Rating: 
Summary: A cross-cultural classic from the 19th century
Review: Herman Melville's "Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life" tells the story of a white sailor who lives for a time among the Typees, a native people of a Pacific island. According to a "Note on the Text" in the Penguin Classics edition, this book first appeared in 1846 in no less than four different editions."Typee" is a marvelous story of cross-cultural contact. It is also a fascinating glimpse at a pre-industrial culture; Tom (known as "Tommo" to the Typees) describes in detail the food, dress, tattooing, physiology, musical instruments, architecture, warfare, religious practices, and social customs of the Typees. The book is full of vividly portrayed characters: the gentle beauty Fayaway, the "eccentric old warrior" Marheyo, the talkative "serving-man" Kory-Kory, and more. Melville's prose style in "Typee" is irresistible: the writing is fresh, lively, and richly descriptive. There is a satirical thrust to much of the book. And there is a lot of humor; at many points I literally laughed out loud. Such scenes as the description of a wild pig's frustrated efforts to break open a coconut really showcase Melville's comic flair. A major theme of "Typee" is that of the "noble savage" (Melville actually uses the term). The narrator often wonders whether Typee life is in some ways better than Western life, and is quite critical of the work of Christian missionaries among Pacific Island peoples. The book is richly ironic, as Melville's narrator reflects on the problematic nature of cross-cultural observation: "I saw everything, but could comprehend nothing" (from Chapter 24). "Typee" is more than just a colorful travelogue or a philosophical reflection; it is also a genuinely exciting and suspenseful adventure story. Melville's story of a visitor to a strange alien world curiously anticipates a major theme of 20th century science fiction; thus a novel like Ursula K. LeGuin's "The Left Hand of Darkness" would make a fascinating companion text. Also recommended as a companion text: "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass," another 19th century American classic which casts a critical light on Eurocentric Christianity.
Rating:
Summary: A cross-cultural classic from the 19th century
Review: Herman Melville's "Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life" tells the story of a white sailor who lives for a time among the Typees, a native people of a Pacific island. According to a "Note on the Text" in the Penguin Classics edition, this book first appeared in 1846 in no less than four different editions. "Typee" is a marvelous story of cross-cultural contact. It is also a fascinating glimpse at a pre-industrial culture; Tom (known as "Tommo" to the Typees) describes in detail the food, dress, tattooing, physiology, musical instruments, architecture, warfare, religious practices, and social customs of the Typees. The book is full of vividly portrayed characters: the gentle beauty Fayaway, the "eccentric old warrior" Marheyo, the talkative "serving-man" Kory-Kory, and more. Melville's prose style in "Typee" is irresistible: the writing is fresh, lively, and richly descriptive. There is a satirical thrust to much of the book. And there is a lot of humor; at many points I literally laughed out loud. Such scenes as the description of a wild pig's frustrated efforts to break open a coconut really showcase Melville's comic flair. A major theme of "Typee" is that of the "noble savage" (Melville actually uses the term). The narrator often wonders whether Typee life is in some ways better than Western life, and is quite critical of the work of Christian missionaries among Pacific Island peoples. The book is richly ironic, as Melville's narrator reflects on the problematic nature of cross-cultural observation: "I saw everything, but could comprehend nothing" (from Chapter 24). "Typee" is more than just a colorful travelogue or a philosophical reflection; it is also a genuinely exciting and suspenseful adventure story. Melville's story of a visitor to a strange alien world curiously anticipates a major theme of 20th century science fiction; thus a novel like Ursula K. LeGuin's "The Left Hand of Darkness" would make a fascinating companion text. Also recommended as a companion text: "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass," another 19th century American classic which casts a critical light on Eurocentric Christianity.
