Moby-Dick (Illustrated by Mead Schaeffer with an Introduction by William S. Ament)

By Herman Melville

A renewed interest in “Moby-Dick” in the early 20th century would help to establish it as an outstanding work of Romanticism and the American Renaissance, firmly placing it amongst the greatest of all American novels. Based on the real life events depicted in the “Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex” and the legend of “Mocha Dick”, an albino sperm whale whose killing is described in the May 1839 issue of “The Knickerbocker” magazine, it is the story of a wandering sailor by the name of Ishmael and his voyage aboard the whaling ship the “Pequod.” Commanded by the monomaniacal Captain Ahab, a man who is obsessed with revenge against a white whale of enormous size and ferocity, the “Pequod” and its crew are tasked with the singular goal of the capture and killing of the whale, whatever the cost. “Moby-Dick” is a novel rich with symbolism, full of complex themes, whose composition defies convention. A commercial and critical failure during the author’s lifetime, this classic whaling adventure would ultimately secure the literary legacy of Herman Melville. This edition includes an introduction by William S. Ament, a biographical afterword, and is illustrated by Mead Schaeffer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Digireads.com Publishing
• Release date: Jan 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9781420952278

Herman Melville

Herman Melville (born Melvill); (August 1, 1819 September 28, 1891) was an American novelist of the American Renaissance period. Among his best-known works are Moby-Dick (1851); Typee (1846), a romanticized account of his experiences in Polynesia; and Billy Budd, Sailor, a posthumously published novella. At the time of his death Melville was not well known to the public, but 1919, the centennial of his birth, was the starting point of a Melville revival. Moby-Dick eventually would be considered one of the great American novels.

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MOBY-DICK

By HERMAN MELVILLE

Introduction by WILLIAM S. AMENT

Illustrated by MEAD SCHAEFFER

Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

By Herman Melville

Introduction by William S. Ament

Illustrated by Mead Schaeffer

Print ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-5226-1

eBook ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-5227-8

This edition copyright © 2015. Digireads.com Publishing.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Cover Image: Moby Dick, English School, (20th century) / Private Collection / © Look and Learn / Bridgeman Images.

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CONTENTS

Introduction

Etymology

Extracts

MOBY-DICK

Chapter 1. Loomings

Chapter 2. The Carpet-Bag

Chapter 3. The Spouter-Inn

Chapter 4. The Counterpane

Chapter 5. Breakfast

Chapter 6. The Street

Chapter 7. The Chapel

Chapter 8. The Pulpit

Chapter 9. The Sermon

Chapter 10. A Bosom Friend

Chapter 11. Nightgown

Chapter 12. Biographical

Chapter 13. Wheelbarrow

Chapter 14. Nantucket

Chapter 15. Chowder

Chapter 16. The Ship

Chapter 17. The Ramadan

Chapter 18. His Mark

Chapter 19. The Prophet

Chapter 20. All Astir

Chapter 21. Going Aboard

Chapter 22. Merry Christmas

Chapter 23. The Lee Shore

Chapter 24. The Advocate

Chapter 25. Postscript

Chapter 26. Knights and Squires

Chapter 27. Knights and Squires

Chapter 28. Ahab

Chapter 29. Enter Ahab; to him, Stubb

Chapter 30. The Pipe

Chapter 31. Queen Mab

Chapter 32. Cetology

Chapter 33. The Specksynder

Chapter 34. The Cabin-Table

Chapter 35. The Mast-Head

Chapter 36. The Quarter-Deck

Chapter 37. Sunset

Chapter 38. Dusk

Chapter 39. First Night Watch

Chapter 40. Midnight, Forecastle

Chapter 41. Moby Dick

Chapter 42. The Whiteness of the Whale

Chapter 43. Hark!

Chapter 44. The Chart

Chapter 45. The Affidavit

Chapter 46. Surmises

Chapter 47. The Mat-Maker

Chapter 48. The First Lowering

Chapter 49. The Hyena

Chapter 50. Ahab’s Boat and Crew. Fedallah

Chapter 51. The Spirit-Spout

Chapter 52. The Albatross

Chapter 53. The Gam

Chapter 54. The Town-Ho’s Story

Chapter 55. Of the Monstrous Pictures of Whales

Chapter 56. Of the Less Erroneous Pictures of Whales, and the True Pictures of Whaling Scenes

Chapter 57. Of Whales in Paint; in Teeth; in Wood; in Sheet-Iron; in Stone; in Mountains; in Stars

Chapter 58. Brit

Chapter 59. Squid

Chapter 60. The Line

Chapter 61. Stubb Kills a Whale

Chapter 62. The Dart

Chapter 63. The Crotch

Chapter 64. Stubb’s Supper

Chapter 65. The Whale as a Dish

Chapter 66. The Shark Massacre

Chapter 67. Cutting In

Chapter 68. The Blanket

Chapter 69. The Funeral

Chapter 70. The Sphynx

Chapter 71. The Jeroboam’s Story

Chapter 72. The Monkey-Rope

Chapter 73. Stubb and Flask Kill a Right Whale; and Then Have a Talk Over Him

Chapter 74. The Sperm Whale’s Head—Contrasted View

Chapter 75. The Right Whale’s head—Contrasted View

Chapter 76. The Battering-Ram

Chapter 77. The Great Heidelburgh Tun

Chapter 78. Cistern and Buckets

Chapter 79. The Prairie

Chapter 80. The Nut

Chapter 81. The Pequod Meets the Virgin

Chapter 82. The Honor and Glory of Whaling

Chapter 83. Jonah Historically Regarded

Chapter 84. Pitchpoling

Chapter 85. The Fountain

Chapter 86. The Tail

Chapter 87. The Grand Armada

Chapter 88. Schools and Schoolmasters

Chapter 89. Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish

Chapter 90. Heads or Tails

Chapter 91. The Pequod Meets the Rose-Bud

Chapter 92. Ambergris

Chapter 93. The Castaway

Chapter 94. A Squeeze of the Hand

Chapter 95. The Cassock

Chapter 96. The Try-Works

Chapter 97. The Lamp

Chapter 98. Stowing Down and Clearing Up

Chapter 99. The Doubloon

Chapter 100. Leg and Arm

Chapter 101. The Decanter

Chapter 102. A Bower in the Arsacides

Chapter 103. Measurement of the Whale’s Skeleton

Chapter 104. The Fossil Whale

Chapter 105. Does the Whale’s Magnitude Diminish?—Will He Perish?

Chapter 106. Ahab’s Leg

Chapter 107. The Carpenter

Chapter 108. Ahab and the Carpenter

Chapter 109. Ahab and Starbuck in the Cabin

Chapter 110. Queequeg in His Coffin

Chapter 111. The Pacific

Chapter 112. The Blacksmith

Chapter 113. The Forge

Chapter 114. The Gilder

Chapter 115. The Pequod Meets the Bachelor

Chapter 116. The Dying Whale

Chapter 117. The Whale Watch

Chapter 118. The Quadrant

Chapter 119. The Candles

Chapter 120. The Deck Towards the End of the First Night Watch

Chapter 121. Midnight.—The Forecastle Bulwarks

Chapter 122. Midnight Aloft.—Thunder and Lightning

Chapter 123. The Musket

Chapter 124. The Needle

Chapter 125. The Log and Line

Chapter 126. The Life-Buoy

Chapter 127. The Deck

Chapter 128. The Pequod Meets the Rachel

Chapter 129. The Cabin

Chapter 130. The Hat

Chapter 131. The Pequod Meets the Delight

Chapter 132. The Symphony

Chapter 133. The Chase—First Day

Chapter 134. The Chase—Second Day

Chapter 135. The Chase.—Third Day

Epilogue

Introduction

I

HERMAN MELVILLE

All ambitious authors, wrote Melville in 1849, should have ghosts capable of revisiting the world, to snuff up the steam of adulation, which begins to rise strengthening as the Sexton throws his last shovelful on him—Down goes his body and up flies his name.{1}

But Melville’s name did not go up for twenty-eight years after his death in 1891. The hundredth anniversary of his birth, however, was the occasion of a new study of his life, the rediscovery of his work, and his election by acclamation as one of the few immortals of American letters. Since 1919 a knowledge of Melville and his chief works has become indispensable to all students of literature and to the intelligent general reader as well.

Thanks to Raymond M. Weaver{2} and others, the outstanding facts of Melville’s life are now well known. But no final interpretation of his brooding and untamed spirit has yet been made. His mind contained within itself elements too diverse and dynamic and waged with itself too long and intense a struggle to permit of easy analysis or academic classification.

On August 1, 1819, at No. 6 Pearl Street, New York City, Herman Melville was born, the third of eight children. His parents were scions of the best American stock. Allen Melville, his father, inherited a substantial estate from Major Thomas Melville and enjoyed extensive travel in Europe before marrying and settling in Albany. In 1814 Allen married Maria Gansvoort, daughter of General Peter Gansvoort of Revolutionary fame. After a few prosperous years in Albany, followed by waning fortunes in New York, the family returned to Albany where the father died, leaving his wife and eight children practically penniless.

