This book is amazing. The character’s transformative journey from naive to more solemn and worldly is surprisingly relatable for something written almost 200 years ago. Also, the prose is almost unmatched amongst writers of the time and even now. The autobiographical inspiration is also very engaging as Melville had a similar experience in his youth. A really cool read and less of a commitment than Moby Dick.

An amazingly good book. About Melville's first voyage to sea...done with wit and an incredible amount of detail about "how it was." There's a fair amount of philosophizing, 99% of which shows Melville to be a modern thinker, e.g. why shouldn't a black man be able to walk with a white woman as they do in England. Most of his comments skewer our foibles as people and a nation.

And there were very few tedious areas (which unfortunately stick out in my memory of Moby Dick so much, that I was quite surprised how goood that was until I re-read an excerpt in a Sea Tales collection), though the section on comparing "present day" Liverpoole with that of his guidebook from 50 years earlier was a significant speed bump. But really, since this was an actual adventure for him, he didn't have pad the book much.

I will definitely be reading more Melville.

Classic gay literature if you ask me.

So what's all this talk about Melville's 'Redburn' dripping with homosexuality? Turns out, it doesn't consistently drip with the stuff - but it does spring a leak. That leak is the totality of Chapter 46 (XLVI): 'A Mysterious Night in London'.

It has got to be one of the gayest chapters in American literature. The book has 62 chapters, so this sudden tornado (which is exactly what it is) has its thrust (if you will) about 2/3 of the way through the book - with nothing remotely like it prior and little to equal it later (mainly other than the penultimate chapter of sudden shipboard disease and near-disaster). 

In fact, the chapter (introducing us further to the - shall we say 'enigmatic' Harry Bolton?) seems to be from a whole other book entirely. Or maybe it should have been its own novella (if expanded). 

Yet here it is, tucked inside this episodic mariner's travelogue; lurking, lying in wait, before leaping in response to the particularly bucolic and strategic burst of heterosexuality that just precedes it.   

There really isn't a whole lot to 'Redburn' in terms of story. It's an older gentleman's look back at his younger, naive self; a memory of his first experience as a sailor. In it, Melville gives the reader the wonderful gift of Redburn's voice. You really can almost hear it as you read his narration - it's a voice both singular and mellifluous. It's a carefully recalled account of naiveté, insatiable curiosity, an unbridled wonder at life and an unceasing, untainted compassion. 

Redburn is a marvelous character; he alone makes the read worthwhile. You don't even mind when he goes on and on and on describing the seemingly endless types of sailor's knots (much like the narrator of 'Moby Dick' describes every existing type of whale). Redburn is a born storyteller; he fashions quite a few memorable (some of them nightmarish) sequences.

So it's somewhat of a disappointment to have learned after the read that, in his journal, Melville wrote, "I, the author, know [it] to be trash, & wrote it to buy some tobacco with." 

I would do more than hesitate in calling the book 'trash'. But I might not object to the claim that there's something... trashy... about chapter 46 - with its veiled yet hiding-in-plain-sight depiction of male-brothel assignations. 

In 1957, when Edward Gorey was asked to do a cover for a new reprint, he seemed to have the idea that 'Redburn' was mainly a tale of chapter 46:

4 stars only on the "Melville Scale". For almost anyone else it would be a 5. It's a wonderful book. Funny, warm, insightful. The narrator here is nicely complex, seeing the world from the perspective of a boy on his first voyage from home, yet filtered through the more worldly wise voice of a much older man looking back at his youth.

This novel also features some of Melville's most emotionally moving scenes, including Chapter 37's heartbreaking lament for those ground up in the gears of Capital and the final chapter's mournful revelation that will be left here unsaid.

(Redburn published 1849, Moby Dick 1851) From chapter 20:
-"There she blows! whales! whales close alongside!"
-A whale! Think of it! whales close to me . . . I dropt the clapper as if it were red-hot, and rushed to the side; and there, dimly floating, lay four or five long, black snaky-looking shapes, only a few inches out of the water.
-Can these be whales? Monstrous whales, such as I had heard of? I thought they would look like mountains on the sea; hills and valleys of flesh! regular krakens, that made it high tide, and inundated continents, when they descended to feed!
-It was a bitter disappointment, from which I was long in recovering. I lost all respect for whales; and began to be a little dubious about the story of Jonah; for how could Jonah reside in such an insignificant tenement; how could he have had elbow-room there? But perhaps, thought I, the whale which according to Rabbinical traditions was a female one, might have expanded to receive him like an anaconda, when it swallows an elk and leaves the antlers sticking out of its mouth.
-Nevertheless, from that day, whales greatly fell in my estimation.

