Moby-Dick (Thrift Editions)

What a long book! I'd forgotten how long it is. I probably had much more reading stamina back when I read it as a teen. It's as rip-roaring a tale as it ever was. You can see the ocean, the ship, and the whalers in Melville's energetic writing. You don't get many books with this setting. The allusions to India and Indian things are a pleasant surprise for an Indian. So is the extent to which science, geography, mathematics, etc., had already advanced even so long ago as the 1850s, when this book was written. But the king is the story itself and the deep understanding of what obsession and vengeance feel like. And there's a vein of humour and wit that runs throughout the book, a pleasure in itself and a silver lining on the dark quest. I'm not sure how many people there are in the world who've read Moby Dick or will read it, given the size and the somewhat old English. But I feel a kindred spirit with them.

Got the book for ₹350. It was supposed to take six days, but arrived in two. The packaging was in a hard cardboard box, so the binding and pages were safe in transit. Kudos to Amazon/Seller for choosing to do this rather than the poly bag packaging they sent last time (which sadly ruined the spine of my Wuthering Heights book). As for the book itself, the Oxford World's Classics edition includes a descriptive introduction, a well researched etymology, very helpful explanatory notes with words marked with asterisks in the work itself for references, and most helpfully Melville's personal letters to Hawthorne regarding this book. It makes for a very comprehensive book to own, and I would recommend it to anyone for this price (the MSRP sticker quotes ₹399, so do not pay any more than that for the sellers that have upmarked it for no reason at all, and look at another publishing in this price range!). The cover of it was a bit dirty, but it was most probably due to the age it sat on the shelf than anything else, and there were still no visible signs of any damage on the cover or the pages themselves. As for the seller, I got it from Manav Books and would personally recommend them to another buyer, though your own experience may vary. All in all, I was worried when I ordered due to it being the last one in stock and with it being marked at a third of the price of the next lowest seller, but I got a perfectly good copy of it that lives up to my satisfaction. As for Melville himself, well, the praise you've heard for him is probably less than what he deserves. The prose is utterly brilliant in execution, and the destructive narrative approach with a non-linear approach is somehow made to work really well. I won't comment much on the metaphysical or the alussions or the metaphors or the references (of which have already been made many in my short time reading it!), but trust me the level of care and devotion put into writing it is second to none. I'd suggest this for someone who already has experienced reading Shakespeare's works (especially Macbeth and King Lear, at the minimum), Paradise Lost by John Milton, and old verses of significant literary importance if it be possible. The author expects you to be well-read and highly intellectual. There's a bar of entry into getting into the book and enjoying it to its fullest potential, but for an experienced reader this is a mesmerising experience. Hemingway was wrong: American Literature does not start with Huckleberry Finn; it starts with Moby Dick. PS: The font size is bigger than the font in Penguin's edition of Paradise lost, and the print and paper quality are far better so don't worry on that front.

Moby Dick isn't just a book; it's a seafaring saga that hooks you like a giant whale on a harpoon! Herman Melville weaves a maritime masterpiece that takes you aboard the Pequod with Captain Ahab on his relentless quest for the infamous white whale. The language is as vast as the ocean it describes, and yes, there are chapters about whales that might make you ponder life's mysteries, but the adventure is worth every wave of words. This book captures the spirit of the sea, the thrill of the hunt, and the complexities of obsession. So, if you're ready to set sail on a literary voyage, Moby Dick is your ticket to an epic oceanic adventure!

I wanted to write this book since I was getting a lot of reference from the movies turns out. It’s hard to understand, but it worth every penny ….loved it.

Thank you Amazon . I purchased this book for my son and he is extremely happy after receiving this gift.

The book is a classic and that's why I wanted to get a hardcover version of it. The cover of this hardcover edition by Chartwell Classics is beautiful, but unfortunately, the paper quality is thin and you can see the type on the other side. Also, the type is tiny and crammed together. Wouldn't recommend this edition. Better go for the Penguin Classics hardcover, the paper quality is much better.

Well, ahem … where do I even start? Forget the narrative subtleties, forget the mammoth-whale chase and forget all the cetological whalelore, if not the geo-aesthetics, and we are left with the sea – the omnipotent, omnipresent and the omnicidal. But between the potency and the presence lies the chasm upon which the phantom feeds. The phantom is but a whale, haunting and haunted; and Moby-Dick is neither about a whale nor about the chase. It is about the monstrosity of the sea that undulates within the interstices of the hull – the tremor of which is never seen but only felt in the prosthesis of the spine. It is about the intensities and the multi-variegated interface of the oblique waves that refracts too less of geometry then rejects all that we managed to grasp. Too much of spermaceti but too little is the light to illumine the abyss of the thalassic mind. O Reader, do you think it’s about a monomaniac vengeance? Well then, offend I must the humanists, for the topological multiplicity of the oceanic offers a yawning analysis of that grinning jawbone chased by a prosthetic-legged man, for when they meet each other, a shudder of the flukes sends splinters into the heart that holds the harpoon – a paroxysm of grief and all that we have lost in the singular spasm of the sea. It is not about vengeance but about the viperous obliquity of the splash that carries enough venom to deafen the mad. The splash is present in the arcs of the spine and the phantom-whale is but a figment of the splash upon that ancient spine and to hunt it is the inception of Vikriti upon the Virat and all the grandeur in catastrophic harmony gathers into a vortex upon which hovers a single “black bubble”, where the disreality of non-utterance concentrates and atomizes perpetually. We are but forced to lunge into it only to emerge out again into an event of disbelief where our hammers freeze and all tongues collapse but the red flag that was yet to be nailed into the mainmast-head ripples quite gently upon the haphazard shivers of the ocean – an ocean become all froth and foam from the tear-stricken eyes of sailors exiled within the wrecks under the eddies. We, the Shakespearean Protozoa, drunk with a literary overdose of lysergic acid, turn to face the jaw of the whale within which our Monadic ancestors lie. But even before we are lowered into our boats, we but see fractals folding and frowning at us from the forehead of the whale beyond which our visions collapse. The spout sprays butane and all we see is vapour. Moby-Dick is gas and in search of Thalassa, all of us are Ahabs behind slouched hats, foolishly branded with the stigma of monomania, when we are trying to discover Marina, like lost-Ulysseses become hollow-Prufrocks, exhausted in our drifting-oceanic voyage, all of us seeking a way to evaporate before the spermaceti lanterns extinguish. Surreal. P.S: Apologies, I do not know how to write, for when an Ahab is dragged into the depths and a Pip lost forever and with neither any Starbucks who cherish nor any Stubbs who cheer, all a stupid reader like me can do is float under the black bubble of constant sorrow where I see myself burst. I apologise to the world for the foolishness I am.

Pages and print could have been better. Yet at this price point it is value for money. This is the epic of America Don't call yourself well read if you haven't read Moby dick