Herman studied in Albany Academy and clerked in the New York State Bank for an uncertain length of time while his family were moving from house to ever cheaper house. Then, three years after Richard Henry Dana shipped before the mast for the sake of his health and a trip around the Horn, Herman Melville, disappointed, as he said, in several plans which I had sketched for my future life and under the necessity of doing something for myself, united with a naturally roving disposition, went down to the docks in New York harbor and shipped aboard the Highlander, merchantman, outward bound for Liverpool. A high-strung, imaginative, and utterly inexperienced youth of seventeen, Melville underwent the hardships of life at sea before the days of steam and saw with pained vision the cruel sufferings of the wretched poor, living and dying near the docks of England’s great industrial port.

Twelve years later (in 1849) these experiences were simply and vividly reported by Melville in Redburn, one of the first and most sharply realistic portrayals of a youth’s apprenticeship to the sea. So excellent is the account that John Masefield places it as one of his favorite stories of the life of the sailor. In spite of this belated praise from a fellow rover and author, the book has suffered a strange and prolonged neglect.

Wellingborough Redburn, as Melville calls himself, went down to New York from the back country, carrying only an old fowling piece, which he pawned for two dollars and a half to supply himself with a red woolen shirt, a tarpaulin hat, a belt, and a jackknife. Provided only with these articles at a time when the sailor had to furnish his entire equipment, the young gentleman signed on as boy for the princely wage of three dollars a month, and spent the day before sailing in wandering with an empty stomach along the river front. Once on the water, in spite of nausea, nostalgia, and a cordial hatred for the scum of the earth who made up the remainder of the crew, Redburn learned to keep his feelings to himself and to do his part. The description of life at sea is vivid enough, but only the pen of a Dostoyevsky can equal the macabre naturalism of the death of Miguel Saveda, with wormlike alcoholic flames flickering phosphorescent over his face and burning white on the letters of his name tattooed on his arm; of the madness and death of Jackson, who fell headlong from the yard, and with a long seethe, plunged like a diver into the sea; and of the misery, vice, and death in the shadow of the Liverpool docks.

Back in his native country again, Melville spent the next three years (1837-1840) in obscurity, teaching in country schools and attempting to write according to contemporary polite taste for undistinguished periodicals. The single voyage in an ordinary merchantman had given him material for an intimate narrative of sailor life, but, still mentally asleep, he wrote conventionally fanciful Fragments from a Writing Desk, distinguished only by their unusual abundance of scattered literary allusions.

By the end of 1840 Melville was again restless, not to say despondent. Having little or no money in his purse, and nothing particular to interest him on shore, Melville went down to New Bedford, then the capital of the whaling industry, and shipped in the forecastle of the Acushnet, sailing January 3, 1841, for a jaunt around the world after whales. Although, in the winter of his discontent, when it was damp, drizzly November in his soul, he used the voyage as his substitute for pistol and ball, he could not bear the conditions—worse than suicide—aboard the whaler. Mr. Weaver’s summary of the fate of the crew gives some insight into life aboard this vessel of iniquity:

Of the twenty-seven men who went out with the ship, only the Captain, the Second Mate, a Boatswain, the Cook, the Cooper, and six of the mongrel crew (one of which made several futile attempts to escape) came back home with her. The First Mate had a fight with the Captain and left the ship; the Carpenter and four of the crew went ashore to die,—another went ashore spitting blood, another to commit suicide.—With this company Melville was intimately imprisoned on board the Acushnet for fifteen months.{3}

It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that Melville conspired with his mate Toby (Richard Tobias Greene) to desert on the island of Nukuheva in the Marquesas Islands. To escape capture and recommitment to the tortures of the Acushnet, Toby and Melville scaled the mountains which divide that part of the island into three main valleys, with the intention of hiding in the friendly valley of Happar until means of escape should be provided. Instead, they descended by mistake into the valley of Typee, inhabited by a tribe of cannibals wholly uncontaminated by association with civilization.

The story of that escape and that sojourn is recounted in Melville’s Typee (1846), the first of the long procession of South Sea idylls which became popular with Stevenson and his followers and have since run wild in cheap story magazines and the movies. The adventures of Melville and his mate and the picture of a beautiful and unspoiled race living in their valley paradise give this story a breathless interest which the increasingly self-conscious imitations lack, and make it unquestionably the freshest and most fascinating narrative of the Pacific islands. The story of that stay among the Typees, of Fayaway, the first and brightest siren of the southern seas, and of Melville’s eventual escape need not be retold, for anyone who cares will read the classic tale itself. It is sufficient to point out that the originality of the book consists in the sympathetic insight with which Melville views the life of this primitive people, and in the detachment which made him dissatisfied with vegetating forever in this land of ease and noble savages.

From the blessings and imprisonment of Typee, Melville was rescued by the Julia, another whaler no better than the first and inhabited by a collection of vagabonds described most humorously in the first part of Omoo (1847), the book of his wanderings among the Pacific archipelagos. Chief among these dregs of marine life was Dr. Long Ghost, with whom Melville loafed while his injured leg was healing. Implicated with the crew, who instituted a general strike, Melville and the Doctor were tried before the British consul at Papeete and confined in the Calabooza Beretanee, the English jail, a native house which proved to be infinitely preferable to any whaling vessel. The mutineers remaining obdurate, the Julia finally sailed off with another crew, leaving Melville to investigate the life of the islanders, which, by this time, was a strange compound of native habits, external sobriety acquired under missionary influence, and more or less secret depravity shared with the riffraff from the navies of all nations. After several months Melville left Dr. Long Ghost on the island and shipped aboard a whaler which took him to Honolulu.

Just what his next adventures were is not known. Certain it is, however, that he soon found himself aboard the frigate United States, sailing home around the Horn to arrive in Boston in October, 1844. Six years later Melville gave a detailed picture of this ship in White-Jacket, or the World in a Man-of-War (1850). A fascinating account it is of life in the American navy before the age of steam and steel. Clothed in a white canvas coat Melville served as a maintop man under the immediate orders of Jack Chase, captain of the station, and embodiment of all the virtues developed in a noble nature by discipline, responsibility, and the hard life of the sailor. There from his post near the top of the mainmast Melville could alternately survey the ship careening below him and lose himself in reverie in the immensity of sea and sky. Most intense are the accounts of a flogging, of his own narrow escape from a like fate, and of his fall from a yardarm a hundred feet down to the scudding water.

Endowed with a magnificent physique, perfect health, and utter fearlessness, Melville made a good enough sailor. But sea life, as a profession, did not interest him. Neither, with all his restlessness, did mere traveling on the face of the waters satisfy him any more than life among the savages. While the routine of sailor life kept his body busy, the vastness of the ocean, its monotony and, at the same time, its endless variety, caught up his mind and turned loose his imagination. Melville was, as he confessed in White-Jacket,

. . . of a meditative humour, and at sea used often to mount aloft at night, and, seating myself on one of the upper yards, tuck my jacket about me and give loose to reflection. Then, to study the stars upon the wide, boundless sea, is divine as it was to the Chaldean Magi, who observed their revolutions from the plains.

And it is a very fine feeling, and one that fuses us into the universe of things, and makes us a part of the All, to think that, wherever we ocean-wanderers rove, we have still the same glorious old stars to keep us company; that they still shine onward and on, forever beautiful and bright, and luring us, by every ray, to die and be glorified with them.

Ay, ay! we sailors sail not in vain. We expatriate ourselves to nationalize with the universe; and in all our voyages round the world, we are still accompanied by those old circumnavigators, the stars, who are shipmates and fellow-sailors of ours—sailing in heaven’s blue, as we on our azure main.

In the Berkshires, too, a few years later, he felt the cosmic consciousness:

This all feeling, though, there is some truth in. You must often have felt it, lying on the grass on a warm summer’s day. Your legs seem to send out shoots into the earth. Your hair feels like leaves upon your head. This is the all feeling.{4}

Melville was not, however, a pantheist; contemplation or reverie was for him only a part of life. What plays the mischief with the truth is that men will insist upon the universal application of a temporary feeling or opinion.{5}

Having fraternized with hardships, savages, and stars, experienced all these adventures, and acquired along with them an astounding collection of odd bits of information about strange men and strange places, Melville returned to Albany, where family and friends urged him to put the romance of his life into a book. Perhaps the very effort of writing awoke him to self-consciousness. At least, until this time, he writes to Hawthorne, I had no development at all, while from my twenty-fifth year I date my life.{6}

But in Moby-Dick the credit for completing his education is otherwise recorded:

And, as for me, if, by any possibility, there be any as yet undiscovered prime thing in me; if I shall ever deserve any real repute in that small but high hushed world which I might not be unreasonably ambitious of; if hereafter I shall do anything that, upon the whole, a man might rather have done than to have left undone; if, at my death, my executors, or more properly my creditors, find any precious MSS. in my desk, then here I prospectively ascribe all the honour and the glory to whaling; for a whale ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.

