"Wilt thou beat this monster? Art thou game for Moby Dick?"

Though this truly is a more than substantial tome; and in the first 283 pages the monster himself has still not made any actual appearance; and though the writing throughout is not illiberally sprinkled with double negatives and other like infelicities; and though it even contains a monster of a sentence occupying one page to itself; this sentence appearing in a chapter - number 42 - devoted to the terrifying nature of the colour white; which chapter I read the day before I met my friend's albino hamster and thought "Melville thou'rt an egregious plonker"; and I would add that my friend also has a white over-stuffed sofa in which I am equally unable to discover any mystic terror*; and to make matters worse, I am unable to exert any directorial control over the cinematographic theatre of my mind, where Geoffrey Rush and Johnny Depp are firmly established in the roles of Ahab and Starbuck;
yet I remain determined to overcome, to succeed in the mad endeavour and finish this book, and am still approximately on target at fifteen pages per diem.

And I will say this - if thou art lagging behind, I say, "Skip the boring bits, shipmates! Read chapters 1 to 5, 10, 12,13, 16, 18, 21, 25 - 31, 36-39. 41, 42 obviously, 48 - 50, 60 - 63, 66-70, 72, 73 and so on!"







* With reference to the sofa, one must admit that there are persons, for instance those charged with cleaning duties, for whom whiteness in a sofa might enhance and magnify any terror the sofa might induce by its own merits, but this is not central to our purpose here.