Product Description
Three American masterpieces in dazzling graphic packages

These novels played a unique and lasting role in the development of American literature, and each one remains a beloved and widely read work of fiction. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn-arguably the great American novel. Ethan Frome-an enduring rural tragedy. And Moby-Dick or, The Whale-a profound inquiry into character, faith, and the nature of perception. Now, Penguin Classics is proud to present these three novels in gorgeous graphic packages featuring cover art by some of the most talented illustrators working today. ... Read more

Product Description
This Kindle book includes the short story collection "Piazza Tales" and nine novels: Typee, Omoo, Mardi, Redburn, White Jacket, Moby Dick, Israel Potter, Confidence-Man, and Billy Budd.According to Wikipedia: "Herman Melville (August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist and poet. His first two books gained much attention, though they were not bestsellers, and his popularity declined precipitously after only a few years. By the time of his death he had been almost completely forgotten, but his longest novel, Moby-Dick — largely considered a failure during his lifetime, and most responsible for Melville's fall from favor with the reading public — was recognized in the 20th century as one of the chief literary masterpieces of both American and world literature.."
Responding to customer feedback, I improved the formatting on 7/3/2009.If you bought a copy before then, you should be able to download the new version at no additional cost. Feedback always welcome. seltzer@samizdat.com ... Read more

Product Description

Having left most of Moby-Dick with a printer in 1851, Herman Melville lamented to Nathaniel Hawthorne that he would go down in history as a "man who lived among the cannibals!" Until his death in 1891, Melville was known as the author of Typee (1846) and Omoo (1847) -- both semiautobiographical travel books, and literary sensations because of Melville's sensual description of the South Sea islanders. (A transatlantic furor raged over whether the books were fact or fiction.) His most famous character was Fayaway -- not Captain Ahab, not the White Whale, not Bartleby, and definitely not Billy Budd, whose story remained unpublished until 1924.

Herman Melville, 1819-1851 is the first of a two-volume project constituting the fullest biography of Melville ever published. Hershel Parker, co-editor of the Northwestern-Newberry Edition of The Writings of Herman Melville, reveals with extraordinary precision the twisted turmoil of Melville's life, beginning with his Manhattan boyhood where, surrounded by tokens of heroic ancestors, he witnessed his father's dissipation of two family fortunes. Having attended the best Manhattan boys' schools, Herman was withdrawn from classes at the Albany Academy at age 12, shortly after his father's death. Outwardly docile, inwardly rebellious, he worked where his family put him -- in a bank, in his brother's fur store -- until, at age 21, he escaped his responsibilities to his impoverished mother and his six siblings and sailed to the Pacific as a whaleman.

A year and a half after his return, Melville was a famous author, thanks to the efforts of his older brother in finding publishers. Three years later he was married, the man of the family, a New Yorker -- and still not equipped to do the responsible thing: write more books in the vein that had proven so popular. After the disappointing failure of Mardi, which he had hoped would prove him a literary genius, Melville wrote two more saleable books in four months -- Redburn and White-Jacket. Early in 1850 he began work on Moby-Dick. Moving to a farmhouse in the Berkshires, he finished the book with majestic companions -- Hawthorne a few miles to the south, and Mount Greylock looming to the north. Before he completed the book he made the most reckless gamble of his life, borrowing left and right (like his wastrel patrician father), sure that a book so great would outsell even Typee.

Melville lovers have known Hershel Parker as a newsbringer -- from the shocking false report headlined "Herman Melville Crazy" to the tantalizing title of Melville's lost novel, The Isle of the Cross. Carrying on the late Jay Leyda's The Melville Log, Parker in the last decade has transcribed thousands of new documents into what will be published as the multi-volume Leyda-Parker The New Melville Log. Now, exploring the psychological narrative implicit in that mass of documents, Parker recreates episode after episode that will prove stunningly new, even to Melvilleans.

Customer Reviews (6)

Herman Melville, part 1
A huge biography, too huge for its own good. It covers the years from Melville's birth in 1819 up to the publication of MOBY DICK in 1851. Parker seems to have tracked down every move in Melville's life, but curiously deals very little with his books. (It is definitely not a critical biography.)

One becomes overwhelmed with the minutae, though bits and pieces of them can be interesting: Melville felt that REDBURN was "trash," and he wrote it "to buy tobacco with." He feared being known merely as the author of TYPEE (his most popular book with the public by far), a somewhat scandalous book at the time. Melville also learned on his whaling voyage to the Pacific that sailors appreciated literature, and read or were read to often aboard ship.

Parker has certainly written a fact-filled book, but he doesn't go beyond recording the facts. Disappointing.

Nothing of Value for the Melville Enthusiast
Unless you are a determined and anxiety-ridden Ph. D. candidate studying for an oral exam, avoid this tedious display of pedantry. There are no insights into Melville's life or works here, only the stuff footnotes are made of. I guarantee this book as a cure for insomnia.

For poor devils of Sub-Subs only
A very long and detailed Melville biography. I appreciated the fact that it didn't devote much space to interpretations of the body of Melville's work. There's an awful lot of interpretive criticism already out there, and we didn't need more in a biography. If you're already a Melville fanatic and are really interested in whether Melville actually worked briefly at a bowling alley in Hawaii as a pin setter (the novel that he never wrote) or how he travelled on his honeymoon, you'll want to read this. If you haven't gotten much beyond one or two readings of Moby-Dick - that is if you haven't yet read Typee, Omoo, Whitejacket, Pierre, The Confidence Man - and still want to read the man's biography, I'd go for a more concise one than this. And the best news of all (for all Sub-Subs) is that Volume 2 is now available!

" ... new vitality to my soul. "
If you approach this work with a right understanding, that is a biography and not an interpretation of the works of Herman Melville, then you should honestly be able to rate it as top-notch. What some might call "disappointments " in what they learn about Melville; his family life,they way he behaved at times, and the manner in which he wrote his books,are to me, the lens by which we see more clearly the humanity of the man.Mr. Parker's work might seem too weighty for some, but I can't wait forVolume Two.

The definitive Melville of our time
Hershel Parker's credentials as a Melville scholar are unimpeachable--he's co-edited the authoritative Northwestern-Newberry edition of the complete works and seems to have eaten, slept, and breathed Melville for decades. Despite his daunting c.v., however, his massive, half-finished biography iseminently readable and entertaining.

While it would be impossible todepict a writer's life without addressing his or her work, the focushereis on the events of Melville's life, not his books.The fascinatingnational and family politics that preoccupied him are on particularly finedisplay.Readers with only a casual interestmight see some details asmere minutiae, but each cited incident enriches the portrait of a complexman and artist.

