Moby-Dick (Bantam Classics)

Book Description

No American masterpiece casts quite as awesome a shadow as Melville's monumental Moby Dick. Mad Captain Ahab's quest for the White Whale is a timeless epic--a stirring tragedy of vengeance and obsession, a searing parable about humanity lost in a universe of moral ambiguity. It is the greatest sea story ever told. Far ahead of its own time, Moby Dick was largely misunderstood and unappreciated by Melville's contemporaries. Today, however, it is indisputably a classic. As D.H. Lawrence wrote, Moby Dick "commands a stillness in the soul, an awe . . . [It is] one of the strangest and most wonderful books in the world."

Customer Reviews:

Some "classics" aren't. This one is........2007-09-21

A few years back I made a conscious decision to read (and in some cases re-read) a number of books that fall into the category of "classics." The books that stand the test of time the best have an uncanny ability to feel modern and relevant no matter how long ago they were written. It's almost as if there is a certain current that runs down through the years that flows with a permanence that most don't. If a writer can tap into this current, their writing can be timeless; a classic.

Herman Melville tapped into that current in spades in this story. Despite this book being over 150 years old, the themes Melville selected from many obviously available to him are themes that are just as relevant an engaging today as they were in 1851. Further, Melville somehow had a handle on using language that would not seem outdated even after a century and a half.

What you get is a great story about a revenge-obsessed man, characters to whom you can easily relate and colorful descriptions of the life of a whaleman. It all comes together beautifully.

Any drawbacks? Sure, Melville's story slows in the middle of the book as he goes into a deep examination of the physical characteristics of various whales, but it's still interesting and it's just not enough to take away from the rest of this novel.

Highly recommended.

Slog Through It -- It's Worth It.......2007-09-18

This great American novel of the 19th Century, like some of the great novels of the 20th Century, is at times unreadable. Long riffs about whale biology and whale trivia made me put down this book when I tried to read it many years ago. I got through it this time, with the help of Frank Muller's classic reading on audiotape. Don't bother with anyone else's reading -- go to the library and check out Muller's version. He is one of the top readers and does justice to the poetry and great language of this novel.

The book is not told in the way we would find conventional today -- a fast paced narration of the adventures of men at sea. Melville clearly wants to tell the tale in the epic style. He writes in very short chapters that resemble Biblical passages, both in the poetic use of language and in addressing the most elemental themes of good vs. evil, man vs. nature, and the human condition. In the end, even the whale trivia serves the epic purpose in driving home the extraordinary courage and heroism of these whalers.

I don't buy the idea that Moby Dick, malevolent as he is, somehow represents evil. The sometimes destructive and overwhelming force of nature is more likely the right allegorical symbol. Evil for me is Ahab, given the truly heartless choices he makes in his obsession for the White Whale -- and given what happens to a man after 40 years at sea.

The most attractive characters are Ishmael and Queequeg, Ishmael's cannibal friend. Each demonstrates the best quailities of human nature --companionship, courage, acceptance of their lot in life. Given the racial turmoil of the 1850s, Melville may have been making a political point by portraying the nobility of the dark-skinned. I don't buy the idea that the allegory was any more elaborate than that, though it's clear to me that the novel is a gold mine for all sorts of Ph.D. thesis topics.

In the end, I do think that the great themes explored by Melville are more effectively explored less allegorically and more through character development and moral choices. For that reason, I'd say that Huckleberry Finn is the true Great American Novel of the 19th century and that the great Russian contemploraries of Melville wrote better books. But this certainly is a classic work worth the effort.

Free SF Reader.......2007-09-03

This whale hunting job really drives me crazy.

or, longer version:

Take on really stupendously big arse white wale. Add a crazed, obsessive monomaniacal Captain. Add in a couple of narrators and quite a few other unfortunates who get stuck in the middle of his quest for the white whale.

Add in an author waxing lyrical, often at length, and you are left with a pretty decent and often interesting novel.

Strange but..........2007-08-29

The strangeness is what makes Moby-Dick so exceptional and an indisputable classic. It was quite a difficult and long read, but upon completion, it was, without a doubt, completely and utterly worthwhile. The characters were some of the most unique in all of fiction and each of them is leaves their mark.

Key Work of Literature.......2007-08-27

Moby-Dick is a sprawling, unwieldy yet very great novel about the obsessive pursuit of happiness and fulfillment. "Call me Ishmael..." the famous opening lines establishes the omniscient narrator for this whale of an epic. The novel is filled with remarkable characters; their composite comradery is a true achievement of writing. Melville's insistence on explicating precise technical minutia on the craft of whaling and oceanography turned off most readers when the book was initially published (these sections still turn off most who dare penetrate this tome), yet it is really these sections that allow the reader to become immersed in the world of Ahab, the deranged symbol of evil amidst the beauty and sublime grace of the sea. Melville was an undisputed master of literary style, and this masterpiece is difficult to place for the simple reason that its' incomprehensible scale defies categorization. This is a reader's book; it is a divine allegory, a conventional adventure, and a bewitching construction all at once. Not for the weak minded.

Average customer rating:

Whale of a Book
Delbanco skillfully brings the world of Melville to life
A New Study of Herman Melville
Hershel Parker's rehash
A World of Hurt

Melville: His World and Work
Andrew Delbanco
Manufacturer: Knopf
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0375403140
Release Date: 2005-09-20

Book Description

With Moby-Dick Herman Melville set the standard for the Great American Novel, and with “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” Benito Cereno, and Billy Budd he completed perhaps the greatest oeuvre of any of our writers. Now Andrew Delbanco, hailed by Time as “America’s best social critic,” uses unparalleled historical and critical perspective to give us both a commanding biography and a riveting portrait of the young nation.

The grandson of Revolutionary War heroes, Melville was born into a family that in the fledgling republic had lost both money and status. Half New Yorker, half New Englander, and toughened at sea as a young man, he returned home to chronicle the deepest crises of his era, from the increasingly shrill debates over slavery through the bloodbath of the Civil War to the intellectual and spiritual revolution wrought by Darwin. Meanwhile, the New York of his youth, where letters were delivered by horseback messengers, became in his lifetime a city recognizably our own, where the Brooklyn Bridge carried traffic and electric lights lit the streets.

