Herman Melville : Redburn, White-Jacket, Moby-Dick (Library of America)

Rating:
Summary: Set Sail for More Rewarding Tracts
Review: Irrespective of what Penguin Books claims ("White-Jacket is one of the greatest novels of the sea. . ."), Herman Melville's book about life aboard a USN frigate in 1843, and, by extension, life in general (the Neversink is to be viewed "as a microcosm of the larger world") -- hardly merits consideration, let alone commendation. However, it is an exercise in drudgery. Indeed, upon completing the semi-autobiographical account one feels as if having personally made the grueling fourteen-month voyage. The few gripping anecdotes are hardly sufficient to keep the reader involved, their underlying meanings being either diffuse, dry, trite -- or all of the above. Verdicts such as "shallow," or "dull reading," as posted by similarly frazzled readers, are accurate, if euphemistic. Typically marvelous Melvillian prose, though.

Rating:
Summary: Set Sail for More Rewarding Tracts
Review: Irrespective of what Penguin Books claims ("White-Jacket is one of the greatest novels of the sea. . ."), Herman Melville's book about life aboard a USN frigate in 1843, and, by extension, life in general (the Neversink is to be viewed "as a microcosm of the larger world") -- hardly merits consideration, let alone commendation. However, it is an exercise in drudgery. Indeed, upon completing the semi-autobiographical account one feels as if having personally made the grueling fourteen-month voyage. The few gripping anecdotes are hardly sufficient to keep the reader involved, their underlying meanings being either diffuse, dry, trite -- or all of the above. Verdicts such as "shallow," or "dull reading," as posted by similarly frazzled readers, are accurate, if euphemistic. Typically marvelous Melvillian prose, though.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant Presages of Moby-Dick
Review: While White-Jacket seems to have little overall relation to Melville's other works in the sense that it appears as a self-contained, highly enjoyable novel, Redburn is one of those central turning points in this great writer's life that makes it extraordinarily important. Forget "adventure" or "romance." This is a novel of psychological destruction, a disasterous novel of "growing up" that displays the shattering of a young mind and the destruction of "young America." Any reader who loves Moby-Dick should devour Redburn again and again as one of Melville's most important works.