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Moby-Dick: or, The Whale (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

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Forget everything you have heard or think you know about this book. What it decidedly is not is the story of a one-legged madman pursuing a whale for revenge.

Do not give this book to high-school students. Have them read THE AENEID, the prophet Isaiah, a few scenes of HAMLET, so that when they are forty and MOBY-DICK falls into their hands, they will recognize at least some of its underpinnings.

MOBY-DICK is as weird and far-ranging as Scripture, and stakes out the same terrority, namely heaven, hell, earth, mortality, joy, flesh, eternity, the soul. Ahab is no more mad than Edmund in KING LEAR: the real madman of MOBY-DICK is Melville himself. But he can only have been unhinged by an angel, so sweeping is the power of his imagination.

It's perverse to look on the shape and construction of MOBY-DICK as radical, innovative, foreshadowing such moderns as Joyce; it's like calling Revelations "innovative." Melville has no such aim and has no interest in technique. Indeed, he has few "literary" virtues. His language is dense, syntactically clumsy, exhausting, over-precise to the point there's no telling what precisely is being said. No human being could speak the dialogue that erupts from the mouths of its personages: it's like opera, or the dialogue in PARADISE LOST. It has a more urgent, essential motive than speech. It's the soul speaking.

MOBY-DICK is nothing so trivial as a literary experiment. It aims for wholeness, concreteness; it wants to be about everything, inside and out, and its eye is everywhere. Melville senses the sun and stars are part of his story, and equally so the bones and guts of a whale, so he makes them characters. When the convention of the first-person narrator becomes too restrictive, he lets Ishmael lapse, absorbing him and all of the Pequod into a single, unlocatable consciousness that seems to have existed before time.

The greatness of this book has nothing to do with its "qualities," but with its passion, its madness -- its genius. If ever a secular work was inspired, surely it was this one. It is beautiful not in the way books are, but as a created thing is, a horse or a river or a redwood. It makes little sense to me to call MOBY-DICK The Great American Novel, since it's hardly a novel at all; it is sui generis, acknowledging no standards but its own. If it must be a novel, then has the same standing in the canon of world literature as TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES: the supremest expression of the mind of a culture, disavowed by the culture itself.

As for this edition, it is at least handsomely printed and well bound. The foreward is profoundly irrelevant, and there are no notes, though I can't imagine any torrent of notes would be of much use in penetrating the mystery of this vision, prophecy, epic, call it what you will.

If you find yourself these days looking for reasons to be proud to be American, MOBY-DICK will give you one.

Readers say it's far too long, the cetacean history is tedious, who the heck cares how to best prep a harpoon line? Well if you're one of those folks who likes a good harpoon-prep scene, you're in for a treat. If not, you might learn something, and, failing that, the singular dexterity with which the author lays the words on the page will not only awe you but carry you into the very whale boat. You will feel in your guts the rush of the sleigh ride, you will breathe the sea air and taste the mist, you will feel the salt hardening on your hands and face. Don't like any of that? Unless there's no place you'd rather be than your rocker, this is escapism as good as it comes. And don't even get me started on timeless themes, unforgettable characters and a plot as fine as they come....

Moby Dick belongs to the first rank of world literature. Melville read widely and deeply within the Western tradition, and brought it all together in his complex masterpiece. Within the framework of a simple tale of obsession, Melville offers commentary on the corpus of philosophy, history, theology, and literature that is our inheritance. All of these themes swirl around the central question of the novel: should we affirm the world, with all of its evil, or should we defy it?

Ahab, memorably, chooses defiance, and staking his all on that defiance, literally disappears, all flags flying, into the whirlpool. The effect is stunning.

Along the way we meet different approaches to the central question embodied in the crew of the Pequod and the various ships she encounters on her long journey. Melville offers no one answer, but rather a piercing observation of the various human reactions to the problem of evil. Nathanial Hawthorne said of Melville that his curse was that he could neither believe nor disbelieve in God. In Moby Dick, we are drawn into the fury of Melville's wrestling match with God, and whether we believe, or don't believe, surely we are enriched by Melville's passionate struggle. The strongest expression of the struggle is Ahab, the epic figure who believes, but refuses to submit to the gods or to the fates. Is he the hero of the piece or the villain? However you view him, you won't forget him.

As memorable as some of the scenes in this novel are, it is a long novel, and there are many detours. For those who are well-versed in both literature and philosophy the long stretches of commentary on whales, and whaling, and whalers, and all of that are actually commentaries on the Western canon. Not a line is wasted. The infamous chapter on Cetology is about whales, yes; but it is even more a commentary on epistemology (and a hysterically funny one, at that).

