this may be my favorite so far:

Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.



In a recent post I noted that the Internet has changed everything. Well, that may be an overstatement, but it certainly has changed my life in regards to my reading choices and habits. Ever since I discovered that downloading books was as easy as making a cup of instant coffee I’ve been quenching my unlimited literary thirst with everything from century old classics to independent and self-published pulp and short stories. And I don’t have a Kindle and I don’t read online. I just print out 40-50 pages a day, staple em and take it on the train. By the time I’m done I’ll be up there with Paul Bunyan as one of the great Tree Fellers of all time. Also gotta mention my love affair with online musical resources—if not for them, I’d still be playing nothing but old Beatles songs and simple blues. And Bach and I would never have found any common ground. The internet has been the music school I never had and I don’t have to ride the subway to get there….and oh yeah, it’s all free.

Here're just two guys whose transcriptions and playing always knock me out…and they and dozens of others have devoted enormous amounts of energy and time to sharing their knowledge online. They are modern mentors in a digital age.
If you dig…you can dig further by searching:

Per-Olov Kindgren
Adam Rafferty