Delbanco charts Melville’s growth from the bawdy storytelling of Typee—the “labial melody” of his “indulgent captivity” among the Polynesians—through the spiritual preoccupations building up to Moby-Dick and such later works as Pierre, or the Ambiguities and The Confidence-Man, His Masquerade. And he creates a vivid narrative of a life that left little evidence in its wake: Melville’s peculiar marriage, the tragic loss of two sons, his powerful friendship with Nathaniel Hawthorne and scores of literary cronies, bouts of feverish writing, relentless financial pressure both in the Berkshires and in New York, declining critical and popular esteem, and ultimately a customs job bedeviled by corruption. Delbanco uncovers autobiographical traces throughout Melville’s work, even as he illuminates the stunning achievements of a career that, despite being consigned to obscurity long before its author’s death, ultimately shaped our literature. Finally we understand why the recognition of Melville’s genius—led by D. H. Lawrence and E. M. Forster, and posthumous by some forty years—still feels triumphant; why he, more than any other American writer, has captured the imaginative, social, and political concerns of successive generations; and why Ahab and the White Whale, after more than a century and a half, have become durably resounding symbols not only here but around the world.

Customer Reviews:

Whale of a Book.......2007-07-22

Is there anything quite like a great biography? A great novel, you say, and I'd agree, but where are they? Meanwhile, we have these marvelous pieces of writing: Ellmann's biography of Joyce, Edel's biography of James, Holroyd on Shaw. This is not a multi-volumed immortal masterpiece but it has all of the characteristics of such a work, save exhaustiveness. This is an introduction, really, more than a complete life, but it serves its purpose as well as can be imagined. The prose style is inviting and easy, the illustrations amusing and pointedly relevant and revealing. The author's point of view is strikingly original. He begins not with Melville's birth, but with his reputation, from his death to the present. American's do not have a great dramatist, so we have made the drama of Melville's life a kind of literary drama surrounding a masterpiece, "Moby Dick." Those who know and love it see it as one of the great pieces of literature of all time. Melville is cast in the role of the likable genius, the sympathetic artist, the neglected and scorned master of American prose. We've been taught to love him, as we have been instructed to hate Hemingway and other dead white male authors. My professor said that Melville wasn't worth reading and recommended in its stead a collection of slave testimony and the lost poems of a female mill worker. I ventured that perhaps I could read him myself and make up my own mind. We live in an odd age that resents greatness. Let's applaud Delbanco's effort to set the record straight.

Delbanco skillfully brings the world of Melville to life.......2007-01-07

This biography of Melville is as balanced, accessible, and thoroughly entertaining as a biography of a literary figure can get while still being considered "serious." Delbanco has a great skills as a writer himself, skillfully juggling the story of Melville's life, critical discussions of his writing, and finally the social and historical context of the works.

The discussions of the books are excellent, particularly Delbanco's readings of the novels Moby Dick, Typee, and Pierre. But where this biography particularly stands out is the intermeshing the books with aspects of 19th century American literary culture. There are, for instance, interesting discussions of the dominance of English publishing houses, of copyright issues, of publishing in general. Delbanco situates Melville's work before a backdrop of a nation in transition (for example the story "Benito Cereno" is published in midst of the debate about the expansion of slavery into Kansas territory), and before a backdrop of the city of New York under transition too.

Finally, Delbanco discusses the unusual trajectory of Melville's own career and reputation - from almost being forgotten at the time of his death to the towering position he holds in American letters today.

This biography is a great summary of Melville's life, and also in a broader sense, of 19th century literary culture.

A New Study of Herman Melville.......2006-02-28

Herman Melville (1819 -- 1893) is one of the writers I have returned to again and again over the course of years. Thus, I was gratified to receive this new book by Andrew Delbanco, "Melville: His Life and Work" (2005) as a gift and to have the opportunity to read it, think again about Melville, and share my thoughts on this site with other readers. Delbanco is Levi Professor in the Humanities and Director of American Studies at Columbia University. He has published widely on American literature, including a book titled "Required Reading: why our American Classics matter now." Before reading Professor Delbanco's Melville study, I also read the lengthy review by Frederick Crews in the December 1, 2005, "New York Review" which is both laudatory and critical.

The literature on Melville continues to grow, and in recent years biographies have been published that are longer and far more detailed than Professor Delbanco's. But Delbanco's study is accessible, engagingly written, and concentrates, as the subtitle to his book implies, in placing Melville in the historical context of Nineteenth Century America, and on the works themselves. I will discuss each of these factors briefly.

As to Nineteenth Century America, Professor Delbanco discusses Melville's roots as the descendant, on both sides of his family, of heroes of the Revolutionary War. He gives a revealing picture of pre-Bellum America and of the seafaring life. He gives a detailed historical discussion, for a literary biography, of the tumults which split the United States and lead to the Civil War, including the War with Mexico, the compromises of 1850, and the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. Professor Delbanco shows how Melville responded to both the literary and political events of his time. He also gives a good, if briefer, treatment of the Civil War and of Melville's life thereafter, as the United States expanded and a crude materialism became dominant. But most vividly, Professor Delbanco gives a picture of New York City, both before and after the Civil War, and argues convincingly for the strong formative influence that the city exerted on Melville's writings.

As to Melville's writings, Professor Delbanco devotes a great deal of space to Melville's four widely-recognized masterpieces: Moby Dick, Bartelby, Benito Cereno, and Billy Budd. He offers textual exposition, compositional background, and a good literary sense of the complexities and ambiguities in each of these works. He offers shorter yet rewarding discussions of several of Melville's more controversial efforts, including Pierre, The Confidence Man, his collection of Civil War Poetry called Battle Pieces, and the long poem Clarel. I think that Delbanco undervalues some of the poetry, particularly Battle Pieces which I have found over the years a provocative literary guide to the Civil War.

The treatment of Melville's life is interrelated well with a study of his works, as Professor Delbanco gives succint discussions of Melville's early years, his decision to go to sea, his marriage, the question of his sexual orientation, the friendship with Nathaniel Hawthorne, his travels and wanderings, the tragic deaths of two of his sons, and the long reclusive years Melville spent as a customs inspector in New York City. We see Melville with all his difficulties and as a great but in his lifetime forgotten writer. Readers interested in a good novelistic portrayal of Melville may wish to read Frederick Busch's "The Night Inspector", to which Professor Delbanco refers.