Rating:
Summary: Classic South Seas story which has stood the test of time
Review: Herman Melville's style of detailed descriptions certainly comes though in this slim 210-page volume written in 1846. He describes life aboard ship, the geography of the island and the technical aspects of making clothing, tattooing and preparing food as well as many native ritual customs. This is all seen through the eyes of his lead character, Tom, called Tommo by the natives. The book put me right there with him, when, exhausted and starved, he and Toby, the other seaman he jumped ship with, find their way into the world of the Typees. The two sailors are treated well, but are kept virtual prisoners and there is apprehension throughout about the Typees' cannibal tendencies. In spite of that, there is also joy as Tommo views the simple and carefree life of the people he considers savages and contrasts it to life in the so-called "civilized world". The Typees seem perennially happy and content. They spend a lot of time amusing themselves as food is plentiful and there is not much work to do. Their lives are idealized so much that I found myself raising a quizzical eyebrow at times. But the story was so good and so well written that I didn't let it get in my way of enjoying the book, which must have been received with similar delight when it was published as it not only painted a picture of a better world, it appealed to everyone's sense of adventure. I loved the book, especially the social commentary. I found myself reading it quickly and at odd times during to day just to see what would happen on the next page. It sure was a good story and seems as fresh and meaningful today it when was published more than a century and a half ago.
Rating: 
Summary: Look Mom, I understand "Classic American Literature"
Review: I just finished Typee and enjoyed the book a great deal (I'm 38, male, and love reading for general education and enjoyment). A few months ago, I made a noble attempt to wade through Moby Dick (I jumped to the last chapter after about a quarter of the book) and I was curious to see if "early Melville" was any easier.
Typee is billed as both an adventure novel and as shocking anthropology. I found Typee well written, but a bit dense with long, detailed, descriptions about trees, landscapes, etc. that don't apply to characters, nor plot (and did put me to sleep). These long passages make it hard for me to call this an adventure novel, but this style seems to be standard fair when reading early American adventure novels (like "Last of the Mohicans" by J. F. Cooper). Reading Typee in 1997 doesn't produce the same moral outrage as it did when it was first published in 1846. But, looking for Melville's cultural observations and comparisons was a great part of what made Typee so very enjoyable. So, for me, it is isn't the adventure that makes the book worth reading, but the author's, and my own, observations and comparisons of different lifestyles. While reading Melville's observations on a primitive culture, I began to marvel at the his ability to transcend his culture and to describe the vastly different culture he had experienced. In Typee he writes about everything from eating raw fish, primitive idol worship, polyandry (multiple husband) marriages, and cannibalism, all without the negative judgment or superiority one might expect from an American in 1847. I must admire the observer when, discussing cannibalism, he writes: "But here, Truth, who loves to be centrally located, is again found between two extremes;..." When reading Melville's cultural observations he inspired me to keep an open mind. I also enjoyed Melville's comparisons between the island culture and his home culture. It is great fun to read Melville's comparison of the stress free, non-capitalistic islanders and the debtors prisons of America. It is unique to see that Melville was able to say maybe his culture isn't the best and that western influence might not be the best influence. He writes early in the book: "Thrice happy are they who, inhabiting some yet undiscovered island in the midst of the ocean, have never been brought into contaminating contact with the white man." But my greatest pleasure, when reading Typee, was in making comparisons between the changes in American culture since the books publication and today. To a buttoned-up, victorian society the descriptions of island women dressed only in tropical flowers must have been a mind bender indeed. However, to our post-flower child generation these descriptions seem tame. When Melville states: "The varied dances of the Marquesan girls are beautiful in the extreme, but there is an abandoned voluptuousness in their character which I dare not describe." it is hard to believe that he could describe something that our current generation hasn't seen in the movies (and with a PG-13 rating!). In conclusion, I encourage you to read Typee. I think it is an enjoyable book and today's readers can find the value of the book without having to get someone else to explain it to you. In addition, I believe that everyone can finish it and thereby allow you to proudly claim that you have indeed read Melville. And, once you have finished a "classic" and been able to see its value, you can begin to understand the common thread that caused your American Literature professor to label Melville, together with F. Scott Fiztgerald and Jack Kerouac, as one of the observers of American society. I am now off to read "The Great Gatsby" and "On the Road." - Anthony J. Godwin p.s. Did you know that Herman Melville wrote Moby Dick, but that Moby Dick never wrote him back!
Rating: 
Summary: Melville's first hit
Review: I read this book to get a better sense of Melville's abilities and his style. Having read Moby Dick, I was prepared for a complicated and somewhat dissolute read with great symbolism. Typee is none of that, though it has elements of the style that would, through Moby Dick make Melville post-humously famous. Written today, this book would not be a hit, though one can see why it was when it was published in the 1800s. The symbolism in Typee is not as substantive or immediately obvious as in MD, but it is present and gives this work more depth than is at first apparent. I don't know that I have an accurate sense of what Melville is all about after reading this and MD, and I would probably recommend one read Billy Budd or at least another novel in order to really get a feel for Melville.
