I recently made my annual round-trip to Rochester, Minnesota. When we were still teaching, we always flew – well, most of the way, once we learned that the 100 mile hop from the Twin Cities to Rochester by air cost as much as the flight from Boise to the Twin Cities; after that we took a shuttle for that last leg of the trip. Since we retired, we have time to take the train. You see, when you teach, you hate to miss any more school than necessary. Even the best substitute will not do things exactly as you would; the longer you are gone, the more cleaning up there is to do. Since retirement, it is no longer necessary to do the trip quickly. So, we fly to Seattle because Amtrak doesn’t go through Boise any more. From SeaTac, we take the light rail ($.75 each) to the King Street Station, and from there we are on our way. Amtrak from Seattle to Winona, shuttle to Rochester. The return trip is just the reverse. Because we are 36+ hours on the train – one full day plus two nights, brutal by coach – we have a sleeper compartment.
What has this to do with any of my pet topics, literary or educational? Only this: even allowing for sleeping and taking meals in the dining car, 36 hours is a lot of time for concerted reading. It is enough time, for example, to read a large nineteenth Century novel.
One year, I read Bleak House, or, I should say, I finished it. For years, I had loved the first half. It always seemed that I would get interrupted part way through, would set BH aside, and by the time I picked it up, months or even years later, I would have to start again. But 72 hours without much else to do is a goodly chunk of reading time.
Another year, I read Jude the Obscure, which always before had kicked me out after only a few chapters.
And this year, I reread Moby Dick. Nearly 50 years ago, I made a summer project of that book and read it by fits and starts, a few chapters at a time. This time, I read it nearly straight through, and it was a very different book. Of course, I imagine that I was a rather different reader this time. I had forgotten, or had never noticed what a strangely put together book it is. It works back and forth among straight narrative, sections on whales and whaling lore, Ahab’s orations, and throughout Ishmael’s philosophical musings. Insofar as the diverse elements cohere, the adhesive is the wry narrative voice, somewhat like the narrative voice in Heart of Darkness, but not so sardonic and biting. No wonder it was poorly received in its own time. It was, even in its day, old-fashioned, in its prose echoing now, the Romantics, then Shakespeare, and yet again the King James Bible and then the Greek tragedians.
Yet, it is curiously modern. It is sort of like Steinbeck’s intercut chapters in Grapes of Wrath — the close-up story of one family played off against more panoramic descriptions from a nation in crisis – except more so. It is a vast and complex montage that struck me as anticipating the montage-like structure of Eliot’s “The Waste-Land.” A couple of weeks later, I am still wondering “What was that?” I think that next time, I will not stay along so long.
Next trip, War and Peace, perhaps.