This coming to age of his mind, whatever brought it about, did not bring to him the peace which arises from accepting the universe or from completing a pleasing and systematic philosophy of life. Instead it made him aware of the comic or tragic ironies of life, of the depths of his dissatisfaction with conventional complacency, of the margin of mystery in nature, and of the inexplicable perversity of fate in managing the lives of men. In the series of books he now produced under pressure of financial need and inner necessity, his detachment from the accepted ways and his strivings to solve the mystery of life become increasingly manifest.

Typee (1846), the first of the series, is the sunniest and least rebellious. But even here, in defending the right of the Typees to the uninterrupted enjoyment of their native culture, he implied at once the futility of missionary effort and the iniquity of corrupting the islanders with all the vices and evils of civilization.

The second part of his criticism was largely ignored—certainly by the vicious adventurers who were the cause—but the few unsympathetic references to the effects of missionary effort provoked strenuous counter attacks which did much to embitter the writer at the opening of his career. The offensive parts were suppressed, but Omoo (1847), published early the next year, repeated the offense with more detail and shared the effects of the counterblast. Still, both books were comparatively successful both in England and the United States where they were simultaneously published.

In the glow of this success Melville married Elizabeth Shaw, daughter of Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw of Massachusetts, an old friend of the family, and moved to New York City. There with the aid of his wife and his sister as copyists Melville set intensely to work producing Mardi and Redburn, both published in 1849 by Harper & Brothers, who sponsored his American editions.

Mardi reversed the formula of the first two volumes of adventure. Not long ago, states Melville in the Preface, having published two narratives of voyages in the Pacific, which, in many quarters, were received with incredulity, the thought occurred to me, of indeed writing a romance of Polynesian adventure, and publishing it as such; to see whether the fiction might not, possibly, be received for a verity; in some degree the reverse of my previous experience. Like Erewhon this Utopia starts off as a most realistic and fascinating narrative of adventure—often the most interesting section of the philosophical romances of this type. The hero of Mardi, with his old Norse shipmate Jarl, deserts from a whaler and in a small boat starts to cross the Pacific Ocean to the happy islands of the south. On the way they come upon a strange craft inhabited only by the two survivors of some bloody massacre or encounter—Annatoo, a Tartar, a regular Calmuk of a domineering woman, and Samoa—Heaven help him—her husband. Later the deserters take to their small boat again and ultimately reach the isles, not of the blessed, but of a strange collection of philosophers and motley originals, among whom the hero searches for Yillah, a maiden from Oroolia, the Island of Delight. But the search from island to island of the archipelago of Mardi—as fantastical places as Swift’s Laputa—is futile. Instead of Yillah, to obtain whom he had in his first encounter killed her guardian, Taji finds Hautia, the vampire, who robs him alike of his love and his happiness. Now he is dogged by the three pale sons of him I had slain to gain the lost maiden, sworn to hunt me round eternity. The end of the book is as haunting as that of the more famous Moby-Dick:

Now, I am my own soul’s emperor; and my first act is abdication! Hail! realm of shades!—and turning my prow into the racing tide, which seized me like a hand omnipotent, I darted through.

Churned in foam, that outer ocean, lashed the clouds; and straight in my white wake, headlong dashed the shallop, three fixed spectres leaning o’er its prow; three arrows poising.

And thus, pursuers and pursued fled on, over an endless sea.

Mardi is full of ironical humor, extravagant discussion of everything from the vanity of all human illusions to the immortality of whales. In this potpourri there is plenty to interest lovers of the curious and all those who would speculate about the ironies of life. But the reviewers fell upon the book with hideous accord. Blackwood’s called it a rubbishing rhapsody entitled ‘Mardi,’ and the Dublin University Review damned it as one of the saddest, most melancholy, most deplorable and humiliating perversions of genius in the language.

While these books were being published Melville was hard at work writing White-Jacket, the manuscript of which he took with him in the fall of 1849 to London where he hoped to find a publisher and to obtain better terms than he could expect at home. After interviewing several publishers and taking a brief trip to Paris and the Rhine, Melville placed the book with Bentley, receiving £200 for the first edition of 1000 which came out the next spring.

On his return he moved with his family to Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where they settled at Arrowhead, a farmhouse commanding a view of the Berkshire hills dominated by Greylock—the circle of stars cut by the circle of the mountains. That winter he wrote:

I have a sort of sea-feeling here in the country, now that the ground is all covered with snow. I look out of my window in the morning when I rise as I would out of a porthole of a ship in the Atlantic. My room seems a ship’s cabin; and at night when I wake up and hear the wind shrieking, I almost fancy there is too much sail on the house, and I had better go on the roof and rig in the chimney.{7}

He writes in Piazza Tales:

In summer, too, Canute-like, sitting here, one is often reminded of the sea. For not only do the long ground-swells roll the slanting grain, and little wavelets of the grass ripple upon the low piazza, as their beach, and the blown down of dandelions is wafted like the spray, and the purple of the mountains is just the purple of the billows, and a still August noon broods over the deep meadows, as a calm upon the Line; but the vastness and the lonesomeness are so oceanic, and the silence and the sameness, too, that the first peep of a strange house rising beyond the trees, is for all the world like spying, on the Barbary coast, an unknown sail.

In the oppression of this silence and sameness Melville longed for the companionship of a congenial soul. In spite of the well-known reserve of the author of The Scarlet Letter, Melville for a time found in Nathaniel Hawthorne the solace of intellectual companionship. That the ardor of this friendship was largely supplied by Melville can easily be inferred from the following excerpt from a letter which is quoted in almost every article about, or Preface to, Moby-Dick:

It is a rainy morning; so I am indoors, and all work suspended. I feel cheerfully disposed, and therefore write a little bluely. . . . If ever, my dear Hawthorne, in the eternal times that are to come, you and I shall sit down in Paradise, in some little shady corner by ourselves; and if we shall by any means be able to smuggle a basket of champagne there (I won’t believe in a Temperance Heaven), and if we shall then cross our celestial legs in the celestial grass that is forever tropical, and strike our glasses and our heads together, till both musically ring in concert,—then, O my dear fellow mortal, how shall we pleasantly discourse of all the things manifold which now so distress us,—when all the earth shall be but a reminiscence, yea, its final dissolution an antiquity. Then shall songs be composed as when wars are over; humorous, comic songs,—Oh, when I lived in that queer little hole called the world, or, Oh, when I toiled and sweated below, or Oh, when I knocked and was knocked in the fight,—yes, let us look forward to such things.{8}

But while he was in imagination looking forward to such things, in actuality he was in solitude, poverty, pain, and despondency slogging at his masterpiece. In the same letter quoted above he says:

But I was talking about The Whale. As the fishermen say, he’s in his flurry when I left him some three weeks ago. I’m going to take him by his jaw, however, before long, and finish him up in some fashion or other. What’s the use of elaborating what, in its very essence, is so short-lived as a modern book? Though I wrote the Gospels in this century, I should die in the gutter.{9}

There was reason for his depression. A year before, while he was in London, he wrote to George Duyckink, his publisher and friend in New York City:

I did not see your say about the book Redburn, which to my surprise (somewhat) seems to have been favorably received. I am glad of it, for it puts money into an empty purse. But I hope I shall never write such a book again.

Tho’ when a poor devil writes with duns all around him, and looking over the back of his chair, and perching on his pen, and dancing in his ink-stand—like the devils about St. Anthony—what can you expect of that poor devil? What but a beggarly Redburn.

But we that write and print have all our books predestinated—and for me, I shall write such things as the Great Publisher of mankind ordained ages before he published The World.{10}

Besides being beset with financial worries, he was bedeviled by the dimming of his eyesight under constant strain. Mrs. Hawthorne noticed an indrawn, dim look in the quite undistinguished and wornout eyes{11} of Melville, who was otherwise remarkably handsome. On December 10, 1850, he himself writes to Duyckink, My writing won’t be very legible, because I am keeping one eye shut and wink at the paper with the other.{12}

Nevertheless he persisted in his task of creation and by June, 1851, he was feverishly pursuing The Whale through the press. In the exhaustion of his intense effort he writes to Hawthorne:

The calm, the coolness, the silent grass-growing mood in which a man ought always to compose—that, I fear, can seldom be mine. Dollars damn me: and the malicious Devil is forever grinning in upon me, holding the door ajar. My dear Sir, a presentiment is on me,—I shall at last be worn out and perish, like an old nutmeg-grater, grated to pieces by the constant attrition of the wood, that is, the nutmeg. What I feel most moved to write, that is banned,—it will not pay. Yet, altogether, write the other way I cannot. So the product is a final hash, and all my books are blotches.{13}

But Moby-Dick; or The Whale (1851) is more than hash.1 Broiled in hell fire, instead of composed in calm, it it a unique and gigantic agglomeration of whale oil, drama, and the philosophy of defiance and disillusion,—in short, the greatest story of whaling and of the sea.