Melville's history is not nearly so well documented asthat of some of his contemporaries, so there is some educated guessworkregarding certain motives and details, but Parker is ever scrupulous aboutseparating evidence from speculation.His immersion in Melville's work andhis sympathetic understanding of the man make this volume the mosttrustworthy and complete biography available. ... Read more

Product Description
Two memorable and stirring works—first written as magazine pieces and later published in The Piazza Tales. "Bartleby," (also called "Bartleby the Scrivener") is a haunting moral allegory set in the business world of 19th-century New York. "Benito Cereno," a harrowing tale of slavery and revolt aboard a Spanish ship, is regarded by many as Melville’s finest short story.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (17)

Two tense and terrific tales
Bartleby the Scrivener was first published in 1853, Benito Cereno in 1855. Both appeared after Moby Dick (1851).

Bartleby is unforgettable. We witness him being hired as a scrivener, a low paid clerk who copies documents in a lawyer's office. His employer is a compassionate gentleman charmingly tolerant of eccentric workers. The two other clerks are an employer's nightmare, but the gloomy Bartleby is even more provoking. When asked to do anything extra in the office, he replies, "I would prefer not to."

Bartleby mesmerizes the narrator, and the reader, with his physical and emotional immobility - and comes to symbolize something about the human condition. Yet we take this something rather lightly, because of the subtle humor of the narration. Truly a gem of a story!

In Benito Cereno we are plunged into yet another bizarre situation. Captain Delano of Massachusetts is anchored off an uninhabited Chilean island and sees a Spanish merchantman coming his way, maneuvering weirdly. Thinking the ship must be distressed, the good-natured captain boards it with offers of help.

The ship, he is told, has been decimated by gales and illnesses, and Benito Cereno, its captain, is sickly and morose to the point of madness. Slaves are a significant part of the cargo, and they roam about engaged in strange tasks. The genial Captain Delano is himself too strangely blinded by racial stereotypes to see what's going on around him.

It's not entirely clear what Melville meant by these highly atmospheric stories. Their interpretation has been a matter of hot debate by scholars. But that's part of the fun of reading them. We may feel free to speculate.

quick and entertaining read
Bartleby is a quick entertaining read about the breakdown between employee/employer relationships.

Follow your leader. I would prefer not to
Benito Cereno is a brilliant story of deception. It makes the reader relentlessly guessing what is really going on and what happened to the inmates of the shipwreck 'San Dominick'.
Unfortunately, it is a racist tale. Herman Melville accepts without discussion the 19th century belief in the superiority of the white man.
The black inmates are characterized as 'the docile arising from the unaspiring contentment of a limited mind ... undisputable inferiors.'
They are crushed by the good whites personified in Captain Delano, 'a person of a singularly undistrustful good nature ... a benevolent heart, more than ordinary quickness and accuracy of intellectual perception'.
More, the story exposes his author as a true calvinist, a fatalist: 'All is owing to Providence!', also the macabre message on the prow of the shipwreck 'follow your leader' (to be killed).

On the contrary, 'Bartleby' is a profoundly modern tale.
The strange behaviour of its main character 'Bartleby' can be described as 'perfectly harmless passivity' : 'I would prefer not to.'
The reason for this behaviour lays in the fact that Bartleby was suddenly removed out of the 'Dead Letter' office in Washington after a reorganization.
'Dead letters! does it not sound like dead men? ... Sometimes from out the folded paper the pale clerk takes a ring ... a banknote ... he whom it would relieve nor eats nor hungers anymore ... on errands of life, these letters speed to death.'
Bartleby had hope. He had a job, albeit a 'catastrophic' one. But he himself became the victim of a catastrophe. He lost his job, his hope. He became a stoic.
Bartleby is the personification of humanity's lost hopes: 'Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!'

Bartleby , the Underground Man, The Overcoat
This review is of one of the long stories, or novellas that constitute this volume, 'Bartleby, the Scrivener' , and not of ' Benito Cereno'. 'Bartleby'is one of the great pieces of American and of Existensial Literature. It's hero, ' Who prefers not to' in some way compares with those other lonely nineteenth century city-dweller isolatos, Dostoevsky's Underground Man, and Gogol's Akakay Akakayevitch. He too has a cousin in much of Kafka's literature perhaps most especially in 'The Metamorphosis'.
The good- natured lawyer narrator, the employer of Bartleby who tells the story would seem to come from a world of ordinary pleasures, family and understanding. Thus his amazement at the worldless Bartleby who cannot say 'yes' to anything even kindness or human consideration.
Bartleby says ' no' and in saying ' no' he somewhow hangs on to, and affirms his own distinct identity and individuality. He is in one sense the anti- hero whose integrity is simply in refusing to follow and obey convention and the ordinary temptations of mankind.
At the same time he is obviously a no-body and a nothing, one who by saying 'no' also denies his own common humanity.
One of the paradoxes of this great story is the somewhat majestic , humorous and ironic tone of the narrator who so calmly presents a tale of isolation bordering on horror.
Close to one- hundred years later a writer far more popular in his time than Melville managed to be in his , J.D. Salinger would present in Holden Caulfield another example of the American naysayer to Society's demands, and hypocrisies. Old Holden however as opposed to Bartleby will be ' quite articulate'. When he prefers not to he will tell us all about it. Enigmatic Bartleby on the other hand charms us by his silence, and his one- track refusal to compromise. He seems to say to us , that even if we think we understand him, we cannot.
And this too is part of this work's special mystery and power.

What a waste
Congratulations Herman Melville - you have a good vocabulary and know how to describe a setting.

Benito Cereno was a waste of my life. Yes, the story is interesting and political and provocative but it could have easily been condensed by 50 pages. The build up is completely unnecessary. if you are desparate to read this book, read only the first 15 and last 15 pages ... Read more

Product Description
Exiled Royalties is a literary/biographical study of the course of Melville's career from his experience in Polynesia through his retirement from the New York Custom House and his composition of three late volumes of poetry and Billy Budd, Sailor.The ten essays in the book are rooted in a belief that "Melville's work," as Charles Olson said, "must be left in his own 'life,'" which for Milder means primarily his spiritual, psychological, and vocational life.The title essay takes its origin from Ishmael's account of "the larger, darker, deeper part of Ahab," Melville's mythic projection of his own feelings of emotional and ontological disinheritance. How to live nobly in spiritual exile-to be godlike in the perceptible absence of God-was a lifelong preoccupation for Melville, who, in lieu of positive belief, transposed the drama of his spiritual life to literature. Exiled Royalties explores the ways in which Melville satisfied this impulse throughout his forty-five year career, how it shaped the matter and manner of his work, and how his writing, in turn, reflexively bore upon his private life and upon the life of the nation. ... Read more

Product Description
Set in the paradise of a South Sea island, "Typee" is a combination of fact and fiction. The tale is a distortion of the life of the Typees and foreshadows the metaphysical precoccupations in Melville's later work with its depiction of the evil and mystery lurking beneath the idyllic setting. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (26)

The book arrived quickly and in good shape
I have not read much of the book yet but looked it over and it is in good condition.I ordered it for a Senior University class I was taking.