Rating:
Summary: Melville's first hit
Review: I read this book to get a better sense of Melville's abilities and his style. Having read Moby Dick, I was prepared for a complicated and somewhat dissolute read with great symbolism. Typee is none of that, though it has elements of the style that would, through Moby Dick make Melville post-humously famous. Written today, this book would not be a hit, though one can see why it was when it was published in the 1800s. The symbolism in Typee is not as substantive or immediately obvious as in MD, but it is present and gives this work more depth than is at first apparent. I don't know that I have an accurate sense of what Melville is all about after reading this and MD, and I would probably recommend one read Billy Budd or at least another novel in order to really get a feel for Melville.
Rating:
Summary: A complex pastoral with anthropological tangents
Review: In Chapter 17 of this book, the narrator conveys his feelings about the differences between Western civilization and other cultures: "The term 'savage' is, I conceive, often misapplied, and indeed when I consider the vices, cruelties, and enormities of every kind that spring up in the tainted atmosphere of a feverish civilization, I am inclined to think that so far as the relative wickedness of the parties is concerned, four or five Marquesan islanders sent to the United States as missionaries might be quite as useful as an equal number of Americans dispatched to the islands in a similar capacity." This portrayal of primitive cultures as being more civilized than Western society is part of a long tradition, beginning at least with Montaigne's essay "Of Cannibals." This and other similar statements by Melville in this work caused quite a tempest in Europe and the United States, but one which was a gentle breeze, compared to the current storm raging in academia regarding the origins and validity of the terms "civilized" and "primitive." I am myself interested in the statement above for another reason. Some fifty years ago, a small group of inhabitants of the Marquesas Islands, in which this book is set, came across this romance. They had long before adopted Western ways, but these individuals decided to use Melville's work as a means to recreate the pastoral moment which the author had captured in this book. Such an effort was as feasible as would be an attempt to recreate the America portrayed in Norman Rockwell's paintings, but these islanders were convinced of the necessity and possibility of this act, and they reconstructed, with admirable accuracy, a past that had never existed. They gave up their new houses, their churches, their Western foods, for a lifestyle closer to that portrayed in this work, a large part of which consists of quasi-anthropological description of rituals, feasts, customs and dress. Naming children after characters in the book became common, though only in those regions in which the Melvilles, as they were called, were predominant, just as there are still a few adults named Rainbow and Sunflower in the U.S., a legacy of the hippie movement. And in keeping with the full spirit of Melville's portrait of the Marquesans, and inspired by the passage I cited above, several families did indeed move to the United States in order to proselytize their lifestyle to the Westerners whose ways these Marquesans had rejected. It is well known that their efforts failed, for the most part, both here and in their home country, but it was a happy accident that my interest in Melville led me to meet Fayaway, one of the descendants of that tribe of emigrants to the United States, and that she and I would soon after wed. As a result, I have become indoctrinated into the remnants of this culture; without either of us being true adherents to the religion, we observe its customs, much as agnostics celebrate Christmas. Our favorite part of the entire set of customs is to replay the Ritual of the Canoe from Chapter 18, as gently erotic now as when it was written, first in Hobomok Lake in Phoenicia, New York, and more recently in Malibu Lake, California. The puritanical fussbudgets in both neighborhoods were appropriately scandalized. As a result of my marriage to the living incarnation of the female protagonist of the romance, I am well familiar with this work, and must say that it is more nearly perfect, in its own way, than is Melville's masterpiece _Moby Dick_. It embodies many of the same themes as that larger work, and reveals, because of its imperfections, a deep glimpse into the author's mind and his longing for that tropical paradise where he sought Arcadia and found a nymph fit to his fancy. Rarely have adolescent male fantasies been given such a beautifully complex form, and if, as many have noted, the anthropological tangents detract from the narrative, it is helpful to recall that Melville was attempting create a fiction that looked like an authentic travel narrative, and that in any case those tangents can become of themselves interesting diversions, and commentary on the greater narrative. They even inspired a small group of South Pacific Islanders to fly from their homes and settle in the wilderness of the United States, in an effort to save us from our wicked ways.
