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Moby Dick; or, The Whale by Herman Melville
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Moby Dick; or, The Whale

by Herman Melville

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10,54512381 (3.94)331

Member recommendations

  1. mannyhesh recommends Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
  2. WilfGehlen recommends The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays by Albert Camus, "Camus was greatly influenced by Melville and in The Myth of Sisyphus mentions Moby-Dick as a truly absurd work. Reading Moby-Dick with Camus' absurd in (see more) mind gives a deeper, and very different insight than provided by the usual emphasis on Ahab's quest for revenge."
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English (114)  German (5)  Dutch (1)  French (1)  Spanish (1)  Danish (1)  All languages (123)
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“Call me Ishmael.” Possibly the most popular and recognized first line of any book and all classics, even by those who have never read it before.

Moby Dick is about Ishmael, as he joins a boat in search for the great white whale who stole Captain Ahab’s leg and cause various other troubles among the sea.

One of the greatest classics ever written, I’m surprised it has taken me this long to read the book in its entirety. I’ve heard much about it, but for some reason never had to read it in school and/or never finished it. Now that I have, I can tell that Melville’s catching tale of revenge and survival on the sea helped him create this amazing story. The weaving in of fact and fiction on a whaling boat makes the reader feel almost as if the tale were true and not an amazing creation.
blondierocket | Jun 28, 2009 |  
Call me impressed. The blurb on the jacket of this audio book calls it a “breathtaking masterwork,” but actually, it’s better than that! It is a epic and staggering tale every bit as big as its subject matter--the largest of all living creatures and the edacious, relentless men who hunt and kill them.

Melville’s language is grandiloquent and a bit archaic, almost like the King James Bible. Although some might find that pretentious, I think it works in its context. My experience of the book may even have been enhanced by listening to it rather than reading it: the language is so elevated that, like a Shakespearian play, it is more moving when heard than when read. Melville says somewhere near the end of the book that one should write big stories about big subject matters, not about small things. And indeed, this book is not about mice or fleas; it is about whales and whaling.

Moby Dick was first published in 1851. The plot is of course familiar to most; beginning with the first sentence “Call me Ishmael” to the obsessed quest by Captain Ahab on the whaleship Pequod to catch and kill the whale that severed his leg, this story has been swimming through the culture in every medium from music to movies (including adaptations like “Jaws) and television.

Melville can be forgiven for utilizing a sprinkling of omens and preternaturally prescient shamans, reminiscent of Shakespeare’s witches, to create a foreboding atmosphere. His characters were superstitious and would have attributed such portentousness to ordinary coincidences. And what wonderful characters they are! Dickens himself would have been proud to have limned them, especially the “pagan savages,” the harpooners named Queequeg, Tashtego, Daggoo, and Fedallah.

This is not just a novel. It is also an encyclopedic treatise on the subject of whales and whaling, relating not only what scientists of the time knew, but also much of the lore (obviously exaggerated, but in many ways more interesting than the truth) prevalent in the fishery.

In the performance to which I listened (“Unabridged Classics” on 18 CDs), Frank Muller did a superb job of mastering accents and employing different voices for different characters. This book sets a very high standard for other fiction. It deserves its rating as one of the greatest novels in the English language.

(JAB) ( )
nbmars | Jun 16, 2009 | 2 vote
still reading, 5 chapters in, so far lovely to read and allready know i want to reread it ( )
purplesue | Jun 6, 2009 |  
The Folio Limited Edition of this book is really stunning, one of the most beautiful books I own. ( )
Lloydville | May 30, 2009 | 1 vote
I'm grateful I was never required to read this for school, because it's such a crazy dense chaotic euphoria of complex symbolism, that the reader needs to be voluntarily engaged with the insanity on every level.

In reality the story of Ahab and Moby Dick is a frame story; I could easily believe that most of the text was written without the story or those characters explicity in mind. Melville's nuts and obviously has Shakespeare whirling in his brain as he writes -- many passages are sylistically straight out of Macbeth or King Lear.

The narrator -- or the author -- seems as monomaniacally obsessed with whales and whaling as Ahab is with the White Whale. If you're not willing to be drawn into that obsession, it's probably not going to be a successful text.

