The Experiment Continues

I'm ready at last. I am ready to read Moby Dick. If you recall my article for Acculturated, I have put off approaching this tome since high school, after my teacher told me "don't read Moby Dick until you are ready to read Moby Dick." When a spot opened up in a reading group at The Rosenbach, I said yes. Yes, I am ready. Yes, this is the time. I will be reading the novel until February, meeting once a month to discuss its chapters. I am forty-four chapters deep, and I don't regret the sudden decision, the leap of investment. The open spot was just the push I needed to commit to Melville, and recommit to myself as a writer.


Moby Dick is Melville's great experiment. Merely two-thirds into the book, he has already changed the writing style several times, from first person, to third person, to play script, and beyond. He challenges himself to grow as a writer, and he challenges the reader to resist putting him in a box. Though he may yet again be addressing whaling and sea voyages, as in other novels of his, Moby Dick is not the same. He refuses to be limited. He experiments with form, right on the published page, and still produces a successful story.

I started this blog two years ago as my great experiment. Other than academic papers, I hadn't written much but I had an enormous longing to find my voice as a writer; to create and produce something approachable but worth reading. I wanted to be like Emerson and Thoreau, to philosophize and reflect and inspire. Now? I want to be like Melville. Brave. Experimental. Fruitfully discombobulated. I never wanted this blog to be limited in scope and style, but I wasn't sure how to navigate it not being so. I feared incoherence would confuse readers and ruin any potential for this blog to turn into something great. Melville has taught me those fears are unfounded. Write for yourself, and for the writer you want to be. I don't ever expect to produce something as definitive as Moby Dick, but if I ever want to try, it has to start right here. This is the Malleable Road. It bends, it turns, it shifts, it changes; but it is always the same, always my own narrative.

The tides of style, content, and (hopefully) consistency are changing. "This is what ye have shipped for, men! ...will ye splice hands on it, now?"