By Jessica A. Kent
It always begins with “Call me Ishmael.”
At noon on Jan. 4, 2020, after a tag-team reading of “Extracts” from the six Melville scholars on hand, Jared Bowen, WGBH’s executive arts editor, took to the podium in the main exhibition hall at the New Bedford Whaling Museum to deliver the most famous opening line in literature. Facing a room filled with hundreds of attendees—sitting in chairs, lining the stairwells, leaning against the walls, filling up the decks of the Lagoda, a half-scale model of a whaling ship housed indoors—Bowen declared, measured and clear, “Call. Me. Ishmael!” Someone hooted, and we burst into a brief cheer of anticipation and delight before he continued on with the first chapter, “Loomings.”
With that, we set sail into the 25 hours it will take to read through the entirety of Moby-Dick, an annual tradition going into its 24th year at the New Bedford Whaling Museum. Surrounded by harpoons, preserved containers of whale oil, thick rope, artifacts, and artwork, with the massive whaling ship replica in the center of the room, the reading of the 1851 novel commences with notable local citizens taking turns with the opening chapters (this past weekend included a National Park superintendent, a U.S. Naval officer, a former mayor, a state representative, and even Massachusetts Senator Edward Markey).
After, the reading will be relegated to 200+ “Melville Aficionados” who won a spot in a lottery, and are given five- or ten-minute stretches to read over the course of six “watches” that proceed through the night and into the next day. The pacing has been so precisely honed over the years that the marathon always finishes on time; you could say they run a tight ship.
WGBH's Jared Bowen opens the reading at the New Bedford Whaling Museum.
(Photos courtesy of Jessica A. Kent)
I’m by no means a veteran—it’s only my fourth time attending, and third staying through the full reading—but I take my place among the hundreds here at the Whaling Museum, one of a few thousand who will be present in some capacity over the two days. We’re all here for different reasons: To experience the experience, to learn more about the novel or whaling, to connect with other readers, or to just enjoy another pass through a favorite book. But we’re also all here for the same reason: We’re fans of this strange, genre-bending, messy, beautiful masterpiece.
What is it about this specific event, this communal get-together of all sorts of people to simply read through a novel? There are author readings, sure, where a writer reads their work for an audience. And we have conferences and book festivals, where readers and writers gather to share their love of literature by conversing, learning, and listening. But the Moby-Dick Marathon falls somewhere else on the literary event scale. It's, essentially, a public expression of a private reading experience. We’ve all read Moby-Dick alone. Now, we read it together.
We spend about an hour and a half on Ishmael’s travails at the Spouter-Inn and his initial introduction to Queequeg, until the New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell reads the chapter “The Street,” about, of course, the beauty of New Bedford. From there, the reading moves across the block to the Seaman’s Bethel, where the chapters that take place in that location in the novel are read.
The end of this first main segment tends to shake people off, as some just attend the opening volleys then continue on with their afternoon—the crowd at the dock seeing off the sailors, so to speak. A few years ago, I stood next to an older couple who were local, and told me they come every year. After the first portion was completed, Ishmael and Queequeg’s friendship solidified, and the group off to the Bethel, the woman turned to me, patted my arm, and said, “Well, that’s it for us. See you next year!” I wonder if they know what happens in the rest of the book.
Founded in 1830, the chapel is the chapel from the novel, where both Melville and Ishmael visited, yet maybe even more so now: Melville invented a ship’s prow for the pulpit in Moby-Dick that never existed, yet during renovations in 1961, the pulpit was replaced with a ship’s prow to mirror the novel. Attendees fill the pews, books in hands, and a local minister who will read Father Mapple’s portions leads the congregation in the singing of “The Ribs and Terrors in the Whale,” the haunting minor chords struck out on the organ. Our novels become hymnals.
Settling in for the long voyage in the Harbor View Gallery.
It’s in this portion that the marathon most acutely breaks the fourth wall. The reader is in that spot in the earth where the writer was; the reader is in that spot in the earth where the characters in the novel are; the reader becomes a character in that novel, experiencing, however briefly, Ishmael’s reality. For the lucky few who snatch Melville’s pew, denoted by a plaque, the worlds become more entangled.
The main reading moves then to the museum’s third floor —while a concurrent children’s mini-marathon and Portuguese language marathon are held—to settle in for the duration. The first time I attended in 2015 was the last time the marathon was held in the old building, where above concrete floors sperm whale skeletons floated in the air above us. Now, the event is much bigger and cozier gallery gives a floor-to-ceiling view of New Bedford harbor, the fishing fleets moored below us, the place where Melville departed on his 1841 whaling voyage to the Pacific. This year, the reading area is made to look like a living room or den, with a fireplace, writing desk, and comfy chairs, decorated with 19th century touches: lanterns, rope, harpoons. Above the fireplace is a painting that looks curiously like the one Ishmael encounters at the Spouter-Inn.