(...)
I came away from Professor Belbanco's book with the desire to revist some of the Melville works that I have read in the past and, perhaps, to read some of the works that I don't know for the first time. I think it is the purpose of a study such as Delbanco's to return to reader to the words of the author, in this case Melville. Delbanco's book succeeds in doing so admirably.

(...)

Hershel Parker's rehash.......2006-01-18

All of the comments about this book are true with the exception that the majority of the biographical findings stem from Hershel Parker's groundbreaking, momentuous two-volume work that maintains itself as THE definitive biography of Melville. Credit Mr. Parker for The Isle of the Cross details, not Delbanco who was one of Parker's most vocal critics and once disputed the biographer's findings on The Isle of the Cross. However, if you do not want to wade through Parker's immense work, then go for this.

A World of Hurt.......2006-01-04

Some parts of Melville's writing are so dense even he got confused in them, for perhaps it was not his conscious self in charge of the words spilling out on the page in splendid, mordant constellation. At the end of his life, he returned after 30 years of sometimes brilliant poetry to write one last short novel, BILLY BUDD, in which most of the quixotic exuberance of PIERRE and MOBY DICK, of earlier years, seems to have been burnt away, as if by great pain.

Intriguing to hear the story (such as it is) of THE ISLE OF THE CROSS, Melville's lost novel, rejected by Harpers Magazine and then disappeared. Maybe this book will return to us someday, miracles have happened before. Written at the height of Melville's powers, ISLE emerges under Delbanco's suggestive treatment as a parable of his relations with Hawthorne, and the pull of the land versus the romance of the sea.

The great pain must have been the suicide of Mackie, Melville's son, who killed himself at age 18 at home; the coroner decided it must have been an accident, a pistol shot gone wrong, after th family protested his earlier ruling of suicide. How awful to think of Lizzie worrying that Malcolm wasn't getting up in the morning, he'd be late for work, and Melville saying, let him stay in bed if he needs to, and he'll pay for his tardiness if he needs to. And then at the end of the day, when they finally made their way into his bedroom, he was long dead, the gun at his side. Though Delbanco says that we will never know if Melville was a homosexual, it seems to me that the whole Mackie drama doesn't make much sense unless you allow he possibility that the boy killed himself to protect himself from further sexual predation by his father. And that CLAREL, JOHN MARR, and BILLY BUDD were the father's attempts to make sense of the wrong he had done the boy.

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Call me Ishmael
A great way to read a great epic tale.
Moby Dick Lives--And We Laugh!
very well read
19 cds capture the full drama (they better!)

Moby Dick (Naxos AudioBooks)
Herman Melville
Manufacturer: Naxos Audiobooks
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Audio CD

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ASIN: 9626343583
Release Date: 2006-10-24

Customer Reviews:

Call me Ishmael.......2007-10-02

Call me Ishmael. One of the most famous opening lines in all of English literature. I was thrilled to find this audio edition of a lengthy classic that I, like many Americans, doggedly plowed through in high school, when I was certainly much too young to appreciate its depth and meaning. Having recently completed Ahab's Wife, my interest in Ahab and what his choices brought about for him, was piqued, and I decided to take another look. This audio version is perfect for someone like me - I know I would not have persevered in reading this on my own.
This version has kindled an understanding and admiration for Moby Dick as adventure story, allegory, and journey of self-discovery. It was surprising how much I learned, simply in the factual sense, about the whaling industry in New England, where I was born and raised and still reside today. This is a book that is probably ruined by the introduction of it during adolescence, when it has little to say to the very young reader. Like Nathaniel Hawthorne, Melville is an author who speaks to the reader who has grappled with the universal questions about life and death, sanity and madness, revenge and forgiveness. Not to mention multiculturalism, racism and tolerance. And, a new word - moby - was coined and entered into the English language.
Intelligently narrated by William Hootkins, the audio version has a lot to recommend it and is a pleasant way to revisit an important American masterpiece. Take another look (or listen!)

A great way to read a great epic tale........2007-01-05

As a forty-five year old english major in my senior year of college with fourteen novels to read in one semester, the MOBY DICK Audiobook made the challenge an easier one. Beside the fact that I could literally do the homework of reading MOBY DICK while driving, excercising or cleaning, each of the nineteen CD's was clearly marked by chapter and title and by quotes making it easy to find a chapter if I needed to review it. Each CD listed the total time and broke the times into chapters assisting me in projecting the time I needed to complete each chapter. The many quintesential voices of reader, William Hootkins, was perfect in projecting the many character personalities in this epic tale of Captain Ahab and the white whale. This audiobook is one that will be on my library shelf forever.

Moby Dick Lives--And We Laugh!.......2006-08-17

I haven't read Moby Dick in 26 years, since I was a Ph.D. student in English. My impression at that time was that it was the greatest of American novels, VERY American, with everything good and bad that implies. I've urged it on people ever since, but forgotten why.

I purchased this set of unabridged CDs because I wanted to experience the book again, but I don't have much time for reading American novels--I teach primarily British.

What a treat! This reading is magnificent! I'd forgotten how funny Moby Dick is. The reader brings out all the delightful jokes through his phrasing and tone. Could I quibble about how to say this line, that word? Sure. But why bother? This is one of the best audiobooks I've listened to, and it really does make Moby Dick come alive. I played the first half hour to my family, and now they all want to hear the rest.

very well read.......2006-07-16

If you're going to get an unabridged recording of Moby-Dick, you certainly can't go wrong with this one, by William Hootkins. I am a big Melville nut and was VERY, VERY PLEASED with this.

Avoid at all costs the only other (as far as I know) unabridged one out there, read by Adams Morgan. Morgan's reedy, effete voice is totally unsuited to this material: his enunciation is so precious it's almost dandyish. And his mispronunciations are legion.

Hootkins, however, reads like a man, in long, strong, lingering swells. He has a deep, resonant voice, is literate, sensitive to the material, and rarely, I feel, misreads a line. The whole thing is very convincing. Neither does he read it too fast.

Another strength of Hootkin's reading is that his style really brings out how full of jokes this book is. Hootkins is very good at conveying Melville's insouciant tone, especially through many of the cetology chapters, where you intellectually understand that Melville is kidding but it just doesn't work. Well, Hootkins really brings Melville's irreverent tone to the fore.

My only possible criticism of his performance is that, in the final act of the book, Hootkins frequently continues with this leisurely, almost jovial tone, even though Melville has gotten by then dead serious. But this is nitpicking.

