I'm here to tell you that I was very pleasantly surprised. This novel was chosen as the sample text for our guide for many very good reasons, many of which are outlined in a blogpost on this topic by Henry Jenkins, but let's face it: it wasn't chosen for its popularity among the general reading public. And--should I then presume?--I think most people carry around a resistance to reading the book for similar reasons to mine. (Try Googling "Moby-Dick required reading" and see how many times people mention their glee at NOT having read the book.)

There's no doubt that reading Moby-Dick is not the same kind of rollicking good time as, for example, reading Harry Potter. I won't argue about the degree of concentration, deliberation, and discipline required to make it through. But I came to three conclusions about Moby-Dick as I worked my way through it.

1.    It's not boring. When I started the book, I prepared myself for serious tedium, determined to charge through for the good of the project (good-hearted team player that I am). But--I promise you I'm telling the truth--I actually had a really good time. I think this is mainly because as I started to read, I was surrounded by some very smart people (Henry Jenkins and Melville Scholar and MIT professor Wyn Kelley) who framed the novel for me as the work of a kind of proto-fan--a writer who channeled a lifelong love of literature, science, mythology, and the tiniest details of whaling culture into the classic text we engage with today. I couldn't help but imagine Melville as a sort of geeky fanboy, running around from library to museum to shoreline to dock and collecting information that he couldn't wait to share with readers. (Henry Jenkins wrote about this first, and way better than I could, in a blogpost entitled "Was Herman Melville a Proto-Fan?" ) When you picture Melville like that, and when you think about the book as evidence of his fandom, it starts to get really fun. You can even slog your way through the pages and pages of whaling history and lore, because you understand that Melville has collected all the information he could possibly find and is presenting it to you, the reader, because he thinks it's really, really neat.

2.     It's not hard. Yes, sure, the story is filtered for us through the many gossamer layers of language, history, and culture. Yes, the novel is dense, and yes, it's absolutely loaded with information that the contemporary reader can't immediately grasp onto. But I decided to just try to ride those waves, and when I did, I sometimes found myself tossed onto the shoreline of crystalline, clear, and shining moments like this one:
 

Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure. Consider also the devilish brilliance and beauty of many of its most remorseless tribes, as the dainty embellished shape of many species of sharks. Consider, once more, the universal cannibalism of the sea; all whose creatures prey upon each other, carrying on eternal war since the world began.
Consider all this; and then turn to this green, gentle, and most docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself? For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half known life.

God keep thee! Push not off from that isle, thou canst never return!

---Moby-Dick, Chapter 58

If you skimmed over the above passage, try to go back to the beginning and ride the waves. I found this passage the most seriously beautiful of anything in the novel.

3.    It's not perfect. This was, for me, the biggest surprise of all. My years spent in the halls of English departments nationwide had led me to internalize the idea of the canonical text as a perfect, unified whole and the author as a solitary genius, toiling alone. Working on this strategy guide has begun to unravel some of that for me. For one thing, the guide encourages students to dismantle a text for the purpose of appropriation. We really want kids to think of a text as a series of choices, of roads taken or avoided, of tangents and mistakes and beautiful accidents. It may be that this very idea--that texts are not infallible--is already in the minds of today's youth as they think about the texts they encounter online, but I wonder about the extent to which kids are encouraged to apply these ideas to the literary canon. I certainly don't remember being pushed very much in that direction even as an undergraduate; certainly, I wasn't sent that way in high school.

It's kind of freeing, is all I'm saying, to be able to engage with a text respectfully but playfully--to try to remix and reconsider the ideas about it through a participatory lens.

Another issue we're grappling with as we shape this guide is in presenting the idea of using Moby-Dick in the high school classroom. I've heard lots of arguments from a range of educators in favor of and opposition to using this text, and I'd love to hear more input on just this question. I invite you either to post your comments on our site or to email me directly at jennamc_at_mit.edu with your thoughts.