“MOBY-DICK” intimidates. Its hundreds of pages of rich, sometimes inscrutable prose, assembled in service of a quest story that’s heartbreaking if not existentially ruinous, make up the kind of novel you’ll want to impale, attach to an oak plaque and hang over the mantel when you finish. If you finish. Much like its namesake, it is not easily vanquished.

Beginning Friday evening, though, more than 160 New Yorkers are giving it a shot — out loud and in succession. Amanda Bullock, the director of public programming at the AIDS advocacy group Housing Works, and Polly Bresnick, a writer and teacher, have organized a marathon-style reading of the Melville masterwork. It will unfold over three days at three independent bookstores — Word, in Greenpoint, Brooklyn; Housing Works Bookstore and Café, in SoHo; and Molasses Books, in Bushwick, Brooklyn. While there are other “Moby-Dick” marathons each year around the country, with bearded, bespectacled acolytes flocking to seaside ports, sipping from thermoses of grog and readjusting their sweaters at the podium, this, organizers say, is New York City’s first. And it includes local actors (Paul Dano, Zoe Kazan), authors (Sarah Vowell), visual artists, journalists, critics and assorted Melville fans who responded to an open Twitter call. (Ms. Bullock lovingly referred to the roster as a “nerd fest.”)

“We thought it would be cool to do one in New York because of Melville’s relationship to the city,” Ms. Bullock explained. The year is not particularly significant, but this weekend was picked to honor the date the book was first published in the United States, Nov. 14, 1851.