MOBY-DICK – HERMAN MELVILLE-HESTER BLUM

It will be a strange sort of a book, tho , I fear; blubber is blubber you know; tho you may get oil out of it, the poetry runs as hard as sap from a frozen maple tree;– to cook the thing up, one must needs throw in a little fancy…. Yet I mean to give the truth of the thing, spite of this. Moby-Dick has a monumental reputation. Less well known are the novel s unexpectedly weird, funny, tantalizing, messy, and wondrous moments. Narrator Ishmael, along with the whaleship Pequod s other meanest mariners, and renegades and castaways , is beguiled into joining Captain Ahab in his vengeful pursuit of the white whale that dismasted him. But along the way, Ishmael takes the reader along many a detour into variegated ways of knowing. In a tone strangely compounded of fun and fury , Moby-Dick brings outlandish curiosity to bear on the multitudinous, oceanic scale of our diverse world. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World s Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford s commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.