The two chairs at the front will always be filled—as one reader reads, the following stages, ready to take up the passage at the cue—though there is also a podium for those who would be more comfortable standing to read. The gallery seats over a hundred, and already most of the chairs are taken, with attendees standing in the back. The reader check-in table is covered in various editions of the novel for anyone who didn’t bring a copy or who wants to peruse the various options out there. And even though this space is set up in the traditional audience/stage layout, no one’s really watching the reader. Most of us follow along in our books, heads bowed. There’s no performance here.
But if there were “rock stars” this weekend, they would be the Melville scholars. They come from all over the country—it’s usually the same six every year, familiar faces—and offer a Friday night pre-marathon dinner talk, and a Saturday morning “Stump the Scholars” session before the marathon begins, where audience members try to one-up their knowledge (it’s rare to stump these folks). During the event, they offer two group discussions for anyone who wants to partake. “I always come to these,” a woman sitting next to me tells me, and even though she’s been attending the marathon for years, we agree that each discussion session is different. “When else would you have access to Melville scholars?”
Just like the marathon, the fifty or so of us in the session are there for various reasons. One wants to know more about ecology and nature in the novel, one wants insight on how to read a product of 19th century racial relations in 2020. One is curious to know if Ahab is based on any real person, while another wants to discuss Ahab’s misunderstood humanity. One offers insight into a close reading of the text, and another asks how other teachers in the group have taught this book. One, who is experiencing Moby-Dick for the very first time like this, wants to know a broader, existential, “Why?” It’s the rare chance for those who never studied the book in school to have English class with experts.
The discussion session is a great chance to chat with those around you away from the quiet environment of the main reading. I talk to a first-timer. I chat with a retired man who, having time on his hands, decided to go through Moby-Dick at the slowest pace he could, savoring each word and line. And I begin to recognize familiar faces from past marathons as well, like a yearly reunion. And while small talk is easy (“Is this your first marathon?”), this isn’t necessarily a social event. There’s an unspoken understanding, it seems, that we’ll connect, sure, but we’re ultimately here for the text. Here, we are readers first.
Back in the Harbor View Gallery, the chapter when the Pequod finally leaves port hits right around sunset, perhaps on purpose, as we sail into the long night on our voyage.
The reading continues into the evening. The chairs are still filled, and I take a spot on the floor against the back wall and follow along in my text. I have the 2002 Norton Critical Second Edition—the one with the reproduction of the self-portrait of Tupai Cupa on it, the one that contains my notes from undergrad and every subsequent reading thereafter. I usually don’t notice anyone else with this version, but this year I find two others who have it. It’s like a silent kinship. I also notice the first Norton edition from 1967 and the newest third edition from 2017. There are many Barnes & Noble Classics editions, the newer trade Penguin edition with the black and red cover which a group of twenty-somethings in front of me have, and a number of the mass market Bantam editions.
I also notice the big white block of the 2015 Raymond Bishop illustrated edition. Some read along from e-readers, but very few, most of us choosing the more traditional tactile experience. One reader reads from a small, dusty volume cradled in his hand, pinching Bible-thin pages. There was a large, blue cloth-bound edition being passed around, but I didn’t get the chance to investigate what it was. Additionally, readers contribute passages from foreign language editions—German, Portuguese, Dutch, Hebrew—and a Braille edition has made an appearance in the past. The minister reads Father Mapple’s sermon from an iPad. Each edition is the reader’s own unique expression, isn’t it? And there are enough editions to choose from.
No one’s come in costume yet to this (give it a few years), but there are a various number of Moby-Dick t-shirts, and many are sporting hoodies advertising the recent American Repertory Theater production of Moby-Dick the musical. A few readers have donned Hartford Whalers items in the past, the tail “showing flukes” on the logo. People wear pins. People bring stuffed whales with them. I wear a whale ring, the body of Moby Dick wrapped around my finger. One year I encountered an attendee in peacoat and nautical cap, carrying a harpoon he had purchased at an antique store down the street. This year, a couple comes dressed for a night on the town, their corsages white whale cutouts pinned to their chests.
