Moby Dick, or The Trouble With Going to College at 18

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In my fourth year of college I was fortunate enough to do an American prose class, which covered a broad sweep of the American canon from Cotton Mather up to Thomas Pynchon and was overall great. However, as part of this class I read Moby Dick, and I've got to tell you I didn't like it very much. At 21 I was less concerned with the finer points of whaling and more concerned with the finer points of skinning up; less worried about some middle-aged, obsessive sea captain than about TEH HOTT GUYZ.

Things sure have changed here on Waltons Mountain, as they say. What books should you never have read when you were younger, because you couldn't possibly have appreciated them?

Show your work.

― accentmonkey, Saturday, 24 February 2007 18:21 (eighteen years ago)

Em, we can also just talk about Moby Dick, if you like.

― accentmonkey, Saturday, 24 February 2007 18:22 (eighteen years ago)

Can we talk about what "skinning up" means? It sounds fascinating.

― Casuistry, Sunday, 25 February 2007 01:09 (eighteen years ago)

rolling a jo1nt!

― jed_, Sunday, 25 February 2007 01:58 (eighteen years ago)

i'm 21 and pissed off with myself i haven't gotten around to moby dick yet, to be honest

― thomp, Sunday, 25 February 2007 04:18 (eighteen years ago)

this new ilx feels very high-security

― thomp, Sunday, 25 February 2007 04:18 (eighteen years ago)

I rolled into college at age 17, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. I swerved into the gutter before I got to the end of the lane, at age 20.

I returned to college at age 22, chastened and the owner of much better self-direction and self-discipline than I'd had during the first go-around. I graduated with the understanding that college and education were not coterminus. Truth is, I have been educating myself ever since I was 20. It is better that way. Much, much better.

― Aimless, Sunday, 25 February 2007 05:55 (eighteen years ago)

I'm 21 and I loved Moby Dick! Although I read it with a great teacher. Also, I'm a nerd.

― max, Sunday, 25 February 2007 17:32 (eighteen years ago)

"They've been skinning up beneath the Andes..."

― PJ Miller, Monday, 26 February 2007 12:50 (eighteen years ago)

It's easier to think of these for high school - Great Gatsby for example. I loved it in college, but in high school it was just "Why should I care about a couple of fey rich wankers and some eyes on a billboard?"

― Hurting 2, Wednesday, 28 February 2007 03:54 (eighteen years ago)

I'm waiting for the Isabel Sanford audiobook.

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Wednesday, 28 February 2007 04:22 (eighteen years ago)

two weeks pass...

Last night I remembered reading the other Moby Dick thread around Xmas time here and getting inspired to go out - without notifying ILB- to get myself a copy. When I pulled my copy off the shelf and looked at the receipt inside of it I was bummed out to discover that the purchasing and reading of thirty pages therein before quitting had taken place not last year but in Xmas of 2005. Tempus fugit indeed.

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Sunday, 18 March 2007 18:41 (eighteen years ago)

High school literature textbooks
leave yellowed crumbles of corners
littering like a rat cage
the floor of this also yellowed trailer

where high school literature students
are grossed out by nesting
told in such highly serifed type.

― s.clover, Sunday, 18 March 2007 19:10 (eighteen years ago)

Ah, I Love Books! Ah, Humanity!

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Monday, 19 March 2007 18:35 (eighteen years ago)

i recall a thread on ilx which mentioned a particularly amazing looking edition of 'moby-dick'. it might have been priced around $75 and was sold via an independent press? i can't find it now, can anyone assist me?

― rps, Tuesday, 27 March 2007 22:01 (eighteen years ago)

I posted this in the what are you reading on nu-ILX3.0 thread:

I have this awesome edition with woodcuts of whales and whaling instruments, put out by UC Press. It's a reprint of a large art book edition.

http://www.sierraclubbooks.ucpress.edu/books/pages/images/1590.jpg

― wmlynch, Tuesday, 27 March 2007 22:45 (eighteen years ago)

If you're not ready for Moby Dick in college, you'll never be ready

― Mr. Que, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 14:47 (eighteen years ago)

If you're ready for college at 21, you've had a deprived childhood.

Real books are for grown-ups.

― Skrik, Sunday, 1 April 2007 14:16 (eighteen years ago)

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