About this title: Misunderstood and unappreciated in its time, Melville's monumental work has become the classic epic of American literature. He tells the dual story of the initiation of young Ishmael, a schoolteacher, into the life of a seaman, and the tragedy of Captain Ahab's obsession with the white whale. The novel begins with a lengthy dissection of the word ...
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Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Signet Classic, New York, New York, U.S.A.
Date Published: 1955
ISBN-13:9780451520210ISBN:0451520211
Description: Good. No Jacket. 12mo-over 6¾"-7¾" tall. The book is very solid with lightly browned pages. The cover has minor shelf wear & moderate edge wear. There is a small sticker at the bottom of the spine. read more
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Collier Books, New York
Date Published: 1962
Description: Good. No Jacket. 12mo-over 6¾"-7¾" tall. The book is very solid with bright, unmarked pages. The cover has moderate shelf wear & minor edge wear. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Modern Publishing
Date Published: 2008
ISBN-13:9780766607194ISBN:0766607194
Description: Lauter, Richard. Very good in very good dust jacket. New condition, page edges fading, very slight coner bumps. Glued binding. 4 vols. 189 p. Contains: Illustrations. Treasury of Illustrated Classics. Audience: Children/juvenile. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Nelson Doubleday, New York
Description: Poor. No dust jacket. Ex-library. Cover has heavy wear and has been taped, binding is slightly tilted, pages are unmarked except for library. 2 p.l., 324 p. 21 cm. The Prose and poetry individualized program. [The novel].. read more
Binding: Mass-market paperback
Publisher: Bantam Classics
Date Published: 1981
ISBN-13:9780553213119ISBN:0553213113
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. Light edge and corner wear. Tight binding. Light corner creases on cover. Some notations on pages inside. Mass market (rack) paperback. Glued binding. 670 p. Bantam Classic. Audience: Young adult. read more
Edition: Unabridged.
Binding: Mass-market paperback
Publisher: Airmont Publishing Company
Date Published: 1964
ISBN-13:9780804900331ISBN:0804900337
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. Some edge and corner wear. Light cover creases. Tanned pages. Mass market (rack) paperback. Audience: Children/juvenile. read more
"A lot of people can't understand Moby-Dick. And I think, to an extent, nobody can fully understand this book who doesn't know at least a little about the transcendentalist movement in American literature.
Transcendentalism, to Thoreau and Emerson, et al., was the idea that one can get to know God by studying nature. Thoreau was transcendentalism's greatest proponent. That's what 'Walden Pond' was all about.
Melville used Ahab and the whale to show (to put it as simply as possible) that one thing we learn when we study nature is that God isn't necessarily a creature we'd like to be closely acquainted with. When little Pip, the cabin boy, falls out of the whaleboat -- to take one example -- he sinks down and down, then he goes down a little farther, then farther still, and then he sinks some more until, bye and bye, he sank so far down in the ocean that he 'saw God's foot on the treadle of the loom.' At that point his mind snapped and when he finally broke surface, he was as crazy as a crap-house mouse. Having seen God, he became a madman, and his derangement was permanent.
Ahab is crazy because he, too, has met God -- and the damned thing took his leg off. He was not happy about losing his leg. He has sworn vengeance on God (manifest in the unstoppable power of the whale) and he will have it if it kills him -- as of course it finally does. Ahab's rage against God reflects the human creature's rage to order the insane universe (God) in which we live.
I mean, that vein is deep and rich. Moby-Dick gives us plenty of room to think and plenty of material to think about, and if we bother to think about it we'll be thinking for a long while. How about the scene where the men sit in a circle around a tub, squishing spermaceti between their fingers? Is there a circle-jerk going on there? Is there a hint at the homosexuality that was so common in all-male crews who spent months and years at sea?
