Paul O\u2019Connor is special.<\/p>\n
All those who write for this book blog do so because they love books. They like to read them, and they also like to talk about what they have read. They enjoy the thoughtful conversation about books that\u2019s increasingly moving to the Internet as more and more print publications give up on locally written book reviews.<\/p>\n
All who write for this blog do so without pay, and I greatly appreciate their efforts and contributions.<\/p>\n
Some of us venture beyond reviews of new books fresh from the publishing houses. Steve Wishnevsky of Winston-Salem enjoys reading books on his Kindle, especially older books that he can download free because they are in the public domain.<\/p>\n
I enjoy listening to books on CD when I\u2019m driving alone.<\/p>\n
But back to Paul, who is truly special. Paul, who lives in Raleigh and is the best journalist I was ever forced to fire, just completed a near superhuman feat, and nobody forced him to undertake this torturous endeavor.<\/p>\n
Read his review to see what I mean.<\/p>\n
By Paul T. O\u2019Connor<\/p>\n
MOBY-DICK; OR, THE WHALE. By Herman Melville. iBooks. 3010 iPhone screens. Free.<\/p>\n
While youth is wasted on the young, so is a good liberal arts education. Put The Great Gatsby<\/em> before a 19-year-old, and he\u2019s likely to say it\u2019s about a rich guy who is hot for a blonde but gets shot in his pool. And, oh, the guy throws big parties.<\/p>\n Ever since I kind of grew up, I\u2019ve fretted over what I missed while daydreaming \u2013 mostly about some Mary, Mary Beth or Elizabeth \u2013 as an American Studies major. What hadn\u2019t I understood when I raced through the works that were difficult to read: The Sound and The Fury<\/em>, everything by the Puritans, Walden<\/em> and, mostly, Moby-Dick<\/em>.<\/p>\n So, in October I started re-reading Moby-Dick<\/em>, a book I first read in less than a week during my junior year in college, 1971-72, and one that I hated. This time, I promised myself I would take the time needed, that I would look up the words I didn\u2019t know, go back over the pages I\u2019d read when I found myself daydreaming and think about what Ishmael was saying.<\/p>\n And I did it, finishing four months later.<\/p>\n Nonetheless, I think I liked it as little this time as I did back then.<\/p>\n That I re-read it on my Apple iPhone may have had something to do with my appraisal. Reading Moby-Dick<\/em> on a 2-inch by 3-inch, backlit screen is akin to taking 7 inches of snow off the driveway with a tablespoon. But that inconvenience wasn\u2019t the main reason.<\/p>\n The story of Ishmael, Queequeg and Capt. Ahab is fabulous. It\u2019s a great adventure, very exciting. And there are great themes of obsession and religious fervor, too. Queequeg is as cool a supporting character as you\u2019re going to meet in American fiction, a good runner-up to Huck Finn\u2019s Jim. Ahab is the characterization of a few editors for whom I worked.<\/p>\n Nonetheless, the book has issues for the modern reader. The first is the antiquated language. Many of the words I didn\u2019t understand 38 years ago, but just read over at the time, aren\u2019t in a contemporary dictionary, if they ever were in any dictionary. And many of Melville\u2019s references to characters of classical literature or medieval times are totally obscure today, if they weren\u2019t even in 1851, when the book was published.<\/p>\n Then there\u2019s Melville\u2019s sentence construction. If I could get a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, I\u2019d conduct a study of Moby-Dick <\/em>to try to diagram these sentences. It would be a lifetime\u2019s work. I swear that there are no verbs in some, that others are complete nonsense, while others employ dangling participles, noun-verb and noun-adjective disagreements and complete non-sequiturs. But, how could I prove it? At these points, I couldn\u2019t figure out what the hell the guy was writing about.<\/p>\n Then there are the digressions. Melville reminds me of the Danish pianist Victor Borge whose shtick was to introduce a piece, sit at the piano, play a few notes and interrupt himself, repeatedly. Melville sets us out on a grand journey across the seven seas, seeking the great leviathan, only to constantly veer off. His chapter detailing various artistic renderings of whales prompted me to scream, \u201cGet on with it, Herman. I want to know what happens to the whale.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s when I put the phone\/reader down for three days.<\/p>\n So, what of the iPhone experience? In some ways, it was good for such a book. The small screen made me focus; it kept my mind from wandering. Every 10 or 15 seconds, it seemed, I had to flip the screen to a new \u201cpage.\u201d The touch dictionary was great, even if a lot of the unknown words weren\u2019t included. And the book was always with me, convenient for the reading of a few chapters if my drinking buddies, for example, were late to the brewpub.<\/p>\n Overall, I\u2019d say, however, the iPhone is not the device for reading Moby-Dick<\/em>. You can\u2019t cuddle with it or even get comfortable. Unlike when reading from Amazon\u2019s Kindle, you never get lost in the book, not realizing that you\u2019re reading from a phone. And the backlit screen might bother your eyes.<\/p>\n So, will I do this again?<\/p>\n Yes, I will tackle another of the books I read, but \u201cmissed,\u201d in college, probably Heart of Darkness<\/em>. But I won\u2019t do it on my iPhone.<\/p>\n No, I won\u2019t try to read another whole book on the iPhone, but I will download short stories, and I use it to read the Raleigh newspaper every morning.<\/p>\n