Herman Melville : Redburn, White-Jacket, Moby-Dick (Library of America) (Hardcover)

~ (Author), George Thomas Tanselle (Author)
Key Phrases: stricken whale, pagan harpooneers, great sperm whale, Captain Claret, New York, Cape Horn (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

"Moby-Dick," Melville's masterpiece, is one of the great epics in all of literature. Ahab's idolatrous hunt for the white whale drives the narrative at a relentless pace, while Ishmael's meditations on whales and whaling, the sublime indifference of nature, and the grimy physical details of whale-oil extraction provide a reflective counterpoint. Sometimes read as a terrifying study of monomania or as a critical inquiry into the sinister effects of reducing life to symbols, "Moby-Dick" also offers colorful and comic glimpses of life aboard a whaling ship. This second volume of Melville's complete prose in The Library of America also includes two other stories of the sea: "Redburn," which relates a young man's initiation into the sailor's life, and "White-Jacket," a semi-autobiographical account of experiences in the U.S. Navy. All three are presented in the authoritative Northwestern-Newberry texts.

From the Publisher

The Library of America is an award-winning, nonprofit program dedicated to publishing America's best and most significant writing in handsome, enduring volumes featuring authoritative texts. Hailed as "the most important book-publishing project in the nation's history" (Newsweek), this acclaimed series is restoring America's literary heritage in "the finest-looking, longest-lasting edition ever made" (New Republic).

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 1436 pages
• Publisher: Library of America; 11th Printing edition (April 15, 1983)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0940450097
• ISBN-13: 978-0940450097
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.2 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #143,613 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant Presages of Moby-Dick, February 17, 2000

By	John Fischer "bookaholic43" (Houston) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

While White-Jacket seems to have little overall relation to Melville's other works in the sense that it appears as a self-contained, highly enjoyable novel, Redburn is one of those central turning points in this great writer's life that makes it extraordinarily important. Forget "adventure" or "romance." This is a novel of psychological destruction, a disasterous novel of "growing up" that displays the shattering of a young mind and the destruction of "young America." Any reader who loves Moby-Dick should devour Redburn again and again as one of Melville's most important works.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Redburn and White-Jacket are well worth reading ...., January 5, 2009

By	P. Kufahl - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

.... before taking on Moby-Dick. This review is not intended to sway anybody towards getting this volume for Moby-Dick. The reputation of this novel as the greatest of American literature, and its role in any number of academic courses, will pretty much decide whether someone buys it. For the record, Moby-Dick fully lives up to its reputation as a great, sometimes difficult and rewarding book. My suggestion is that going through Redburn and White-Jacket will make reading through Moby-Dick more rewarding, and this volume makes an elegant combination of the three.

"Redburn" is a highly readable coming-of-age novel with a strong autobiographical component. The protagonists suffers repeatedly from inexperience on his trip across the Atlantic, finds crushing poverty in the port city of Liverpool and returns home rather beaten up and disillusioned. This story helped me get ready for the psychological struggles, as well as the gradually unfolding tragedy, of the major characters in Moby-Dick.

"White-Jacket" was longer and took more of a concentrated effort to get through, but is an even better preparation for Moby-Dick and is an outstanding novel in its own right. The novice onboard the merchant ship of Redburn is replaced by the quiet and pragmatic survivor White-Jacket, who serves on a U.S. Navy vessel. The ways of the Navy had been rather primitive and brutal by the standards at the time, and Melville rails against the favoritism and corporal punishment in extended passages. The cast of characters is notably larger in White-Jacket than Redburn, and appear to represent actual figures in Melville's past as a sailor (Redburn seemed far more constructed as pure fiction).

"Redburn" and "White-Jacket" are great books on their own, but in this volume they serve as complimentary lead-ins to the different dimensions of Moby-Dick. As with the other Library of America volumes I've read through, I benefited from going through the entire contents in order.

1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Moby-Dick, as my father once said, is one of the greatest novels ever written, November 15, 2006

By	Robert Danduran (california) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Melville is one of the greatest American authors ever, and Moby-Dick alone is worth the price for this book. When I read the book myself in american literature, I was amazed at the extensive detail taken into the culture of whaling, a culture that was in its twilight days; it also gave us more information about whales that some think is too much, but whatever. Even though I didn't completely understand the book (but so did everything I read in high school), I have the desire to read it again.