The book begins as a novel, and moves on to explore other forms of literature -- most notably dramatic tragedy and the epic. In doing so, Melville makes an overt bid to be counted as one of the great writers in the Western tradition; and I, for one, think he succeeds. The novel is a complex tapestry, in which all of the pieces, even the seemingly meaningless ones, come together into that central whirlpool that brings Moby Dick to a close. It is a work that can be read again, and again, and again.

There are great sections that are exciting and accessible to all. But for a more casual reader, there are long stretches that will seem pointless and incomprehensible.
For someone looking for something a bit more accessible, "Billy Budd" and "Bartleby the Scrivener" are two Melville works that are shorter and more plot-driven. Yet both have the same complexity of thought that is so magnificently presented in Moby Dick.

Still, if you are up to the challenge, Melville will reward you in spade

Let anyone who dares try to surpass it, Melville's Moby Dick remains and probably will remain forever untouched as THE American masterpiece. Where else can you find a novel about an activity that has all but perished from the earth--at least in its 19th century form and purpose--that stays fresh as hot blood and silvery as sea-wrack in the mind? Where else can you find such a magnificent, encyclopedic grasp of western philosophy, theology, mythology and classical literature, handled with high humor--as though the whales themselves were batting those great themes and ideas about among their flukes? Where else but Shakespeare will you find a cast of characters of such variety and stature, with such resonant voices? Where else such immediate journalism of the daily life aboard a whaler? Where else such beautifully turned small essays, that seem like the journal entries recorded yesterday by a clever and educated man aboard a ship sailing now in some eternally present ocean? Where else will you go deep into details of filth and gore and hardest physical labor utterly foreign to your own life, and emerge considering how you will live out tomorrow? If it's an effort to keep up with Melville's mind, make the effort to keep a reference book hard by. You will emerge the wiser from the struggle to understand it all. Or if you don't want to be bothered with that, just NOTICE how much you SEE when he is describing sights and operations you surely have never seen before. This novel is so much more than a summary of its lance-straight trajectory of a plot can convey. Because Melville has freed himself--who knows how--to use every method he can think of to expand the Pequod into a universe of humans being human, mad or inhuman, dramas unfolding, specific work being done, nature inspiring us with awe, meditations mused upon. And the whale, his whiteness, and his magisterial, inscrutable power, truly is 'the unknown God.' When we see him in the last chapters surging among the boats it is like watching God pass on the waters. That tangle of lances and cables, that corpse freight Fedallah on his back, are like all the futile attempts of theologies to capture God and lash him to our little human craft and try out his essential oil. We'll never do it, and this novel will never sink. Sometimes, inexplicably, human talent touches the sublime. Melville saw God's face, and has lived to tell us.

Believe me when I tell you that I used to be the most outspoken Melville trash-talker due to a "bad experience" with Moby in my pretentious high-school days. Well, I read it last month and I am penitent.

I can't think of any book about which I have had such a radical change of heart. This is a brillant, ground breaking novel. Surprisingly, I found all the famoulsy "boring" middle chapters about the minutiae of whaling the most enthralling. The actual hunt for the whale was less interesting because Melville seems to drop his more earnest attempts at innovation and "get down to the buisness" of plot.

And that's weird. Because, you'd think the plot would be the more exciting thing-especially with this subject. But I loved the experimental use of voice that Melville used in the middle of the book.

Anyway, I clearly haven't got it all figured out. But I'd love to take a class. In the meantime, I'm going to try to spread the word and atone for my grave blasphemy. Hear me, brothers and sisters, this book is actually GOOD.

Yes, this book is long and unconventional. Yes, if we measure it with a Fanteusgue or Bukowskiesque standard of "does the writing flow" this book flops like a carp in mudpuddle. But come on people, this is EPIC! How much grander can you get than the Satanic Captain Ahab playing Prometheus against the Jehovahian Moby Dick. The other characters play delightful parts as well.

While Ishmael is the narrator of the story, I have always felt Starbuck to be the 'hero.' Melville places Ahab's monomania of endless drive and fixation on a goal (noble though it is) in unfavourable light against Starbuck's common sense and embracing of his ordinary, happy life. Starbuck is the "best lance of Nantucket" but he will not be a fanatic, preferring his wife, children and home to cosmic quests. But Ahab's stirring speeches are worth the price of this text alone! Where do you stand?

This edition of this great book is pleasing in every way...I used it to read from in the Moby Dick marathon in New Bedford...supple, beautiful, light but sturday paperback. Nathaniel Philbrick's introduction is wonderful. This edition belongs at every bedside.