NOTE: It's not TOTALLY unabridged. The etymology and extracts sections have been cut. But the rest is there.

There are no sound effects or music.

19 cds capture the full drama (they better!).......2006-04-14

Herman Melville's MOBY-DICK receives professional William Hotkin's lively, vivacious narrative style which lends well to a weighty 19-cd read capturing the full drama and flavor of the high seas. MOBY-DICK is said to be the penultimate American novel: any who struggled with the dry written word should give it another chance here in audio format, where the full flavor of Melville's talents come to life.

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GG
Amaizing Book.
Moby Dick
Call Me Ahab
Minority View.

Moby Dick
Herman Melville
Manufacturer: Castle Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0785819134

Customer Reviews:

GG.......2007-10-07

Obviously the book's a classic. However I thought this hard copy was going to be a (retro) small book like the one I read as a boy. This thing's huge like a medical dictionary.

Amaizing Book........2007-02-04

This version is by far the best I've seen. The quality of the book is unsurpassed.

Moby Dick.......2006-11-06

Received in great condition. Wonderful book. Would recommend to as gift or for your own library.

Call Me Ahab.......2006-05-04

First, let me tell say that I began this book with high hopes since it considered a masterpiece. However, not 100 pages into the book, I kept asking myself why this book is considered a masterpiece. After finishing it, I am still asking myself that very question. I don't have an answer since this book was certainly not worth the time and effort to read it.

I entitled this review "Call me Ahab" since after getting 300 pages into it, I became obsessed with finishing the book. I was not going to let the White Whale beat me. I was not going to let that fish cause me to put down the book (even though that is what I wanted to do). I was not reading this book because I was enjoying it. I merely finished it so that I could say that I finished it and the White Whale did not win.

There is a reason that the most famous line in the book is the first one. Of the 135 chapters, there are maybe 20-25 that are worth the reading. Of the 725 pages, maybe only 150-200 are worth reading. I was not too terribly concerned about knowing the anatomy of whales, the different types of whales, the skeletal system of whales, or knowing about whaling in general.

Throughout the book, you may read one chapter with some action only to be followed by 5 or 6 chapters of tangents that are not necessary to understand the story. This also happens within some of the chapters that have some action. In the middle of a chapter with some action, Melville may go off on some tangent for several paragraphs and then come back to the storyline.

If you like a story with nonessential information and an author that is entirely to verbose, then this book is for you. Also, if you have only one book and way too much time on your hands, this would be a good book. However, if you like a story that has some continuity to it and a good storyline, this is not the book for you.

I think that Melville's plan was to have his writing be the White Whale and the reader as Ahab to determine if his writing would cause the reader to become obsessed just to get through it. If this was his thinking, then it worked on me.

There are so many more books that are much, much better than this one. If you have many books that you want to read, read them first and always place this book at the back of the line and read it when you have no other books you would rather read.

Take my advice - read another book. If not, then be prepared to become obsessed with finishing it since that may be the only way you will get though it.

My apologizes to all those that I may have offended with this review.

Minority View........2006-04-27

"Moby Dick" has been hyped far beyond its worth because it was the first American novel with philosophic pretentions. You could read the first ninety pages, then skip to the last ten and miss nothing but a binful of symbols. It's gauche, jejune, primitive, a graphic novel without illustrations--one of the few American novels improved as a Classics comic book. Joseph Conrad covers the same material better, and Persig better than either of them. This is a wearying tome that no one would read if it weren't assigned reading. It will teach you . . . nothing.

Mariners, Renegades and Castaways: The Story of Herman Melville and the World We Live In (Reencounters With Colonialism--New Perspectives on the Americas)

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Great book from a brilliant mind.
C.L.R James interpretation of Melville's works
Brilliant Analysis of Melville's Classic Text
poco Po-Co
CLR James and The World We Live In

Mariners, Renegades and Castaways: The Story of Herman Melville and the World We Live In (Reencounters With Colonialism--New Perspectives on the Americas)
C. L. R. James
Manufacturer: Dartmouth
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 158465094X

Book Description

Political theorist and cultural critic, novelist and cricket enthusiast, C. L. R. James (1901 - 1989) was a brilliant polymath who has been described by Edward Said as "a centrally important 20th-century figure." Through such landmark works as The Black Jacobins, Beyond a Boundary, and American Civilization, James's thought continues to influence and inspire scholars in a wide variety of fields. "There is little doubt," wrote novelist Caryl Phillips in The New Republic, "that James will come to be regarded as the outstanding Caribbean mind of the twentieth century."

In his seminal work of literary and cultural criticism, Mariners, Renegades and Castaways, James anticipated many of the concerns and ideas that have shaped the contemporary fields of American and Postcolonial Studies, yet this widely influential book has been unavailable in its complete form since its original publication in 1953. A provocative study of Moby Dick in which James challenged the prevailing Americanist interpretation that opposed a "totalitarian" Ahab and a "democratic, American" Ishmael, he offered instead a vision of a factory-like Pequod whose "captain of industry" leads the "mariners, renegades and castaways" of its crew to their doom.

In addition to demonstrating how such an interpretation supported the emerging US national security state, James also related the narrative of Moby Dick, and its resonance in American literary and political culture, to his own persecuted position at the height (or the depth) of the Truman/McCarthy era. It is precisely this personal, deeply original material that was excised from the only subsequent edition. With a new introduction by Donald E. Pease that places the work in its critical and cultural context, Mariners, Renegades and Castaways is once again available in its complete form.

Customer Reviews:

Great book from a brilliant mind........2004-07-27

CLR James was one of the earliest left wing thinkers to break from Orthodox Marxist dogmatism, even rejecting Leninism and the notion of the 'Vanguard of the Proletariat' all the way back in the late '40's, a move that left him alienated from the mainstream Left of the time and eventually led to his deportation in the 1950s. This book was written while he was in jail in New York awaiting his immigration hearing, a fact that makes this insightful look at Melville all the more impressive.

James points out that Melville was a visionary who caught glimpses of new social types long before they became prevalent in society: he even makes the startling statement that Melville is the ONLY author of Industrial capitalism. Reading first this book, then going back and reading Moby Dick, I must say that I cannot argue with his assessment. I found this small volume challenging, engaging and at times, personally upsetting, as I read something of myself and many others like me in James' reading of Ishmael. Definite cause for pause and reflection.

