It is an extraordinary book, unlike any other I know of in English. Recently I decided to try again with the talking book version (this runs for something over 25 hours, about two and a half times the length of the average novel), hoping that an expert reading would hold me. Jean reports a similar experience or thinks she may have skipped through, rather than read it. I bought the handsome, map-festooned Penguin Classic version about 40 years ago, read several chapters but was turned back twice, perhaps three times. Same with me. I suspect that for many people TE Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1922) falls into the same category. In Woody Allen’s brilliant comedy Zelig (1983), the only regret psychotic chameleon Leonard Zelig has at the end of his life is that ‘I never finished Moby Dick’. Humphrey McQueen once claimed to have been the only person to have read Xavier Herbert’s massive novel Poor Fellow My Country (1975) from start to finish and I’ve never heard him contradicted. Tags: Humphrey McQueen/ Moby Dick/ TE Lawrence/ Woody Allen/ Xavier Herbert
The Godfather: Peter Corris on The Seven Pillars of Wisdom
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