In sum, I believe the novel has at least three purposes and at least two of those are didactic. On the one hand it discourses on transcendentalism, on the nature of God and the nature of man and the relationship between them. On the other hand, it discourses on the life of the whalers. We learn from reading Moby-Dick a very great deal about life and work on a wooden, wind-powered, Yankee whaling vessel. You can read it one way, you can read it the other way, or you can read it as a straight-up, meaningless adventure yarn. No matter how you read it, it's a whale of a tale and it's one that always yields more to those who re-read it.
I give it five stars because I think it earns every one of 'em."
"This is a curious and unwieldy book. At times (and too frequently) it reads like the more excruciatingly detailed scenes of Robinson Crusoe; at others, the zany songs, goofy scenes, and curious characters prove Pynchon and DFW to be no pioneers in their lighthearted pursuits. The descriptive prose occasionally builds into an alliterative tornado where form, content, and raw urgency combined to leave me buzzed and page corner-bending. There's a staggering amount of wisdom dressed up in whale-speak and ship-speak, easily justifying the frequency with which this book is taught and revisited. The dialogue and soliloquies are reminiscent of (and well-nigh the equal to) Shakespeare: the rhythm of speech, if not technically similar, certainly conjures up the Bard and, regardless of the accurateness of my observation here, offers exquisite aesthetic delights. Indeed, this is the first book I've tried reading/whispering aloud in parts since moving through Paradise Lost earlier in the year.
After a jocular commencement full of quaint homoeroticism and ominous adumbrations, the feverish intensity of the story picks up with Ahab's declaration of his quest to find and kill the white whale. Not only does this scene kick the plot into motion, but it also signals the beginning of Melville's flirtation with other perspectives outside of Ishmael's semi-omniscient narration. Once I'd become familiar and comfortable with the mode of storytelling, we started bouncing from Ahab's point-of-view back to Ishmael over to Stubb, and the story suddenly revealed a passionate and intimate aspect that would become so important with Ahab's consuming madness as the book reached its climax.
Everything in the story feels thoughtfully-constructed, but it occasionally falls into a predictable pattern that likely gives the book its reputation for-dare I say it-boringness. When the style changes feel fresh and organic (as in the perspective switches mentioned above), the mood and flow are well-affected. Frequently, however, Melville seems to be following the modern indie rock playbook: build up tension...build...Build...BUILD... release, ahh. Except here the tension comes from subjection to the minutest of details on whales, whalers, and whaling life that often come across as more creative and artistic Wikipedia entries. But then, right when you can't take it anymore, and you drift into reverie contemplating the risk of eye injury from excessive computer-screen exposure, Melville switches into plot/action mode and the story takes off again...for 3 pages. (There are about 150 chapters in this book, which kinda makes you wonder about the institution date of the rule that literary and genre fiction must be distinguishable by chapter length).
So is Moby-Dick the Great American Novel? I don't think so, but it may at least be The Quintessential American Novel, in the sense that it's imperfect and it chronicles single-minded, results-driven obsession as well as the destruction of living mystery and mastery of the awe-inspiring Unknown. I couldn't help but bring my modern day whale knowledge and sensibilities to the text (a failure on my part), and yet as soon as the brutality and glorification of whale-killing reached its peak, Melville preempted and precluded my ready protestations. Indeed, he mocks all of us who eat meat and would object to the brutal whaling he describes:
But Stubb, he eats the whale by its own light, does he? and that is adding insult to injury, is it? Look at your knife-handle, there, my civilized and enlightened gourmand dining off that roast beef, what is that handle made of?-what but the bones of the brother of the very ox you are eating? And what do you pick your teeth with, after devouring that fat goose? With a feather of the same fowl. And with what quill did the Secretary of the Society for the Suppression of Cruelty to Ganders formerly indite his circulars? It is only within the last month or two that that society passed a resolution to patronize nothing but steel pens.
