The novel opens with those marvelously classic words, "Call me Ishmael" and proceeds to follow the story of this narrator. Ishmael gets work on the whaling ship, the Pequod, but what he doesn't realize is that he's not about to set off on an ordinary voyage. The captain of the Pequod is the manic Ahab, whose leg was bitten off by the infamous White Whale, Moby Dick. Now, Captain Ahab only seeks revenge. No matter the cost, he will find Moby Dick and he will kill him.
And so that gets played out over 550 pages. Despite its premise, Moby Dick is not really an adventure novel. Action is rare. There are whole chapters dedicated to seemingly insignificant details like how whales have been portrayed in art or what Ishmael's quilt looks like. Moby Dick is more a psychological novel than anything else, examining the internal and the condition of man. It's rich with symbolism and captures the maddening descent of Ahab into the consumption of rage.
But Moby Dick is slow. Some of its chapters are kind of boring. So when my eyes started to droop, I started to skim.
And then it occurred to me: why is it that I find these parts boring? I began to realize that it's a direct result of technology.
With modern technology, we have a broad wealth of information at our fingertips. We can read and watch whatever we want whenever we want. Our eyes are constantly scanning social media to find something of interest. If we do, we click it and scan that. Technology has trained us to surface read.
In his book, Lit!, Tony Reinke said something exactly to that effect: "The Internet encourages superficial browsing, not concentration."
It has also diminished our wonder. If we find something initially boring, we stop reading it. We are a fast consumerist culture. We want our entertainment exciting and we want it right now. If you start to bore me, I will turn you off.
And I think that's dangerous. What if we slowed down? What if we took the time to read big, boring books? What might we find in their pages? Maybe not CGI explosions or quick punch lines. Instead we'd find reality. We'd find a mirror to see ourselves and our world for it as it really is - broken, vast, beautiful, dark, and wondrous, sometimes thrilling, sometimes mundane.
Maybe you've already stopped reading this post. Your scanning may have found me unworthy of your time. But if you haven't, I would encourage you to slow down. Read a (seemingly) boring book. Pick up Moby Dick or Les Miserables. Sure, maybe it won't be your cup of tea after all. That's okay too. But don't let technology handicap your appreciation of good literature. Don't let it kill your joy in a masterpiece.
Instead of turning on the TV tonight, open a book. Slow down. And welcome yourself to a new story.