The title of this book totally isn't Moby Dick. It seems like a shame that for so many, the fact that this book is not Moby Dick seems to be Redburn's most egregious error. Just pretend someone else wrote it and it totally becomes a good book, like MAGIC!!!11

I'm not really down for Moby Dick 2: A Fish to Kill, anyway.

Melville's writing was a delight as always.

Lovely book, and quite gay. My impulse, having read the last chapter, is to follow Gertrude Stein’s example and call it TWO BROTHERS WHO WERE NOT BROTHERS.

I read this novel when I was in the US Navy, in 1977, which I remember largely because I have not forgotten its cover, by Edward Gorey. Shortly after my current reading of Redburn, I tackled for the first time Melville’s Pierre; Or, The Ambiguities. While it was clear in Redburn that Melville was using his titular character to reflect on his own experiences as a young man, it was even more the case in Pierre that Melville was using his fiction to ponder the genesis and nature of his own personality, how he perceived himself uneasy with and distinct from the general run of mankind.

Redburn’s history as a sailor begins in upstate New York in the 1840s, after his distinguished family falls on hard times and Redburn must find his own way. Redburn is a rube in NYC and he thinks himself lucky to find a berth aboard a Liverpool-bound ship as a novice seaman. Even though the narrative is a first-person account and Redburn is clearly a victim of circumstances, he is generally a good sport, even at the cruel hands of his more able mates. Amidst the indignities there are spirited accounts of learning, fearfully at first, to enjoy the thrill of going and staying aloft in the rigging. Redburn is bewildered how the old seaman Jackson holds all the seamen in thrall, even as his hard living has begun to hollow him out. Jackson serves to epitomize the depredations of the silors and throughout provides woeful or dire maledictions.

Reaching Liverpool, the ship is berthed for several weeks, and the men are given liberty, though they have to daily report back to the ship for an 8-hour workday. Redburn explores the city, using his father’s old guidebook from the beginning of the century to navigate. Redburn observes how the city has changed in 40 years, and he is witness to scenes of horrific poverty. Both are occasions for Melville to dilate on civilization, how while it may advance/grow, there are still those whom it overlooks/harms.

Redburn makes friends with Harry Bolton, an English dandy. Redburn goes AWOL for a weekend in order to travel with him to London. In an intentionally obscure episode, Redburn is confused by the circumstances that make Bolton fugitive, desirous of escaping England. Redburn gets Bolton a seaman’s position on the return voyage to New York. Bolton is not, however, the competent seaman he claimed to be, and the crew torments him. The somber Jackson throws himself overboard after a long bout with tuberculosis. Arriving in New York, Redburn heads upstate to his home and Bolton remains in the city to make his fortune. On a later seagoing adventure, Redburn hears that Bolton was not able to find his footing in the city, had signed on with a whaler, and had somewhere in the Pacific fallen overboard and drowned.

This is an interesting, but uneven novel, with episodes that never cohere, psychologically or dramatically. The events with Harry Bolton, for instance, promise some greater meaning, as if Bolton were some doppelganger or corollary, but there is nothing definite in his life or death, much as with the strange reign and demise of the grim figure Jackson. Even Redburn remains unsettled at novel’s end, and he is once more, despite the lessons of his first voyage, back at sea.

I would be lying if I didn't admit that I am a Melville nerd. I am a big enough Melville nerd that I have the last line of "Bartleby the Scrivener" tattooed on my arm. I am a big enough nerd that reading Moby Dick wasn't enough for me--I followed it up with Redburn.

Here's the thing: Redburn is an early effort that's passable in its own right, but really doesn't prepare you for the genius gamechanger it's laying the groundwork for. You just don't see anything like Moby Dick coming based on Redburn. Which is not to say Redburn isn't a good book, or an enjoyable one, or one worth reading (especially if you, like me, are struck with an incredibly geeky urge to go all completionist and read everything Melville wrote). But it does mean that reading Redburn after reading Melville's legitimately more famous and better-regarded books is a peculiar experience.

