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Moby-Dick (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (Barnes & Noble Classics)
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Author: Herman Melville
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Our Price: $9.95
You Save: $ ( % )
Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Barnes & Noble Classics
Author: Herman Melville
Publisher: Barnes & Noble Classics
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Moby-Dick (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (Barnes & Noble Classics) Description
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.3
EAN: 9781593080181
ISBN: 1593080182
Label: Barnes & Noble Classics
Manufacturer: Barnes & Noble Classics
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 752
Publication Date: 2003-04-01
Publisher: Barnes & Noble Classics
Studio: Barnes & Noble Classics
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.3
EAN: 9781593080181
ISBN: 1593080182
Label: Barnes & Noble Classics
Manufacturer: Barnes & Noble Classics
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 752
Publication Date: 2003-04-01
Publisher: Barnes & Noble Classics
Studio: Barnes & Noble Classics
Editorial Review of Moby-Dick (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (Barnes & Noble Classics)
Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars Biographies of the authors Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events Footnotes and endnotes Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work Comments by other famous authors Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations Bibliographies for further reading Indices & Glossaries, when appropriateAll editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.
On a previous voyage, a mysterious white whale had ripped off the leg of a sea captain named Ahab. Now the crew of the Pequod, on a pursuit that features constant adventure and horrendous mishaps, must follow the mad Ahab into the abyss to satisfy his unslakeable thirst for vengeance. Narrated by the cunningly observant crew member Ishmael, Moby-Dick is the tale of the hunt for the elusive, omnipotent, and ultimately mystifying white whale—Moby Dick.
On its surface, Moby-Dick is a vivid documentary of life aboard a nineteenth-century whaler, a virtual encyclopedia of whales and whaling, replete with facts, legends, and trivia that Melville had gleaned from personal experience and scores of sources. But as the quest for the whale becomes increasingly perilous, the tale works on allegorical levels, likening the whale to human greed, moral consequence, good, evil, and life itself. Who is good? The great white whale who, like Nature, asks nothing but to be left in peace? Or the bold Ahab who, like scientists, explorers, and philosophers, fearlessly probes the mysteries of the universe? Who is evil? The ferocious, man-killing sea monster? Or the revenge-obsessed madman who ignores his own better nature in his quest to kill the beast?
Scorned by critics upon its publication, Moby-Dick was publicly derided during its author’s lifetime. Yet Melville’s masterpiece has outlived its initial misunderstanding to become an American classic of unquestionably epic proportions.
Includes an extensive Dictionary of Sea Terms (37 pages).
On a previous voyage, a mysterious white whale had ripped off the leg of a sea captain named Ahab. Now the crew of the Pequod, on a pursuit that features constant adventure and horrendous mishaps, must follow the mad Ahab into the abyss to satisfy his unslakeable thirst for vengeance. Narrated by the cunningly observant crew member Ishmael, Moby-Dick is the tale of the hunt for the elusive, omnipotent, and ultimately mystifying white whale—Moby Dick.
On its surface, Moby-Dick is a vivid documentary of life aboard a nineteenth-century whaler, a virtual encyclopedia of whales and whaling, replete with facts, legends, and trivia that Melville had gleaned from personal experience and scores of sources. But as the quest for the whale becomes increasingly perilous, the tale works on allegorical levels, likening the whale to human greed, moral consequence, good, evil, and life itself. Who is good? The great white whale who, like Nature, asks nothing but to be left in peace? Or the bold Ahab who, like scientists, explorers, and philosophers, fearlessly probes the mysteries of the universe? Who is evil? The ferocious, man-killing sea monster? Or the revenge-obsessed madman who ignores his own better nature in his quest to kill the beast?
Scorned by critics upon its publication, Moby-Dick was publicly derided during its author’s lifetime. Yet Melville’s masterpiece has outlived its initial misunderstanding to become an American classic of unquestionably epic proportions.
Includes an extensive Dictionary of Sea Terms (37 pages).
Carl F. Hovde taught at Columbia University for thirty-five years. An editor for the Princeton University Press edition of Henry David Thoreau, he has also written about Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry James, and William Faulkner.
Customer Reviews of Moby-Dick (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (Barnes & Noble Classics)
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A whale of a book
Review: Moby Dick by Hermann Melville is considered by many to be the greatest American novel ever written. To come up with such credentials is no meek achievement for a novel, that was floating in wilderness for first sixty years of its existence. The 1851 novel was at best ignored by readers and critics alike, till in the beginning of twentieth century, D. H. Lawrence declared it to be "An epic of the sea such as no man has equalled." Thereafter two critics, Carl Van Doren (1921) and F. O. Matthiessen (1941) managed to convince the generations that followed that Moby Dick was not only a great novel, but perhaps one of the greatest work of fiction ever written.
My only intention to quote this history before I write my own review is to point out that this whale of a book comes with contexts and content that make it a remarkable study. If I were to judge the book with dead objectivity, I think I would have sided with the reception this book got in the first sixty years of existence. Now I am burdened by biases created by people in last hundred years. But in what follows, I will speak my mind, in spite of what impressionists, critics, symbolists and literary hoi polloi might have inferred due to an imposing reputation that this novel has begun to acquire.
Moby Dick is an encyclopedia on whaling. It is an almanac about how the products that can be extracted from the body of a whale. It is a tome that contains endless entries about ships, whaling, oil business and zoology of a whale. As an epic, which it is touted to be, it cannot light a candle to the epics of the ancients, say Homer or Ved Vyas. There is an obsessive Ahab, captain of the ship Pequod, whose only motive is to kill the white whale, Moby Dick. He sets out on the journey with a set of "barbarian" harpooners, and the book presents the imperialistic, (White Man's Burden) thoughts of the age, in an honest portrayal of the non-white races. The ocean roars in the background, sharks chase dead whales, the hunting of whales is described without creating much adventure and then it is usually a notebook entry about this or that.