“The Quarter-Deck” arrives, and with it Ahab’s famous “pasteboard mask” speech, with all its monomaniac intensity (depending on who the reader is each year, we’ll either get a straight reading, or an “Ahab voice” for the speeches, which is always enjoyable). And then it’s downstairs to the theater for the performance of the fortieth chapter, “Midnight, Forecastle,” by local theatre troupe Culture*Park. It’s only appropriate: Melville begins to fold in stage directions to his narrative, and wrote Chapter 40 as a short play, probably to highlight the different nationalities and voices found in the crewmembers of the Pequod. It’s somewhat of a throwaway chapter; the crewmembers horse around at midnight, dance, fight, and sing, with the only item of note coming in the last soliloquy when Pip asks the “big white God” to “have mercy on this small black boy.” In the hands of Culture*Park, the scene not only comes to life, but makes sense. It’s again a kicking down of the fourth wall: Words and actions from the text come to life, and once again we’re in the book we’re reading, the novel in our hands now a dramatic script.
The marathon returns upstairs where it will continue until the end, and the seats stay filled through the chapters on Moby Dick and his whiteness, the first lowering of the whaleboats, and Ishmael’s narrative voice slowly crowding out the character of Ishmael in the text. It’s after midnight when the chapters get bloody—it always seems to be energetic older women reading the bloodiest chapters, I find—with the first whale kills and explanations on how they’re dismantled, the oil tried out of their bodies. The crowd thins, of course. Some attendees have fallen asleep; some grab coffee at the concession; some seem as awake as if it were one in the afternoon instead of one in the morning; everyone not asleep still follows along in their texts. I find the most comfortable place I can and settle in, amazed at how many people are still there. Then again, so am I.
Middle of the night readers appear for their spots, in from the cold at 2 a.m., and sometimes they read and leave; sometimes they read and stay. People I saw earlier who left for dinner or a rest return. There’s movement, still, and even at 3:30 a.m. there’s a good two dozen people still present, following along. We go through the survey of whales’ skulls, Tashtego’s near drowning in the whale’s head, the cook’s sermon to the sharks, Ishmael’s retelling of Jonah, and the various gams the Pequod has with other passing ships. We’ve swam through libraries and sailed through oceans already.
Reading along.
At 6 a.m. I need to take a walk, and encounter other attendees like me breaking to peruse the various exhibitions around the quiet museum. Back by the main entrance, I can hear the staff chatting and laughing, welcoming newcomers at 3 a.m., 4 a.m., 5 a.m., who appear from the dark, cobbled New Bedford streets.
With what other book could this happen? What is the appeal of this messy chowder of a novel, and the out loud reading of it, that would draw people from around the globe to attend, draw people from their beds, to participate in at least a bit of this ritual? I’ve gone through this book probably twenty times now and still learn new ideas, find new phrases to fall in love with, get inspired to write better or think deeper, find new ways to study it. It’s a book so broad and deep that each person at the reading is able to find their own way into it, and get lost in wonder in its pages.
This isn’t the only Moby-Dick marathon that exists. There are numerous marathons all over the world, points at which readers gather to find a tribe with which to share their love of this one particular novel. I’m not aware of another book that has sparked so many unique situations in which people gather together to read it aloud, except, perhaps, for the Bible.
The sun rises and illumines the Harbor View Gallery. We’re still here, but there’s much to go through until the final death throes of Ahab, the final resurrection of Ishmael. At 8 a.m. my phone lights up with the Museum’s text message updates: “For all you Marathoners still here, we have a treat for you in the San Francisco Room.” Malassadas, Portuguese fried doughnuts from a local bakery. I go across the street for a galão, a Portuguese latte, and attend the second Melville scholars session, a different discussion from the previous afternoon…or was it earlier that day? Time has disappeared, and I’m now measuring out my life in chapter numbers.
Attendance swells, and by the last hour the seats will be filled, the spots along the wall taken, and the hallway in the back at capacity, multiple people deep. Ahab’s mania draws the Pequod closer to Moby Dick, and by the time the Rachel appears, the room is full, a few hundred, more on the livestream, everyone following along in eager anticipation. The chapter “The Symphony,” one of the most emotional chapters in the novel, silences the room, and I notice people listening along with their eyes closed. By “The Chase—Third Day,” we all seem to have held our collective breath. The action builds and intensifies, tumbling onto itself, and the room pulses silent electricity as Moby Dick rams the Pequod, Ahab’s neck gets snared by the line, and everything sinks away.
At last, Amanda McMullen, president of the New Bedford Whaling Museum, steps to the podium to deliver the “Epilogue”—“one did survive the wreck”—and at the closing words the tension is broken by an applause that lasts.
The drama’s done. The tale is told. We have been through this journey individually, together.
Jessica A. Kent is a fiction writer, freelancer, bookseller, reader, and founder of the Boston Book Blog, a website that covers the Boston literary community. Find more writing at www.jessicaakent.com. (And in case you were curious, her master’s thesis on Moby-Dick won the Director’s Prize at Harvard University in 2018.)