Documentary-like story of life in an uncivilized paradise, circa 1850.
Much of this first novel of Melville's reads more like a documentary than an adventure novel.This story of Tommo's time as a prisoner to the Typee savages (mirrored after Meliville's own experiences with a Tahitian tribe) isn't the most exciting book you'll read.Most of it is actually taken up by detailed descriptions of the (imaginary?) Typee tribes-people, their customs, habits, ect.Because it is based on real experiences, it is somewhat difficult to determine what is fiction and what is really true of Pacific-Islander life.In-depth descriptions of how food is processed, how clothing is made, and how island life is organized ring true, while a few parts of the book, like the beauty of the people and their habitually lazy lifestyles, seem exaggerated.

Melville's writing style reminds me of Jules Verne.The mundane tone used to describe (in great detail) people, objects, and occasions is very similar to what you get in Verne's novels (think Five Weeks in a Balloon).Also similar is the constant but dry and never-distracting humor always just beneath the surface, helping to make this otherwise lengthy-feeling descriptive work entertaining to read.Admittedly, there aren't the same sort of intense life-and-death situations here, but the tone and descriptive writing certainly have similarities to Jules Verne's style.

This book is most well-known for its poignant social commentary.The unfavorable comparisons of Western society to the stress-free life of the islands, and the condemnation of the corrupting influences of military and religious 'civilizing' influences on tribal people might have been offensive or enlightening to some in the 1850's, but seem like nothing original today.The unrefined, unashamed, and unladylike behaviour of the Polynesian women may have shocked readers at the time of publishing, but today, while lovely, it doesn't cause consternation.

I wouldn't recommend this book for the thrill seeker, or adventure lover.Only for those interested in the early work of Herman Meliville or a documentary-like story from the 1850's about life in an uncivilized tropical paradise.

TYPEE
Book came as advertised. Even better really. Nice & clean and in a clean slipcover.

Herman Melville - Typee (1846)
What I gather from some of the reviews here is that because Melville wrote some complex novels later in his career, some people will probe and muse upon everything he writes until some deep meaning or intent can be wrung out of it.I'm sure many academics in the world of publish-or-perish have concocted quite extravagant analyses of books such as 'Typee' in order to keep their jobs.

From a more sensible vantage point, while Melville certainly evolved into a more complex writer, there's no reason to believe he intended writing a 'deep' or symbolic book with 'Typee'. 'Typee' was his first book, and it became an immediate success because of its colorful handling of Melville's experiences among the inhabitants of Polynesia.End of story.

Melville's account is what would today be classified as 'narrative fiction', meaning he took his actual experiences and molded them slightly to communicate a larger idea he had in mind.With 'Typee', Melville's larger idea is the comparison of civilization and savagery.His conclusion is that so-called savages - like Typees - are in many ways superior to their civilized counterparts.Great message, but it doesn't make this book something you can dwell on for days or analyze to death.

Most readers will find Melville's writing pretty crisp, especially given the time he was writing and the time we're reading.His theme and his approach make 'Typee' far more readable than a straight travelogue but less exciting than an adventure novel.Bottom line, this is a good read.While the plot is rather thin, Melville's digressions into the culture of the Typee are really the point of the book and he doesn't stick to any subject long enough for you to get bored.On the contrary, his observations are very interesting especially given that he had no way of understanding or explaining much of what he saw.

Read 'Typee' for what it is and enjoy it as so many people have before.Take away the message Melville intended, which I promise you will not need to be especially sharp or penetrating to tease out.Please don't make 'Typee' out to be a piece of esoteric literature (like 'Moby Dick') when it clearly is not.

Life among beautiful cannibals
Although Typee is based on his own experiences in the South Pacific, Melville's popular work is wonderful adventure fiction. Disillusioned with months at sea on a whaling boat Tommo/Melville jumps ship with his friend Toby on the island of Nuku Hiva in the Marquesas archipelago of what is modern day French Polynesia. They are quickly captured by the Typee tribe who carry a murderous and cannibalistic reputation but are surprised to find that they are treated with respect and hospitality by their captors. However, it is soon apparent that the Typee, for reasons that are not clear, have no intention of letting them go for they are shadowed everywhere and under constant surveillance by groups of villagers. Toby makes an early escape with the intention of summoning help for Tommo who is being nursed for a serious leg wound by the fair-skinned beauty, Fayaway. When his friend fails to return Tommo reluctantly acquiesces to his situation. His subsequent anthropological observations are not dry text but a humorous and fascinating glimpse into an inscrutable world where the jollity, sensuality and general indolence of the villagers are lights year away from the puritanical and Protestant New England of Tommo's/Melville's own background. Some of the customs and practices have survived to this day and the words are still in use (recognisable despite Melville's esoteric spelling) as Marquesan is spoken in preference to French throughout the islands. (Some years later the people of Nuku Hiva were to be converted to Catholicism and it must have come as a shock to them to discover that they had been praying to the wrong idols for the previous two millennia.) Although the attitudes of the day were apparent in places - `Kory-Kory, though the most devoted and best-natured serving-man in the world, was alas! a hideous object to look upon' - Melville compares the natural beauty of the many of the Typee, both men and women, most favourably with the over-preened, coiffured dilettantes of the `civilised' world. With the sumptuous Fayaway and devoted Kory-Kory, he passes the days in sloth, lying around, eating, and swimming. He is effectively in a `golden jail'. As months pass, though, he becomes gloomy at his isolation and inability to meaningfully converse with the villagers and, when he makes a gruesome discovery, he develops a dreadful foreboding as to the possible outcome for his captivity. The novel closes with tension and drama.
Today, the village of Taipivai (River Taipi) is as tranquil a place as one could imagine, with the villagers enjoying a pace of life barely changed since Melville's time 170 years ago. Highly recommended to all who enjoy old-fashioned adventure and those who are interested in the history and culture of Pacific island communities. A second book, the less well-known Omoo, continues the author's South Seas escapades.
... Read more

Product Description
From the author of the international bestseller The Last Station, a stirring novel about the adventurous life and tragic literary career of Herman Melville.
 
As The Passages of H. M. opens, we see, through the eyes of his long-suffering wife Lizzie, an aging, angry, and drunken Herman Melville wreaking domestic havoc in his unhappy New York home. He is decades past his flourishing career as a writer of bestselling tales of seagoing adventures like Typee and Omoo. His epic but ungainly novel Moby-Dick was meant to make him immortal, but critics scoffed and readers fled. His days are spent trudging the docks of New York as a customs inspector and contemplating his malign literary fate. But within him is stirring, perhaps, one great work yet—the tale of a handsome sailor in the Napoleonic Wars, undone by one moment of uncontrollable rage . . .

