A Herman Melville line from Moby-Dick played on repeat in his head, like a scratched CD track: There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke. He’d been trying to work his way through the novel for months, reading a page here and there. Not because it wasn’t readable, but because it struck Boychuck as a book you lived with for a while.