An American Classic

Herman Melville's Moby-Dick is, without question, the greatest single work of American fiction ever written. With good reason the novel has been a staple of our culture, from the English classroom to popular culture. Melville's compelling story of obsession and revenge, his rich cast of characters, his varied and experimental style, and above all his masterful use of symbolism and pregnant imagery make Moby-Dick a book that no educated man or woman can afford to miss.
The storyline, though somewhat unevenly paced, builds steadily into a first-rate tale of human struggle. The book is narrated by Ishmael, a young man who joins the crew of a whaling vessel to combat his depression, or, as he puts it, the "drizzly November" in his soul. Though Ishmael narrates, Ahab, the captain of the Nantucket whaling ship The Pequod, is the book's main character. Prior to the beginning of the story, Ahab is attacked by an albino sperm whale, named Moby-Dick. Moby-Dick chomps off Ahab's leg and sends him into a feverish madness. Ahab swears revenge, and over the course of the rest of the novel, he brings his crew with him on his doomed quest.
Melville crews his ship with a huge and diverse cast of characters. The domineering and remote Ahab provides a natural foil for the care-free and easy-going Ishmael. The three mates of the ship - Starbuck, Stubb and Flask - encapsulate the range of man's responses to life's trials. Starbuck's sensitivity, Stubb's nonchalance, and Flask's prickly nature mark each character as distinct (though archetypal). In addition, the crew contains New Englanders of all types, natives from remote islands around the globe, and the sinister "hair-turbaned Fedallah [who] remained a muffled mystery to the last."
Melville's style, like his characters, is varied. There are sections of the book - particularly the "Whiteness of the Whale" chapter that are lyrical and poetic, alongside technical chapters addressing the types of whales or the proper manufacture of whaling rope. Certain scenes are written almost like a play, with stage directions and character names followed by their lines. When the Pequod leaves Nantucket, the mastery of Melville's prose shines through: "Ship and boat diverged; the cold, damp night breeze blew between; a screaming gull flew overhead; the two hulls wildly rolled; we gave three heavy-hearted cheers, and blindly plunged like fate into the lone Atlantic."
Moby-Dick is a landmark in American Literature, but because of its complex structure and poetic style, it's better suited for older or more patient readers. In addition, many readers might find an abridged version useful - one that removes the less plot-oriented chapters (like the infamous "Cetology" chapter). Still, for the discerning reader, there is no richer find than Moby-Dick by Herman Melville. I give it 10 harpoons out of 10.

I read (or tried to read) Moby Dick in high school, like many American students. I loathed it. Decades later, I have returned to the book and it is fantastic. It is alternately dark and light, almost always vivid. With more years under my belt, I have a far greater appreciation for the sense of life and living conveyed by Ishmael.

You might want to consider either or both of "The Loss of the Ship Essex, Sunk by a Whale" -- a first hand account by survivors -- and "In the Heart of the Sea", also about the Essex and by the author of the introduction to this edition of Moby Dick.

This is an excellent edition, as good as a paperback can get. Far poorer books on far worse paper with far worse binding are sold for as much or more. My only gripe is that the paper does not appear to be acid-free, but the paper stock is certainly very good.

The introduction by Nathaniel Philbrick is excellent -- personal, well-informed and insightful, very worth reading before reading the novel. It will increase your enjoyment and understanding of Melville's writing.

I have, on more than one occasion, heard English professors and writers pine for the day when they could craft a single sentence as rich, as descriptive and revealing as Herman Melville.

We should all be this envious.

One reviewer noted that maturity is necessary for reading Melville's Moby Dick. I've been spellbound by this book since I was 20. Thirty years later, I can't turn away from it. When it came time for me to write my own book on a true nautical disaster, only a line by Melville could do justice as an introductory quote, though it came from Melville's book White Jacket.

Moby Dick is Melville's masterpiece, though even his shorter works such as Benito Cereno and Billy Budd should be examined.

Some force touched Melville, connecting him to the land, the sky and the sea and to the souls of men, and then, inexplicably, blended his consciousness with the universe. Melville exhibits an uncanny appreciation of the mystery of existence that is spliced as tightly as a mainbrace to everyday tasks and knowledge. The preparation of a harpoon for its murderous work is part of life's reality and Melville makes sure we can sign on for a voyage and do our part.

In Moby Dick, Melville instructs you not only how to be a whaler, but he's given the reader a glimpse into eternity. Moby Dick is required reading for anyone who wants to understand Melville's magnificent vision of America, as a lone quixotic ship of co-equal strangers upon a journey that is as thrilling as it is fraught with hazards.

Melville's best-kept secret is his harpoon-sharp humor which is unleashed on society through the rueful observations of his characters as they navigate a ruthless sea driven by the unyielding Ahab. The dour New England whaling captain is both at his best and worst when he is enthusiastically hailed by the captain of a passing ship. "How wondrous familiar is a fool", mutters Ahab who can think of nothing but slaying the white whale.

Those seeking simple thrill reading may be too distracted to be in awe of Melville. His writing style is rich rather than impenetrable and not for those without a love of the language. A wise reader will allow himself to be overwhelmed like a sailor who surrendereds to the rise and fall of sea swells as they carry him to an unknown place.