Sign up for our newsletters to receive our Best of 2024 ezine!

Excerpt from Dayswork by Chris Bachelder, Jennifer Habel, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Summary |  Excerpt |  Reviews |  Beyond the Book |  Readalikes |  Genres & Themes |  Author Bio

Dayswork by Chris Bachelder, Jennifer Habel

Dayswork

A Novel

by Chris Bachelder, Jennifer Habel
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus (6):
  • First Published:
  • Sep 5, 2023, 240 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Sep 2024, 240 pages
  • Rate this book

About this Book

Print Excerpt

This morning I discovered a list, derived from student complaints, of the ten writers most likely to put you to sleep.

It's actually just nine writers, I discovered, because Herman Melville is mistakenly listed twice.

Over coffee, I read my husband the list of the "biggest snoozers":

  • William Shakespeare
  • Ernest Hemingway
  • William Faulkner
  • Herman Melville
  • James Joyce
  • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  • Thomas Hardy
  • Herman Melville
  • John Steinbeck
  • Joseph Conrad

"Remember how easy it was in high school to fall asleep while reading classic novels like Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Moby-Dick?" asks the author of the article on soporific classics.

Who reads Moby-Dick in high school? my husband said.

Julie Taylor, I told him, is reading Moby-Dick in the pilot of Friday Night Lights.

And Rory Gilmore, I told him, is reading it in the pilot of Gilmore Girls.

And Heather Duke reads it in the opening scene of Heathers, but only because Salinger wouldn't grant permission to use The Catcher in the Rye.

My husband asked if any pretend boys read Moby-Dick in high school, and I said no.

Zac Efron does read it, I said, but he's a troubled Marine vet.

This morning I see that Moby-Dick has for many years been assigned to actual students at the Hackley School in Tarrytown, New York—
"It's far too seldom these days that high school students get a chance to grapple with work as long and complex as Moby-Dick," according to one teacher of English 11.

"Yes, we read the whole thing," said his colleague.

"And then we celebrated."

One year, having completed the two-month unit on the novel, "the entire 11th grade gathered to smash Whale Pinatas in the Lindsay Room."

But I see now that in 2016 Moby-Dick was removed from the English curriculum of the Hackley School.

An article in the student newspaper, the Dial, presents the rationale for the change: teacher fatigue, student opinion, curricular diversity and variety.

"Moby Dick is a long book," according to the English Department Chair—
"It practically drives other books out of the way."

Based on what is known of the composition of Moby-Dick, it seems likely that Melville did not intend to write such a long book—or such a challenging one.

In June 1850, seeking an advance, he pitched the novel to his publisher as a romance of adventure based upon his two years of experience as a harpooner.
(He had been a harpooner for six months, if at all.)

In early August one of Melville's friends wrote in a letter, "Melville has a new book mostly done—a romantic, fanciful & literal & most enjoyable presentment of the Whale Fishery."

Melville, who then lived in Manhattan, was spending the summer at a family property in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and in August took a break from his novel to entertain guests—
These were to be, according to one biographer, "madcap summer days filled with parties, picnics, dinners, rambles, hikes, and even a fancy dress ball."

(Melville had invited his guests without first checking if there was sufficient room in the family home, and there wasn't.)

One morning he took a break from his break to write a review of Nathaniel Hawthorne's collection Mosses from an Old Manse, though he had not yet read all the stories.

By 2 p.m. he had written twenty pages.

By 2 p.m. he had written twenty pages on Hawthorne's stories, Hawthorne's darkness (ten times black), Hawthorne's genius, Shakespeare's genius, American genius, American critics, the great Art of Telling the Truth, literary ambition, originality, failure.

Excerpted from Dayswork by Chris Bachelder and Jennifer Habel. Copyright © 2023 by Chris Bachelder and Jennifer Habel. Excerpted by permission of W.W. Norton & Company. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Beyond the Book:
  Author Homes in Massachusetts

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: Small Rain
    Small Rain
    by Garth Greenwell
    At the beginning of Garth Greenwell's novel Small Rain, the protagonist, an unnamed poet in his ...
  • Book Jacket: Daughters of Shandong
    Daughters of Shandong
    by Eve J. Chung
    Daughters of Shandong is the debut novel of Eve J. Chung, a human rights lawyer living in New York. ...
  • Book Jacket: The Women
    The Women
    by Kristin Hannah
    Kristin Hannah's latest historical epic, The Women, is a story of how a war shaped a generation ...
  • Book Jacket: The Wide Wide Sea
    The Wide Wide Sea
    by Hampton Sides
    By 1775, 48-year-old Captain James Cook had completed two highly successful voyages of discovery and...

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket
In Our Midst
by Nancy Jensen
In Our Midst follows a German immigrant family’s fight for freedom after their internment post–Pearl Harbor.
Who Said...

A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Big Holiday Wordplay 2024

Enter Now

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.