Lizzie’s chapters alternate with third-person accounts of Melville’s crowded life: his shipping off to sea on a merchant vessel as an impoverished young aristocrat; his fateful voyage on a whaling ship; his desertion in the Marquesas Islands and sojourn with cannibals—a great adventure and polymor­phous sexual idyll—and his instant fame as a novelist; his fateful encounter and soul-deep friendship with Nathaniel Hawthorne; and the long years of physical decline and liter­ary obscurity.

Jay Parini creates a Melville who is at once sympathetic and maddening, in sync with the vast forces of the universe and hopelessly impractical and abstracted. And one who, in thought and deed, is unambiguously attracted to men—a surmise well supported by the known biographical facts but still sure to cre­ate controversy. Parini penetrates the mind and soul of a liter­ary titan, using the resources of fiction to humanize a giant while illuminating the sources of his matchless creativity.


From the Hardcover edition. ... Read more

Product Description

Billy Budd is a novella begun around 1886 by American author Herman Melville, left unfinished at his death in 1891 and not published for the first time until 1924. The work has been central to Melville scholarship since it was discovered in manuscript among Melville's papers in 1924 and published the same year.

Customer Reviews (2)

Misleading, do not recommend.
It says it is the Hayford-Sealts edited version, and it is not, be warned!It is an earlier version that is filled with errors.

Herman Melville
Billy Budd by Herman Melville

Billy Budd by Herman Melville is an insightful and dramatic masterpiece. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (3)

GOOD BOOK!
Newton Arvin provides an involving overview of Herman Melville's personal life and literary career in this biography, which won the National Book Award in 1950. In contrast to many current biographies, Arvin clearly wrote this book and did not simply edit his lectures. This counts with me, since many biographies nowadays have the pace and style of lectures, not the elegance and precision of great written prose. The result, in this case, is that HERMAN MELVILLE is its own literary experience, not simply informed dictation transferred to the page.

Certainly, Herman Melville wrote what Arvin calls "one very great book." And Arvin does a wonderful job describing what he believes is great about MOBY DICK in his excellent chapter "The Whale". But he does an even better job addressing this question: Why didn't Melville write more great books after hitting his stride in MOBY DICK? The short answers to this question are burnout and Melville's failure, after MOBY DICK, to find a form to match his gifts. As Arvin explains, Melville chose, after his great book "...to write in a form that was as inexpressive to him as a foreign tongue." In a sense, this makes Melville's decline a lesson to all writers, as they grope for the form and structure that celebrates their content.

Although published in 1950, HERMAN MELVILLE holds up very well. By current mores, this biography probably underplays Melville's sexual issues and overplays its occasional Freudian insights. But the book is NOT dated.

Deserving National Book Award Winner
This seminal critical biography of Melville is by far the best introduction to the life and work of Herman Melville. Arvin's book bristles with intelligence and insight and is, unlike many academic studies ofMelville, highly readable. Search for it and when you get your own copyrejoice. Some smart publisher could do worse than bring this truly classicvolume back into print.

What It Used To Take To Win A Pulitzer Prize
Any fan of Melville's writing who has not read this seminal and still unequaled critical study and biography has sheer pleasure in store. Arvin'sintelligence and immense knowledge are seamlessly matched by a writingstyle that is measured and seductive. Anybody reading this study withoutknowing jack about Melville would probably be so excited that s/he wouldhave to rush out to buy the complete works. This book is worth whatevereffort you have to invest to find a copy. The question is: why is this TRUEclassic out-of-print? ... Read more

Product Description
By some strange arts, Isabel's wonderful story might have been, some way, and for some cause, forged for her, in her childhood, and craftily impressed upon her youthful mind; which so--like a slight mark in a young tree--and now enlargingly grown with her growth, till it had become this immense staring marvel. Tested by any thing real, practical, and reasonable, what less probable, for instance, than that fancied crossing of the sea in her childhood, when upon Pierre's subsequent questioning of her, she did not even know that the sea was salt. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (14)

Much Better Than Rumor Would Have It (Kindle edition)
For decades I've read about how dreadful "Pierre" is.Everyone from Newton Arvin to John Updike seems to have given it the back of the hand.(I think it was Updike who claimed that at no other time in literary history has such a bad book followed on the heels of such a good one [the good one being "Moby-Dick"].)

Admittedly, "Pierre" is very odd for a mid-nineteenth-century work -- so odd, in fact, that I'm surprised anyone even agreed to publish it.It starts out as a gothic but then about mid-way becomes a loose mixture of satire and philosophy, in much the same way that "Mardi" suddenly changes from seafaring adventure to satire/allegory.But throughout the book we find Melville's sharp insights and unique turns of phrase, while getting a view of 1850s America that's unique, to say the least.

Penguin's Kindle edition of "Pierre" has very few typos and includes a linked table of contents, a good critical introduction, and helpful explanatory endnotes.For some reason, however, the endnotes are not linked or even indicated in the text.This oversight is hard to excuse, since Penguin charges top dollar for its Kindle editions.

Melville's Landlocked Novel of Manners
It's hard to enjoy Pierre. The style is reminiscent of the effect of perfume on a seasick sailor. I can't say that I enjoyed it myself, nor can I make much of a case for its significance in a world rather well-stocked with significant books. I'd urge any reader to use her/his reading lifetime judiciously by 'perusing' all of Melville's other novels and tales first. But there are some people who admire Pierre; the review here on Amazon, by D. Cloyce Smith, makes as good a case for the novel as any I've encountered, and in a few dozen words.

Even Melville's later novel The Confidence Man, which I admire strongly, is a shipboard narration - on a Mississippi river-boat. Melville's only supreme creation on land is the short story Bartleby the Scrivener. Like a sailor wobbling on his sea legs on a long pier, Melville wobbles through Pierre with a slight suspicion that nausea, caused by surfeit, is closing around us. Perhaps that sense of vertigo really is a premonition of 20th Century literature - of the loss of simple diversion with a measure of instruction as the main cargo of novels.

Anyone who has read Robert Musil's endless existential novel The Man Without Qualities should have no trouble recognizing that Melville was sailing toward the same sea of anxiety. But there's a more obvious connection to German literature, to Goethe!, and especially to Goethe's novel Elective Affinities. If, as his biographers claim, Melville wrote Pierre under the delusion that he would find a broader, feminine reading public with it, then the success of Goethe and of Goethe's imitators in England must have been the stimulus.

And there you have three-in-one, three novels that I will grudgingly admit to have "greatness thrust upon them" - Elective Affinities, Pierre, and Man Without Qualities - all three without which I think you can enjoy a long life of reading and nonetheless die fulfilled.

Ambiguities indeed!
I found this to be a much better Book Club selection than just a classic read.It is the tragic story of a young man who is naive in the world and his life quickly dissipates into ruin.Herman Melville published this novel a year after Moby Dick.I would not necessarily recommend it, but I thought it was an interesting work, especially if you are interested in the career of Melville.