This book ends with a chapter describing in excruciating detail James' treatment while in jail, which I found at first quite self serving and gripey...but upon further reflection, his story is irritating because it is a banal and everyday litany of life under bureaucratic capitalism, not pretty or interesting, but it got under my skin, like the rest of this book.

If you like Melville or are interested in anti-authoritarian left thinking, you could do no better than to pick this up: I couldn't put it down.

C.L.R James interpretation of Melville's works.......2003-02-09

When I first read this book by James, I was preparing to write an essay on Melville and his "isolatoes." James gives ample evidence for establishing the reasons why some of the protagonists appear elusive, enigmatic, and, of course, reclusive. I found this text quite helpful in its explanations of why Melville portrayed his male characters the way he chose; perhaps James own exile for passport violations sets up the framework for presenting his theories on the characters he analyzes. The work is a fine read, although the socialist commentary remains controversial.

Brilliant Analysis of Melville's Classic Text.......2002-06-20

C.L.R. James's analysis of Moby Dick brings the book to life and makes it understandable for a 21st century audience. You'll read "Mariners, Renegades, and Castaways, and want to immediately run out and read Moby Dick and Melville's other classics. James argues that Melville used the novel to explore dramatic changes in the fabric of American culture including the rise of industrial capitalism, the international working class, and the increasingly savage character of political and industrial life and leadership.

C.L.R. James wrote this book while he was interned with the newest generation of "Mariners, Renegades, and Castaways" on Ellis Island awaiting deportation. James's fate--that of a foreigner who offers the finest existing interpretation of one of America's greatest books and is still deported--serves as a cautionary tale for our own times. James concludes, "What the writing of this book has taught the writer is the inseparability of great literature and of social life."

poco Po-Co.......2002-04-25

This book is more than a little bit of early Postcolonial writing. The intoduction by Donald Pease is new, and the last chapter - an autobiographical sketch and personal appeal by James - was omitted from a previous edition. In terms of literary criticism, this is what Pease has to say about James and his writing: "He was one of the few critics who emerged from the Third World in the 1950's and traveled throughout Britain and the United States generating what are now called post-colonial readings." The real value of this book however is in its brilliant reinterpretation of MOBY DICK.

Rather than see Ahab and Ishmael as representing respectively "totalitarian" and "American" cultural themes as critics in the 1950's saw it, James offers a vison focused on the Pequod and its crew. A view in which the MARINERS, RENEGADES & CASTAWAYS of the ship were at the mercy of their Captain. In James' interpretaion the Pequod is a factory ship and the crew are the workers. Ahab is no longer a mere sailor but is now illustrative of a "Captain of industry."

I agree with the reviewer from New Haven regarding the peculiar situation James found himself in. The established interpretation of a Cold War allegory was in keeping with the times in the 1950's. If James or Melville himself were writing today, the interpretation on offer here - rather than something to be persecuted for - would be considered far more plausible than the narrow and blinkered view of the 1950's mainstream critics.

CLR James and The World We Live In.......2002-03-15

James, writing 100 years after _Moby Dick_ was published, shows a significant understanding of Herman Melville's time and its relation to the time in which he (James) wrote--1952. James gives an insightful critique of Melville's earlier novels and shows how they chronologically lead to Melville's eventual masterpiece, _Moby Dick_. _Moby Dick_ is an allegory for modernity gone awry, with a mad captain at the helm. For James, Ahab is comparable to the USA, which is charting its own mad course with destiny. In 1952 James was right on target, for he was detained on Ellis Island and eventually deported during the worst days of McCarthyism. It is a peculiar instance of a Trinidadian intellectual's desire to become a US citizen, and instead, being figuratively slapped in the face because of his associations with--through his writings against-- Russian communism and Trotskyites. That he wrote this book while being detained, and included an autobiographical chapter at the end makes this text quite a resource for literary critics as well as for those interested in learning about a historical case of US immigration policy in action.

Herman Melville : Typee, Omoo, Mardi (Library of America)

Average customer rating:

The first Library of America book I read
The Growth of a Seeker

Herman Melville : Typee, Omoo, Mardi (Library of America)
Herman Melville
Manufacturer: Library of America
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0940450003

Book Description

This first volume of The Library of America's complete prose works of Herman Melville includes three romances of the South Seas. "Typee" and "Omoo," based on the young Melville's experiences on a whaling ship, are exuberant accounts of the idyllic life among the "cannibals" in Polynesia. They remained his most popular works well into the 20th century. "Mardi" ("the world" in Polynesian) is a mixture of love story, adventure, and political allegory, set on a mythical Pacific island, that looks forward to the complexities of "Moby-Dick." Together, these three romances give early evidence of the genius and daring that make Melville the master novelist of the sea and a precursor of modernist literature. Two companion volumes--"Herman Melville: Redburn, White-Jacket, Moby-Dick" and "Herman Melville: Pierre, Israel Potter, The Piazza Tales," "The Confidence Man, Uncollected Prose, and Billy Budd" complete this edition of Melville's prose.

Customer Reviews:

The first Library of America book I read.......2007-08-29

Back a few years ago, I bought the entire series of Library of America books, some 173 books, each with as many as 1,600 small-print pages. Typically, each volume contains several books (say novels) by an author.

The quality of the writing they have selected is marvelous. There are very few "dogs". Below are my ratings of all the stuff I've read so far (a miniscule fraction of the total library), along with, of course, my completely nonsensical (often sports or pop culture) author nicknames.

And they keep sending me new books faster than I can read the existing ones...

Practically all that I've read ranges from good to fantastic, and I stop reading ones I don't like, so almost all of the books cited below are worthy by my standards. No stars means good, * means especially good, ** means great, and I think I also gave one or two books ***. The numbers are the series # of the book out of the 173 published so far.

A book of Henry James' fiction (not in the LOA series) that I read about 3 years ago got me started on this quest, a supplement to my quest of playing the entire history of baseball via APBA.