Pierre, or The Ambiguities (1852), however, Melville’s next adventure in veiled autobiography and open pessimism, was universally hailed as a botch—and worse. While writing Moby-Dick Melville had written to Hawthorne, I feel that I am now come to the inmost leaf of the bulb, and that shortly the flower must fall to the mould.{14}

This book was almost the last petal of the flower, and when it dropped into the lap of the unappreciative world Melville’s genius, if not in the mold, yet remained, with some small exceptions, dormant for the rest of his long life.

In 1850 Melville’s account at Harper & Brothers was overdrawn $733.69, and in 1851 further advances were refused; he was disenchanted with the noble savage but even more disillusioned about civilization; the support of his family (there were soon four children) had become a burden; and Hawthorne, his friend, who for a while seemed close enough in spirit as well as in space to satisfy his longing for friendship, had departed for his consulship at Liverpool. His eyes were dim and his romantic hopes on every side frustrated. In this mood Melville coiled down into the night of his soul, to write (in Pierre) an anatomy of despair.{15} The book, beginning with a comparatively realistic account of the youth of Pierre Glendinning (a story at first largely autobiographical), becomes more and more ambiguous, dark, and hopeless. Its general thesis is that naive goodness is certain to be overwhelmed by the malevolent demonism of perverse fate. Never was a book written more essentially opposed to the glib optimism of conventional piety and it was only natural that every reviewer pounced upon Pierre and tore it to pieces.

On December 10, 1853, a fire destroyed the publishing establishment of Harper & Brothers, including nearly all the unsold copies of his books.

Almost at the end of his literary rope, between 1853 and 1856 Melville ground out one more novel and twelve magazine articles, and during the next thirty-five years added only a little more, principally poetry. Israel Potter (1855) is mostly a novelized version of the experiences of a Revolutionary soldier in England and France. There are vivid descriptions of Benjamin Franklin and John Paul Jones, and a terrific account of the battle between the Bon Homme Richard and the Serapis. But most characteristic of Melville are a few of the last pages depicting the horrors of poverty in London after the wars.

Although he later took two long sea voyages, one to Constantinople and the Holy Land and the other around the Horn to San Francisco, and attempted lecturing on his South Sea experiences, the remainder of his life was mainly one of obscure labor as Inspector of Customs in New York City, a post he held until January 1, 1886. His death came quietly on September 28, 1891.

Lost in the obscurity of a half century of neglect, still some of his works will never die; and with the hundredth anniversary of his birth there came the discovery of Herman Melville’s great contribution to literature in the English language. His special claims to distinction are now universally recognized.

W. Clark Russell points out that to Dana and Melville we owe the first, the best, and the most enduring revelation of the life of the common sailor in the heyday of the British and American merchant marine.

Similarly Melville in White-Jacket gives the best description of a sailor’s life in the United States navy before the days of steel and power, and, in so doing, according to Rear Admiral Franklin, his book had more influence in abolishing corporal punishment in the navy than anything else. This book was placed on the desk of every member of Congress, and was a most eloquent appeal to the humane sentiment of the country. As evidence of the good it did, a law was passed soon after the book appeared abolishing flogging in the navy absolutely, without substituting any ether mode of punishment in its stead.{16}

Melville was the discoverer of the Pacific Isles as literary material, the author of the first, freshest, and best story of life among the Polynesians, and the literary ancestor of all the subsequent writers who have described the real or imaginary idylls of the Southern Seas.

In sheer capacity to feel, most American writers look pale beside him,{17} says Mr. Weaver; and many others have paid tribute to his amazing eloquence and pictorial power. He is a master of description both of actual and imaginary incidents and almost unique among American writers in his powerful pictures of suffering and death, in which he rivals the greatest of the Russians.

Melville is the greatest Titan of American literature and one of the two or three greatest writers of the sea, of the men who go down to the sea in ships, and of the creatures in the waters thereof.

And finally, he is the author of Moby-Dick.

II

MOBY-DICK

If Herman Melville had written nothing else, Moby- Dick, or The Whale would have made him immortal. Speaking of this book J. St. Loe Strachey ventures to say:

Melville . . . will never be forgotten either here [in England] or in America. So long as the English language survives—and who dare prophecy its extinction?—so long will people read and wonder at the eccentric mariner who described a whale hunt in the terms of Urn Burial. He was an uncanny throw-forward, and did not in his day quite fit into either the life or the literature of his age. If he were living and writing now [1922] he would be one of the world’s greatest sellers and would thoroughly deserve his success.{18}

But even as a rediscovered masterpiece Moby-Dick is gaining an ever increasing audience, which half a dozen editions since the Melville centennial in 1919 have not sufficed to satisfy.

The story was suggested to Melville, in some degree at least, by the achievements of two whales. On November 20th, 1819, while her boats were out and fast to the quarry, a great leviathan charged directly at the mother-ship Essex, and struck her head on just forward of the fore chains. A few minutes later as the ship was settling, the whale attacked again and completely stove in the bows. The seamen, who were left orphaned in mid-Pacific, struggled on in their small boats literally for months, and died one by one from hardships, until, on February 17th, 1820, the three final survivors were picked up by the British brig Indian.{19} The other probable source of Melville’s story was Mocha Dick, or The White Whale of the Pacific, whose deeds and death were reported by J. N. Reynolds, Esq., in the Knickerbocker magazine for May, 1837. Mocha Dick’s back was serried with irons, but he had given as well as received wounds. In short the story of a Mocha Dick ramming an Essex would be very similar to the story of Moby-Dick, except for the wealth of imaginative detail and human significance which only a Melville could add.

The book is a monstrous agglomeration of adventure and reflection, of whale oil and philosophy, of humor and despair. It is the encyclopedia of the whale. Lincoln Colcord, himself one of the few distinguished writers of sea stories, testifies that Melville’s treatment of the whaling industry, in fact, is classic. No one else has done such work, and no one ever will do it again; it alone serves to rescue from oblivion one of the most extraordinary episodes of human enterprise.{20} At the same time it is an epic of the monomania of revenge, with Captain Ahab pursuing his enemy around the watery world. And in final analysis, it is the high tragedy of one who would smash this sorry state of things entire, but who is instead smashed by the malignant perversity of unthinking things. After the struggle nothing is left but the great shroud of the sea, which rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago.

This aggregation of literary matter is electrified by Melville’s intense passion of creation and fused into a unity which swallows up the diverse parts. It has the vitality of one of those unique books of the world into which a few great authors have poured the whole molten content of their flaming thoughts. It is thus to be classed rather with a Faust or a Sartor Resartus than with an ordinary book of fiction.

For the use of students in schools and colleges, however, and for the general reader as well (according to Augustine Birrell) certain parts may well be skipped, leaving the whole of the story and the essence of the allegory, both well flavored with smoke, blubber, whale oil, and the salt, salt tang of the sea. In this edition, therefore, some sections—usually entire chapters—which serve as expository interludes, relating in minute detail the zoological or other peculiarities of whales, have been omitted. Doubtless most teachers of American literature who wish to acquaint their classes with this masterpiece and who are not enthusiastic cetologists will appreciate the omission of much stuff of curious interest but of rather wide departure from the normal subjects of study. Purely episodic matter and some of the most abstruse and high-flown passages, chiefly in dialogue, have also been omitted. Obviously much material of intrinsic value and interest has thus been put aside for exploration by the more curious and leisurely reader. This is the penalty for reducing any monumental masterpiece to appropriate classroom size.

But what remains, while it loses by the omissions, gains also by the condensation, and is discovered to be a directly advancing narrative surging on to its inevitable conclusion. In this edition every detail of the essential action is preserved and scarcely a word except Melville’s amazing eloquence appears, interpolated transitions being entirely unnecessary.{21}

The story tells itself at first from the lips of Ishmael and then in the omniscient third person, returning only in the Epilogue to the original narrator. The unfolding of the purpose of the cruise is masterly, leading up as it does to one of the most imaginative scenes of all literature: on the quarter-deck the mad Ahab calls upon the crew to vow eternal vengeance on the whale; the long barbed steel harpoons are canted; to cries and maledictions Daggoo, Queequeg and Tashtego drink from the harpoon goblets the fiery liquid; and all swear Death to Moby-Dick! In this version the chase around the Cape of Good Hope (soon left behind), through the Straits of Sunda, past the Bashee Islands north of the Philippines, to the Japan hunting grounds—and beyond—seems shorter and the end even more inevitable, as fate rushes Ahab down to his death in the three-day battle with the malignant monster of the deep.

The allegory need not be followed out in curious detail, although it has been subtly analyzed by E. L. Grant Watson in the London Mercury of December, 1920. It is sufficient to note that the White Whale becomes the symbol of a malevolent nature (more personal than it would seem to people of our scientific generation), the wall which closes all the vistas to our lands of heart’s desire, the immovable object or fate which conquers the almost irresistible force of the will of mortal man. Ishmael, the wanderer over the waste of waters, is the spectator and narrator until the conflict becomes almost cosmic. Meanwhile the other characters on the doomed ship Pequod have their own curious, picturesque, and vital existences, besides (many of them) suggesting some of the forces with which man’s character, or more certainly Melville’s own character, is endowed in his mystic voyage over the pathless sea.