Rich Chocolaty Goodness
The thing about Bartleby, the Scrivener is that it makes you want to read everything else Melville wrote. Right now I'm about half way through Pierre; or, The Ambiguities and think it an immensely satisfying layer cake so far. When I'm finished I hope to go fishing. Apropos of which, great bolshy yarblockos to Clifton Fadiman, who wrote the following paragraph in an introduction to Moby Dick round about 1941:

"A pessimism as profound as Melville's, if not pathological--and his was not--can exist only in a man who, whatever his gifts, does not posess that of humor. There is much pessimism in Shakespeare but with it goes a certain sweetness, a kind of radiance. His bad men--Macbeth, Iago--may be irretrievable, but the world itself is not irretrievable. This sense of balance comes from the fact that Shakespeare has humor, even in the plays of the later period. Melville had none. For proof, reread Chapter 100, a labored, shrill, and inept attempt at laughter. Perhaps I should qualify these strictures, for there is a kind of vast, grinning, unjolly, sardonic humor in him at times--Ishmael's first encounter with Queequeg is an example. But this humor is bilious, not sanguine, and has no power to uplift the heart."

Is it me or is this just a bit too saucy and overbold? Fadiman was a noted intellectual but was obviously unafraid of making a right eejit of himself--can you beat the blinkered quality of his indictment? Talk about a blind spot! That's the trouble with introductions to novels, they're right there in front, always getting in your way, distracting you with their gibberish. Luckily there's no introduction in my copy of Pierre so I was able to proceed directly to the first page unmolested. The story of Pierre Glendinning is straightforward enough but it unfolds amid a vast and stunningly considered narration that is for me the novel's chief delight. Here's what strikes me at this point: Melville swallowed with obvious relish the Classics, the King James Version of the Bible and most of Shakespeare and then brung them all back up again in a glorious nineteenth-century American amalgam. I'm practically certain that this is some of the most capaciously vivid and readable English I have ever encountered, the type of prose D. H. Lawrence wished he could type but was too blotto with hormones to actually type coherently on his typewriter. Forget everything you've ever read or heard about this novel--the critical response since its first appearance in 1852 has been for the most part laughably inept and spineless--and just start right in. Believe me, if you're a certain type of reader you will be well pleased. Would it help if I told you that the manservant in Saddle-Meadows is named Dates? Or the local clergyman Falsgrave? Perhaps not. Getting back to Bartleby though for a minute, what a peach that is. Funny and poignant and mysterious. When I finished it a couple of weeks ago I went out on my bicycle and did a victory lap round the neighbourhood, sealing my exultant passage with a cigarette which I actually smoked while awheel. Bliss that was. When you smoke on a bicycle the whole world is your ashtray!

Adultery, incest, madness, murder, and suicide--all in "a narrative nervous breakdown"
"Pierre" is perhaps Melville's most difficult and challenging novel--and that's saying something. Despairing over his inability to support his family, Melville began writing a book designed to be popular--a counterpoint to the sensational novels written and read by contemporary women, using inspiration from French romances and even from Hawthorne's novels. Wavering between psychological melodrama and social satire, Melville ultimately increased the book's length by half again, incorporating his rage against the literary world by adding a subplot about a young man's desperate struggle to become a writer.

The stumbling points for most readers are the novel's opaque prose, the "thees and thous" of its antiquated dialogue, and the labyrinthine hodgepodge of a plot. But the density is broken by colloquial asides, sparkling sarcasm, and an occasional passage that approaches Dickensian mirth, such as Melville's description of the "Preposterous Mrs. Tartan!" and her undercover attempts to play matchmaker between Pierre and her daughter: "Once, and only once, had a dim suspicion passed through Pierre's mind, that Mrs. Tartan was a lady thimble-rigger, and slyly rolled the pea."

Behind the mask of the prose, however, is a modernist--even scandalous--story of a young, somewhat deluded man whose nihilistic descent leads to his destruction. Engaged to Lucy Tartan, Pierre adores his mother (their make-believe brother-sister relationship is almost creepy in its amorous undertones) and worships the memory of his long-dead father. This idyllic world is shattered by a missive from a woman, Isabel, who claims to be his half-sister--a claim supported by a more-than-passing resemblance to a portrait of his father. Complicating matters are his romantic feelings for this alleged half-sister.

Convincing himself that he is choosing honor over duty, he breaks off his engagement and flees to Manhattan with Isabel, taking along a local woman who had been disgraced by an out-of-wedlock tryst. Disowned by his mother and cut off from his family fortune, Pierre finds shelter for this odd trio among bohemian neighbors in a dilapidated part of town. His finances slowly evaporating, Pierre struggles to support them by writing a novel. And then, just when the plot can barely handle another twist, his estranged fiancee Lucy shows up at their doorstep.

To go any further would spoil the fun for the reader. Yet even such a basic plot summary omits some memorable and extraordinary scenes and sketches: his first meeting with Isabel, the near-riot that greets them during their first night in Manhattan, the eccentric philosopher who refuses to put his scholarly brilliance into written form.

Adultery, incest, madness, murder, and suicide--all the ingredients of a bleak nineteenth-century melodrama are wrapped in archaic language and modern themes. In her life of Melville, Robertson-Lorant calls "Pierre" "a narrative nervous breakdown" that is a "minefield" for biographers. It's also a goldmine; in no other work does Melville more clearly ridicule his critics, his friends and family, and even himself. The weird universe of "Pierre" is not the place to start if you've never read Melville, but it's certainly where you should go if you want better to understand his life and works. ... Read more

Product Description
This collection contains 17 novels and short fiction by acclaimed writer Herman Melville, including 'Moby Dick' and 'Bartleby, The Scrivener.'Includes an active table of contents.

Contents:

Typee
Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas
Mardi Vol. I
Mardi Vol. II
Redburn: His First Voyage
White-Jacket
Moby Dick
Israel Potter
The Confidence-Man
Billy Budd
The Piazza
Bartleby, The Scrivener
Benito Cereno
The Lightning-Rod Man
The Encantadas
The Bell-Flower
I and My Chimney
... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Excellent Melville
This is NOT a collection of poetry, but a collection of Melville's prose, including his famous books like Moby Dick and shorter works like Bartleby the Scrivener.It's a good value for the price.

Collected Works of Herman Melville
I was quite disappointed as I thought it would be his stories but it was mainly poetry. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (2)

A great poem but only for the hardy
Melville is known universally for his single decade of prose, not his three and a half decades dedicated to poetry. In part, this suggests his relative achievement in the two genres. In part, our ignorance stems from the general fate of poetry as it has been almost totally displaced by the novel over the last 200 years. In the case of Clarel, the situation is even more trying: 500 pages (one of the longest poems in any language) of iambic tetrameter are not calculated for popular sale. Indeed, Melville had a growing tendency to push the average reader away especially as his works sold in inverse proportion to his growing skill. Still, this is an epic that informs us about Melville's relation with God and America's relations with religion and the old world. So if you care deeply about him or the ideas which haunt our country, you should read this best edition of the poem.

