Moby-Dick

Herman Melville

Sep 2017 · Oregan Publishing · Narrated by Eoin Joyce

About this audiobook

Moby-Dick; or, The Whale is a novel by American writer Herman Melville, published in 1851 during the period of the American Renaissance. Sailor Ishmael tells the story of the obsessive quest of Ahab, captain of the whaler Pequod, for revenge on Moby Dick, the white whale which on an earlier voyage destroyed his ship and severed his leg at the knee. The novel was a commercial failure and out of print at the time of the author's death in 1891, but during the 20th century its reputation as a Great American Novel was established. William Faulkner confessed he wished he had written it himself, and D. H. Lawrence called it "one of the strangest and most wonderful books in the world", and "the greatest book of the sea ever written". "Call me Ishmael" is among world literature's most famous opening sentences. The product of a year and a half of writing, the book draws on Melville's experience at sea, on his reading in whaling literature, and on literary inspirations such as Shakespeare and the Bible. The detailed and realistic descriptions of whale hunting and of extracting whale oil, as well as life aboard ship among a culturally diverse crew, are mixed with exploration of class and social status, good and evil, and the existence of God. In addition to narrative prose, Melville uses styles and literary devices ranging from songs, poetry, and catalogs to Shakespearean stage directions, soliloquies, and asides.

Ratings and reviews

The narrator was alright, however, the editors need to learn to listen to audio books prior to releasing them. If they were to have performed that step they might have noticed that chapters 87 and 88 were repeated and that chapters 89, 90, and 91 were missing. Granted with the way Herman Melville wrote it I have no clue what I might have missed. I can say with no doubts that chapters 87 and 88 were not so important that I needed nor would have wanted to listen to them a second time during each experience of listening to this novel.

It rarely gets better than Melville's nearly-forgotten masterpiece: Moby Dick... Well done, Ishmael !!

It starts out with a prologue for like 23 minutes which is very annoying and then the rest of it the way he reads it is very droll and boring