And so I must begrudge Melville his whaling apology as I simultaneously confront my life's own pusillanimous contradictions. In any case, Melville's position shouldn't be oversimplified-he's interested in portraying both the glories and horrors of war and concedes that there are, in fact, ideals (however impossible/impractical they may be to attain): in legend, the first whale attacked by our brotherhood was not killed with any sordid intent. Those were the knightly days of our profession, when we only bore arms to succor the distressed, and not to fill men's lamp-feeders.
Within a novel of such depth, where the literal nearly always represents something(s) more, such a close eco-reading is perhaps uncalled for. This book is overflowing with humor (French translation scene, anyone?), epic struggle, unhealthy human obsession (What is best let alone, that accursed thing is not always what least allures), destiny, societal escapism, and good old-fashioned adventure. And never have I read a superior description of the sinusoidal curve of life; of our empty pursuits; of the fundamental patterns to which we subject ourselves (and are subjected):
Oh! my friends, but this is man-killing! (i.e. soul-killing) Yet this is life. For hardly have we mortals by long toilings extracted from the world's vast bulk its small but valuable sperm; and then, with weary patience, cleansed ourselves from its defilements, and learned to live here in clean tabernacles of the soul; hardly is this done, when -- There she blows! -- the ghost is spouted up, and away we sail to fight some other world, and go through young life's old routine again.
"I first read this when I was nineteen; I did not enjoy reading it nearly so much as I enjoyed having read it. Every summer, a friend's daughter comes home from college, and together we read books she's interested in. This summer, she said she wanted to read MOBY DICK. I was not at all interested, but I'd never say no to a student who wants to read this book.
The past three weeks of reading have been unadulterated joy. The book: I get it, now, I finally get all the fuss. Harold Bloom says that reading is a solitary pleasure. That's true, but the bounty of goodreads has made it much less so. That said, one of the most thrilling moments in my reading life, ever, came an hour or so ago when, having finally spotted the white whale he'd searched three seas for, Ahab shouted, "Thar she blows!"
There is nothing left to be said about this book, nothing I can add. But it truly is an amazing, amazing work of fiction."
One of the most challenging and most intense novels to which I have ever put my mind. Over the course of reading this book, I encountered resistance. When I said I was reading it, someone responded, "On purpose?" Just today, finishing it in a cafe, a couple sitting across from me spoke of the book to each other. "Have you read Moby Dick?" asked the girl. "I tried but it didn't do it for me," said the guy. Who are these people.
Maybe I'm a literary snob. I don't think that's such a bad thing. If you don't become ill at the state of modern "popular" fiction, sometimes called literature but resoundingly far from it, you have not given enough time to exploring how things once were; how dedicated writers were to creating an experience; a time when craft reigned. After reading Moby Dick, I'm just dumbstruck as to what passes for literature these days.
But then maybe people don't want to be challenged anymore. Maybe books have become as much a diversion as television. Sure, books are meant to be a diversion; they are meant to be enjoyable and to pass the time in a pleasant way. Otherwise, why read? But Moby Dick is more than that and literature should be more than that. Books should change you and open you up and free you. Modern fiction is little more than reality tv. Why else would the modern reader be so obsessed with both the non-fiction and fiction memoir? We want to escape but not be challenged. We pick up a book like Moby Dick, feel pressured by it to think, and put it right back down.
Moby Dick is the American epic. There is nothing even close to it. If you think you know of a book that can rival it, let me read it and prove you wrong. This is the novel that all other novels should strive to be in spirit. How can these people turn it away?
Go back to your Palahniuks and Lethams and Eggers and everything else masquerading as something important. Don't give Moby Dick a chance, don't open your eyes, and relax deep into your easy-chair of mediocrity. Moby Dick is difficult. Moby Dick is something you won't fully understand when you try to read it in high school, in college, in your formative years, in your later years. It is something that needs multiple readings and needs to be read at a time in your life when you are most susceptible to the truths it entails. It deserves to be read now and forever.
We all have a White Whale we are chasing. The question is whether or not one may ever truly recognize it."
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