However considered, Moby-Dick is a great epic of the rebellious pilgrimage of the soul, and a great romance of strange characters on a strange quest after the strangest of all living beasts.

Etymology

(SUPPLIED BY A LATE CONSUMPTIVE USHER TO A GRAMMAR SCHOOL)

The pale Usher—threadbare in coat, heart, body, and brain; I see him now. He was ever dusting his old lexicons and grammars, with a queer handkerchief, mockingly embellished with all the gay flags of all the known nations of the world. He loved to dust his old grammars; it somehow mildly reminded him of his mortality.

While you take in hand to school others, and to teach them by what name a whale-fish is to be called in our tongue leaving out, through ignorance, the letter H, which almost alone maketh the signification of the word, you deliver that which is not true.

—Hackluyt

"Whale. ... Sw. and Dan. hval. This animal is named from roundness or rolling; for in Dan. hvalt is arched or vaulted."

—Webster’s Dictionary

"Whale. ... It is more immediately from the Dut. and Ger. Wallen; A.S. Walw-Ian, to roll, to wallow."

—Richardson’s Dictionary

KETOS, GREEK.

CETUS, LATIN.

WHOEL, ANGLO-SAXON.

HVALT, DANISH.

WAL, DUTCH.

HWAL, SWEDISH.

WHALE, ICELANDIC.

WHALE, ENGLISH.

BALEINE, FRENCH.

BALLENA, SPANISH.

PEKEE-NUEE-NUEE, FEGEE.

PEKEE-NUEE-NUEE, ERROMANGOAN.

Extracts

(SUPPLIED BY A SUB-SUB-LIBRARIAN)

It will be seen that this mere painstaking burrower and grub-worm of a poor devil of a Sub-Sub appears to have gone through the long Vaticans and street-stalls of the earth, picking up whatever random allusions to whales he could anyways find in any book whatsoever, sacred or profane. Therefore you must not, in every case at least, take the higgledy-piggledy whale statements, however authentic, in these extracts, for veritable gospel cetology. Far from it. As touching the ancient authors generally, as well as the poets here appearing, these extracts are solely valuable or entertaining, as affording a glancing bird’s eye view of what has been promiscuously said, thought, fancied, and sung of Leviathan, by many nations and generations, including our own.

So fare thee well, poor devil of a Sub-Sub, whose commentator I am. Thou belongest to that hopeless, sallow tribe which no wine of this world will ever warm; and for whom even Pale Sherry would be too rosy-strong; but with whom one sometimes loves to sit, and feel poor-devilish, too; and grow convivial upon tears; and say to them bluntly, with full eyes and empty glasses, and in not altogether unpleasant sadness—Give it up, Sub-Subs! For by how much the more pains ye take to please the world, by so much the more shall ye for ever go thankless! Would that I could clear out Hampton Court and the Tuileries for ye! But gulp down your tears and hie aloft to the royal-mast with your hearts; for your friends who have gone before are clearing out the seven-storied heavens, and making refugees of long-pampered Gabriel, Michael, and Raphael, against your coming. Here ye strike but splintered hearts together—there, ye shall strike unsplinterable glasses!

EXTRACTS

And God created great whales.—Genesis.

"Leviathan maketh a path to shine after him;

One would think the deep to be hoary."—Job.

Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah.—Jonah.

There go the ships; there is that Leviathan whom thou hast made to play therein.—Psalms.

In that day, the Lord with his sore, and great, and strong sword, shall punish Leviathan the piercing serpent, even Leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.—Isaiah

And what thing soever besides cometh within the chaos of this monster’s mouth, be it beast, boat, or stone, down it goes all incontinently that foul great swallow of his, and perisheth in the bottomless gulf of his paunch.—Holland’s Plutarch’s Morals.

The Indian Sea breedeth the most and the biggest fishes that are: among which the Whales and Whirlpooles called Balaene, take up as much in length as four acres or arpens of land.—Holland’s Pliny.

Scarcely had we proceeded two days on the sea, when about sunrise a great many Whales and other monsters of the sea, appeared. Among the former, one was of a most monstrous size. ... This came towards us, open-mouthed, raising the waves on all sides, and beating the sea before him into a foam.—Tooke’s Lucian. "The True History."

He visited this country also with a view of catching horse-whales, which had bones of very great value for their teeth, of which he brought some to the king. ... The best whales were catched in his own country, of which some were forty-eight, some fifty yards long. He said that he was one of six who had killed sixty in two days.—Other or Octher’s verbal narrative taken down from his mouth by King Alfred, A.D. 890.

And whereas all the other things, whether beast or vessel, that enter into the dreadful gulf of this monster’s (whale’s) mouth, are immediately lost and swallowed up, the sea-gudgeon retires into it in great security, and there sleeps.—Montaigne.—Apology for Raimond Sebond.

Let us fly, let us fly! Old Nick take me if is not Leviathan described by the noble prophet Moses in the life of patient Job.—Rabelais.

This whale’s liver was two cartloads.—Stowe’s Annals.

The great Leviathan that maketh the seas to seethe like boiling pan.—Lord Bacon’s Version of the Psalms.

Touching that monstrous bulk of the whale or ork we have received nothing certain. They grow exceeding fat, insomuch that an incredible quantity of oil will be extracted out of one whale.—Ibid. "History of Life and Death."

The sovereignest thing on earth is parmacetti for an inward bruise.—King Henry.

Very like a whale.—Hamlet.

"Which to secure, no skill of leach’s art

Mote him availle, but to returne againe

To his wound’s worker, that with lowly dart,

Dinting his breast, had bred his restless paine,

Like as the wounded whale to shore flies thro’ the maine."

—The Faerie Queen.

Immense as whales, the motion of whose vast bodies can in a peaceful calm trouble the ocean till it boil.—Sir William Davenant. Preface to Gondibert.

"What spermacetti is, men might justly doubt, since the learned Hosmannus in his work of thirty years, saith plainly, Nescio quid sit."—Sir T. Browne. Of Sperma Ceti and the Sperma Ceti Whale. Vide his V. E.

"Like Spencer’s Talus with his modern flail

He threatens ruin with his ponderous tail.

...

Their fixed jav’lins in his side he wears,

And on his back a grove of pikes appears."

—Waller’s Battle of the Summer Islands.

By art is created that great Leviathan, called a Commonwealth or State—(in Latin, Civitas) which is but an artificial man.—Opening Sentence of Hobbes’s Leviathan.

Silly Mansoul swallowed it without chewing, as if it had been a sprat in the mouth of a whale.—Pilgrim’s Progress.

"That sea beast

Leviathan, which God of all his works

Created hugest that swim the ocean stream."

—Paradise Lost.

—"There Leviathan,

Hugest of living creatures, in the deep

Stretched like a promontory sleeps or swims,

And seems a moving land; and at his gills

Draws in, and at his breath spouts out a sea."

—Ibid.

The mighty whales which swim in a sea of water, and have a sea of oil swimming in them.—Fulller’s Profane and Holy State.

"So close behind some promontory lie

The huge Leviathan to attend their prey,

And give no chance, but swallow in the fry,

Which through their gaping jaws mistake the way."

—Dryden’s Annus Mirabilis.

While the whale is floating at the stern of the ship, they cut off his head, and tow it with a boat as near the shore as it will come; but it will be aground in twelve or thirteen feet water.—Thomas Edge’s Ten Voyages to Spitzbergen, in Purchas.

In their way they saw many whales sporting in the ocean, and in wantonness fuzzing up the water through their pipes and vents, which nature has placed on their shoulders.—Sir T. Herbert’s Voyages into Asia and Africa. Harris Coll.

Here they saw such huge troops of whales, that they were forced to proceed with a great deal of caution for fear they should run their ship upon them.—Schouten’s Sixth Circumnavigation.

"We set sail from the Elbe, wind N.E. in the ship called The Jonas-in-the-Whale. ...

Some say the whale can’t open his mouth, but that is a fable. ...

They frequently climb up the masts to see whether they can see a whale, for the first discoverer has a ducat for his pains. ...

I was told of a whale taken near Shetland, that had above a barrel of herrings in his belly. ...

One of our harpooneers told me that he caught once a whale in Spitzbergen that was white all over."—A Voyage to Greenland, A.D. 1671 Harris Coll.

Several whales have come in upon this coast (Fife) Anno 1652, one eighty feet in length of the whale-bone kind came in, which (as I was informed), besides a vast quantity of oil, did afford 500 weight of baleen. The jaws of it stand for a gate in the garden of Pitferren.—Sibbald’s Fife and Kinross.

