Moby Dick (Penguin Popular Classics) (Spanish Edition) (ISBN 0140620621)

masterpiece:
I'm not sure where to begin reviewing. Many of you who are reading this are at least familiar with the title "Moby Dick" or "The Whale", and if you have read this incredible and penetrating book, most of you (I hope) will be in awe from its memories: fearful, heavy, and strange. For those who say the book is too "wordy", then you simply don't understand style and taste. Melville manages to go from an incredibly tight narrative at one page to something distant and spacey the next page. Indeed, it is a magical novel or as many call it a "masterpiece". Since most people - from what I have gathered here alone - review this book splendidly, I will not spend much time writing about it. In fact, it is best one digests this book arbitrarily, otherwise its weight may not be as profound. There is much speculation one may collect, I imagine, when thinking of this book in deep introspect. "Penguin Press" did an excellent job compiling this book. The back features very detailed diagrams and sketches of equipment and atlases. There is also an appendix for those who are not very familiar with boat terminology. The introduction is engaging and very helpful for those who have not read the book.

Entertaining, meaningful, but at times painful to read:
Moby Dick is a great story but a poorly written novel. The story of Moby Dick is actually very interesting and contains great meaning and symbolism. The events occurring in the book have the perfect combination of truth and fiction to make the action gripping. Nearer to the end of the book you are overwhelmed with a sense of wonder and suspense as you try to guess how the book will end and are blown away by the events that occur. In Moby Dick, Herman Melville proves that he is the master of descriptive language. In some parts of the book the extremely descriptive writing is an extremely positive aspect of the book but in others it makes the book unbearable to read. During the action parts of the book this excessive description makes the book a delight to read as you can see in your mind exactly what is happening. While envisioning this some amazing images come into your mind. Like the sights in the real world that would make you stop and take another look, you feel compelled to read certain passages over and over again just to keep that image in your brain. The other up side to his description is the attachment you feel with the characters. With the simple mention of a main characters name you can picture them, hear their voice, and give an attitude to the words. The downside to all of this description is during the long down time in the book, when no action can be described in hundreds of pages. For example there is one chapter all about a man's pipe, a chapter describing a bowl of chowder and a particularly long chapter describing the masthead (top of one of the masts). These long rants about unimportant aspects of the story make up the first three quarters of the book, as Moby Dick is not even spotted until the last quarter of the book. I would not recommend reading this book unless you can find a condensed version that only contains the details important to the plot. To just pick up Moby Dick in its original version and start reading is a painful and can be an almost impossible task. Overall however the story and the theme of the story is very entertaining and meaningful.

The Greatest American Novel:
This is a book unlike any other i've ever encountered. To say its a classic is an understatement. It's a shame that it's forced on high-school kids and that they think it isn't any good. In reality, it's a brilliant piece of artwork. All of the characters, the settings, the conflict, it's all real and alive. The story is about a whaling boat named the Pequod that is set on a course of vengeance by a man named Captain Ahab. He desires to kill the white whale that bit off his leg a while earlier. It's this mad quest for revenge that serves as the story, but that isn't the only thing happening, not by a longshot. Melville uses his vast knowledge of whaling to explore all sorts of philosophy, morality, and pure poetry. His writing style is utterly beautiful. Some people complain about the middle portion being nothing but a textbook on whaling. It seems that way, but at the same time, Melville is showing the reader what must be done in order to capture a whale. And within that frame, he also explores themes such as man vs nature, man vs god, and many more. How this book came to him is beyond me. If you are willing, you must experience this novel because my words can't justly explain it. But if you are put off by the length or the middle or for any other reason, you will likely be disappointed. With respect to Huckleberry Finn, THE American novel is here and nowhere else.

I Don't Recommend it:
My review is of the book, not this particular edition. There are only a few reasons to read this book: (1) You have to read it for school. If this is the case stop reading reviews and get to work. (2) You want to be cultured. There are many "cultural" books that are a lot more fun to read and more educational/enlightening than this book are. Come back to this book when you're more desperate (3) You are a whaler, or a member of some anti-whaling organization. It's really part of your field. This book fits Mark Twain's definition of a classic: "A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read." While I am sure there is a personality type out there who would like this sort of book, I think it's in the minority, and that most people wouldn't like this book, and it wouldn't be a classic unless college professors told us it was a classic. First off, the vast majority of the book is mind-numbingly boring. It seems that most authors of the 19th century thought that to write well, they had to write a lot, so Melville takes a story that could fit into a few chapters and bloats it with countless discussions on anything and everything even remotely related to whales. From the point of view of learning, these discussions are of limited value. A great deal of the information is out of date or of a limited perspective. If you want to learn about whales or even 19th century whaling, you'd probably learn a lot more and in a lot less time just by reading encyclopedia articles on the subject. That leaves two things to be gotten from this book: A moving story, and a lesson in good writing. Like I said, the story could really fit into a few chapters. The book is 135 chapters, and could easily have fit into thirty, even with Melville's ornate style. That brings us to a lesson in writing. It seems to me that there are two great schools of though on writing: The first values clarity, and the second values ornamentation. The first seeks to say something as clearly and succinctly as possible and when you read it, you say "ah, that is the perfect way of saying that." The second seeks the most virtuosic way of saying something, and when you read it, you say "ah, that is the most impressive way of saying that." I come from the first school, and I don't particularly like the virtuosic style: but Melville is such a pitch-perfect caricature of the most pompous wing of the baroque school of writing that I found slogging through his prose to be a miserable experience. If you like finding new ways of saying common things, I think you should give Melville a try, but if you value clear and direct writing, I suggest you heed this warning. I should end by saying it's not all bad. I was trying to decide between one and two stars for most of the book. But around chapter 119 I thought it really became good. The reading was actually enthralling and I even teared up at the part where Starbuck has a moment of insight into Ahab's soul and makes one final attempt to convince Ahab to give it up. I'd give from about chapter 119 to the end four or five stars, but that's not enough to save the book for me.

Classic for a reason:
This book has the momentum of a cracking whip. The struckture, almost post-modern in its rambling complexity, moves almost sideways as it speeds up and in the last twenty-five pages suddenly snaps in a bonanza of rich, delicious action. Nay-Sayers seem not to appreciate the substance all the slow, informative chapters give to the final actions of Ahab and his crew. I personally love this book.