halfway through the whale

booktok, beautiful boys, and accepting discomfort

Right now I'm trying to read Moby Dick. I am a little obsessed with trying to finish reading a “Big Book,” and I’m sort of embarrassed about how stupid my quest is making me feel. I’m a simple man. But I can’t be the only reader right now with a phone-induced dithering attention span who in recent years can seem to summon the strength to read only short novels, and perhaps feels FOMO because of that, and, so, wants to change. So, I wanted to talk about it: the pleasure of reading that is hard to grasp these days, the actual process of approaching a challenging book, and the re-education of sitting still.

It's been a while since I have struggled with a behemoth of a novel. And it’s instead become a bad habit for me to abandon books because of their sheer length, even if I do really want to read them.

One “Big Book” I recently attempted was Middlemarch, last summer, which I thought might give my shapeless days structure. I tried to get through it with the occasional aid of an audiobook, to run while I did dishes, and allow me to feel like I was making progress, but even with the hand-holding I quit halfway through (although I do hope to pick it up again).

I assumed if I picked a “Big Book” I had read in high school, back when my attention span was made of steel and I was a little loser with no distractions, that perhaps the familiarity would allow me to lock in and eventually give me the satisfaction I was craving and maybe even the momentum to do more. So, I found a different translation of Crime and Punishment than the one I had read literally a decade ago. No dice. I quit on poor Raskolnikov halfway through, and not even intentionally. I had a nice steady habit of getting through about 10 or 20 pages a night, and then I lost track, and stopped picking up the book. That felt especially disheartening because I remember losing sleep and forgetting to eat while reading it as a teenager. It was once possible for me to become so engrossed I could forget about what my body needed! I so desperately want to be back in that teenage brain. Back then, it was not unfathomable or even particularly challenging for me stay up all night with a book. Now, I struggle to button-down for even an hour.

Online, there are a few different visible classes of “readers” we should talk about. The first is BookTok - which is a nebulous label, because TikTok isn’t very conducive to community. BookTok is mostly younger women who are focused on what I think of as fluffier novels. What’s on the reading list has usually been published recently. They’re designed to be read quickly, and easily. They generally are about fantasy and romance. Now, I’m sure there are corners of BookTok that are still Dark Academia adjacent, where they are reading or purporting to read more heavy-hitters, but of course those people aren’t as fun to make fun of, so a majority of the screenshots and chatter I’ve seen about BookTok tend to be about the first group I described. The second group of readers is “the dudes who read theory” on Twitter. It’s a group of primarily leftist young men, but also women, who give the impression that they are simply plowing through volumes and volumes of theory, and tackling really difficult subject matter as a course of either political obligation or pleasure. I think it’s good and necessary to read theory - I don’t think reading theory is inaccessible. But in certain spheres on Twitter, you get the sort of competitive approach toward reading that is not that different in my opinion from the atmosphere over on BookTok.

No, I haven’t read Capital. How would I even begin?

What I’m curious about is the actual process of reading. And I’m not sure this is much of a discussion in the reading spheres, where you might want to peacock a bit, make it seem like reading is the easiest thing in the world for you. I feel like I am learning how to approach reading again and I have a lot of stupid questions. I want to know if they’re reading books in large, concentrated sessions … if they’re broken up throughout the day … if the readers dream about the material … if they take notes, or underline … if they have a book club … how much they actually retain if they’re reading such large volumes … and if they also have a hard time with recall, and having original impressions and interpretations.

I feel insecure when it comes to my reading habits, obviously. And I read perhaps slightly more than the average (but not compared to BookTok or the Theory Fellas). But because I’m trying to be a writer, it’s important for me to have at least a familiarity with the classics — something more, I feel it’s important to be habituated as an avid reader. This is not a particular revelatory idea: voracious reading appetites simply make better writers. When I’m reading an article or a short story, I can alway tell when the author does not read very much. Even though I am a little loosey-goosey with all of y’all on my Substack, I definitely do not want to be that kind of writer.

When I do read, it’s like there is another layer to the activity, where I have to confront my insecurities about my intellect, my comprehension, as well as my ability to sit still and pay attention. I do not have the experience with books that I used to, when I would put them down and I would walk away with lots of swirling thoughts about what I had just read. Now it feels like when I have a reading session, what I try to do is simply recall what it is that I read. I’ll ask myself, “Okay, so what just happened? Did anything stand out to me?” And there’s a sort of anxiousness there.

Maybe it would serve me better to drop some of these expectations about how I wish I was reacting to the books I’m trying to read. Especially considering the most important takeaways tend to happen via unconscious percolation. What’s concerning to me is that it’s now so hard to sit with the material, before, during and after I’ve gone through a few pages.

What’s sort of happening is that I’m beating myself up because reading no longer feels effortless. And from the outside, the Real Readers in the room do make this seem effortless. Maybe the important thing to realize is that maybe for me it’s just going to take a lot of effort - and learn to make peace with that.