Myself have agreed to try whether I can master and kill this Sperma-ceti whale, for I could never hear of any of that sort that was killed by any man, such is his fierceness and swiftness.—Richard Strafford’s Letter from the Bermudas. Phil. Trans. A.D. 1668.

Whales in the sea God’s voice obey.—N. E. Primer.

We saw also abundance of large whales, there being more in those southern seas, as I may say, by a hundred to one; than we have to the northward of us.—Captain Cowley’s Voyage round the Globe, A.D. 1729.

... and the breath of the whale is frequently attended with such an insupportable smell, as to bring on a disorder of the brain.—Ulloa’s South America.

"To fifty chosen sylphs of special note,

We trust the important charge, the petticoat.

Oft have we known that seven-fold fence to fail,

Tho’ stuffed with hoops and armed with ribs of whale."

—Rape of the Lock.

If we compare land animals in respect to magnitude, with those that take up their abode in the deep, we shall find they will appear contemptible in the comparison. The whale is doubtless the largest animal in creation.—Goldsmith, Nat. Hist.

If you should write a fable for little fishes, you would make them speak like great whales.—Goldsmith to Johnson.

In the afternoon we saw what was supposed to be a rock, but it was found to be a dead whale, which some Asiatics had killed, and were then towing ashore. They seemed to endeavor to conceal themselves behind the whale, in order to avoid being seen by us.—Cook’s Voyages.

The larger whales, they seldom venture to attack. They stand in so great dread of some of them, that when out at sea they are afraid to mention even their names, and carry dung, lime-stone, juniper-wood, and some other articles of the same nature in their boats, in order to terrify and prevent their too near approach.—Uno Von Troil’s Letters on Banks’s and Solander’s Voyage to Iceland in 1772.

The Spermacetti Whale found by the Nantuckois, is an active, fierce animal, and requires vast address and boldness in the fishermen.—Thomas Jefferson’s Whale Memorial to the French Minister in 1778.

And pray, sir, what in the world is equal to it?—Edmund Burke’s reference in Parliament to the Nantucket Whale-Fishery.

Spain—a great whale stranded on the shores of Europe.—Edmund Burke. (somewhere.)

A tenth branch of the king’s ordinary revenue, said to be grounded on the consideration of his guarding and protecting the seas from pirates and robbers, is the right to royal fish, which are whale and sturgeon. And these, when either thrown ashore or caught near the coast, are the property of the king.—Blackstone.

"Soon to the sport of death the crews repair:

Rodmond unerring o’er his head suspends

The barbed steel, and every turn attends."

—Falconer’s Shipwreck.

"Bright shone the roofs, the domes, the spires,

And rockets blew self driven,

To hang their momentary fire

Around the vault of heaven.

"So fire with water to compare,

The ocean serves on high,

Up-spouted by a whale in air,

To express unwieldy joy."

—Cowper, on the Queen’s Visit to London.

Ten or fifteen gallons of blood are thrown out of the heart at a stroke, with immense velocity.—John Hunter’s account of the dissection of a whale. (A small sized one.)

The aorta of a whale is larger in the bore than the main pipe of the water-works at London Bridge, and the water roaring in its passage through that pipe is inferior in impetus and velocity to the blood gushing from the whale’s heart.—Paley’s Theology.

The whale is a mammiferous animal without hind feet.—Baron Cuvier.

In 40 degrees south, we saw Spermacetti Whales, but did not take any till the first of May, the sea being then covered with them.—Colnett’s Voyage for the Purpose of Extending the Spermaceti Whale Fishery.

"In the free element beneath me swam,

Floundered and dived, in play, in chace, in battle,

Fishes of every color, form, and kind;

Which language cannot paint, and mariner

Had never seen; from dread Leviathan

To insect millions peopling every wave:

Gather’d in shoals immense, like floating islands,

Led by mysterious instincts through that waste

And trackless region, though on every side

Assaulted by voracious enemies,

Whales, sharks, and monsters, arm’d in front or jaw,

With swords, saws, spiral horns, or hooked fangs."

—Montgomery’s World before the Flood.

"Io! Paean! Io! sing.

To the finny people’s king.

Not a mightier whale than this

In the vast Atlantic is;

Not a fatter fish than he,

Flounders round the Polar Sea."

—Charles Lamb’s Triumph of the Whale.

In the year 1690 some persons were on a high hill observing the whales spouting and sporting with each other, when one observed: there—pointing to the sea—is a green pasture where our children’s grand-children will go for bread.—Obed Macy’s History of Nantucket.

I built a cottage for Susan and myself and made a gateway in the form of a Gothic Arch, by setting up a whale’s jaw bones.—Hawthorne’s Twice Told Tales.

She came to bespeak a monument for her first love, who had been killed by a whale in the Pacific ocean, no less than forty years ago.—Ibid.

No, Sir, ’tis a Right Whale, answered Tom; I saw his sprout; he threw up a pair of as pretty rainbows as a Christian would wish to look at. He’s a raal oil-butt, that fellow!—Cooper’s Pilot.

The papers were brought in, and we saw in the Berlin Gazette that whales had been introduced on the stage there.—Eckermann’s Conversations with Goethe.

My God! Mr. Chace, what is the matter? I answered, we have been stove by a whale.—"Narrative of the Shipwreck of the Whale Ship Essex of Nantucket, which was attacked and finally destroyed by a large Sperm Whale in the pacific ocean." by Owen Chace of Nantucket, first mate of said vessel. New York, 1821.

"A mariner sat in the shrouds one night,

The wind was piping free;

Now bright, now dimmed, was the moonlight pale,

And the phospher gleamed in the wake of the whale,

As it floundered in the sea."

—Elizabeth Oakes Smith.

"The quantity of line withdrawn from the boats engaged in the capture of this one whale, amounted altogether to 10,440 yards or nearly six English miles. ...

Sometimes the whale shakes its tremendous tail in the air, which, cracking like a whip, resounds to the distance of three or four miles.—Scoresby.

"Mad with the agonies he endures from these fresh attacks, the infuriated Sperm Whale rolls over and over; he rears his enormous head, and with wide expanded jaws snaps at everything around him; he rushes at the boats with his head; they are propelled before him with vast swiftness, and sometimes utterly destroyed.

... It is a matter of great astonishment that the consideration of the habits of so interesting, and, in a commercial point of view, so important an animal (as the Sperm Whale) should have been so entirely neglected, or should have excited so little curiosity among the numerous, and many of them competent observers, that of late years, must have possessed the most abundant and the most convenient opportunities of witnessing their habitudes."—Thomas Beale’s History of the Sperm Whale, 1839.

The Cachalot (Sperm Whale) is not only better armed than the True Whale (Greenland or Right Whale) in possessing a formidable weapon at either extremity of its body, but also more frequently displays a disposition to employ these weapons offensively and in manner at once so artful, bold, and mischievous, as to lead to its being regarded as the most dangerous to attack of all the known species of the whale tribe.—Frederick Debell Bennett’s Whaling Voyage Round the Globe, 1840.

October 13. There she blows, was sung out from the mast-head.

Where away? demanded the captain.

Three points off the lee bow, sir.

Raise up your wheel. Steady! Steady, sir.

Mast-head ahoy! Do you see that whale now?

Ay ay, sir! A shoal of Sperm Whales! There she blows! There she breaches!

Sing out! sing out every time!

"Ay Ay, sir! There she blows! there—there—thar she blows—bowes—bo-o-os!"

How far off?

Two miles and a half.

Thunder and lightning! so near! Call all hands.—J. Ross Browne’s Etchings of a Whaling Cruize. 1846.

The Whale-ship Globe, on board of which vessel occurred the horrid transactions we are about to relate, belonged to the island of Nantucket.—"Narrative of the Globe," by Lay and Hussey Survivors. A.D. 1828.

Being once pursued by a whale which he had wounded, he parried the assault for some time with a lance; but the furious monster at length rushed on the boat; himself and comrades only being preserved by leaping into the water when they saw the onset was inevitable."—Missionary Journal of Tyerman and Bennett.

Nantucket itself, said Mr. Webster, is a very striking and peculiar portion of the National interest. There is a population of eight or nine thousand persons living here in the sea, adding largely every year to the National wealth by the boldest and most persevering industry.—Report of Daniel Webster’s Speech in the U. S. Senate, on the application for the Erection of a Breakwater at Nantucket. 1828.

The whale fell directly over him, and probably killed him in a moment.—"The Whale and his Captors, or the Whaleman’s Adventures and the Whale’s Biography, gathered on the Homeward Cruise of the Commodore Preble." by Rev. Henry T. Cheever.

If you make the least damn bit of noise, replied Samuel, I will send you to hell.—Life of Samuel Comstock (the mutineer), by his brother, William Comstock. Another Version of the whale-ship Globe narrative.

"The voyages of the Dutch and English to the Northern Ocean, in order, if possible, to discover a passage through it to India,

Reviews for Moby-Dick (Illustrated by Mead Schaeffer with an Introduction by William S. Ament)

[moekane_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

On 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

[velmeran · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Societally we all know the basic story. I learned a great deal about whaling, and the times.

