after years of using goodreads dot com exclusively for saving quotes from my favorite novels, i have finally begun documenting all the books i’ve read with my very own account. the first book i added was my favorite one, which is MOBY-DICK. woof . . . and it was an error of judgment on my part to glance at the reader reviews people have written. i don’t know what i was thinking, reading all that stuff on purpose, but it was a true sadness nonetheless. these people essentially read the synopsis on the back and called it a day. (this is a much larger conversation about Internet Opinions in general, though for the sake of brevity let us place the lens on the white whale and briefly on DUNE.)
and let us also quote that reverend vice, that grey iniquity, that father ruffian—and of course i am referring to big delicious mccune, WHO SAID THUSLY:
listen: it’s fine of people don’t read M-D. and it is perfectly OK if they don’t like it. it’s a nearly 700-page book written in shakespearean / biblical flourishes. and anyway someone’s displeasure with something you enjoy should never diminish your own enjoyment of that thing. get real. all i’m saying is that if you’re not having fun with this:
Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity came over me; and I found myself unwittingly squeezing my co-laborers’ hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally; as much as to say,— Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness.
. . . then baby i don’t know what to tell you! unzip your pants and breathe deeply and walk around the house a little, if that’s what it takes! but alas! the real issue is that if your idea of a good time is writing a review of a book you read exactly twenty pages of, then man, go ahead and do that thing i guess but that sucks lol
YEAH
