Friday afternoon, Nov. 14, a group of Alfred University students, faculty and staff began what is likely the most ambitious public reading in the university’s history: Herman Melville’s epic novel Moby Dick.
Reading in 15-minutes slots, volunteers read the 135 chapters of the novel, working through the night and the following morning, finishing at 2:30 pm Saturday afternoon with “the great shroud of the sea (rolling) on as it rolled five thousand years before.”
The group then read in unison the short epilogue, which recounts the rescue of the story’s narrator, Ishmael.
The idea for the 24-hour reading marathon came from Alfred University undergraduate Delia Logan, a third-year English major who had learned about Moby Dick reading marathons on social media and asked English Professor Melissa Ryan, chair of the Division of English, if the Division could host a public reading of the novel at Alfred University.
Ryan worked with students, English faculty members, and staff members at Herrick Library to line up readers, secure a comfortable reading space – Herrick Library’s BookEnd Lounge – and organize donations of food to keep the volunteers going through the night. Undergraduate Cori Recktenwald created a commemorative book stamp. Art student Zoey Rainville designed a wood-cut-inspired image of a whale rising from the deep; scores of t-shirts bearing the image were distributed to volunteer readers. Students and faculty members stayed in BookEnd Lounge through the night, donning pajamas as they beat their way through the novel’s more than 213,000 words. Volunteers munched on slices of cake celebrating the 174th birthday of the publication (1851) of Moby Dick’s American edition. Individual readers wore a sporty sea captain’s cap while standing at the podium.
“Moby Dick may be the Great American Novel,” Ryan said after the marathon, as volunteers gathered sleeping bags, cushions, and trays of donated food. “It deserves this kind of effort.”
For many, the 24-hour reading marathon was their first experience of Moby Dick, a novel of such length and density many readers shy away from the reading challenge. There are scenes of high drama and heartbreaking tragedy in the story; there are also plenty of chapters many readers just find dull.
“I liked it,” says Delia Logan, whose personal literary tastes run toward fantasy and young-adult fiction. Her takeaway: “If you’re on a ship, looking for a giant whale for four years, it’s occasionally going to get boring.”
The novel was a commercial flop for Melville, a popular novelist at the time, with books such as Typee (1846) and Omoo (1847) behind him. He struggled financially as he continued writing and lecturing until his death in 1891. Interest in Moby Dick, as well as his other work, began growing in the early 20th century.