I am thinking about a tweet that I saw from an academic, who posted that they had just sat on the subway and read for an hour, without distractions, and how rare it was for them to be able to do that. When they shared this with their colleagues, it gave them pause — because their colleagues remarked it had been a while since they too had that experience, and they were impressed by their uninterrupted reading time. And how alarming! People whose entire careers and livelihoods which are dependent upon their ability to study meticulously, read closely, and ultimately pay attention for long periods of time, struggle with concentrating while reading in the same way I do as a bozo clown amateur.

I went to school for finance and not for literature. My thinking was that sometimes when people go to school for the arts, they aren’t able to set up a life for themselves that allows them to do art. I know people who went to music school and never touched an instrument after graduating, for instance (absolutely no judgement there - sometimes, we discover we’re not passionate about our passions - sometimes, we re-examine what’s important in our lives - yada, yada, you get it). What I wanted to do was set myself up so I wouldn’t have to abandon my writing or abandon my painting either due to burnout or financial necessity. I figured if I had enough guts and will power and sense of what I loved, I’d be able to give myself that education, just over a longer period of time and on the side. I essentially want to be as well read as if I had majored in English, even though I didn’t. I used to think this was going to be a lackadaisical goal that I could meander toward, but now, because in the few years since graduating I did not treat this goal seriously, and shocker, have not had the results I thought I would trapeze into, I recognize that this is actually a pretty massive and ambitious goal in the modern era. Because we are all very distracted.

And it’s fine to have big goals, and it’s fine to do stuff that is hard. Everything in life is hard! Going to school is hard, not going to school is hard. Staying in a relationship is hard, leaving a relationship is hard. Starting a family is hard, not starting a family is hard. Everything in life requires hard work, and I think that’s not something I, or very many other people, want to accept. Hence the myth of the email job. That’s not real! So, continuing to not read will be hard for me. Just as hard as reading.

So, in writing this, maybe what I’m trying to do is let go of the thought that holds me back from doing the hard work of reading “Big Books” among other goals I, until this point, expected to meet without challenge. Here’s something I am faced with: the lingering notion that if you really, really want to do something, nothing will prevent you from doing it. You won’t have to force yourself to. You will just obsess and lose sleep and change all your priorities around. And if you’re not doing that, you’re not serious about your desires at all. This is an incredibly incisive idea — we are what we do all day. You cannot get around that.

It’s true, but it’s not helpful to think like this if I want to make changes.

There’s nuance in the world. The easiest students to teach are the ones that believe they can be taught, more so than the students who believe an ability to understand a particular subject is innate. I would rather be the eager student. I would rather believe that I can introduce discipline into my life to make the steady progress toward my goals, than continue to flounder hoping I wake up with a ravenous appetite for reading again.

So, this is what I’m doing with Moby Dick. The book that is hard to read. That I want to abandon, because I’m halfway through it. And is deeply rewarding when I am able to get through a couple chapters.

At times, I wonder if I have anhedonia induced by years of the pandemic and compounded by my really horrible cell phone addiction. I am in the (controversial? Or not?) camp that cellphones have deeply, and perversely, hurt all of our psyches - and they are the cause behind a lot of social ills right now. My iPhone has given me a particular form of attention deficit disorder that could be cured with a digital detox which I absolutely do not want to do. It’s like an amulet I can’t stop holding.

I think the expectation to always be entertained continues long after you've put the phone in the drawer, which I've been doing. I have all the locks, I have all the time limits. I have the discipline to not reach for my cell phone first thing in the morning — I charge it in another room when I go to bed, most of the time, but I haven’t really grappled with the lingering effects scrolling for hours seems to have on my brain. It’s a consistent restlessness. My brain doesn't seem to run quietly in the background like it did in the time before social media.

I haven't found a good cure to anhedonia besides brute force. I realize that this isn't a problem I can theorize my way out of, or use a clever trick, to bring my brain back to normal. What I have to do is practice. What I have to do is be uncomfortable. In a way, I am convinced that long reading sessions of Melville is what is going to cure me of these phone diseases.

I am not enjoying the process of reading. It is difficult, and more difficult than it would have been if I would have read it at 17. But at the same time, I am deeply enjoying the writing, and I am deeply enjoying the story. It just is sometimes overshadowed by my discomfort, the struggle I'm having with my own attention span. It's the sitting and the paying attention that's difficult.

When I think about the rewards of my struggle with reading “Big Books,” they do quite outweigh the discomfort. So, if you’re a little like, “Well, Cecilia, Why? You don’t have to read Moby Dick. You also don’t have to be well-read. You’re, like, fine dude.” Sure, yes, that’s true. But I DO want to read Moby Dick, and I also do want *to have* read it. And other “Big Books.” And I want to rediscover the joy of reading. And I want to grow back my attention span, so that someday reading and concentration are blissful modes. Sometimes, I get glimpses of that bliss and it’s better than any stimulant or instant gratification.