The story in itself can be told in a few lines, but Melville choses to take us on an endless journey, where interlocking ships converse to fill in the interminable sailing time. For all the diversions and digressions into the plethora of facts and rumors Melville manages to supply us with, I would have liked him to put little more effort into those celebrated elements of novel as a form of fiction: plot, characters, story, climax and drama. The characters are "flat", i.e. they don't get altered by experiences. If I would wish to read a fable, I will always prefer the ones by Aesop or the ones by Vishnu Sharma (Panchtantra).
On the whole, Moby Dick is a readable book, for it does contain some remarkable passages. With some editing, it could have risen in my estimation, and fared better in the era before symbolists explained that what is presented is not as important, as what metaphors, what allusions, (what illusions) it can inspire. Since the book is sold as the battle between the whale and Captain Ahab, I must add that the face-off between these occurs only in the last thirty pages of a six hundred and fifty-five page version I read. The build-up to the battle begins so far into the novel, that by then most people who read for readings sake, would have given up. The reader is as exhausted as maybe Melville was when he brought his epic struggle of writing this to an end.
Surprisingly, while I did find that I had marked at least hundred pages as worth revisiting (and that in my typical estimation makes it an awesome novel), I was more disappointed than not, after finishing the novel. Even in translation, the Russians and the French find favor from me and I feel transformed after reading them. I prefer and prescribe Lawrence, Maugham, Hemingway, Nabokov, Victor Hugo, Virgina Woolf, Dickens, Joyce, Marquez, Tolstoy, Tagore, Dostovesky, Prem Chand, Pamuk, Gogol, Austen, Forster, Rushdie, and many more over Melville. Be it for entertainment, word play, historical or mythical content or for sheer imagery or all together, I will recommend at least a hundred novels that must enter your reading room before this Whale rams its way there.
Review Summary: A whale of a book
Review: Moby Dick by Hermann Melville is considered by many to be the greatest American novel ever written. To come up with such credentials is no meek achievement for a novel, that was floating in wilderness for first sixty years of its existence. The 1851 novel was at best ignored by readers and critics alike, till in the beginning of twentieth century, D. H. Lawrence declared it to be "An epic of the sea such as no man has equalled." Thereafter two critics, Carl Van Doren (1921) and F. O. Matthiessen (1941) managed to convince the generations that followed that Moby Dick was not only a great novel, but perhaps one of the greatest work of fiction ever written.
My only intention to quote this history before I write my own review is to point out that this whale of a book comes with contexts and content that make it a remarkable study. If I were to judge the book with dead objectivity, I think I would have sided with the reception this book got in the first sixty years of existence. Now I am burdened by biases created by people in last hundred years. But in what follows, I will speak my mind, in spite of what impressionists, critics, symbolists and literary hoi polloi might have inferred due to an imposing reputation that this novel has begun to acquire.
Moby Dick is an encyclopedia on whaling. It is an almanac about how the products that can be extracted from the body of a whale. It is a tome that contains endless entries about ships, whaling, oil business and zoology of a whale. As an epic, which it is touted to be, it cannot light a candle to the epics of the ancients, say Homer or Ved Vyas. There is an obsessive Ahab, captain of the ship Pequod, whose only motive is to kill the white whale, Moby Dick. He sets out on the journey with a set of "barbarian" harpooners, and the book presents the imperialistic, (White Man's Burden) thoughts of the age, in an honest portrayal of the non-white races. The ocean roars in the background, sharks chase dead whales, the hunting of whales is described without creating much adventure and then it is usually a notebook entry about this or that.
The story in itself can be told in a few lines, but Melville choses to take us on an endless journey, where interlocking ships converse to fill in the interminable sailing time. For all the diversions and digressions into the plethora of facts and rumors Melville manages to supply us with, I would have liked him to put little more effort into those celebrated elements of novel as a form of fiction: plot, characters, story, climax and drama. The characters are "flat", i.e. they don't get altered by experiences. If I would wish to read a fable, I will always prefer the ones by Aesop or the ones by Vishnu Sharma (Panchtantra).
On the whole, Moby Dick is a readable book, for it does contain some remarkable passages. With some editing, it could have risen in my estimation, and fared better in the era before symbolists explained that what is presented is not as important, as what metaphors, what allusions, (what illusions) it can inspire. Since the book is sold as the battle between the whale and Captain Ahab, I must add that the face-off between these occurs only in the last thirty pages of a six hundred and fifty-five page version I read. The build-up to the battle begins so far into the novel, that by then most people who read for readings sake, would have given up. The reader is as exhausted as maybe Melville was when he brought his epic struggle of writing this to an end.
Surprisingly, while I did find that I had marked at least hundred pages as worth revisiting (and that in my typical estimation makes it an awesome novel), I was more disappointed than not, after finishing the novel. Even in translation, the Russians and the French find favor from me and I feel transformed after reading them. I prefer and prescribe Lawrence, Maugham, Hemingway, Nabokov, Victor Hugo, Virgina Woolf, Dickens, Joyce, Marquez, Tolstoy, Tagore, Dostovesky, Prem Chand, Pamuk, Gogol, Austen, Forster, Rushdie, and many more over Melville. Be it for entertainment, word play, historical or mythical content or for sheer imagery or all together, I will recommend at least a hundred novels that must enter your reading room before this Whale rams its way there.