Rating:
Summary: A young man in paradise with headhunters
Review: Melville was 22 in 1842 when he deserted a whaling ship in the South Pacific and was captured by a tribe of Tahitian headhunters. His first novel, "Typee," was borne from these experiences. Although his tale of life among the
savages proved hugely popular as an adventurous yarn,
the book is memorable for its anthrological observations
of primitive tribal life: the young girls preparing
breadfruit and frolicking in the crsytal blue seas,
the lazy weathered warriors wearing their tattoo masks and
lolling in huts. Some people banned the book
from libraries. Certainly they objected to naked island
girls engaging in free love, but what really angered
good churchgoing souls was the author's antagonistic
attitude towards missionaries. The book is America's first
indictment of colonialism and its withering effect
on native cultures. Observes Melville, "The sympathy which Christendom feels for them has, alas!, in too many instances proved their bane." The exuberance that runs
through these pages will wane for Melville in his later
years. None of his other great works will be as widely
read. He will be considered a failure, fall into debt,
suffer ill health. His son will committ suicide before
his eyes. No one will buy "Moby Dick"; the crisp, unopened copies of the first edition will lie in a warehouse until they are consumed by fire. The author will lapse into depression, madness. He will, finally, stop writing altogether and live in obscurity and poverty until his death. No one expected his name
to be remembered.
Rating:
Summary: Melville's most important work?
Review: The earlier reviewers said much of what I wanted to say, and for the most part, said it better. I'll try not to repeat them. One of the fascinating things about this book is how Melville could go back and forth from describing the Typee people as the world's happiest, living the best lives, to his own perspective that to become one of them would nevertheless be a most horrible fate. Near the end of his sojourn with them, their tatoo artist-priest becomes increasingly insistent upon tatooing the lids of Melville's eyes, but it is not the imagined physical pain of this that terrifies Melville: it is the fear that he will lose all ties to Western Civilization, which, almost in the same breath, he so effectively criticises. As an American school teacher in rural East Africa, I often noticed this love-hate relationship to our own culture among my fellow volunteers. Like Melville, we almost all "went native" and tended to see the best in the Africans' lifestyle. Like him, we constantly contrasted it with Western Civilization, and found the primitive life the clear winner. And yet, like Melville, we nearly all came home. In my case, when I did, I found that, after two years, American faces looked ugly, overstressed and mean compared to the African faces I had been looking at. Yet I stayed home, and they gradually started to look better. I was initially depressed by the filth, the environmental degradation, the aimlessness of so many lives back here in the developed world. I suspect this might have been Melville's experience too, and part of what drove him back out to sea time and again. And yet, in the end, home is home, and we all come back. You should read this book. Much of it, at least, is fast paced, exciting, educational, and profoundly thought provoking. Despite its rough edges, it may have been Melville's most imortant work. I'll let you know after I finish his sequel: Omoo.
Rating:
Summary: Melville's most important work?
Review: The earlier reviewers said much of what I wanted to say, and for the most part, said it better. I'll try not to repeat them. One of the fascinating things about this book is how Melville could go back and forth from describing the Typee people as the world's happiest, living the best lives, to his own perspective that to become one of them would nevertheless be a most horrible fate. Near the end of his sojourn with them, their tatoo artist-priest becomes increasingly insistent upon tatooing the lids of Melville's eyes, but it is not the imagined physical pain of this that terrifies Melville: it is the fear that he will lose all ties to Western Civilization, which, almost in the same breath, he so effectively criticises. As an American school teacher in rural East Africa, I often noticed this love-hate relationship to our own culture among my fellow volunteers. Like Melville, we almost all "went native" and tended to see the best in the Africans' lifestyle. Like him, we constantly contrasted it with Western Civilization, and found the primitive life the clear winner. And yet, like Melville, we nearly all came home. In my case, when I did, I found that, after two years, American faces looked ugly, overstressed and mean compared to the African faces I had been looking at. Yet I stayed home, and they gradually started to look better. I was initially depressed by the filth, the environmental degradation, the aimlessness of so many lives back here in the developed world. I suspect this might have been Melville's experience too, and part of what drove him back out to sea time and again. And yet, in the end, home is home, and we all come back. You should read this book. Much of it, at least, is fast paced, exciting, educational, and profoundly thought provoking. Despite its rough edges, it may have been Melville's most imortant work. I'll let you know after I finish his sequel: Omoo.
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