Moby Dick
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Herman Melville
Herman Melville (1819-1891) was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet who received wide acclaim for his earliest novels, such as Typee and Redburn, but fell into relative obscurity by the end of his life. Today, Melville is hailed as one of the definitive masters of world literature for novels including Moby Dick and Billy Budd, as well as for enduringly popular short stories such as Bartleby, the Scrivener and The Bell-Tower.
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Reviews for Moby Dick
5,636 ratings200 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This is it, folks--the Great American Novel. It doesn't get any better--or more experimental--than this.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5In my view, America's greatest novel. Timeless, poetic and emblematic of a once great industry dominated by Americans.
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5I don't suggest reading this unless you enjoy torture or just want to say "yah, that's right - I read Moby Dick!" I just do not like this book at all.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Read this out of a sense of duty, while recovering from surgery for a deviated septum, which required laying on my back for a week. I thought it was pretty good.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The most beautiful modern edition of an undisputed masterpiece. Stranger, funnier, and more varied than I imagined, this edition literally stopped people on the street. A homeless man in San Francisco stopped and admired the book, smiling as he told me he "needed that".
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5On my should read list list but avoided successfully for 45 years. Between the Philbrick recommendation and the lauds to Hootkins' narration, I finally succumbed and spent nearly a month of commutes taking the big story in, and the next month thinking about the story. SO glad I listened rather than skimmed as a reader. It has everything;. Agree with Floyd 3345 re fiction and nonfiction shelving
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Considered an encyclopedic novel. Never heard of this before but it fits. In this story based on the author's whaling voyage in 1841, Moby Dick, or the white whale, inspired by Mocha Dick and the sinking of the whaleship Essex. The detail is very realistic and in this book you not only learn about whale hunting, you learn about whales and porpoise and ships. Chapters are dedicated to lengthy descriptions. On the ship, the reader is introduced to a cultural mixture of class and social status as well as good and evil and the existence of God. Melville used narrative prose but also songs, poetry, catalogs and other techniques from plays. The story is told through Ishmael. Plot:Ishmael meets up with Queequeg and shares a bed because the inn is overcrowded. Queegueg is a harpooner and they sign unto the Pequod. Characters:Ishmael: Queequeg:Starbuck: first mateStubb: second mateTashtego: Indian from Gay Head (harpooner)Flask: third mate,Daggoo: harpooneer from Africa. Captain Ahab: Fadallah: a harpooneer, Parse. Pip: black cabin boyThe boats: Jeroboam, Samule Enderby, the Rachel, The Delight and Pequod. These ships all have encountered Moby Dick. Ahab is obsessed with revenge against Moby Dick because of the loss of his leg which the whale bit off. There are several gams or meetings of whale boats. Ending with a tireless pursuit of the whale without regard to the dangers it exposes the sailors of Pequod. Starbuck begs Ahab to quit. Structure:narrator shapes the story by using sermons, stage plays, soliloquies and emblematic readings. The narrator is the aged Ishmael. There is also narrative architecture. There are 9 meetings with other boats.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Societally we all know the basic story. I learned a great deal about whaling, and the times.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Read this in tandem w/ friends, a full spectrum of opinion was thus established. My friend Roger Baylor left an indelible smudge on his own critical reputation for his hapless remarks. I tended to the ecstatic edge of said continuum. I did find the novel's disparate elements an obstacle at times, but, then again, I had to temper my velocity anyway as it was a group read: there's been sufficient snark from my mates for a decade now about plowing through a selection in a weekend. There was such a foam of detail and philosophy. The terrors of thunder and the groan of salty timber abounded. The stale breath of morning would often freeze upon the very page. The majesty of Melville's prose was arresting, it held, bound -- it felt as if one's focus was being nailed to the mast like Ahab's gold. Moby Dick is such a robust tapestry, epic and yet filigreed with minor miracles and misdeeds.
I do look forward to a reread. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5No one ever seems to discuss this, but there are parts of this exquisitely written tome that are hilarious!