A Problematic But Great Classic
Since no one else has written about Clarel, I thought I'd be nice to Melville and congratulate him on his epic poem.Although the poetry itself isn't always brilliant, I felt that the general tone of melancholic spirituality was powerful.Essentially, to me, Clarel was about a young man questioning his world, and searching for meaning in a seemingly meaningless existence.The book parallels Melville's own travels in Jeruseleum, and with this work, we get a glimpse into Melville's interpretation of spirituality.Highly recommended, considering that it is overshadowed by that other Melville work (Moby Dick, of course!). ... Read more

Product Description
From short masterpieces like “Bartleby the Scrivener” and “Billy Budd” to more obscure, even completely unknown works like the epic poem “Clarel,” Melville’s stories and poems rank among his greatest and most gripping work. This unique anthology–the first of its kind in fifty years–gathers together all of Melville’s tales, as well as a judiciously edited array of his prose poems, literary criticism, letters, lectures, and poetry. Though few realize it today, poetry was Melville’s abiding passion; yet his poetry has never received the recognition it deserves, until now.

Containing many writings available nowhere else, and edited by leading Melville scholar John Bryant, Tales, Poems, and Other Writings includes a comprehensive introductory essay and extensive, in many cases groundbreaking, editorial commentary. It opens a window onto Melville’s writing process–he was a ceaseless reviser and experimenter–and reveals his career-long evolution as a writer as well as the full breadth of his literary achievement. And it marks a new stage in our ability to appreciate not only the work of one of our greatest writers, but the immense dedication that lay behind it.

John Bryant is a professor of English at Hofstra University. He has published five books and numerous articles on Melville, and is the editor of the Penguin Classics edition of Typee and the Modern Library edition of The Confidence-Man. He has been the general editor of the Melville Society, one of the oldest and largest single-author societies in America, since 1990.


From the Trade Paperback edition. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A Superb Melville Anthology! Kudos!
I became a fan of Herman Melville while reading "Moby Dick" for the first time, back in college. Not only did Melville capture the lore and lure of the sea, and create some of literature's most memorable characters, he applied his craft, and love of language, like few other writers. I moved from the tale of the great white whale to "Bartleby The Scrivner," and "Billy Budd," with a growing appreciation for Melville's work.

Thanks to John Bryant, a Melville expert with a strong voice of his own, here at last is an anthology that contains some of Melville's most extraordinary writing. "Bartleby" is here, as well as "Billy Budd," along with many, lesser known short stories, some of them published in this collection for the first time. His moving Civil War poems, including, "Chattanooga," "Shiloh," "Sheridan at Cedar Creek," and "The Mound by the Lake," are included here, as are his letters, and sections from his epic "Clarel."

Kudos to John Bryant for putting together this wonderful Melville anthology. It should make a welcome addition to any good library.

The Best Anthology of Melville
I always liked Melville, but was never a big fan. But, thanks to John Bryant's wonderful job, this collection very much converted me to a hardcore fan. The paperback version is quite handsome as well. ... Read more

Product Description
Herman Melville's classic novel, first published in 1861. One of world literature's great poetic epics. Melville recounts the Promethean quest of Captain Ahab, who, having lost a leg in an earlier battle with the White Whale, is determined to catch the beast and destroy it. By the time readers meet Ahab, he is a vengeful, crazed, and terror-provoking figure, for Moby Dick has come to represent for him all the evil in the world. ... Read more

Product Description
Unlike his fiction, which has been popular and oftenreprinted, Melville’s poetry remains obscure: The last“collected poems” appeared in 1947 and “selected poems” inthe 1970s, and only two books dealing exclusively with Melville’spoetry have appeared, both published in the 1970s. In this revisededition of his Poems of Herman Melville, Douglas Robillard updates thescholarship on the poetry through his introduction and notes and makesa case for a revised estimate of the importance of Melville as a poet.

The Poems of Herman Melville contains entire texts of“Battle-Pieces” (1866), “John Marr and Other Sailors”(1888), and “Timoleon” (1891). Selected cantos from“Clarel” are reprinted with accompanying notes and commentary.

Melville scholars will appreciate the depth and scope of this additionto the critical study of this American poet. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Is Melville's poetry really worth reading?
If the difficulty of getting hold of it is any indication, then most people think Melville's poetry *isn't* worth it. I've been waiting for years for the poetry volume of the Northwestern-Newberry edition to appear (it was promised for 2002, but still shows no signs of coming out). That will be the ultimate answer, as it'll include all the materials, commentaries, etc. that one could desire.

In the meantime, it makes a lot of sense to collect Melville's own three published volumes of verse in this beautifully compact book. This may not represent his poetic legacy as a whole, but it shows (at any rate) his public face as a poet.

And a very odd poet he is indeed. He has a lot in common with Thomas Hardy, I think: both are addicted to convoluted diction, impossibly complex and confining stanza forms and metrical schemes, a general sense of labouring over every line and of lack of music and ease.

Hardy is, nevertheless, a great poet. When the occasion demands it -- "The Convergence of the Twain" about the Titanic disaster, the superb poems of 1912 about his dead wife -- there's a kind of clumsy power about him which overpowers any reservations.

Melville's technical shortcomings are -- if anything -- even greater. The chains of rhyme and metre chafe him more than virtually any other nineteenth-century poet I can think of. He seems to have almost no natural facility for verse.

And yet (as all readers of his prose are aware) he is a genius. His prose-poetry in Moby-Dick, "Benito Cereno" and "Las Encantadas" is incomparable. And very now and then it glimmers out in the midst of the most clotted poems. There are certain lines from his Civil War poems included in Ken Burns' PBS documnentary series which seem almost to beat Whitman at his own game:

In glades they meet skull after skull
Where pine-cones lay ...
... Some start as in dreams,
And comrades lost bemoan:
By the edge of those wilds Stonewall had charged --
But the Year and the Man were gone. [102]

The equation between the skulls and the pine-cones is haunting, yet unobtrusive, and the invocation of Stonewall as a kind of force of nature works brilliantly. There's a mythic force in some of these Civil War poems which is unsurpassed.

Once you get over the surface defects, then, there's a lot encoded in the depths of Melville's verse -- a submerged continent of perceptions every bit as vivid as his fiction. The wait continues for the definitive edition, but for now I'm just grateful to have this one. It seems somehow characteristic that he should have to wait so long for the critical establishment to do justice to his talents in this field -- Herman Melville (both as a man and a writer), was, it seems , born to be overlooked.