[selfcallednowhere · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I wasn't sure what I was going to think of this book going into it because some people had told me it was really boring--it was one of my "I'm *obligated* as a person educated about literature to read this book" additions to my library. But I turned out to really enjoy it. Parts of it were very exciting, the symbolism was intriguing, and even the "whaling manual" stretches I found interesting because I like it when books teach me about things I don't know anything about. The only times it lost me were when it went off on total tangents like "And now I'm gonna describe paintings people have made of whales!" Ishmael/Queequeg are my OTP, and I related just a bit too much to Ahab. A note on this edition: It had a lot of footnotes, which were helpful as far as sailing terms/allusions, but sometimes were a little bothersome when they were trying to explain to you what passages meant.

[shanaqui_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I read this when I was very young, and I don't really remember it very well. Another for the list of things to reread now I'm older and wiser!

[the_unnamable · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Any time I mentioned to someone that I was finally tackling the book of the whale, I would get eye-rolls or declarations of boredom. But I actually got sucked further and further in, as pulled by some leviathan's great wake.Ishmael's tale of Ahab's dark revenge is not a typical narrative. If one's looking for a well-paced action yarn, don't read it. It's a story of character asides and the sea and the secrets of the whale physical and metaphysical. Ishmael concerns himself chiefly with the unfolding sublime (in Burke's sense) rather than the mundane.Images and old-sea phrases will doubtless rattle around in my head for decades to come.

[deadmanjones_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

A promising beginning on land as the narrator unveils his character with a good degree of humour, sinks without trace as soon as the Pequod puts to the ocean. The narrator is forgotten (a risible postscript doesn't help), as is the story, as the novel transforms itself into a lengthy discourse on whaling, whales, the colour white, and any passing fancy that slipped into Melville's mind. Its form is random, its narrative is inconsistent and its symbolism is ham fisted (and more oft that not actually announced as symbolism). When the chase finally erupts it is an exciting and emotional ride, but little could overcome any reader's feeling of exhaustion by this point. I deserve a medal for reading every page of the unabridged version, since less than 1/5 of its volume is taken up with any semblance of story.

[thereadingmermaid · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is a sea epic adventure story.If you didn't already know this book takes you on the journey of a sea voyage as told by our first person narrator Ishmael, who in boredom, decides to join the crew of a whaling ship called the Pequod. They then and bark on their journey off the coast of Nantucket and search of whales and most infamously the killer white well known to the sailors as Moby Dick. Crazy Captain Ahab seems not only dead set on evening the score with Moby Dick but in his obsession to do so leads the ship and its crew in to peril. Will Ishmael ever reach the shore again alive?Okay so I understand this is a classic, but my readers expect an honest review for me so here it goes...Though beautiful the writing is in this book, Herman Melville is extremely long-winded with his descriptions of pretty much everything. Every little detail takes an entire chapter to explain. The book becomes extremely tedious and even boring to those who aren't really keen on ocean epics. The language in which it is written is borderlined Old English and is beautiful to read. However as I said before the descriptions of things become monotonous with this author. I respect this for the classic that it is. But I'm sure this will probably be my one and only time reading this one. Now I can say that I have read it and move on. I would definitely recommend others to read it once and respect for the classic that it is as well. It is a good story overall, just difficult to read.

[benbulben_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The master of allusion in storytelling. Every page has at least one allusion to a previous work of literature or story of the Bible (Jonah, Job, Solomon) or event experienced in Melville’s time. Don’t tell me how, but there was even one allusion to the current upheaval that Egypt is experiencing in replacing their dictator of thirty years. I think Starbucks mentioned something about it. The comparisons have comparisons. We get that your a smart guy that has read a lot of books, but tone it down a little. Let us enjoy the story without having to refer to some archaic reference. I’ve got my own 1001 books to read during my lifetime. I don’t need a thousand more.There needs to be a new genre of the novel created for Moby-Dick. We currently have the popular Historical Fiction or Historical Novel. What is the term for the combination of a study with a story. Fictionology? But that implies the study of fiction. This needs to combine Cetology with Historical Fiction. Moby-Dick was inspired by the reported sinking of the Essex in 1821 and by the great whale Mocha-Dick. Mocha Dick was a notorious male Sperm Whale that lived in the Pacific Ocean in the early 19th century. In addition to that, we get the added benefit of enjoying every minute detail of whaling. If you were to take a whaling vessel from the 1840s and describe it inch by inch you would have what Herman Melville accomplished in Moby-Dick. I don’t think he missed a spot or explanation believed needed in describing what it was to whale. And you thought Charles Dickens was paid by the word. There is no brevity of detail in Herman Melville. Maybe it is a Victorian writer thing.Don’t get me wrong some if it was fascinating and Herman Melville led a remarkable life in his early years. His many experiences on whaling vessels and merchant ships combined with being stranded on an island with native peoples is fascinating. I hope to assuage some doubts I have in some of his background in Andrew Delbanco’s Melville: His World and Work. Some of it seems too good to be true. But I love how he described his classification system for the many varieties of whales in our great oceans. When it came down to it, all we really needed was a good description of the Right Whale and the Sperm Whale for those are the whales encountered by the crew of the Pequod–when you discount the few porpoises and giant squid. Did we really need the Folios, Octavos, and Duodecimos. I will leave that up to you. For me, I will need a good strong second reading, possibly a third and if time permits a fourth, to sort through the multi level sky rise building that is Moby-Dick. As someone once said, "blubber is blubber you know; tho' you may get oil out of it, the poetry runs as hard as sap from a frozen maple tree." Or was it, "He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby becomes a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee."I feel like I need to blow the water out of my ears.

[dbsovereign · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Though descriptions of the types of whales, whaling, whaling implements, etc. can take up most of this novel (and bore one to tears), there are sections of the book that are absolutely sublime. Ultimately it can be read as a book about perceptual bias and how people are notoriously narrow-minded and way too biased/focused/obssessed for their own good. The whale's eyes, on the other hand, see two different worlds simultaneously...

[comfypants · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

A harrowing experience. It starts out so promising... and then the story is put on hold and the perspective is abandoned while Melville writes a series of loosely related essays. For hundreds of pages. By the time the story resumes, I couldn't care less about it; I just want to get through it. After coming so far, you can't NOT finish...

[postsbygina · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This may be one of the beautifully written pieces of literature I've read. I didn't read this in high school, and never saw it read any excerpt or iteration of this story but I had a general idea that the story was about a man in pursuit of a great whale. Simple. Upon reading it for the first time, however, it's more than just pursuing a whale with an engrossing since of vengeance and passion. It's about passion itself, and the elusive desires that result in less successes than failures. How we pursue our dreams can be the end of us or elevate us.

[friendlydragonspouse · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This was a set text for my degree in American literature. One of the lecturers admitted to never having finished it, so I feel justified in not doing so either. Have not looked at it since 1987.

[briandrewz · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Wow. I made it through. It took some work, but I made it through. "Moby Dick" is described by many as a great American novel. I can't understand why. It is extremely tough going. At the time of its publication, the novel was largely panned by critics, and it wasn't brought to its current popularity until many years later. The book started out just fine. I was invested in the story, interested to see where it would go. I think I lost interest even before Ishmael stepped foot on the Pequod. But, my motto is never leave a book you've started unfinished. So, I persevered to the unsatisfying end.

[rkosarko-360552 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Moby Dick is a bloated, overlong mess of a novel that makes all of the classic mistakes of pacing and intentionality. Melville very much hangs a gun on the mantle and forgets the gun is there, never to be taken down. The actual plot the book is famous for, the mad Ahab's hunting of the White Whale, takes up a tiny fraction of the book's runtime. The long first fifth of the book before Ishmael and Queequeg even get onto the Pequod seems to set up nothing and serve no purpose for the rest of the book. The actual chapters relevant to any plot, such as it is, are few - the majority of the book is long digressions on many and varied topics relating to sailing, sailors, whales, and whaling. Only about four characters are ever developed in any particular way, mostly the second mate, Stubb, who seems to by far have the most lines, and those lines are almost all strange chanting nonsense. Ishmael, our narrator, simply stops being a character once the Pequod is underway, disappearing into the background like a ghost.

In short, most of the contemporary reviews (of which this edition, the Barnes & Noble Leatherbound from 2015, includes some) are absolutely correct in their criticism of the book.

And yet, I was fascinated by this thing, read through it at lightning speed (less than a week, for a 600-pages-of-small-print novel), and every single chapter has at least two or three brilliant one-liners or musings in there. Even the tedious, rambling ones on Whale Facts which are laughably wrong. Especially those chapters. You can't skip those chapters, they have most of the best lines.

In short, this is a furiously uneven book, but it's... okay, "good" is stretching it, but definitely worth the effort it demands.

{The sea had jeeringly kept his finite body up, but drowned the infinite of his soul.}

[adaorhell · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Forlorn hope.

