Moby Dick

Rating:
Summary: Pequod
Review: Casting about for something to read my harpoon fell on The Whale or Moby Dick. My whale line quickly went taut as the book sounded and I found myself submerged in the strange awesome world of whaling. Shakespeare, Bible, yes their influence is strong on Melville but he makes the language his own as you sail through this leviathan of a novel. Melville's beauty of language has few equals in literature except the two afore mentioned. The digressions into all aspects of whales and whaling do remove one from the story, yet you are returned to the narrative of the Pequod richer for having digressed. Not recognized as a great book until about 75 years after publication it makes you wonder what future classics published in our time are laying around unread.

Rating:
Summary: A deep and profound book, not for the casual reader
Review: Moby-Dick is the book everyone has heard of, but few people have actually read. Like many people who tackled it with an open mind, I loved it. But the first time reader who approaches it without warning will often abandon ship before they get very far on the voyage. Its easy for readers of modern fiction to make the relativily easy transition to the 19th Century literature of Mark Twain or Charles Dickens, but woe unto them who are unprepared to navigate the rocks and shoals of Melville's oceans! To appreciate Moby-Dick you must love the English language with a passion, for no other book demostrates better what can be done with it. Moby-Dick contains an ocean of ideas, many of them so subtle you won't see them on a first time reading. So, plan you voyage carefully, or else you might get stove in by Melville's whale and abandon the hunt for true and beauty far too early.

Rating:
Summary: It really is worth reading
Review: About a year ago I was talking with a good friend about the books we'd each been reading recently, and the topic of Moby Dick came up. "What!" she exclaimed. "You've never read Moby Dick? You've got to read it! It's great! And it has all kinds of geeky stuff about ships and whaling that you'd like." I made some excuses about it being archaic but she browbeat me into agreeing to check it out.

I found a number of editions at the local bookstore but this edition, with the Rockwell Kent illustrations, caught my eye, so that's the one I bought. As I was paying for it the clerk at ther register said "That's my favorite book!" Maybe my friend was on to something after all.

I started reading it that evening, and you know what? This *is* a great book. The language may be a bit flowerly and long winded for those raised on post-modern New Yorker short stories, but it's a very vivid language that makes characters and scenes come alive. Melville's narration of both the external world of the shop and the internal world of the characters is compelling in a way that few if any modern authors can acheive.

Moby Dick is a classic for reasons that go beyond having been assigned as school reading since the beginning of time. If you never got beyond reading the Bartlett's Notes when Moby Dick was assigned to you in high school, this is as good a time as any to dive into the real thing.

Rating:
Summary: Finally, the edition this book deserves
Review: My comments pertain to the Norton Critical Edition of Moby Dick, second edition (published 2001) ISBN 0393972836. If this review is appended to a web-page showing some budget paperback edition, please know that I am reviewing a specific edition of the novel, not just the novel itself. The ISBN above will take you to the only edition of Moby Dick you should need, the edition that (if you're going to read the book, and not just go through the pages in order) you'd do well to get ahold of.

In fact, I'm not reviewing the novel at all, really. I believe Melville's book is America's greatest novel, and the closest thing to King Lear or Job that our nation has produced. Despite our ideals, our country has yet to embrace the full measure of Moby Dick's numinous democratic vision. At any rate, I want to remark that a reader really requires help to truly wrestle with all of this book's artistry and implications. I sure did, as did a class of 11th graders who tackled the book with me several years ago. The vast range of literary, historical, and artistic sources that Melville draws from, and the manner in which he works them deeply into the structure and meanings of his book, are staggering, and in the 2nd Norton Critical Edition, Moby Dick and its readers finally get the volume they always deserved.

Before the publication of this edition in 2001, the best choice was Harold Beaver's over-annotated (and very agenda-driven) old Penguin edition. That's the one my class and I used years ago. The previous Norton edition (which I used to supplement Beaver) was solid in its reprinting of Melville's sources and of through-the-years scholars and critics, but it was carelessly and lightly annotated. This 2001 volume, however, is fully and richly footnoted, as most of our civilization's great works require (Paradise Lost, The Divine Comedy, Shakespeare, Homer), and all of the useful illustrations and glossaries from the older Norton edition have been retained. The text of the novel itself is the painstakingly reconstructed Northwestern-Newberry text, and the editors (Hayford and Parker) are justly renowned, even groundbreaking Melville scholars. Don't be daunted by all this: due to their hard work, this great edition allows greater pleasure and ease with Melville's tremendous book.

The critical articles include almost every review from the book's initial publication, plus more recent explorations of Melville's composition of the book and also of many interpretive angles. There is also a nice selection of Melville's seafaring sources, another good article listing all the books which he drew on (including both familiar classics and obscure resources), Melville's letters from the period, numerous voices from the 19th century pre-Moby-Dick debate about Melville's stance on Christianity, and a recent discovery--a self-portrait by a South Pacific islander, a portrait that may have been Melville's source for Queequeg. That image graces this exemplary edition's cover.

