Herman Melville and Typee

[Anonymous No.9041508]

Can someone explain Herman Melville to me? I read Moby Dick a while ago and was blown away, predictably, and I figured now I'd read Typee because I'd heard it was his next most acclaimed novel, and because it's interesting to see the evolution of an authors style.

However I cannot figure out what makes Typee so great, and if it's the best novel other than Moby Dick he wrote (not including his short stories or Billy Budd), how the fuck did he manage to write Moby Dick in the end? Was it his ridiculous reading of Shakespeare? His meeting with Hawthorne? Typee seems like a quaint, cheerful travel memoir bookended with an adventure story, two genres I have not read enough of to know how ahead of his time he was with them.

Maybe my copy was abridged? It's a 100 year old hardback I found in a used book store, like 210 pages long, average density of around 375 words per page, I do know that old books were more often censored if something was deemed offensive, is that what might have happened to me? Cheers lads.

[Anonymous No.9041561]

Who told you Typee was good? His novels othwr than Dick were commercially successful adventure books. Moby Dick is his master piece and would have been forgotten if DH Lawrence hadn't republished it in the 1920s

After Dick ypu should read Budd. Bartlebe lves up to dick

[Anonymous No.9041682]

>>9041508

I only read Moby Dick, once, as a teen. Yes, the whole thing, yes, I 'got' about eighty-ninety percent of it, including the various references to the ancient world, which I'd learned recently in history class.

The "middle-third" that is commonly derided seemed to me to be just the comfy part of the book where Ishmael is just doing details about whaling, and what daily life is like. This lets us get closer to the characters, the men and their work, and come to understand them as human beings, though obviously we are vaunting forward toward The Great Conflagration. The front and back thirds are the "plot", perhaps, while the middle third is a long piece of prose style. But then it's been a very long time.

I suddenly want to re-read it.

Like the other anon sorta-said, it's my understanding that things like Omoo and Typee were popular and well-liked at the time, while when Moby Dick came out, the reaction was a collective "meh".

[Anonymous No.9041730]

>>9041508
Typee was his first work, followed by the closely related Omoo. They both sit in the halfway zone between non-fiction travel and fictionalized self narrator. Neither is among his great literary works, though they were the only two in his career for which he earned fame, respect, and money. This is like because people took him as the quaint adventurer and didn't notice the ironic social criticism he scattered throughout.

The question of how he progressed from there to Moby Dick is best answered in a combination of his reading (good biographies will mention not just shakespeare but his intense interaction with Milton - Satan/Ahab etc - and classical tragedy (in translation)) and by reading through the other novels that led into Moby Dick in which he explored more and more not just of what he'd read but of what he himself thought. Few people read them but if you're interested then it's best to go to Mardi, Redburn, and White Jacket in that order of publication.

Otherwise if you just want his next best novel go for Confidence Man - though it is very different and far denser than Moby Dick. Generally though his later shorter fiction is where he's at his finest after Moby Dick - Bartleby, Billy Budd, and Benito Cereno being the clear standouts.

[Anonymous No.9041765]

>>9041682
>>9041730
Thanks, especially >>9041730 about Miltion and Satan/Ahab

[Anonymous No.9041796]

Redburn is the best of his 'early' novels

[Anonymous No.9041847]

Your copy is probably abridged
I did the exact same thing
I have a copy from the 30s and after seeing a post here discussing the midnight forecastle chapter I realize I got fucked
Needless to say I bought the full text