There's something Italo Calvino says, about the longing for the naive reading experience -- that books are spoiled by coming to them with expectations. Nothing creates expectations like "The Great American Novel", or "You Must Read This and Love it Or You Get An F", or many of the other accretions which spoil the way we approach literature. Moby-Dick, in particular, I think, requires the naive and willing engagement of the reader. ( )
endlessforms | May 24, 2009 | 4 vote
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Epigraph
There Leviathan, Hugest of living creatures, in the deep / Stretch'd like a promontory sleeps or swims, / And seems a moving land; and at his gills / Draws in, and at his breath spouts out a sea. PARADISE LOST
Dedication
In token

of my admiration for his genius,

This Book is Inscribed

to

Nathaniel Hawthrone.
First words
Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world.
Quotations
Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off -- then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. ...from Chapter 1 : Loomings
Last words
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
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Shouldn't this be "by Herman Melville"? If this is your book, please check the information you have listed.
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Book description
1851 : Moby-Dick published

On this day in 1851, Moby-Dick, a novel by Herman Melville about the
voyage of the whaling ship Pequod, is published by Harper & Brothers
in New York. Moby-Dick is now considered a great classic of American
literature and contains one of the most famous opening lines in
fiction: "Call me Ishmael." Initially, though, the book about Captain
Ahab and his quest for a giant white whale was a flop.

Herman Melville was born in New York City in 1819 and as a young man
spent time in the merchant marines, the U.S. Navy and on a whaling
ship in the South Seas. In 1846, he published his first novel, Typee,
a romantic adventure based on his experiences in Polynesia. The book
was a success and a sequel, Omoo, was published in 1847. Three more
novels followed, with mixed critical and commercial results.
Melville's sixth book, Moby-Dick, was first published in October 1951
in London, in three volumes titled The Whale, and then in the U.S. a
month later. Melville had promised his publisher an adventure story
similar to his popular earlier works, but instead, Moby-Dick was a
tragic epic, influenced in part by Melville's friend and Pittsfield,
Massachusetts, neighbor, Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose novels include The
Scarlet Letter.

After Moby-Dick's disappointing reception, Melville continued to
produce novels, short stories (Bartleby) and poetry, but writing
wasn't paying the bills so in 1865 he returned to New York to work as
a customs inspector, a job he held for 20 years.

Melville died in 1891, largely forgotten by the literary world. By the
1920s, scholars had rediscovered his work, particularly Moby-Dick,
which would eventually become a staple of high school reading lists
across the United States. Billy Budd, Melville's final novel, was
published in 1924, 33 years after his death.

*Note: Information provided by History.com

Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0760757836, Hardcover)

On board the whaling ship Pequod, a crew of wise men and fools, renegades, and seeming phantoms is hurled through treacherous seas by a crazed captain hell-bent on hunting down the mythic White Whale. As the "great flood-gates of the wonder-world" swing open, Melville transforms the little world of the whale-ship into a crucible where mankind's fears, faith and frailties are pitted against a relentless fate. Teeming with ideas and imagery, and with its extraordinary, compressed intensity sustained by a buoyant, mischievous irony and by moments of exquisite beauty, Melville's masterpiece is both a great American epic and one of the most profoundly imaginative creations in literary history. Herman Melville was born in 1819 in New York City. Both his grandfathers were Revolutionary War heroes but his father, a merchant, died bankrupt in 1833. Melville left school and worked at various jobs before shipping on the whaler Acushnet in 1841. The next year he deserted, traveled the South Seas and joined the US Navy. After three years he retired, settled in Massachusetts and started to write. His first two novels, Typee (1846) and Omoo (1847), were fictionalized accounts of his travels: they remained his most popular works during his lifetime. In 1847 Melville married and wrote a series of novels he considered potboilers for money. With Moby-Dick (1851) he changed course, partly under the influence of Nathaniel Hawthorne; but the novel's extravagant intensity lost him readers. Pierre (1852) fared no better, and after publishing one more novel Melville took a job as a customs inspector in the New York City harbor and turned to writing poetry. He died there in 1891; an unfinished novel, Billy Budd, Sailor, was published in 1924.

(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:57:57 -0400)

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Legacy Library: Herman Melville

Herman Melville has a Legacy Library. Legacy libraries are the personal libraries of famous readers, entered by LibraryThing members from the I See Dead People's Books group.

See Herman Melville's legacy profile.

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