A little over a year ago, during my time in the New England Literature Program, I was part of a group that attempted to read Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick” aloud — all in one go and without stopping. We set sail during dinner and weathered relentless seas until dawn the following morning. Armed with a makeshift harpoon, our fearless leaders guided us through various scenic locations across camp and in the harbor of Wolfeboro, New Hampshire as we continued to read.
“Call me Ishmael,” I wrote in my journal recounting the event. “This evening, a jolly crew boarded the good ship Pequod and set out to catch the white whale himself — MOBY DICK. The crew was most valiant in our journey but not even our strongest of harpoons could tame this beast. Into the sunrise, we brought home one half whale, battered and weary, and glad to be back on solid land.” As memorable as the experience was, though, if you asked me today to recall specifics of the half of the book we completed (or sorry — the one half whale we brought home), I wouldn’t be able to do it. One’s memory operates at suboptimal levels when it’s 2 in the morning and you’ve been reading lengthy cetology passages aloud for hours, it seems.
“Ulysses” this past April was different, having already completed it at a regular pace in English professor John Whittier-Ferguson’s James Joyce class before we began our 26-hour odyssey across Ann Arbor reading the book aloud in lieu of a final exam. But even so, by the time daylight broke and we’d crawled back to our classroom to finish the minimally punctuated stream of consciousness “Penelope” chapter, stumbling over words and letting innuendo slip noiselessly over our heads, there wasn’t a single fully lucid individual amongst us. The chapter and book, famously concluded with the words, “yes I said yes I will Yes,” ended the reading and permitted us to return home just as Leopold Bloom had done a few hours before. I walked back to my apartment disheveled and delirious, removed my “Bloomsday 2024” pin and took the best nap of my life before waking up to resume studying for finals.
This is the read-around, or reading marathon, a phenomenon infamous among book nerds, English majors and the like. It can take various forms, all of which involve members of a group reading a book (or lengthy text) aloud together, but in the spaces where I’ve partaken in them, the biggest and most rigidly adhered to rule is this: don’t stop reading. During a read-around, people will take bathroom breaks, have lengthy side conversations and sometimes enjoy full meals (we worked through about two chapters of “Ulysses” over dinner and drinks at Conor O’Neill’s Irish Pub), but throughout all the chaos, someone in the group must continue reading the entire time.
“Moby Dick” and “Ulysses” are examples of a ceremonial rendition of this olympic feat, where groups read entire books aloud and participants cater costumes and reading locations to fit book-related themes; but read-arounds exist in more casual and practical contexts, too. We did a lot of reading aloud at NELP — brief passages during class, Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” as an evening activity and even with an informal “Talk it Out Club” designed to collectively work through tougher chapters the night before a reading was due.
In many of my English classes, from elementary school popcorn reading to collegiate level creative writing courses, reading aloud has played a part. The concept of reading aloud is heavily supported pedagogically — it encourages slower and more focused reading, deeper comprehension and new approaches to a text (including reading aloud your own writing to catch mistakes you’d normally glaze over). Reading aloud to children in classrooms and at home are both encouraged — children reap distinct but intertwined benefits both from reading aloud themselves and from being read to. Speech pathologists have also found that reading aloud supports speech and language development, particularly for students experiencing language difficulties. I do find, though, that there is a significant difference between reading aloud and a read-around — think of reading aloud (the activity) as practice for a read-around (the main event).
Read-arounds are difficult, especially the ones that span entire nights or days, take a long time to complete and are thoroughly exhausting. But in nearly all of the read-arounds I’ve experienced, both long and short, participation has been completely voluntary. So why do students choose to sign up for such a challenging thing? When you’re reading aloud an entire book and slowly pushing yourself to delirium, what is there to be gained beyond the novelty of the experience? I may have been present for the reading of “Moby Dick” (with the exception of a couple brief moments where I dozed off), but I don’t entirely feel like I read it myself. That is to say, I couldn’t write a paper on it like I could if I’d read it independently at a slower pace.
I suppose some people sign up with the intention of simply having another book under their belt, especially a notoriously difficult one. Maybe that’s part of it — and truthfully, it is kind of cool to be able to say you read all of “Ulysses” out loud — but I don’t think comprehension was ever meant to be the focal point of the read-arounds I’m describing. It’s inevitable that through the sheer nature of reading a 600 or 700-page book all at once — overnight, while walking, while eating — there’s bound to be much you don’t fully absorb, especially in the final hours as the goal becomes “Let’s finish this godforsaken book as quickly as possible so we can go to bed.” What I do remember, though, about reading “Moby Dick” and “Ulysses” is how fun it was, even when it really wasn’t.
Novelty may have been the initial draw for me, not knowing much of anything about them before I signed up, but it was the undeniable sensation of togetherness that has made me want to partake in more. The best part about read-arounds, in this humble athlete’s opinion, is the sense of community that can only be developed by taking on such a ridiculous and challenging endeavor. It is a team sport, after all. Each person bears the collective responsibility to continue, to not stop reading and to motivate each other throughout. During the wee hours of the night, there were times when all but three or four people had fallen asleep. In those moments, it fell on those awake to continue reading and sustain a consistent pace, knowing that the workload might be balanced as others woke up, but that it just as easily might not be. The work of the team both superseded and supported the needs of the individual reader. In a cliched way, it felt kind of like “The Breakfast Club” — all in one room you had Greek lifers, co-op diehards, quiet loners, artists, STEM majors, athletes — nearly every sort of clique under the sun was represented, united by the common goal of finishing the damn book.
Regardless of where you came from, you can’t leave an experience like this one and not be bonded for life with the group you did it with. It feels like a secret society that we’re all a part of now. When participants of a read-around see each other on the street, they are obligated to tip their hat and offer a sly wink in greeting. Many of the people I’ve done a read-around with I may never see again, yet still we are bound by the ironclad ties of memory. The Bloomsday 2024 button will stay pinned to my curtains forever.
There’s also something to be said about a broader human desire to experience triumph over difficulty, an appeal which extends beyond the book-loving class. A lengthy read-around might not commonly be considered on par with summiting Mt. Everest or other physical feats that are widely accepted as challenging, but it’s a mental marathon all the same that requires substantial amounts of focus, determination and commitment. Maybe this is why people elect to partake in this frenzied activity — you really feel like you’ve accomplished something great by the time you’re done, even if said “something great” only holds genuine relevance to a niche group of people.
Frankly, I think read-arounds ought to be an official Olympic event. They are truly the book lover’s sport — the culminating achievement for any reader, just as the Olympics are commonly thought of as the highest level of athletic competition. Completing a read-around takes dedication and hard-work, which are both quintessential Olympic qualities, are they not? And, just like Michigan’s own Bo Schembechler said in his infamous 1983 speech, it’s all about “The team, the team, the team.” If you can envision a huddle of dweeby kids, half-asleep and reading aloud by Olympic torchlight in monotone voices as the crowd goes wild, then surely my point has been made. I’ll start sending around the petition now, and hopefully come summer 2028, we’ll be ready to go.
Statement Columnist Katie Lynch can be reached at katiely@umich.edu.
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