A poet in prose and not in poetry
Consider Melville's prose in 'Moby Dick'. Its complexity and vast metaphorical reach, its narrative reflectiveness and great exploring quality. Melville in his prose is the master of the long line reaching out to encompass and define greater and greater worlds.
Melville of the poetry has his own poetry chopped up into small lines. And somehow the music is lost, the diction seems more archaic and trite, and the great sweep of the story is lost.
The mode of Melville's genius is prose, and his poetry is read today primarily as supplement to further understanding it. ... Read more

Product Description
Available in its complete form for the first time since its original publication. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Great book from a brilliant mind.
CLR James was one of the earliest left wing thinkers to break from Orthodox Marxist dogmatism, even rejecting Leninism and the notion of the 'Vanguard of the Proletariat' all the way back in the late '40's, a move that left him alienated from the mainstream Left of the time and eventually led to his deportation in the 1950s. This book was written while he was in jail in New York awaiting his immigration hearing, a fact that makes this insightful look at Melville all the more impressive.

James points out that Melville was a visionary who caught glimpses of new social types long before they became prevalent in society: he even makes the startling statement that Melville is the ONLY author of Industrial capitalism. Reading first this book, then going back and reading Moby Dick, I must say that I cannot argue with his assessment. I found this small volume challenging, engaging and at times, personally upsetting, as I read something of myself and many others like me in James' reading of Ishmael. Definite cause for pause and reflection.

This book ends with a chapter describing in excruciating detail James' treatment while in jail, which I found at first quite self serving and gripey...but upon further reflection, his story is irritating because it is a banal and everyday litany of life under bureaucratic capitalism, not pretty or interesting, but it got under my skin, like the rest of this book.

If you like Melville or are interested in anti-authoritarian left thinking, you could do no better than to pick this up: I couldn't put it down.

C.L.R James interpretation of Melville's works
When I first read this book by James, I was preparing to write an essay on Melville and his "isolatoes."James gives ample evidence for establishing the reasons why some of the protagonists appear elusive, enigmatic, and, of course, reclusive.I found this text quite helpful in its explanations of why Melville portrayed his male characters the way he chose; perhaps James own exile for passport violations sets up the framework for presenting his theories on the characters he analyzes.The work is a fine read, although the socialist commentary remains controversial.

Brilliant Analysis of Melville's Classic Text
C.L.R. James's analysis of Moby Dick brings the book to life and makes it understandable for a 21st century audience. You'll read "Mariners, Renegades, and Castaways, and want to immediately run out and read Moby Dick and Melville's other classics. James argues that Melville used the novel to explore dramatic changes in the fabric of American culture including the rise of industrial capitalism, the international working class, and the increasingly savage character of political and industrial life and leadership.

C.L.R. James wrote this book while he was interned with the newest generation of "Mariners, Renegades, and Castaways" on Ellis Island awaiting deportation. James's fate--that of a foreigner who offers the finest existing interpretation of one of America's greatest books and is still deported--serves as a cautionary tale for our own times. James concludes, "What the writing of this book has taught the writer is the inseparability of great literature and of social life."

poco Po-Co
This book is more than a little bit of early Postcolonial writing. The intoduction by Donald Pease is new, and the last chapter - an autobiographical sketch and personal appeal by James - was omitted from a previous edition. In terms of literary criticism, this is what Pease has to say about James and his writing: "He was one of the few critics who emerged from the Third World in the 1950's and traveled throughout Britain and the United States generating what are now called post-colonial readings." The real value of this book however is in its brilliant reinterpretation of MOBY DICK.

Rather than see Ahab and Ishmael as representing respectively "totalitarian" and "American" cultural themes as critics in the 1950's saw it, James offers a vison focused on the Pequod and its crew. A view in which the MARINERS, RENEGADES & CASTAWAYS of the ship were at the mercy of their Captain. In James' interpretaion the Pequod is a factory ship and the crew are the workers. Ahab is no longer a mere sailor but is now illustrative of a "Captain of industry."

I agree with the reviewer from New Haven regarding the peculiar situation James found himself in. The established interpretation of a Cold War allegory was in keeping with the times in the 1950's. If James or Melville himself were writing today, the interpretation on offer here - rather than something to be persecuted for - would be considered far more plausible than the narrow and blinkered view of the 1950's mainstream critics.

CLR James and The World We Live In
James, writing 100 years after _Moby Dick_ was published, shows a significant understanding of Herman Melville's time and its relation to the time in which he (James) wrote--1952. James gives an insightful critique of Melville's earlier novels and shows how they chronologically lead to Melville's eventual masterpiece, _Moby Dick_. _Moby Dick_ is an allegory for modernity gone awry, with a mad captain at the helm. For James, Ahab is comparable to the USA, which is charting its own mad course with destiny. In 1952 James was right on target, for he was detained on Ellis Island and eventually deported during the worst days of McCarthyism. It is a peculiar instance of a Trinidadian intellectual's desire to become a US citizen, and instead, being figuratively slapped in the face because of his associations with--through his writings against-- Russian communism and Trotskyites. That he wrote this book while being detained, and included an autobiographical chapter at the end makes this text quite a resource for literary critics as well as for those interested in learning about a historical case of US immigration policy in action. ... Read more

Product Description
Written some 40 years after "Moby Dick", Melville's "Billy Budd" is a moving tale of good versus evil. Set aboard a British navy ship at the end of the 18th century, the envious Master-at-Arms becomes obsessed with the destruction of the "Handsome Sailor", Billy Budd. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A compelling and vivacious rendition
Read and performed by veteran actor William Roberts, Billy Budd, Sailor is the unabridged audiobook presentation of Herman Melvilles maritme classic of a sailor "pressed" into service on the HMS Indomitable during the Napoleonic Wars. Despite his popularity among the crew, Billy experiences ruthless treatment from the ship's master-at-arms, and so follows horrible tragedy. A compelling and vivacious rendition, Billy Bud, Sailor is a recommended addition to personal and community library audiobook collections. 3 CDs, 3 hours and 35 minutes. ... Read more

Product Description
This is an OCR edition without illustrations or index. It may have numerous typos or missing text. However, purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original rare book from the publisher's website (GeneralBooksClub.com). You can also preview excerpts of the book there. Purchasers are also entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Volume: 1; Original Published by: Evanston [Ill.] Northwestern University Press; Newberry Library in 1850 in 337 pages; Subjects: Fiction / Literary; Fiction / Historical; Fiction / Sea Stories; Fiction / Action ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

Herman Melville - White-Jacket (1850)
It's often said that, in 'Huckleberry Finn', "life is a river". 'White-Jacket', Herman Melville's fifth novel, may be his take on this: "the world is a ship". In fact, the subtitle of 'White-Jacket' is 'The World in a Man-of-War'. This is an interesting idea for an allegory and, in many ways, Melville suceeds. Using the events on the man-of-war Neversink, Melville draws many parallels to society in general and human justice in particular. Further, in the final chapter, Melville provides a moral to tie his allegory together.