1. Herman "Franks" Melville: Typee* ("Idyllic") 316 pps
1. Herman "Franks" Melville: Omoo ("Picks up where Typee left off") 330 pps

2. Nathaniel "Nate the Skate" Hawthorne: Assorted Stories ("Some hard to follow") 301 pps

4. Harriet "and Ozzy" Beecher Stowe: Uncle Tom's Cabin** ("Uncle Tom is no 'Uncle Tom'") 520 pps

5. Mark "Shania" Twain: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer* ("Hilarious moments for a different kind of Tom") 216 pps

10. Nathaniel "Nate the Skate" Hawthorne: Fanshawe* ("Young scholar, romance, skullduggery") 114 pps

6. Jack "Gene" London: The Call of the Wild ("Savage") 86 pps
6. Jack "Gene" London: White Fang* ("Roger Vick-type dog-fighting
action") 198 pps

8. William Dean "Bailey" Howells: A Foregone Conclusion* ("Gripping, intricate romance") 172 pps
8. William Dean "Bailey" Howells: A Modern Instance ("Marriage gone awry in repressed times") 418 pps

11. Francis "Shibe" Parkman: Pioneers of France in the New World** ("What it was REALLY like") 330 pps
11. Francis "Shibe" Parkman: The Jesuits in North America* ("More of these accurate depictions") 382 pps

14. Henry "Don" Adams: Democracy** ("Real politics 1800's-style")

16. Washington "Dr. J" Irving: Early writings ("Boring at times") 87 pps

18. Stephen "Whooping" Crane: Maggie: A Girl of the Streets ("Fascinating but grim") 74 pps
18. Stephen "Whooping" Crane: The Red Badge of Courage* ("True face of war") 134 pps

19. Edgar "Teletubbie" Poe: Assorted Stories ("Truly weird") 188 pps

29. Henry "Edgeron" James: Washington Square* ("Plain woman trapped") 190 pps

30. Edith Wharton "School": The House of Mirth* ("Reese Witherspoon plays role in movie") 348 pps

33. Frank "Chuck" Norris: Vandover and the Brute ("Wolf-man emerges") 260 pps
33. Frank "Chuck" Norris: McTeague** ("Greed prevails") 312 pps

35. Willa "Thrilla" Cather: Assorted stories ("Oblique") 76 pps

36. Theodore "Early" Dreiser: Sister Carrie** ("Young lives go opposite directions") 456 pps

37. Benjamin "Joe" Franklin Assorted Writings* ("Brilliant satire") 87 pps

39. Flannery "Father" O'Connor: Wise Blood ("Liked better at 25") 132 pps

55. Richard "Gary" Wright: Lawd Today!** ("Unforgettable humor, violence") 220 pps

59. Sinclair "Jerry" Lewis: Main Street* ("Small-town USA") 486 pps

69. "Ornery" Sarah Orne Jewett: Deephaven* ("Atmospheric")

72. John "Franken" Steinbeck: The Pastures of Heaven** ("Modern Gothic") 170 pps

74. Zora Neale "Zorro" Hurston: Jonah's Gourd Vine ("Black preacher")

97. James "I think I'm going" Baldwin: Go Tell it on the Mountain ("Conversion experience") 216 pps

101. Eudora "The Explorer" Welty: The Robber Bridegroom ("Ridiculous fairy tale") 88 pps

103. Brockden "Les" Brown: Wieland* ("Early Gothic chills") 228 pps

111. Henry "Etta" James: Assorted Stories 1864-74** ("Consistently compelling") 430 pps

117. F. Scott "Ella" Fitzgerald: This Side of Paradise* ("Ultimately sublime") 252 pps

126. Dawn "Boog" Powell: Dance Night* ("Small-town romance in 1920's") 204 pps

134. Paul "Super" Bowles: The Sheltering Sky* ("Sophisticates lost in Africa") 252 pps

148. James T. "Turk" Farrell: Young Lonigan* ("Coming of age in tough streets") 176 pps

164. William Faulkner "Pontiac, Buick, GMC Trucks": Soldier's
Pay*** ("Unique, gripping") 256 pps
164. William Faulkner "Pontiac, Buick, GMC Trucks": Mosquitos** ("Indescribable romp") 284 pps
164. William Faulkner "Pontiac, Buick, GMC Trucks": Flags in the Dust ("Doomed family") 336 pps
164. William Faulkner "Pontiac, Buick, GMC Trucks": The Sound and the Fury ("Bewildering") 268 pps

The Growth of a Seeker.......2000-11-18

Among the early products of the wonderful Library of America Series were three volumes devoted to the novels of Herman Melville. This volume consists of Melville's first three novels, Typee(1846), Omoo(1847) and Mardi (1849)

Melville's novels are based, more or less loosely, on his life at sea. The first two novels describe voyages to the Marquesas and to Tahiti. They are filled with lush descriptions of scenery, and tales of adventure. Of the two, Typee is filled with encounters with cannibals and Polynesian maidens while Omoo presents a wider canvas of characters and scenes. Both books emphasize the sexual openness and relative simplicity of Polynesian life as compared to life in the United States and both books are critical as well of attempts to Christianize the islanders. These are not unusual themes today and probably were not as radical in the 1840s as one might suppose. The stories are well told and the descriptions alluring. These books made Mellville's reputation as a young writer.

Mardi, however, is the gem of this collection. Its relationship to the earlier novels can be analogized, say, to the relationship between the young Beethoven's first symphony on the one hand and the growth of language and thought in the second and third symphonies on the other hand. Melville prefaces the book with the note that his first two books were fact-based but were received with "incredulity" while Mardi was pure romance and "might be recieved for a verity." (Little likelihood of that)

The book as in a baroque, ornate, and bravado style that Melville would bring to completion in Moby Dick. It is an allegory involving the search for Yillah, a strange, mthical maiden, through the seas of Mardi -- Polynesian for "the world". The narrator is accompanied by King Media, by the philosopher Babbalanja, the singer Yoomi, and the historian Mohi. There are many wonderfully exasperating discussions. They wander far and wide in search of Yillah and in there wandering we here many religious allegories and many depictions of the Europe and United States of Melville's own time. There are shadowy maidens, villans, long scenes in the empty wide ocean, and pages of Melvillian thought and bluster.

The book is high American romanticism and presents a religious and personal quest by the narrator that resounds of similar quests by many in our own day. For example, there is a famous unfinished novel of the religious quest called Mount Analogue by a French writer, Duhamel, which fits quite compactly into just a few chapters of Mardi. Mardi is a long, maddenlingly difficult book but worth the effort.

Book Description

The Cambridge Companion to Herman Melville is intended to provide a critical introduction to Melville's work. The essays have been specially commissioned for this volume, and provide a comprehensive overview of Melville's career. All of Melville's novels are discussed, as well as most of his poetry and short fiction. Written at a level both challenging and accessible, the volume provides fresh perspectives on an American author whose work continues to fascinate readers and stimulate new study.

