It’s impossible to know what goes on in someone else’s head. One of the things I love about reading novels is that I actually get a glimpse of the inner workings of someone else’s mind. Research has found that reading character-driven books can help develop empathy. And the world can always use more empathetic people.

As much as I love reading sci-fi and fantasy, I do sometimes read more realistic books that let me see our actual world from a new perspective. Reading John Green’s Turtles All the Way Down is not always a lot of fun to read, but I don’t think it’s supposed to be. After all, there is no way that experiencing the thought spirals of someone suffering from OCD should be fun.

Whenever I watch a movie based on a book I’ve read, I almost always prefer the book to the movie. But in the case of Turtles All the Way Down, I enjoyed the movie more.

I almost didn’t finish the book. I started the book in December 2023, but I stopped halfway through. I eventually decided to finish the book when I learned that the movie was coming out in May 2024. I’m so glad I finished the book before watching the movie.

Turtles All the Way Down was the first John Green novel I read. I did enjoy his non-fiction book Anthropocene Reviewed. I’m not a big fan of YA. I’m more of a sci-fi fan. I read and loved two sci-fi novels by Hank Green, John Green’s brother.

For most of the book, I was pretty sure I would give it a rating of 3/5 stars. But John Green nailed the ending, and I ended up giving it a 4/5 stars.

First, Some Warnings

Hank Green posted a hilarious YouTube video called “Everything Wrong With Turtles All The Way Down.” One of his (joking) complaints was that there are no turtles in this movie. Which is true. So be warned: if you’re expecting turtles, you will be disappointed.

Obligatory spoiler warning: I will be discussing the book and the movie. If you choose to read beyond this point, consider yourself warned.

Horror warning: if you hate horror movies, this book and movie might not be for you. Even though there are no external monsters in this story, the internal intrusive thoughts are pretty scary.

Easter Eggs

• Dr Pepper: In Hank Green’s YouTube funny review of the Turtles All the Way Down movie, he said that it was very unrealistic that anyone would order Dr Peppers for people whom he just met. Hank Green says that after all, “Dr Pepper is no one’s favorite soda.” The joke is based on the fact that John Green loves Dr Pepper. He wrote a glowing review of Diet Dr Pepper in Anthropocene Reviewed. There’s also a hilarious vlogbrothers YouTube video called “Dr Pepper Enthusiast John Green Taste Tests Dr Pepper and Its Misbegotten Pretenders.”
• We’re Here Because We’re Here song: In the movie, Aza’s mother sang her the song “We’re Here Because We’re Here” when she was in the hospital. John Green mentioned this song in Anthropocene Reviewed as a song that gave him hope. He recounted how British soldiers started singing this song in Christmas 1916 to the tune of “Auld Lang Syne” with different words: “We’re here because we’re here because we’re here because we’re here.” John Green’s friend Amy used to ask the audience to sing the song with her. He said:

And although it’s a profoundly nihilistic song written about the modernist hell of repetition, singing this song with Amy, I could always see the hope in it. It became a statement that we are here — meaning that we are together, and not alone.

• OCD: John Green suffers from OCD. In one of his interviews promoting the movie, the cast took a Buzzfeed quiz to find out which John Green character they were. John Green’s results showed that he was Aza. And the actress who played Aza said that the test was accurate, because Aza is John Green. John Green has said that Aza is the character he has written who was most like him. If you want to take the test yourself, check it out here. At the end of my Kindle copy of Turtles All the Way Down, there is an interview with John Green where he says:

It can be really isolating to live with mental illness, not least because it’s so hard to explain to people around you what’s going on, and I wrote the book partly because I wanted to give people in my life a sense of how obsessive thought spirals can consume one’s consciousness.

Things I Liked in the Book and Movie

• Star Wars Fanfic: As a proud sci-fi nerd, I was happy to see nerd representation in the character of Daisy. I don’t read a lot of fanfic anymore, but I loved the depiction of a creative, intelligent teenager like Daisy as she passionately discussed her Chewbacca/Rey romance fanfic. Here’s a snippet of the funny dialogue from the book:

“It’s not a question of whether Chewie was human, Holmesy; it’s a question of whether he was a person.” She was almost shouting. She took Star Wars stuff quite seriously. “And he was obviously a person. Like, what even makes you a person? He had a body and a soul and feelings, and he spoke a language, and he was an adult, and if he and Rey were in hot, hairy, communicative love, then let’s just thank God that two consenting, sentient adults found each other in a dark and broken galaxy.”

