>start reading pic related >halfway through >realize

>>8892693
Yes, my diary desu.

>>8892698
/thread

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>start reading pic related
>Realize that I need to have consumer and processed the entirety of all human knowledge and experience in order to fully appreciate it
>Give up and realize I can never have the full perspective of any great work

>>8892693
>Plato, Euclid, Aristotle, the Romans, the Holy Bible, the Stoics, Shakespeare, Spinoza, Leibniz, and Descartes
I realize you're probably shitposting (either that, or this whole "i need to read the western canon to understand the allusions in a book" is really believed by a lot of unoriginal people), but I've read and enjoyed the Dick twice and I've only read some of Plato, some of the Bible, a little bit of Spinoza and a good deal of Shakespeare. Wikipedia is your friend, don't feel ashamed of researching a reference you don't understand if you're that autistic about it; better yet, realize that a lot of the allusions are just there because it was what was on Melville's mind and a quick sort of shorthand, so to speak, or connection he made in his mind, and not the bulk of the story.

You also forgot Milton.

>realize I need to have read the Plato, Euclid, Aristotle, the Romans, the Holy Bible, the Stoics, Shakespeare, Spinoza, Leibniz, and Descartes in order to understand all of the references

No you don't, you need a passing understanding of the most basic versions of their ideas. For example:

Plato: Forms, essence, platonic object
Aristotle: Morals, aristotelian logic, being qua being
Holy Bible: ok here you probably gotta know most of the major stories
Stoics: le go with the flow
Shakespeare: here also you should have read a few plays
Spinoza: le pantheistic God-monad
Leibniz: Universal monad substance, best of all possible worlds
Descartes: Dualism, Method of doubt, rationalism

There's your cliffsnotes guide buddy-boy. Trust me Melville didn't have a particularly deep understanding of most of the philosophers either

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>>8892693
>He didn't spend a year starting with the Greeks
>He didn't spend a single year solely studying the bible
>He hasn't slowly and methodically progressed his way through the Western Canon
You shouldn't reach Moby Dick until you're at least in your mid 30s. You're never gonna make it desu.

>>8893061
>not reading it once in your twenties and again in your thirties

Welcome to /lit/. Is it your first day, or have you been with us before?

>>8893061
It's people like this that will be 'reading' their whole lives without ever reading something they truly enjoy because they wanted to feel like they conquered literature instead of appreciated it

>>8893132
The only way to "win" against /lit/ is to not play.

I remember three years ago autists were forcing the meme of "read the Bible or you'll never get litterature". Dont do it

>>8893155
>meme