I rank this among the top titles of the Norton Critical Edition series, up there with their volumes on Heart of Darkness, Paradise Lost, The Jungle, Shelley, Great Expectations, Oroonoko, and the new Macbeth and Othello volumes. In short, this new edition allows us a nearly complete experience with Moby Dick, which is the best service a scholarly edition of this novel can provide, and it is the only way to really read the book. Spring for a few more bucks and get the right copy of Moby Dick.

Rating:
Summary: Open your mind
Review: Last year I decided to expand my intellectual horizons by reading a series of American literary classics. Moby Dick was the first book on my list. It took me three months to finish this legendary story and, looking back on it now, I must say that it was worth every minute. To others who are considering this effort I say this: buttress your stamina and open your mind. This is not John Grisham or Tom Clancy. You will be reading high literature and you will be required to think. If you do so, Ishmael, Ahab and crew will open a window to some of mankind's most profound questions: Is it better to fight evil or promote virtue? Where is the line between honorable justice and blind vengeance? Do bad things happen because the universe is evil or just indifferent? The true pleasure to be derived from reading this book can be found by closing its pages every so often and reflecting on the questions that it will raise in your mind. A completely different experience than breezing through the latest best-seller, but much more rewarding.

Be aware that Moby Dick is many types of books in one. It is part adventure story, part sermon, part history of whaling, part encyclopedia of whale anatomy, part metaphysical allegory. Expect it to change periodically as you move through it, be receptive to each part, and don't try to compartmentalize it as any one particular type of work.

Rating:
Summary: Sooo slow... but great!
Review: This book moves along at a pretty slow pace but at the same time manages to keep you stuck to the pages somehow. If you've got the time and the vocabulary then i suggest picking up this classic novel.

Rating:
Summary: Moby Dick
Review: I thought Moby Dick was a great novel, and I liked Herman Melville's style of writing. The overall plot is great. The book starts out with a very famous line," Call me Ishmael" read by the main character of the book, Ishmael. He is the narrorator of the novel and I think he is a very interesting guy to read about. He is a sailor who has sailed a lot, but never on a whaling ship. Then he stays at a whaler's inn, and rooms with a harpooner from the south pacific named Queequeg. He was my favorite character in the book. He is covered in tattoos and has strange habits and rituals. When they first meet, Queequeg is very hostile, infact the first words he says to Ishmael are "Who-ee debil you?" "Speak-ee, or dam-me, I kill-ee!" when he doesn't know that Ishmael is sleeping in his hotel room. But through out the novel Ishmael gets to know him, and learns that Queequeg is a very nice guy and they become very close friends when they decide to look for work on the same whaling ship. There are many other character in the novel, especially when they go out to sea, on the Pequod ship. That is the whaling ship they join, led by captain Ahab. He is the ship captain; he lost his leg on his last journey to sea, in a situation with a sperm whale. His peg leg that he uses to stand on is made from the bone of a whales jaw. He explains with saying " Aye, it was that cursed White Whale who gave me this dead stump I stand on now. And I'll chase him round the Cape of Good Hope and round Cape Horn and round the flames of Hell before I give up. And this is what ye have shipped for, men, to chase that White Whale over all sides of the earth until he spouts black blood and rolls over! What say ye, men? Are ye brave enough to join hands in it now?" This speech gets everyone on the ship pumped up and ready to kill the whale. The rest of the book is great, they hunt the white whale with many turns and subplots. I enjoyed reading the book a lot and thought it was one of the best I have ever read.

Rating:
Summary: MOBY
Review: I thought that Moby Dick was an all around inspiring novel that everyone should read. All though I had to high of expectations for the book, which made me not enjoy it as well as I thought I would. All though the sensational job of Keir Dullen the narrorator made me feel that I was on the ship, and that I was actually along side Captain Ahabs hunting the white whale. Through out the whole book captain Ahab's and his crew is in search of Moby Dick the white whale. They travel half way around the ocean in search of him and hopefully can hunt and kill him. All though you don't actually read about Moby Dick being seen in the book till the end which emphasizes his presence a lot more and make's it more interesting to read, and also more exciting.

Rating:
Summary: Long winded at times, but beautiful
Review: Although it took me a while to get through this book, I am very glad that I read it. As a warning, Melville can be very long-winded and wordy at times. You will find that he could have said what he wanted to with far fewer words, while still using the colorful language he is known for. But then again, the feeling that this book is so long may in fact be on purpose to really give the reader the sense of how long whaling voyages were in those days.

But even with those seeming flaws, the book is very rewarding. Melville's writing really is beautiful. He is able to bring alive Captain Ahab and his obession for revenge that has become so popular. The other passengers on the ship also come alive as Melville uses colorful dialogue and humor. And as you are taken on the journey with Ishmael, you learn a great deal about whaling.

If you have the time and patience, I recommend this book to you. If you start it, stick with it - you will be glad you did. Now that I have finished it, I look forward to reading it again (because I know which parts I can skip past and which parts I want to read again more thoroughly).

Rating:
Summary: Everyone Should Read This One
Review: This book represents a microcosm of society, artfully done by
Melville. He takes time to develop the characters, wonderful.

Jeffrey McAndrew
author of "Our Brown Eyed Boy"