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5very good, very long
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Worst book ever
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Quite difficult to read - but enjoyable
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A good story shouldn't take that long to tell.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A perfect novel. Pure genius.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5One of my favorites! The opening paragraph pretty much sums up why I read it.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I listened to the unabridged text as an audiobook over a couple of months of long drives to and from work, and what struck me most was the structure of this huge book: the story of Ahab is essentially a short story which Melville has fragmented and embedded in thousands of tons of blubber! That is bold. I think it's also interesting that when this long text finally ends we're actually not quite half way through Melville's source--the sinking of the Nantucket ship Essex in 1820. Within this context, Melville's colossal text is actually a truncated and abbreviated version of his primary source! Again, wild to think of it. Because I love to hear stories even more than to read them, because the rhythms have a physical presence when read aloud, I highly recommend the text as an audiobook. That Melville would devote an entire chapter to "The Blow Hole" is outrageous in many ways, but also an interesting listen. A friend told me her professor advised her class to "not wait for the whale" as they were reading the novel. That's hard advice to take. The book is definitely a unique experience.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Meeslepend, maar de onderbrekingen storen toch. Die vertonen trouwens sterke gelijkenis met methode van Herodotus: kritische bevraging van verhalen. Het geheel is niet helemaal geloofwaardig, en vooral het slot is nogal abrupt.Stilistisch vallen de abrupte veranderingen in register en perspectief op, waarschijnlijk toch wel een nieuwigheid. De stijl zelf doet zeer bombastisch, rabelaissiaans aan. Tekening Ahab: mengeling van sympathie en veroordeling
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5(Original Review, 1981-02-10)This is a book that knows how excessive it is being.It took me three times through it to realize that it's the greatest novel in the English language. Of course it has everything wrong with it: the digressions, the ludicrous attempt to out-Shakespeare Shakespeare, the prose through which a high wind blows perpetually, the fact that it's written almost entirely in superlatives . . . Never mind, it's overtopped by wave upon wave of genius, exuberant, explicative, mad in its quest to be about everything at once and to ring every bell in the English language. Yes it can be tough going sometimes, but here's an all-important hint: read this book aloud.Needless to say, it would never get across an editor's desk intact today. And today we're poorer for that. Something else: no one ever seems to mention how madly funny it is. It's vital to tune in to the humour, I think, if you are to enjoy reading it.“The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym” is a good book, but doesn't quite rank with Poe's best work, and the "Scarlet Letter" has always seemed to me so narrowly provincial in its concerns that I've never been tempted to read it. But "Moby-Dick" is something else. Strange, digressive, sprawling, experimental, playful... it's a book that takes chances - and sometimes falls flat on its face: for example, not all the digressions work and, as someone already mentioned, the attempts at Shakespearean language are often laughable. But in the end, I think it has to be recognised as a monumental effort.First encountered it at 19 as required reading and found the tale enjoyable but the digressions on whaling baffling and tedious. Some year’s later I am two-thirds of the way through re-reading it. It now seems as though the tale is the most minor and uninteresting part of it. The supposed digressions are the bulk of the work.It is beyond marvellous. The language rings with echoes of the Bible and Shakespeare but the high style is mingled with prose of such simple directness that it barely feels like a 19th century novel at all. For me, what rises endlessly from the pages is a sense of joy and wonder - the sheer joy of being alive and experiencing each moment as something new, and the profound wonder of man in the face of a natural world he may come close to conquering but will never fully understand.I still find myself struggling to get my head around what it all means and quite why it is so great. But great - immense, staggering, colossal - it surely is. A mighty work."Moby-Dick" will be the equivalent of the Hogwarts Sorting Hat at the gates of Heaven. If you liked it, you'll go straight through the gates. If you didn't, well....As a side note, whilst “Moby Dick” remains his towering achievement, works such as "Bartleby the Scrivener", "Billy Budd & Pierre", or "The Ambiguities" are all remarkable in their own ways, whilst utterly different. Alongside "Bartleby", though, for me, Melville's other astonishing achievement is "Confidence Man" - a breathtakingly modern, or perhaps better, "post-modern" book, almost entirely without precursor. Imagine a literary "F is for Fake", & you begin to get a tiny hint of what Melville is up to. Of all writers, he seems to me to be the one who, standing at the very cusp of that moment when literary form is about to find itself cast in stone, is able to invent, it seems as if with every work, a wholly new literary form in & for each of his works. In every sense of the word, his writing & his works are excessive, just as Faulkner's Willbe, & those of Gaddis, &, to an extent, Pynchon. This "excessiveness" is, for sure, a predominantly American phenomenon.