• More Friendship, Less Romance: When I was reading the book and I realized that the super wealthy Davis Pickett was going to be the love interest, I cringed. I’m not a fan of YA romance. I was especially not that excited to read a story of a Prince Charming saving a damsel in distress. I should have given John Green more credit. The story does include the budding relationship between Davis and Aza, but the story is also a lovely exploration of the friendship between Aza and Daisy.
• Realistic Ending: As I mentioned previously, I was so pleased with the ending of the story. I know that it is very hard to get the ending just right. It’s tempting to give the characters either a happy ending or a tragic ending. But realistic endings are my favorite. From the same John Green interview in the Kindle version of the book:

I wanted Aza to find a path toward a rich and fulfilling life without experiencing some miracle cure.

Differences from the Book That I Liked

• Northwestern professor: In the book, Aza is obsessively reading Wikipedia’s entries about the microorganisms inside humans. But in the movie, Aza is obsessed with a Ted Talk on YouTube by a Northwestern professor. I loved the scene where Aza actually meets the Northwestern Professor.
• Turtles All the Way Down story: The discussion about the phrase “turtles all the way down” was earlier in the movie. In the book, the story was told by Daisy after the car accident near the end of the book. In the movie, it was the Northwestern philosophy professor telling the story. The turtle story is about a woman who challenges a scientist who has given a presentation about the history of Earth. The woman disagrees with the scientist and says that the truth is that the Earth is a flat plane resting on the back of a giant turtle. When the scientist asks her what that turtle is resting on, she says that it’s turtles all the way down. In the John Green interview, he explains why he used that story as a metaphor for Aza’s experience:

I love that story first because so often when I am caught in an obsessive thought spiral, I am looking for the bottom turtle, for some certainty that will allow me to cinch shut my worries. But there is no bottom turtle, because it’s turtles all the way down!

• Davis’ dad: In the book, Aza and Daisy figured out that where Davis’ dad was hiding and died. They don’t actually know how Davis’ dad died. Davis and his brother tip the police anonymously, and the police recover the body. That’s why Davis has to leave. In the movie, Davis’ father committed suicide and left a note for his sons. This was a stronger resolution to what happened to Davis’ dad in the book.
• Daisy: In the book, we’re stuck in Aza’s head, and I wasn’t sure if Daisy was only using Aza because she needed a ride. Daisy was much more likeable in the movie. It helped that the actress playing Daisy was very charismatic.
• John Green’s cameo: I knew that John Green had a cameo in this movie, because John Green mentioned it in one of his social media posts. Apparently, he was so nervous about his one line in the movie that he promptly forgot his line the first time they shot the scene. I wonder if he was nervous about his cameo as a volleyball coach because he worried that he would be so terrible that he would be cut from the movie (which is what happened to his cameo in “The Fault in Our Stars.”). Again from Hank Green’s funny video: “Whoever they got to play the volleyball coach is just not very good.”

In Conclusion

While I was watching the most intense part of the movie, I realized that one of the reasons that I had a hard time finishing the book when I first started reading it was because in some ways, it’s a horror story. It was stressful for me to read the part where Aza is in the hospital room and the voices in her head are telling her that she needs to drink the sanitizer soap. But because I already knew that she ends up okay in the end, watching the movie did not make me as anxious.

The real world can be a pretty scary place. It’s easy to get stuck in our own thought spirals these days. Sometimes, it feels like no one can possibly understand all the hardships we are facing. And I suspect most of us have days when we feel helpless against the enormity of the challenges we face as a society. Reading books and watching movies like Turtles All the Way Down help remind me that we don’t have to face these challenges alone. Turtles All the Way Down can be challenging to read/watch, but I believe it’s worth the effort.

I usually feel anxious about going to parties. I don’t enjoy small talk. I cringe internally when someone starts a conversation with, “What do you do for work?” In his book, How to Know a Person, David Brooks says:

The worst kinds of questions are the ones that don’t involve a surrender of power, that evaluate: Where did you go to college? What neighborhood do you live in? What do you do? They imply, “I’m about to judge you.”

