Moby-Dick: The Timeless Sea Adventure & Literary Classic (Dover Thrift Editions: Classic Novels)

Having reached the mid-life point, I didn't "get around to" reading MOBY-DICK until just recently. I'm certainly glad that I finally stopped putting it off. Herman Melville's work is truly one of the most amazing books I have read. As others have pointed out here, it's not always an easy read, but it is well worth devoting time to. Indeed, I approached it as if it were an artisan cheese or a fine glass of wine; I ingested it slowly, savoring it over a period of months. MOBY-DICK is told (mostly) through the eyes of a seaman ("Call me Ishmael"), beginning with his journey to Nantucket to find a job on a whaler and then continuing with his voyage on the Pequod. The initial chapters (minus the introductory matter) are somewhat misleading in that they employ a traditional narrative structure--quite amusingly describing Ishmael's first encounter with the cannibal harpooner Queequeg--and the unaware reader who enjoys this initial rollicking ride may be disappointed with the "digressions" that follow. Once the Pequod sets sail, the narrative adopts the rhythm of a voyage, i.e., long days at sea, labor-intensive with respect to the upkeep of the vessel, but otherwise dull, interspersed with heart-stopping whaling and welcome encounters with other ships. This pattern of life at sea is reflected in the book's structure in this way: the long, uneventful days lend time to the narrator to present the history, science, and art of whales and whaling, while the whaling and ship encounters brings the narration back to a more-or-less (and often less) traditional narrative structure. The core story is well known, and would be familiar even to those who haven't much other knowledge of the work. (Anyone who's seen or read JAWS would recognize the story.) A psychologically scarred and physically mutilated man, Ahab, the captain of the Pequod, is obsessed with exacting retribution against the highly dangerous white whale that made him a cripple, not to mention killing many other men. His loyal first mate, Starbuck, tries to reason with him, but Ahab is unable to respond to reason; Ahab feels that he is acting out a preordained role. MOBY-DICK, which was first published in 1851, is a surprisingly modern work. Melville explores the story using multiple perspectives and various literary devices, most notably inserting chapters written as scenes in a play. An example of this can be observed beginning with Chapter 36, "The Quarter-Deck": This is a seminal chapter in that in it Captain Ahab explains the Pequod's true mission--to kill Moby-Dick--and his personal motivation for doing it: "Aye, Starbuck; aye, my hearties all round; it was Moby-Dick that dismasted me..." Chapters 37-40, which are given sequential temporal titles ("Sunset," "Dusk," "First Night Watch," "Midnight") provide reflections on Ahab's speech to the crew from the perspective of three of the main characters, Ahab, Starbuck and Stubb; these are followed by a chapter written like a script of a musical play and which involves a number of crewmen. There is, in short, considerable exploration of and experimentation in narrative forms. What I found particularly moving were the small, almost painterly touches in Melville's writing, such as the image of a hawk in the far distance dropping Ahab's hat into the sea (Chapter 130, "The Hat"). Also delighting the reader are the intensely cinematic moments, e.g., Starbuck, standing outside Ahab's door and full of angst, ponders murderous thoughts while handling a musket (Chapter 123 "The Musket"). MOBY-DICK is a fabulous piece of art and is veritable literature worthwhile reading.

One of the greatest novels ever written in any language. My poor evaluation is meaningless when confronted by creative genius.

I have read Moby Dick many times and each time I have gotten something different from it. I am NOT a child prodigy but I read Moby Dick for the first time when I was 10 years old and that was 60 years ago. As a pure novel it does not qualify as being very well put together. However,as a work of art and a testament to the writer's craft it in my opinion ranks as one of the greatest books ever written. I must admit I might be a little biased. The beauty of the book is how many different level it can be read on.This has been alluded to in other reviews so I won't go into any great detail about them. If nothing else it can be read as an adventure story and it is the best text on how the whaling was done in the heyday of American whaling

i like this book very much because i got overwellemed from this book when i was 10 yrs old.

