Liza Klaussmann: 'I Reread Moby-Dick and Thought: Where Was Your Editor?'

Guardian | Saturday 11 August 2012 | Gemma Kappala-Ramsamy

[wintertime]

I **listened** to Moby Dick last week. Yes, last week! I down loaded it from I-Tunes U. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

__ At a time when books were published in newspapers one chapter at a time and read aloud to the family, I believe the best way to “experience” the book Moby Dick is by audiobook.

__ It is really a collection of short stories with a generally thin connecting story woven throughout. Each chapter could stand completely alone on its own merits and some of the stories are quite funny.

2) Each chapter explains, for the reading public some aspect of the whaling industry. Fascinating!

3) If, indeed, Mellville, captured the true speech of the common sailor, then the level of literacy and education of the common man and woman in the U.S. would be **outstanding** as compared to education of our nation's population today.

4) This book was written to be read by the common citizen of the day and it was. We as a nation have fallen so far educationally that our Founding Fathers must be weeping in their graves.

5) I am regret now that I didn't make Melville and important part of my children's homeschooling education. It would have added a minimum of 150 points to their SAT scores.

[Pilgrim's Progress]

I agree. Audiobook is the way to go. Well, generally so, but only if the reader is skilled in making the characters come alive. A monotone reader pretty much equals a wasted investment of time and money.

[Skepolitic]

It only looks like a paragraph.

It’s actually a single sentence!

[Sherman Logan]

2 words: Newspaper Serial.

Don't think so. Melville had some notoriety from previous books, but was not a widely acclaimed author with a vast following as Dickens was. I can find no evidence it was serialized prior to publication in book form.

It was first published by Richard Bentley in London on October 18, 1851, in an expurgated three-volume edition titled The Whale, and weeks later as a single volume, by New York City publisher Harper and Brothers as Moby-Dick; or, The Whale on November 14, 1851. The book initially received mixed reviews, but Moby-Dick is now considered part of the Western canon,[3] and at the center of the canon of American novels.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moby-Dick

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

***It’s actually a single sentence!***

I prepared myself by reading FROM THE TRANSLATOR TO THE READER in the older printings of the KJV.;-D