Lately I’m feeling pretty damn sick of being a human being.

I’ve come to the conclusion that people suck.

Maybe it’s me. Maybe I’ve become mentally twisted in my old age. But I don’t believe so. I think maybe this malaise I’m feeling lately toward humanity is not a condition I should ascribe to a moral failing or even a “condition.”

If I say people suck maybe…maybe I’m not alone.

Here’s how a certain Great American Novel begins:

Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. 

Moby Dick, by Herman Melville

Ishmael takes a dim view of human nature. Going to sea is his method of shedding himself of the grossest manifestations of society…for a while at least. I read this book (I tried to read it) fifty years ago. I was just a kid. The world was fresh. I had no opinion of human nature beyond a wild urge to fit in and maybe get ahead. My ambition was unfocused. I wanted what I didn’t understand. Which is why I didn’t understand what Moby Dick was about.

Herman Melville was by nature profoundly pessimistic. The novel begins with a kind of calculated optimism. Perhaps the efforts of sailors on a voyage brings out the best in one’s nature. But it’s all down hill from there. By the end of the novel the crew is dead and only Ishmael survives afloat Queequeg’s casket.

Mankind is the villain of this novel.

I read it again in college. This time around I managed to get through it with the help of cliff notes. My professor had his own analysis of the book based of his Meta Fictional Theories. A fiction about fictions. The profound dualism of all things. A work of encyclopedic prose. Etcetera, etcetera…I kind of got what he was talking about. It gave the novel more meanings that I needed to ascribe to it.

And it killed it for me. John Huston’s movie was way more fun.

Moby Dick is a novel meant to be appreciated when you’re old. When you’ve been beat up by life. When you feel as though maybe being a human being is not all it’s cracked up to be. It’s a kind of justification of everything you feel about being alive in this crazy world.

I’m there.

I’m about ready to read Moby Dick again.

Not quite ready.

It’s not an easy book to read nor is it particularly well written from a modern perspective.

Yet there’s great soul value in Moby Dick. If you read it for the characters. there’s Pip. And Queequeg. And many others, particularly those of them non white. Melville has sympathy for these people. These people of color for want of a better phrase. He sees that the human spirit blossoms in those that are marginalized. This is why Ralf Ellison was so fond of Moby Dick.

Invisible Man is another book that tackles the imponderables of existence and the value of Humanity. Like Gulliver’s Travels, the Invisible Man wants to know if being Human is all it’s cracked up to be. I found Invisible Man more pleasurable to read than Swift’s book…maybe because it allows sympathy for oppressed people. Gulliver’s Travels shows no sympathy. I found it darker even than the tale of the great while whale. Gulliver may be the bleakest book ever written.

Gulliver’s Travels, where Horses are better than people.

I think I may tackle all three of these books again.

What the hell.

Because I’m a masochists?

Probably.

Or maybe I’ll pick a great book that wont drag me down.

Like Don Quixote.

A great book with a sense of humor.

Or Huckleberry Finn, another work of profound pessimism, but filled with humor. Yes, definitely Huckleberry Finn deserves another reading. And there’s a bonus. This book might restore some of my faith in the value of People.

Yeah? Maybe…

Good old Huck Finn.

A kid with a good heart.