What a completely weird book this is. Moby Dick seems like it could have easily have been just a conventional sea-faring adventure, it's full of really cool set pieces and (surprisingly to me) a really keen sense of humor. It can be a very boisterous book, which is good because when it isn't it kind of scared the crap out of me. Melville is just so fixated by whales, by their size (huge), their behavior (impenetrable), and by the arcane, terrifyingly violent history that humanity has foisted on them (We boil their bodies down into oil. OIL.). He's able to weave this bizarre, pseudo-mystical rumination around them that reinforces the narrative and at the same time gives it an inscrutable, portentous sense of menace. The two main aspects at work in Moby Dick slowly bleed into each other, so that by the end the human beings are trapped in a... what exactly? A Trajectory? A Plateau? A Downward Spiral? At any rate, some kind of primordial doomed place. And the whales, the sharks, the ocean, hell, even the seagulls, just sort of become something else, lurking and attacking out of some other creepy aesthetic/naturalist dimension that might be totally sybmolic or might be totally real, or might be both. Or neither. I wonder if H.P. Lovecraft had this in mind when he wrote some of his tales. Because the weird, metaphysical terror vibe you sometimes get from his stuff is out in full force all over this book. Forget the Great American Novel. Moby Dick is the Great American Freak-out.

Fast shipping. Book was as described. Very pleased with the purchase

I never received this book. Now the price has gone up.

Having never read any of the classics, I landed on this book by choice. I knew little about whaling, so I was delighted while read that the author included much history and facts about commercial whaling of the time and then known biological facts about whales. I highly recommend this book but be warned it is slow to read if all you want is fast action and adventure, as the story has all this and more to the reader that wants more.

“Poet, painter and philosopher” a reviewer once called Melville. His subject matter and writing style are welded together as firmly as the 12 intertwining steel rods that make up Ahab’s harpoon and the fate of Ahab and the whale itself. The epic process of trawling through until the final confrontation mirrored The Pequod’s journey to same. As the end approached and I caught whiff, through one nostril, of the white whale’s proximity in the final pages, I deliberately slowed down my reading to more fully appreciate the journey, and because by now my reading eyes had synced with Melville’s Shakespearean rhythms, swirling poetry, dry wit, and grandiloquent turn of phrase, the final chapters were more joy than reward. The wit - after the crew had hauled all the heavy oil barrels up on deck: “top-heavy was the ship as a dinnerless student with all Aristotle in his head”. and: “The (whale’s) milk is very sweet and rich; it has been tasted by man; it might do well with strawberries.” The poetic: “In the face of all the glad, hay-making suns, and softcymballing, round harvest-moons, we must needs give in to this: that the gods themselves are not for ever glad. The ineffaceable, sad birth-mark in the brow of man, is but the stamp of sorrow in the signers.” The tormented Shakespearean soliloquizer: “what cozening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor commands me; that against all natural lovings and longings, I so keep pushing, and crowding, and jamming myself on all the time; recklessly making me ready to do what in my own proper, natural heart, I durst not so much as dare? Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of himself; but is as an errand-boy in heaven; nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible power; how then can this one small heart beat; this one small brain think thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I.” The philosophical: “consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself? For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half known life” And the haughty self-referential: “To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be who have tried it.” Never was a book’s plot more secondary to its themes. It’s man versus everything; fate, circumstance, demons, ego, expectation, classism, religion, God, nature, empathy, understanding, brotherhood, the universe. An unforgettable and hard-won experience.

El libro llegó un poquito después del día pactado, pero todo bien. El libro es una joya brutal de la literatura.

La edición es increíble, tapa dura con sobrecubierta, buena encuadernación. El precio es buenísimo sin estar de oferta. El libro en sí es increíble, pero la lectura de este clásico es exigente, pero vale la pena. He visto algún comentario que la sobrecubierta viene raspada, pero no es cierto, es el diseño original que simula el impacto de la ballena y al estar en blanco da otra impresión.

Terrific readable copy of a classic!

Great