However, despite these successes, 'White-Jacket' pretty much fails as a novel. The main problem is that Melville exercises no control over his allegory. 'White-Jacket' contains far too much content that doesn't add to the allegory, and some of it clearly is not even meant to. While every word and chapter does not necessarily have to drive an allegory (unless you're Dante and writing something genius like 'The Divine Comedy'), the narrative that does not propel the allegory should have some point. Unfortunately, that is not the case here and it makes 'White-Jacket' pretty tedious.

The excess material is especially frustrating because 'White-Jacket' quite simply tells no story. There is no plot, no character development, no conflict, nothing other than the allegory. So if a chapter doesn't fit in with the allegory, it really serves no purpose whatsoever! And, quite frankly, if Melville had honed his allegory the way he should have, his final chapter - which is terribly prosaic - would not have been required.

Oddly, it seems to me that in writing his fourth, fifth, and sixth novels, Melville repeats the path he took with 'Typee', 'Omoo', and 'Mardi' (his first three). His fourth book ('Redburn') was like 'Typee', even though 'Typee' was more romantic and 'Redburn' darker. Both are quite successful works, tell a great story, and have clear themes communicated by those stories. 'Omoo' suffered from a directionless narrative that never came together as a story, very much like what we have with 'White-Jacket'. In his third book, Melville made an ambitious attempt at something deeper and, since his sixth book is 'Moby-Dick', the parallel seems to hold.

I also found myself thinking of 'Redburn' and 'White-Jacket' as two halves of the whole that would become 'Moby-Dick'. 'Redburn' focuses on the story, and 'White-Jacket' focuses on an all-encompassing theme. In 'Moby-Dick', Melville would attempt both in a single novel. In addition, 'Moby-Dick''s theme of the microcosm echoes the 'world in a man-of-war' theme in 'White-Jacket'.

Okay, all that said, is this a book worth reading? The answer is 'no', unless you're interested in delving into Melville's development as a writer or have an urge to learn in great detail what it was like to serve on a man-of-war in the 1800s. Bottom-line, in 'White-Jacket', Melville was overtly trying to write another 'tale of the sea' to earn money and regain the attention of his readers, while creating a deeper work 'under the radar'. However, the lack of plot means the book fails dismally as the former and the lack of control by Melville undermines the latter. 'White-Jacket' could have been much better, but Melville clearly needed more time, effort, and craft on this novel to realize this potential.

Blogging from atop the mainmast
In this early title from the great Melville, we get an episodic account of the author's service aboard the USS United States, sister ship of "Old Ironsides." To avoid prosecution under the Articles of War, the name of the ship (called in the book the "Neversink") and his fellow crew members have been changed, but the stories retain their often startlingly candid detail. From the ritual floggings at the masthead to a critical grog shortage, Melville gives us a seaman's eye view of life of the 400-man crew of an American man-of-war marooned uncomfortably in a time of peace.

Each chapter is a commentary on some facet of life aboard the ship. Some are laden with irony and dry humor, others express thinly veiled outrage at an institution that completely deprives men of any form of liberty and justice as they work to protect the freedom of their country.In these chapters, you will also see the seeds of the themes and images that appeared in Melville's later works.

"A blog," you ask? That is exactly what this book is. There are many characters, no plot to speak of, but an incredibly rich garden of facts, opinions ideas and observations. It does little to flatter the U.S. Navy of the mid-1800's but provides a richly detailed and distinctly un-romanticized view of the lives of those who served. If you're a fan of Melville or just like books about sailing the seas, White Jacket is a must-read.

A guide book for sailors
Reading this book made me realize how much I have in common with the sailors of old in our illustrious Navy. We all hate general quarters. This book is a good read for anyone looking for a more indepth look at what naval life was/is like. Underways are long, port visits are short ( and more restricted than ever), and you never feel at home no matter where you go. Naval life is great but it isn't a adventurous as some writers tend to make it appear. To have adventures you must go it alone or pick a liberty buddy with similar ideas.

Harsh Life Aboard a US Navy Ship in the Last Days of Sail
The title, "White Jacket", serves as a double entendre by the author, Herman Melville.He actually sews up a hand-stitched jacket made from white sail cloth and other material, but it is ill-fitting, continually wet, ineffective against the cold, and actually the source of trouble between himself and the crew.So, the white jacket is a suit of his own making that very well brings about his own downfall.In the end, he discards it when he sees himself about to drown.And so, Melville uses this theme to serve as a metaphor for white superiority and the threatening danger of civil war over slavery.

Indeed, Melville experiences effective slavery during his voyage aboard the USS United States (USS Neversink in the book) during its run from the Pacific back to the Atlantic.And like so many black slaves, he and his crewmates suffer the ever-present threat of public lashings for even minor infractions.So, Melville also uses his book as an indictment against a hypocritical system, whereby officers are never wrong and never experience corporal punishment but the enlisted crew remain in perpetual danger of arousing the slightest displeasure of any officer with the ultimate result of a humiliating public lashing. However, no military organization could function effectively if it were a democratic institution; who would ever risk their life in such a case?(Even the early Communists quickly abandoned that principle.)

But the vast majority of the book focuses on the minute details of life aboard a frigate during the age of sail.Several hundred (500?) souls are packed into the space of a single wooden vessel for months on end.How the ship is organized and the rituals of life aboard ship are the mainstay of the book.Melville describes in factual detail the actual work (trimming sails, cleaning decks, etc.), the daily routines (meals on deck, standing watches, playing cards in secret, sleeping in the crew's quarters), the professions (sailor, waistman, quartermaster, boatswain, carpenter, surgeon, captain, commodore, purser, midshipmen, chaplain, pharmacist, cook, cockswain, gunner, and yeoman), the less usual events (floggings, making a port of call, receiving official dignitaries aboard ship, rounding Cape Horn, the order of Neptune initiation rites, rumors of war), and all the underlying social structure and tensions ever-present.

I enjoyed the book and would recommend it to anyone interested in life aboard naval ships in the days of sail.With the rise of modern wireless communication, captains no longer enjoy such an absolute despotism as in times previous, but he still remains the unchallenged master aboard US navy vessels.While much of life aboard ship has changed, probably half of the book would still be quite familiar to modern-day sailors.

Second to one
This book is second only to Moby-Dick in the list of Melville's greatest works. And Melville's greatest works are America's greatest works.

White-Jacket has it all; humor, pathos, poetry and philosophy. This book makes me not only admire Melville the author but love Melville the man.

To suggest that the book would be better off without its "sermons" against cruelty in the Man-of-War's world is to suggest that Melville should have written some other book. He didn't write that book, he wrote this one and this is the one he wanted us to read. God bless him. ... Read more