Moby-Dick Marathon: A Whale of a Read
Every fall, Venice Beach comes alive with a unique event: the Moby-Dick marathon. For two days, a circle of beachgoers gather to read aloud from Herman Melville’s epic novel, creating a mesmerizing spectacle.
Nearly 200 years after Melville first published his tale of a captain’s obsessive hunt for a white whale, these marathon have become a surprisingly popular American tradition, across the US each year.
“There aren’t many books that generate this kind of interest, intensity, and devotion,” said Samuel Otter, a Melville scholar at the University of California, Berkeley. Part of the appeal of the communal readings, Otter said, is the “stamina they require.
The Venice beach marathon, held for 29 years, is particularly surreal. Even in late November, the beach is crowded: French tourists on bikes, the men of Muscle beach lifting weights, friends playing volleyball in shorts. Far out on the sand, where the air begins to smell more like salt than weed or essential oils, the Moby-Dick readers sit in a circle, switching readers every chapter, as tourists and surfers drift up, take photographs and then drift away again. Sometimes, readers spot whales in the distance.
The Venice beach marathon is a unique experience.
Erin Darling, 43, had been surfing earlier that day, then wandered up to the circle. It was his first time reading aloud from the novel: “I’s been too timid before,” Darling said. Tim Rudnick, 81, a longtime resident with a necklace, started the marathon in 1995 with his family, as part of the Venice Oceanarium, a museum without walls he founded. His goal, he said, was to create a forum for environmental discussions.
“It’s a very intimate and artistic way to be at the beach,” Rudnick said. “You’re not playing. You’re not surfing. You’re thinking, reading, and.
Moby-Dick is a strange, unwieldy novel, its 600-plus pages loaded with a staggering number of facts about whales. Not much of a commercial success when first published in 1, Melville’s literary vessel has proved surprisingly adept at navigating the changing currents of American politics. It’s been canonized as a great American novel in the 1940s, when it was understood, reductively, as an allegory of liberalism and , personified by Ishmael, the novel’s curious, egalitarian narrator, versus Ahab, his fanatical captain. Today, it’s valued for its critical lens on capitalism, its focus on workers and the queer-coded relationship between Ishmael and Queequeg, his crew- and bedmate. It continues to inspire other artists: a musical based on premiered in2019, while artist Wu Tsang’s silent film of the novel, has been touring museums across the US. As an inspiration for reading, Moby-Dick is unique. Only Joyce’s Ulysses has a comparable record of readings, Otter said. “No offense to Austen, but more happens. It’s more exciting to hunt a whale than to hunt a husband,” said Dawn Coleman, an English professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. “A lot of today, when they to Moby-Dick, people are rooting for the whale. Coleman said.
In many ways, Moby-Dick also speaks to the sensibilities of readers today. “A lot of people today, when they Moby-Dick, they’
“Every year, it reads a little differently,” Rudnick said. “I had never finished Moby-Dick before, but this time, I would make it to the end.
“The Venice beach marathon is unique. Even in late November, the beach is crowded: French tourists on bikes, the men of Muscle beach lifting weights, friends playing volleyball. Far out on the sand, where the air begins to smell more like salt than weed or oils, the readers sit in a circle, switching readers every chapter, as tourists and surfers eddy, drifting, up to take photographs and then drifting away. Sometimes, readers spot whales.
** ‘It is grassroots.”
The Venice beach marathon is a unique experience.
