I plan to reread this one because I am sure that I will like it more the second time where I can take my time instead of rushing through it in a class that I simply didn't enjoy.

4.25/5

It is a grand and eloquently written tale, but suffers from shortcomings which might put off less patient readers - it is at times overly florid and unnecessarily convoluted, the digressions are huge and sometimes uninteresting, making the reader feel he is reading a mid 19th century whaling manual rather than literary work.

If you can see past these, it is an enjoying read.

This series of books (Library of America College Editions) are well worth the money. They always seem to bind works of varying fame from a given author, thereby ensuring a wide sampling of that author's efforts.
Melville is amazing. I love Moby Dick, from the cryptic chapter devoted to the color white, to the debate about whalesteak, to the ever-present spout on the horizon and the haunting close of the narrative, the rescue of "another orphan". I won't gush and ramble about Melville's religious imagery, or his transcendentalism, or the enigma of the whale; I am only a fan, and have little critical experience with such a profound and complex novel. But the tale is powerful, and gripping, and even after several rereads I find myself getting anxious when Ahab baptizes the three heathens, when the St. Elmo's fire burns, and when the crazed captain screams "From the depths of Hell I stab at thee!" The power in the novel is in the riddle of its focus, in the various meanings and unmeanings of the whale, of the primal force of the world that man flails against in futility; its poetry is in its execution. This is a tale well worth a yearly read.