David Shaerf is a documentary filmmaker and professor at Oakland University in Michigan. His film about "Moby-Dick" and the artists it has inspired, "Call Us Ishmael," is distributed by Gravitas Ventures and is available on Blu-ray and DVD through Amazon and on streaming services iTunes and Google Play. The views expressed here are his. Read more opinion on CNN.

(CNN) Along with so many, I was first subjected to "Moby-Dick" when I was still a teenager, being forced to read it as part of an American literature survey course. I was not a fan of it-- I certainly could never have anticipated I would one day make a film about it. I thought it was a laborious read. Its narrative was glacially slow, and the titular antagonist doesn't even make an appearance until the final pages of the novel. I resented the book and was quite glad to put it down and (hopefully) never touch it again.

David Shaerf

I didn't get it, but looking back, I wanted to. I picked up a tattered copy of the book some years later, determined to understand what all the fuss was about, and it had an immediate impact on me. Even by the opening paragraph of the book spoke to me in ways it could not have possibly in years prior. The narrator, in a fit of ennui, tells of his desire to head to sea as a remedy to his depression. I get this. What better medication for boredom or anxiety could there be than to run off to an adventure on the romantic high seas? There is a universality to the glumness that Melville spoke of - even he says, "almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me."

My desire to delve deeper into the world of "Moby-Dick" led me to embark on a documentary film project speaking to the community of people who carry on the legacy of Melville's masterwork. While I was filming "Call Us Ishmael," I went to the New Bedford Whaling Museum where there is an annual marathon reading of the book. Patrons of the museum spend a full 24 hours reading their well-thumbed copies out loud to one another. It's an opportunity for those who share this obsessive love of the book to connect with one another -- like a family reunion, almost.

Here's something you may not know: "Moby-Dick" is hilarious, as well as moving. It's also an important book as we stand here in 2019.

It was only upon returning to the book that I came to understand that Melville wasn't simply writing about whales, he was writing about the human condition (and whales): "All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life."

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