port (04/08/83)
I have just finished reading Melville's Typee and his Omoo. Typee is
Melville's first published novel, Omoo is his second. I was really looking
forward to reading these as Moby Dick is one of my favorite novels. I was
disappointed.
Typee is not so much novel as travelogue. The main character is
captured by cannibals, then escapes. All the action takes place in the
first few and the last few chapters. In between is just life among the
Polynesians. You could go quite a ways waiting for something to happen.
Omoo is much better, but not good. The narrator of the last novel
jumps ship in Tahiti, gets arrested, then travels to a neighboring island.
At least something is happening. The writing is also quite a bit better,
methinks.
Let me comment on the writing. Of course, there are a lot of
references to commonplace things of the mid-1800's that I could not quite
grasp. But worse was Melville's use of commas. Melville would write the
last sentence as "But, worse, was Melville's use, of commas". Pretty
annoying. If they had typewriters back then, I would say his commas was
stuck.
Altogether, I would not recommend either of these for fun reading. I
do not see the drive and power which I saw in Moby Dick. And although the
edition I read (from the Library of America) is a stickler for textual
accuracy, if you do read one get one that has been edited a bit.
Howard G. Port
State University of New York at Stony Brook