Moby Dick

By Squashed Editions

The Squashed edition of Moby-Dick by Herman Melville. Abridged from the original text to read in an hour or so.

Squashed editions are precise abridgements - the original ideas, in their own words, the full beam of the book, the quotable quotes and all the famous lines, but neatly honed down to the length of a readable short story.

"Like reading the bible without all the begats" - Prof. Jim Curtis

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: May 30, 2018
• ISBN: 9780244090678

Book preview

Moby Dick

Moby-Dick

by Herman Melville

A Squashed Edition, elegantly abridged to read in a hour or so.

This abridgement, Copyright © 2017, Glyn Hughes. All rights reserved. Published by: Hughes Design Ltd, Squashed Editions, Denver House, Winster, Derbyshire, England DE4 2DH

ISBN: 978-0-244-09067-8

Also available in print, ISBN:978-0-244-69065-6

INTRODUCTION

Melville's strange, vast, tale, founded on his own experience as schoolmaster-turned-whaler, was far from well-received initially. Now, it tends to be seen as one of the glories of American Romanticism and among the greatest stories ever told.

Glyn Hughes, Winster, 2017

Moby-Dick

or, The Whale

by Herman Melville

New York, 1851

Abridged by Glyn Hughes

ETYMOLOGY

(Supplied by a Late Consumptive Usher to a Grammar School.)

WHALE: This animal is named from roundness or rolling - Webster's Dictionary

"So be cheery, my lads, let your hearts never fail,

While the bold harpooneer is striking the whale!" - Nantucket song.

Loomings.

Call me Ishmael. 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.

There is nothing surprising in this. Landsmen, pent up in lath and plaster, tied to counters, nailed to benches, clinched to desks, if they but knew it, almost all in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.

Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.

Now, when I say that I am in the habit of going to sea, I do not mean as a passenger. Passengers get sea-sick. No, when I go to sea, I go as a simple sailor, right before the mast. The transition is a keen one, I assure you, from a schoolmaster to a sailor, and requires a strong decoction of Seneca and the Stoics to enable you to grin and