Epistemology of the Closet (Centennial Books)

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The "Problem" with Conceptual Schemes, New and Old
Deep wading
...Theory should always be so good
Seminal work in a fledgling field of academic research.
Tout livre qui ne s'adresse pas à la majorité est sot.

Epistemology of the Closet (Centennial Books)
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
Manufacturer: University of California Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0520078748

Amazon.com

Since the late 1980s, queer studies and theory have become vital to the intellectual life of the U.S. This has been, to no small degree, due to the popularity of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's critically acclaimed Epistemology of the Closet. Working from classic texts of European and American writers--including Herman Melville, Henry James, Marcel Proust, and Oscar Wilde--Sedgwick delineates a historical moment in which sexual identity became as important a demarcation of personhood as gender had been for centuries.

Sedgwick's literary analysis, while provocative and often startling (you will never read Billy Budd or The Picture of Dorian Gray the same way again), is simply the basis for a larger project of examining and analyzing how the categories of "homosexual" and "heterosexual" continue to shape almost all aspects of contemporary thought. Epistemology of the Closet is a sometimes-dense work, but one filled with wit and empathy. Sedgwick writes with great intelligence and an eye for irony, but always makes clear that her theories and critical acumen are in the service of a politic that seeks to make the world a better and more humane place for everyone. An extraordinary book that reshapes how we think about literature, sexuality, and everyday life. --Michael Bronski

Customer Reviews:

The "Problem" with Conceptual Schemes, New and Old.......2006-07-20

The August 11, 1999 "a reader" comments about Sedgwick's prose is especially valuable. The tendency to "abuse" language, in J. L. Austin's famous phrase, seems pronounced in Francophile and postmodernist writings, as if obscuritanism is a measure of profundity rather than a measure of obscuritanism. Several critics have justly claimed that unintelligibile writing and ideation only expose unintelligibility.

What could have been a provocative inquiry into the uniqueness of each human being (a novel, but now confirmed, fact, originating in Darwinian theory), once again reverts to a series of ideological templates to overlay the diversity of being and experience to "fit" a new paradigm. The dominant template here is the binary homosexual/heterosexual dichotomy, which Sedgwick insists is the prism by which we come to have knowledge of our world (I hope my effort at intelligibility does not misrepresent her views.)

Of course, the use of ideological templates laid over an inquiry is nothing new. Critical theory, Marxist theory, Freudian theory, and now Queer theory are variants of the same methodology. If one accepts the ideological template, then the subsequent examination under that template achieves a knowledge (i.e., epistemology) within the limits of that template, but generates a new conceptual scheme. Ironically, the ostensible purpose of the ideological template is to liberate thought from the status quo by forcing thought through an alternative sieve. The "insight" derived from this process becomes subversive of the status quo, but only to impose an different status quo that is putatively superior to the existent one.

According to psychology and anthropology, humans "by nature" impose categorical thinking on experience in order to "frame the reference" and "give order" to chaotic particularism of individual experience. This notion is no longer controversial, indeed, it is "obvious," with aetiology as far back to Hebraism and Hellenism, differing only in the templates used. So, instead of breaking the mold, the new theorists create new ones. Akin to Kuhn's paradigm shift applied outside science, we are prodded to look anew at the old phenomena.

But one of Darwin's keenest insights is the uniqueness of all living things, despite similarities. Instead of the essentialist thinking we inherited from Greek metaphysics and epistemology, we're told by Darwinians that we must use "population thinking," where "grouping" of things is by common descent, not our morphological, behavioral, or ideological similarities. I suggest this same motif applies to sexual populations, sexual expressions, and sexual orientation. Kinsey and others who have insisted on a continuum of orientation differences along a line between the polarities of opposites is truer to the truth than a "homosexual essence" or "heterosexual essence." The appellation of "gay" and "straight" are nominalist, not essentialist, groupings, where each appellation picks out a wide variety of differences by our conceptual schemes of categorization and understanding of populations, not by any essence. If true, and I believe it is, why revert to binary templates of essences to lay over the variety of differences as if one aspect, however shared, must then define many others as well?

Same-sex and opposite-sex relations are not as "neat and tidy" as theorists want us to believe, nor do they exist only in polarity, but rather along a continuum with yet another point between any other two points. Within different populations one finds vast varieties of sexual orientation and expression, not to mention vast differences in other facets of the human being, that homo- and hetero-sexual appellations conflate. To then use these conflated nominalisms as departure points (i.e., templates) for further inquiry only boxes in the subject further, thus undermining difference itself. Instead of nominalist pluralism one becomes both a reductionist and an essentialist to further categorize what is already tenuous at best. This paradigm shift in turn becomes its own raison d'etre further undermining uniqueness so that a new consensus of a new conceptual scheme can be forged.

Consequently, these projects have their own slippery slopes I'd prefer not to slide into. They all strike me as yet another "ideology" in the service of liberation, subverting one status quo for another, categorizing more categories, until we fit the new paradigm. I think we have had enough experience with this methodology to stop it before it starts.

Indeed, the courage to be authentic suggests the enterprise is not only subversive of the status quo, but subversive of our authenticity as well. Being unique, and therefore different, is both a starting and ending point, not a place to begin new essentialist programs to "fit" yet another putatively "new" conceptual scheme.

Deep wading.......2006-05-10

Ugh, a tough, tough book to read. I found myself really bogged down by this book and looked more forward just to getting through it than actually getting anything out of it. Sedgewick's style is definately not for me, but if you can get past the thick writing style you may be able to glean some interesting points from it.

...Theory should always be so good.......2003-05-12

According to the writer Avital Ronell, in his youth Kant wanted to be a poet. Fortunately for us, perhaps, he turned to philosophy instead. Through this turn Kant ended up setting the standard towards which most academics currently strive: a zero-degree style (which Lyotard both attempts to mime and identifies as naive in the preface to The Differend). What this does, essentially, is provide the rather stupid (and perpetually misrecognized) effect that an author is objective, sound, and important. Most of the time, authors are none of these.

People may disagree with me, but I find Sedgwick's style gorgeous and memorable. This may make the book difficult to read, but it also can make it quite a pleasure, and what else could one want from a well-informed, well-argued, politically necessary academic intervention?

For people deterred by Sedgwick's prose, I suggest you go pick up something more simple-minded. Whoever thought that reading a book shouldn't be a challenge? Who actually believes that one shouldn't struggle with difficult and new ideas?