Asking about your job can be perceived as judgmental. It seems like a roundabout way to ask how successful you are and how much money you make. Are you worth talking to?

I would much rather ask someone, “What’s your favorite book?” I bet I could tell more about someone from their reading habits than their current job status.

But I don’t usually ask people about their favorite book, because I don’t want to assume they enjoy reading. According to a Washington Post article, 51% of Americans read less than 2 books a year on average.

I am always thrilled when I meet a fellow bookworm and can discuss the books we love. I love discovering new books.

One of my favorite books is Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. I first read Moby Dick as a teenager for fun. I read it because I was obsessed with X-Files, and there were so many references to the novel. For example, Scully named her dog Queequeg, who was a harpoonist in Moby Dick.

I love books and TV shows where someone is obsessed with something. In X-Files, Mulder was obsessed with solving mysteries and uncovering conspiracies. In Moby Dick, Ahab is obsessed with getting revenge on a whale who bit off his foot.

Ann Patchett on TikTok

I heard about the novel Dayswork from author Ann Patchett. Every Friday, she releases a TikTok video as part of her “New to You” series. She recommends a book that isn’t necessarily new. But if you haven’t read it yet, it’s new to you.

When she recommends Dayswork, Ann Patchett mentions that she and her friend Sophie Blackall loved Moby Dick. That got my attention. They describe Dayswork as a love letter to Herman Melville and Moby Dick and a portrait of a marriage during the pandemic.

Dayswork is a short novel beautifully written by a married couple. Chris Bachelder is a novelist, and Jennifer Habel is a poet. The novel is written in chunks of prose and describes the fictional couple and their daughters at home as they quarantine. While they are stuck at home, the wife becomes obsessed with the research she is doing on Herman Melville.

I bought the book right away. Ann had me at Moby Dick.

Dayswork

Sometimes, I read books and wonder who the target audience of the book was. In the case of Dayswork, my guess for the ideal reader is:

1. Someone who enjoyed reading Moby Dick or someone who is considering reading Moby Dick
2. Someone who is curious about the relevance of a 19th century American novel to our times
3. Someone who loves fun facts and gossip about authors

Although it is hard to predict what people will hate, it may not appeal to:

1. Someone who expects a fast-paced plot in their novels
2. Someone who doesn’t want to think about what it was like to live through the Covid quarantining period
3. Someone who doesn’t have any interest in Herman Melville or classical literature

Fun Facts about Herman Melville

Herman Melville was born to a wealthy family. But when he was 12 years old, his father died, leaving the family in debt. He dropped out of school and started working at 12 years old. He worked as a clerk and a school teacher, but he didn’t enjoy either job.

When he was 21 years old, he got a job on a whaling ship and proceeded to have some adventures described in Dayswork:

At age twenty-three, having deserted ship in the Marquesas Islands, lived among cannibals, escaped onto an Australian whaler, joined the crew’s mutiny, been briefly imprisoned, escaped onto another whaler, sailed the South Pacific, then quit whaling forever, Melville worked briefly as a pinsetter at a bowling alley in Honolulu.

I love the image of Melville working at a bowling alley in Hawaii. So young, trying to figure out what he wants to do next. I usually picture Melville as mad old Ahab, shaking his fist at the sun. But we were all young once. Even Melville.

Melville would spend the rest of his life trying to balance the need to make money with the desire to create great art. He had some success as a writer when he wrote his popular travel adventure books (Typee and Omoo) based on his own experiences. But he yearned to write something different, partly because he didn’t want to be remembered as someone who lived with cannibals. Unfortunately, his next books, Mardi and Moby Dick, did not do well.

After the commercial failure of Moby Dick, Melville worked on writing Clarel:

Clarel, the longest poem in American literature, is eighteen thousand lines of iambic tetrameter. Longer than the Iliad, longer by far than Paradise Lost.

I took a class on Melville in college, and I had never heard of this poem. Melville worked on Clarel over a period of 4 or 5 years.