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5This is the real thing, not the easy reading shortened versions available in any imaginable media. It drags for almost 700 pages with little to almost nothing happening at all, just long and boring descriptions of whales and life at sea. So, before venturing into it, remember there thousands of far better and more important works to read and enjoy.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5While I am no stranger at all to the digressions and slow pace of 19th century literature, much of which I love, I am unwilling at the moment to read any more of this after reaching the 40% mark. The basic theme of Captain Ahab's monomanic revenge against the sperm whale that cost him his leg is fair enough, and some of the characters are vividly described, but there is just too much information dumping on the history of the whaling industry, different types of whales, and other digressions, and very many (mercifully) short chapters which seem opaque and purposeless. A pity as the novel started well, and the first few chapters, in particular Ishmael's first meeting with Queequeg, were humorous. I may return to this some day, but there are just too many other books to read and enjoy.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This is the best book I've ever read. An amazing adventure. I couldn't believe what I was reading at times! The way the main character delivers his humor is just exquisite. I had to look up a lot of words, a lot of Biblical references, and a lot of American history to understand parts of the book, and that was a great educational experience.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5good book.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Incredible.
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5i tried. god did i try.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I have written a review of Moby Dick elsewhere, still in the first flush of my love for the book, but I'm going to add a note here, as well.
Moby Dick is my On the Road. It's my Dead Poet's Society, my Catcher in the Rye. My book where disillusionment and carpe diem combine, my book where wonder meets pain. You know that quote people love from On the Road? "The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live..."? I liked that quote too, when I was in high school. I mean, Kerouac, for me, was a high school phenomenon.
As an adult, I have a greater sense of adventure - and a deeper melancholy, and the opening lines of Moby Dick captured that for me:
Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball.
The language felt so fresh to me, as I read, so urgent and modern and prickly and vivid. I think it's one of the greatest books ever written and I could have drowned in the prose. - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I listened to the free Librivox recording of the book. The reader did an excellent job.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Beautiful when focused on the actual story. The whaling chapters took me right out.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This is an odd book. It has some passages that I found really very uncomfortable, the chase of the sick whale, for example, turned my stomach. Having said that, it serves to illustrate the mindset and the times they lived in. Did I enjoy it? Not sure. But I did always want to know how it ended (badly). Starts and ends as a first person tale, not sure it always fits into that category though.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Despite Ishmael's astonished and disquieting first encounter with Queequeg, readers may feel a gentle entry,an easing into his life as a whaler. Then comes an awakening call from Jonah and Father Mapple:"You cannot hide the soul!"Melville alternates unflinching minutely detailed descriptions of whale hunting, hideous cold-bloodedkillings, and god-awful butchery with his own kind hearted compassion, love, and respect for animals.One imagines him pondering, as he did the nursing whale babies who were spared death, all the three-legged Easter lambs that never get a chance at life. He skewers foie gras, leading this reader to wonder if President Obama read the volume before his visit to Paris restaurants.Though daunting reading at times for animal lovers, the unrelenting pursuit of the divine, sublime, mysticLeviathan monster sphinx overrides the parts to skim over.Midway through the lengthy book when interest may be waning, Melville changes directions, introducing GAMS, and the plot takes off again. Insights into various characters' humor, mysteries, and personal life philosophies abound as we are all "lashed athwartship." The rhythms of the ship, the winds, weather, and waves interweave in this fateful journey toward the "...spouting fish with a horizontal tail."And, woe be to anyone who interrupts the reading of the Three Chapter Chase!Rockwell Kent's many illustrations not only illuminate the long text, but move it smoothly along. As well,we see the world from the whale's eye...and, we want that Great White Whale to make it, to live,sounding deep and free and far from Ahab's treacherous commands to "...spout black blood.""Speaking words of wisdom, let (them) be..."For readers who inquire about the relevance of this old Classic, Ishmael offers up the headline he sees:"BLOODY BATTLE IN AFGANISTAN"The climax of Moby-Dick is perfect. For me, the ending was not. Why did the bird need to be nailed to the mast of the dying ship?Why are we left with this horrifying image? What does it mean?Other mysteries > The significance of the three mountains (rooster, tower, and flame) on the Spanish doubloon?Why the out-of-place, contrived conversational "Town-Ho"episode is included? It would not be missed.> What Fedallah gets out of joining Ahab? With his gift of prophecy,he must have known before departure that he would be doomedwith the rest, so what was he seeking? Unlike Hecate and the three witches who did not join MACBETH in his castle, Fedallah strangely casts his lot with The Captain.(The book I read was unabridged - this Great Illustrated Classics is the only Rockwell Kent title I could find.)