The next stage for me is going to be quietly reflecting on what I read. Being bored and still enough to let my brain settle with the information taken in.

This idea isn't new. And yeah, the thing is happening to me where the most profound realizations of my twenties can be neatly summed up into a cliche — one that belongs on a souvenir refrigerator magnet. “Instant gratification isn't as good as delayed gratification." Corny. Obviously. Duh!

Ugh.

So, why Moby Dick? Well beyond the obvious about Melville (the impact of this book, the innovative writing stream-of-consciousness style, the beauty of the prose) there’s just a lot to love. I am someone who reads Wikipedia pages late at night and the parts where Melville departs completely just to tell you about whales and whaling facts gives you that satisfying fact-hoarding feeling. I love the heavy allusions. And I love the luxuriating on beautiful boys.

There were two reasons that I picked up Moby Dick. The first is that Jamie, my Twitter friend, invited me to a reading group informally known as Dick Chat, which was a great impetus to get started. The second was reading this clip from Angela Carter, where she described Melville as being a feminine writer.

I am finding Melville to be extremely female coded in this way. You sort of think as a modern young woman, you’re not going to relate to an antiquated book about a bunch of guys being dudes, on a masculine quest to triumph against nature, which isn’t a drive I can even fantasize about identifying with. So I was sort of gritting my teeth the way I do when I approach Hemingway, whose writing I do love but I do have to brace myself against (I just get a bit bored when there aren’t ladies in a story). But I think because of Melville’s gay little POV I haven’t felt that way: he looks at men like women do. And it turns out Moby Dick is less about a bunch of riled up dudes hunting some poor animal. It’s more about having a job and a manager that sucks. And as shit-job-havers will know, sometimes your horrible fucking job takes you on an adventure. There’s little more relatable than that.

So, I’ve been surprised and delighted as much as I have been frustrated and driven to self-doubt. If you haven’t read the book, all that really happens in the first hundred pages is that Ishmael and Queequeg cuddle and eat clam chowder. It’s adorable. The approachable and incredibly human and funny parts of the book are like sugar before cod liver oil. Later on when I’m struggling with an incredibly long thread studded with alien vocabulary, I just try to remember that it all adds to greater sum of this book, and that it’s worth it.

As for my process, underlining and highlighting have tethered me to the text. I let myself reread sections quite a bit and give myself grace for the things I miss. I try to focus on the general gist of certain passages rather than bearing down into their meaning. For instance, this is a chunk of text I couldn’t seem to parse for a while, but I think in typing it out I’ve gained an understanding. This is exactly where I am in the book, btw.

“He knew, for example, that however magnetic his ascendency in some respects was over Starbuck, yet that ascendency did not cover the complete spiritual man any more than the mere corporeal superiority involves intellectual mastership; for to the purely spiritual, the intellectual but stands in a sort of corporeal relation.”

I’ve been reading in short sessions - 30 minutes tops - but I can recognize that actually longer sessions would be more enjoyable. What’s hardest is getting started and getting back into the flow. If you’re on an adventure with a drunk, it’s better to keep up and see the night through rather than allow yourself to approach sobriety several times, especially if you plan to keep drinking regardless. And, like listening to a drunk, I’ve had to make peace with sometimes completely lacking all context. It doesn’t have to impede upon my enjoyment of the story and it doesn’t mean I won’t have important takeaways, just because sometimes I’m confused.

Naturally, I’ve been talking about reading Moby Dick a lot, and making the feeble admission that parts of the book have been really challenging for me to get through. Once, someone in conversation remarked, “Oh, nice, that’s like a High School book. It’s good to get through those.” I do not feel like this is at all a High School book, but that might be because the American education system lacks rigor (have you ever met someone who has gone through the Russian school system and was force-fed Tolstoy and made to memorize poetry? Humbling.)

Anyways. All of this is to say is that sometimes as an adult you will want to tackle challenging literature, and you might be surprised by the degree of difficulty — not because the book is so completely out of your depth, but because modernity has given us all slight anhedonia and stripped us of our ability to pay attention in a deep way. And maybe it felt effortless once, and other people certainly make the act of reading look easy. When you read, you will confront your insecurities, you will feel stupid. I come back to the idea that reading is not always about ease and pleasure. It’s worth it to push your own boundaries and do things that are uncomfortable.

I realize in my reading sessions I’m mostly engaging in a practice of mindfulness and confronting my discomfort more than I’m actually absorbing material. But I believe in patience. And I think eventually my mental fortitude will give way to pleasurable reading. Now, I feel very stupid for sharing this, but I do want to talk more about the reading process, and regaining the attention span necessary for being present, just in general. It can be your turn next. Please tell me about a time a book made you feel like an idiot. Or maybe about a time your shit boss took you on an adventure. I’d love to hear about it.

— C