At any rate, he wrote it primarily during the evenings while working six days a week as a customs inspector at the Port of New York, where he earned four dollars per day. (In nineteen years he never received a promotion or raise.)

The fact that he worked in a job for 19 years without a promotion or raise makes me sad. But maybe Melville did not expect a reward for doing his day’s work. In a letter from Melville to Nathaniel Hawthorne, Melville says:

People think that if a man has undergone any hardship, he should have a reward; but for my part, if I have done the hardest possible day’s work, and then come to sit down in a corner and eat my supper comfortably — why, then I don’t think I deserve any reward for my hard day’s work — for am I not now at peace? Is not my supper good? My peace and my supper are my reward, my dear Hawthorne.

Melville spent so many years obsessed with writing something important and philosophical. But he was often hampered by the practical needs of providing for his family. He seemed to share some characteristics with Ahab: brilliant, but on the edge of madness in his obsession.

Melville was a complicated man who was selfish and aspired to greatness. He was also a terrible gift giver:

Melville bought books when he was broke and when he was dying, that he bought books as gifts for family members that he wanted for himself.

This makes me think of Homer Simpson buying his wife a bowling ball, even though she did not bowl. Sometimes, we think writers are godlike in their ability to create moving stories. But in the end, they’re only human after all.

Work

During the pandemic, I remember learning that Shakespeare wrote King Lear during a pandemic. The bubonic plague had closed the theaters, and Shakespeare had some time to work on new plays.

I wonder how many novels were written during the pandemic. A lot was written during the pandemic about who was considered essential workers. People were also divided into those who could do their work remotely, and those who did not have that luxury.

Dayswork poses the question of what is “real work”. I suspect that if you met Melville at a party and asked him what he did for work, he would not say that he was a customs inspector. Melville thought of himself as a writer trying to explore deep thoughts. He was a “thought-diver.”

Melville was obsessed with earning the respect of fellow “thought-diver” Nathaniel Hawthorne:

In Hawthorne, Melville found a member of what he called the corps of thought-divers, that have been diving & coming up again with blood-shot eyes since the world began.

Melville dedicated Moby Dick to Hawthorne, “in token of my admiration for his genius.” Dayswork describes the moment after Melville presents Hawthorne with a copy of Moby Dick:

In the Biographer’s account, Hawthorne was “profoundly moved” by Melville’s gift. Enveloped in tobacco smoke, the two men, the Biographer wrote, “lingered long after the dining room had emptied, each reverential toward the other’s genius, each aware that when they met again, in West Newton, in Boston, or wherever their Fates might bring them together, they would not fall at once into these present terms of intimacy.” “Take it all in all,” Volume 1 concludes, “this was the happiest day of Melville’s life.”

The wife in Dayswork feels dismayed by the idea that Melville’s happiest moments was with Hawthorne and not his family:

Of course I didn’t like the idea that on the happiest day of Melville’s life, his wife was at home nursing their newborn son despite suffering from a breast infection so painful the walls in her room had been draped with sheets because the pattern of the wallpaper made her dizzy.

I can relate with the fictional wife’s frustration with a society that glorifies the genius of great men while minimizing the work women do in the domestic sphere. I often wonder why I love Moby Dick so much when there are hardly any women in it. I suspect it is because the themes explored in Moby Dick are universal: obsession, revenge, friendship, loyalty, and morality.

Final Thoughts

Although Moby Dick was a commercial failure in his time, it is a tribute to its writer that it is still being read and adored more than 170 years later.

If you have never read Moby Dick but are considering it, reading Dayswork might inspire you to give Moby Dick a try.

I will end with a couple of rave reviews included in Dayswork:

“Been rereading Moby-Dick again,” wrote Ralph Ellison in a letter to Albert Murray, “and appreciating for the first time what a truly good time Melville was having when he wrote it.” The book, Ellison noted, “is pervaded by the spirit of play, like real jazz sounds when a master is manipulating it.” “The thing’s full of riffs, man.”

And also:

The opening paragraph of the first chapter of Moby-Dick is, according to Ta-Nehisi Coates, “the greatest paragraph in any work of fiction, at any point, in all of history.” “And not just human history, but galactic and extra-terrestrial history too.”

If that doesn’t convince you to read Moby Dick, I don’t know what will.