The Epistemology of the Closet is a necessary book. Sedgwick's thoughts on ignorance and power (in response to Foucault's coupling of knowledge/power) are incredible. Her readings of Bowers v. Hardwick, the homosexual panic defense, and figurations of homosexuality are more than insightful: they are powerful critiques and exposes of the way that homophobia operates and is legitimated in contemporary American culture. Please please read this book. Read it twice or three times. Try it again and again. Each time you return, I promise you, you'll be startled by the ideas that come out, and hopefully, they'll mobilize you to do something more with them.

Take it to the next level and keep reading.

Seminal work in a fledgling field of academic research........2000-12-11

This scholarly text is the second academic publication by Sedgwick, who has made a name for herself by becoming one of the prominent researchers of 'queer theory'. Sedgwick is a professor of English at Duke University. In this book, she elaborates her focus on the study of male homosexuality in Western texts, and so reads between the lines, as it were, of mainly canonical works by authors such as Melville, Wilde, James and Proust for signs of obscure queer themes and subtexts.

Sedgwick's main argument is as follows: she believes that homosexuality - male and lesbian - tends to be represented in both society and in literature as though it were an unstable, even deviant or perverse alternative to the fixed norm of heterosexuality. Homosexuality is all too often a thing of 'the closet'; it is a secret waiting to come out; it is the 'love that dare not speak its name'. In Sedgwick's preface to this book, she introduces a note of urgent contemporaneity to her writing that continually resurfaces later on. Clearly, Sedgwick perceives an urgent topicality in her subject matter.

This argument is sound. The execution is mostly fine. Occasionally Sedgwick seems to truncate her examination of works as soon as she has provided us with the bare outlines of their queer subtexts. For instance, she tells us that Claggart in Melville's 'Billy Budd' is gay, and that his testimony against the short story's title character contains an array of important, yet pervasively subtle, sexual connotations. Sometimes this approach borders dangerously on dispensing cheap thrills as Sedgwick proceeds to list terms that constitute sexual innuendo. Having done this, she does not try to link other themes in 'Billy Budd' - issues of legality, of social hierarchies and of mutiny - with the theme of homosexuality. Thus she doesn't always carry her analysis far enough. Why is Claggart gay, but not Billy Budd himself, or any of the other sailors aboard the Bellipotent for that matter? Why does Sedgwick make this seemingly petty distinction when the text itself is, as she rightly argues, deliberately secretive to the extent that it is refuses to make such details explicit? Still, this is an admirable and well-intentioned effort to create a foundation for further studies of queer theory. At the same time Sedgwick tries to emphasize the broader social relevance of her concerns. But here's the final catch: her style of writing is so densely compacted, so obfuscatory, so Jamesian in its complex morass of never-ending clauses that it's bound to marginalize a potentially much larger audience than the one it has now. And so this text, which is relevant in one sense, is esoteric in another. Moreover, Sedgwick likes to combine eloquence with banal profanities as freely as she mixes readings of Proust with Willie Nelson. For those who are phased by such language games, this set of reviews is where your intimacy with Sedgwick ends. For those remaining, Sedgwick's writing is a rare treat.

Tout livre qui ne s'adresse pas à la majorité est sot........2000-07-27

Long long ago, when I was a young faglet wandering the halls of my college pursuing truth, beauty, and a lang & lit degree, I ended up in a class with Professor Peters, my favourite teacher in history and a fabulous gay guy. It came time for us to write an essay - I forget whether it was the one about Blanche duBois as a drag portrayal of the author in "A Streetcar Named Desire" or the one about Hyde being the queer half of Jekyll, but at any rate I asked Prof. Peters for help and he directed me to this book. Trusting his judgment, I sat down to read.

Well. I'm sure this book contains many fascinating and provocative things to say, but unfortunately they are buried under prose so thick that one has the sensation of wading through molasses. Note to Dr. Sedgwick: ideas do nobody any good if they are expressed so poorly that nobody can understand them.

"Any book not written for the majority - in number and intelligence - is a stupid book." - Charles Baudelaire

Average customer rating:

wonderful edition of a true classic

Moby Dick Or The Whale Leatherbound Easton Press..100 Greatest Books Ever Written
Herman Melville
Manufacturer: Easton Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Leather Bound

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ASIN: B000MMRLGC

Customer Reviews:

wonderful edition of a true classic.......2007-09-14

For those who are fans of classic American Literature, Moby Dick is certainly one of the greats and the easton press edition does the story service by binding a wonderful novel in gold embossed leather for a look and feel any book collecter would be proud of.

Average customer rating:

Excellent

Moby-Dick: A Longman Critical Edition
Herman Melville
Manufacturer: Longman Publishing Group
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0205514081

Book Description

You may think you've read Moby-Dick, but this new edition reveals a text you've never seen: the first American edition as Melville wrote and edited it himself, enhanced with unprecedented discussions of the revisions which Melville, his British editors, and 20th-century scholars later made to his book.

Bryant and Springer, both Melville scholars, bring this classic into the 21st century with the first critical edition in forty years - presented in a beautiful design which wears its elegant scholarship lightly for the general reader. Throughout the book, a special typeface indicates passages in Moby-Dick that were later revised. On-page revision narratives describe the exact changes Melville or his British editors made to the 1851 American text and those made for the 1967 Northwestern-Newberry edition (the version most widely read today), and explain the story behind each revision. Minimal footnotes offer lively explanations of key glossary and other terms right on the page, while more extensive, often entertaining Explanatory Notes and Revision Narratives are found at the back of the book. The result is that readers are immersed in the personal, social, and cultural context of Melville's novel and his writing process

An illuminating Introduction relates a history of the composition of Moby-Dick in the context of Melville's life, talent, and career.

A glossary - running both on the page and at the end of the text - brings the language and otherwise arcane nautical terms to life.

A number of the annotations reveal revisions that the British publisher required, essentially censoring the work.

Thoroughly annotated, readers will now have, in one place, everything they need for a true understanding of this great American novel.

Customer Reviews:

Excellent.......2007-07-09

This is an excellent new edition of Moby Dick, with detailed informational notes and "double text," showing and explaining the differences between the American and British versions of MD. There are also very helpful diagrams and prints, illucidating some of the nonfiction/informational chapters. Excellent text for college students studying at the upper levels.

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