Downsides to Reading Moby Dick on My Phone
In my profound arrogance, I wrote about my experience reading Moby Dick on my cell phone before I was even a quarter of the way through the American nautical epic. Now, after finishing the book and having a little time to reflect, I can see with greater clarity some of the ways in which this bold approach to reading fell short of my lofty expectations.
I should start by saying that, even with its frequent and excruciatingly detailed tangents on the particulars of sperm whale anatomy and life aboard a whaling vessel, I thoroughly enjoyed reading Moby Dick. Almost every moment of the story serves to build up a sort of mythic tension around Ahab's climactic encounter with the object of his obsession. All the while, Ishamel's narration (which, to my delight, sees him throwing a non-insignificant amount of shade) supports the slow burn by imbuing it with humor, adventure, and a kind of poetry.
It was partly because I so loved reading Moby Dick that I developed some dissatisfaction around reading it on my phone. While it was great to take in a short chapter here and there while on the toilet at work, I found myself less inclined to settle down for a pants-up reading session at home. I wanted to hold a physical object whose beauty befit that of the words contained therein. Instead, I was staring at my phone like some kind of a chump!
To make matters worse, having the Bad Rectangle as my only access point for the Good Book wound up reinforcing my phone-grabbing muscle memory with virtually no meaningful alleviation of my social media habit. I even logged back into Tumblr on my phone during this period and knowingly exposed myself to some categorically dogwater takes (which my brain nonetheless internalized and filed away for the next bout of ruminative self-flagellation).
I still might try this strategy again, especially for nonfiction texts (potentially including some EPUB conversions from PDFs of questionable provenance...) to be consumed in parallel with my usual fiction/literature intake. This could be particularly useful for older and/or more academic texts with fewer affordable hard copies in circulation. At the same time, I think it's telling that I immediately gravitated towards a nice, musty, physical book from the 1960s and finished it in relatively short order after wrapping up The Whale. It was even a hardcover edition, which I often find to be insufficiently portable to slot into my fits-and-starts reading schedule! With screens so ever-present in many of our lives (especially in such nasty weather outside as I have had over here for some time), any kind of respite from the non-stop glittering marquis of slop is probably something worth cherishing.
Read anything good lately? Have any "hacks" for getting into the right headspace to read a lot? Drop your local blogger a line at asksycamore [at] mailbox [dot] org today!