[thebooksofwrath · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This amazing tome contains everything you didn't think you needed to know about the whaling industry, the whale anatomy, cetology ("the science of whales") and, of course, the extracting of whale spermaceti (not spermatozoa, though the hand squeezing might leave some wondering...)! What's not to love?

[jckphnx · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

There's not much to say about this work from the American Renaissance that hasn't already been said, but Moby-Dick remains a surprisingly weird, funny, primal, and daunting novel for the modern reader.

[benkaboo-51322 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

The author writes in long sentances that drip with poetry. Personally I think they sound/feel a bit like shakespear. There appear to be more words than are needed, but at the same time they have a musical quality that forgives the excess.

Chapter 42: The Whiteness of the Whale: Oh golly, I can't believe how this chapter drags as the author spends 9-10 pages making an argument for why the color/hue white should be menacing versus calming (assuming you thought it was calming in the first place).

Chapter 43-44: Really nice writing that continue to build the sense of menace and foreshadowing of the plot. As much as I was dragged through chapter 42, I really like the pacing of these chapters which refresh me and keep me in the story.

There is quite a bit of foreshadowing, lots of references to dark and dangerous things he will need to tell you in the future.

[mlhershey · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Can't remember when I read this, but I did. Enjoyed it more than I thought I would

[viviennestrauss · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I'm glad I finally took the time for Moby Dick - Melville's prose is incredible and worth the slower pace of reading than I'm used to. He was ahead of his time for sure and more socially aware than many are in today's world.

[lydia1879 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Call me Ishmael.

So begins one of the so-called greatest American classics, Herman Melville's behemoth, Moby Dick. It is perhaps one of the most effective and simplest opening lines in literature, and as a writer, I’m jealous.

I’ve read Melville before — Typee — which is a book where he discusses his time ship-wrecked on a small Polynesian island. The writing was antiquated and sounded like it came right out of a curio box, but I read on anyway. So I came to Moby Dick with the understanding that Melville was something of a nerd and loved the sea more than most men loved their children.

The first 25% of Moby Dick read like a classic adventure tale. We had our protagonist, Ishmael, the tabula rasa to be written on by life’s experience. We had the wonderful Queequeg, experienced in the ways of whaling and a stick for all other men to measure themselves against. Queequeg is one of the best-written characters I’ve read in a long time because Ishmael regularly checks himself and his privilege when speaking of the harpooner, and it’s the two of them against the world.

Ishmael and Queequeg are in love. I will die on that hill.

But Lydia, I hear you protest, there’s no mention of ‘gay’ or anything of that sort in the book. Indeed, there is not. However, identifying as ‘gay’ wasn’t really a thing back then. There were gay / queer / homosexual acts but not necessarily people who identified as such. There were only relationships, and the two of them did indeed have a relationship.

Where is the evidence? I hear, from the stands.

Here, I present to you, my receipts.

Ishmael and Queequeg spend the night together, sharing a bed because there is no more room at the inn.

"Upon waking next morning about daylight, I found Queequeg’s arm thrown over me in the most loving and affectionate manner. You had almost thought I had been his wife.”

Upon seeing Queequeg smoking his pipe by the fire:

"I felt a melting in me. No more my splintered heart and maddened hand were turned against the wolfish world. This soothing savage had redeemed it.”

"Our own hearts' honeymoon, a cosy, loving pair.”

Along with a whole chapter dedicated entirely to how Queequeg holds him at night and keeps him warm and how delightful that is, I rest my case. Ishmael is as queer as the day is long.

Unfortunately, in terms of positive representation, Queequeg is decidedly where it ends. Melville demonstrates the power of ignorance and stereotype and the effect it has on his writing with characters like Tashtego and Dagoo, First Nations and African respectively. Where Melville had experience with Polynesian people he created a fully-formed, interesting, compelling character. In others, where he had no experience, the characters are but hollow shells, racist and a product of their time.

Racism and ignorance make your writing shit, Melville. This is why we need sensitivity readers and to research, to ask questions and most importantly for marginalised people to tell their own stories, with their own voices.

I digress. On with the rest of the review.

In order to teach a man how to sail, you must first teach him to long for the sea.

Meville loves the sea, and that is clearly evident in some of the passages and paragraphs. His poetic love for the sea knows no bounds. I adored reading those passages because even when the sea was at its most destructive and totally wrought with a typhoon, the book was still such a beautiful read.

"With the landless gull, that at sunset folds her wings and is rocked to sleep between billows; so at nightfall, the Nantucketer, out of sight of land, furls his sails, and lays him to his rest, while under his very pillow rush herds of walruses and whales.”

"Now, in that Japanese sea, the days in summer are as freshets of effulgences. That unblinkingly vivid Japanese sun seems the blazing focus of the glassy ocean’s immeasurable burning-glass. The sky looks lacquered; clouds there are none; the horizon floats; and this nakedness of unrelieved radiance is as the insufferable splendors of God’s throne.”

I loved the sea as Herman did. I soaked it up. I could’ve read pages and pages and pages of him talking about the sea.

As a writer, sometimes it is difficult to describe the same thing many times, because it can feel same-y, stale, but Melville’s writing never did.

… until the whales.

Melville needs a PhD in whales.

The author describes whales in meticulous detail. Their types, their migration patterns, their size, how they swim, how they breed, their teeth, jaws, heads, foreheads, spines, flukes and tails. At length he describes them, adding footnotes to elaborate further. He mentions engravings, historical writings, papers, museums, paintings and other sculptures that feature whales as if he’s desperate to prove that he did the research and that his research matters. At times, while reading, I was like, Ahab isn’t the one obsessed with whales, Melville is.

And then there’s the whaling.

Once again, Melville describes in meticulous detail the technology, the ships and the weapons in order to go whaling.

And you’d think that would be enough, but no. Melville continues to describe in detail, the slaughter, skinning and gathering of whale oil for chapter after chapter.

I almost put down the book at a few points because I was so tired of Whale Facts (TM). I didn’t wanna go to whale school anymore.

But then, like all great books, something compelling would happen in the next chapter and so I would read on.

And, this is partly conformation bias speaking, but it was a good book.

This book is biblical in all senses of the word. Its size is biblical, its scope is biblical, its characters are biblical.

"There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody’s expense but his own."

[bookconcierge · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Digital audiobook performed by Anthony Heald


This is a re-read … sort of. The first time I attempted this book I was only 11 years old, in 7th grade, and participating in a “great books” discussion group. I gave up and relied on the Cliff’s notes and watching the movie with Gregory Peck as Ahab.

Some years ago, I read Nathaniel Philbrick’s excellent In the Heart Of the Sea, a nonfiction account of the whaleship Essex, which was the inspiration for Melville’s tale. I found it fascinating and commented “Almost makes me want to read Moby Dick.”

Well I didn’t forget that urge and decided to give the audiobook a try. I’m glad I did.

Yes, Melville writes in great detail – ad nauseum – about the intricacies of whaling, the various species of aquatic mammals, the arduous and dirty (even disgusting) job of butchering the carcass. But he also explores the relationships developed among the crew, the sights of new ports, the weeks of tedious boredom broken by a day or two of exhilarating chase.

And then there is the psychology of Ahab. A man tortured by his own obsession and need for revenge. That was the most interesting part of the book for me and I wanted much more of it.

I struggled with my rating and ultimately decided on 4 stars for the enduring quality of the work; despite its flaws and the things I disliked about it it’s a work that will stay with me.

Anthony Heald was the narrator of the audio book I got from my library. He did a fine job of the narration. He read at a good pace and brought some life to a work that frequently bogs down in minutia.

[kristelh_15 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Considered 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 mate
Stubb: second mate
Tashtego: Indian from Gay Head (harpooner)
Flask: third mate,
Daggoo: harpooneer from Africa.
Captain Ahab:
Fadallah: a harpooneer, Parse.
Pip: black cabin boy

The 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.

[tronella_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Reading Railsea reminded me that I'd never read this one, and since it happens to be public domain I just downloaded it and got straight into it. And it's great! It sort of reminded me of Neal Stephenson or Umberto Eco, in the way in which it goes off into tangents explaining how something works (generally whale anatomy or hunting equipment in this case) so that you can better appreciate the few dramatic moments of the plot... I love that. And I suppose that a long whaling voyage would be like that, with long stretches of nothing much happening, so it makes sense structurally, too. Well, anyway... I liked this one a lot. Somehow I had not been spoiled for the ending of it, either, which is always nice!

[eoin-311239 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The 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".

[larryking1-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

No one ever seems to discuss this, but there are parts of this exquisitely written tome that are hilarious!

[jonfaith · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Read 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.

[viccavalli · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I 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.

[antao-3 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

(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.

[krizia_lazaro_3 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

This could have been a shorter book. Melville created multiple chapters explaining and discussing the sperm whale’s head, right whale’s head, different kinds of whale and their classifications. It was like reading an encyclopedia rather than a story.