To just take the book on its own terms, devoid of context or history or knowledge of what comes after, Redburn is at its heart a tale of a boy just coming to terms with the fact that his view of the world, and in particular his understanding of it as a fair and just place, has been shattered. It's a pretty standard story of innocence lost and adulthood gained, told in hindsight by an older version of Wellingborough Redburn himself (and isn't that a hell of a name?*) who seems slightly embarassed at just how naive he was way back in the day. This theme is nested throughout the book, starting with the economic collapse of his father to the inherent unfairness of life on the sea, to the inherent unfairness of poverty he's first exposed to in Liverpool. The scope of the book gradually grows, like going from the innermost matroushka doll to the outermost one, which is a neat little trick on Melville's part and rings very true for anyone who's grappled with forging his or her own worldview in adolescence.

And the writing is lovely. Here, like in Moby Dick or "Bartleby," Melville is telling you a story through someone else telling you a story. And one thing that keeps me coming back to Melville time and again is just that: that he tells you a story. The writing here is intimate and immediate, like you're sitting in a comfortably overstuffed armchair with Redburn and he's recounting his youthful exploits to you -- just you -- over a cup of tea. In fact, it's a little bit purer here in Redburn than in anything else I've read by him. It's got more scope than "Bartleby" by virtue of its length alone and unlike Moby Dick, where Ishmael himself starts to fade in and out of the narrative, Redburn is always front and center. It's Redburn telling Redburn's story (as opposed to the rather elderly gentleman telling you about Bartleby or Ishmael telling you about the Pequod) and Redburn, luckily, has the wit and grace as a reflective narrator to carry it.

But if I'm being honest, I think the only people who would be willing to read Redburn and enjoy it are people like me who have already signed on for the Herman Melville Experience once and don't mind coming back for more. And since that's the case, the truth of the matter is that Redburn is most interesting to read in the context of Melville more broadly. In Redburn, you see what is essentially the first pass at themes and archetypes Melville will use to much greater and deeper effect later on. In particular, Jackson reads like a more malicious and less conflicted version of Claggart. And Redburn himself reads as a terribly naive and less observant version of Ishmael. Perhaps Ishmael ten or fifteen years before he set foot on the Pequod. Redburn, like Ishamel, is more educated and more refined than the others on his boat, and Redburn (like Ishmael) finds himself falling into very close, very fast (and very homoerotic) friendships with foreigners as soon as he gets the chance. As in Benito Cereno, Melville's ambivalence towards America -- its grandeur built on foundations of injustice, its insularity, its conformity that can (as far as Melville seems to be aware) only be escaped by shipping out to sea -- becomes a dominant theme.

More than that, Redburn gives a great deal of insight into Melville himself. If Ishmael is more or less an idealized version of Melville, Redburn is clearly who Melville thought he once was. The parallels between Redburn and Melville are striking (so striking that my copy of Redburn has an appendix which notes chapter by chapter aspects of Melville's own first voyage that he fictionalized for the book). Redburn is a book about a young man whose education and experiences lead him to sea totally unprepared, one who has to adapt without any clear guidance, and who in the process finds life at sea both utterly freeing and constraining, and really that young man is Herman Melville and not Wellingborough Redburn. It's not so surprising, then, that Melville was dismissive of Redburn. He wrote it fast and wrote it for the money and frankly, you can tell. It's an overly long, highly digressive travelogue of a book where you find yourself sifting through random chapters about churches in Liverpool and Redburn's father's unusable guidebook before Melville eventually gets around to anything resembling a plot again. This technique works a lot better in Moby Dick, but even there people find it annoying.

But I can't help but wonder if he was dismissive of it because it was a little exposing to him, too. Writing it that fast perhaps meant that it's more raw, more reflective of parts of himself he wasn't fond of, and when all is said and done that's what will stick with me most about this book.


* His name, despite what the back cover of my Penguin Classics edition of the book would have you believe, is actually Wellingborough Redburn and not Wellington Redburn. Shame on you, Penguin Classics, shame on you.

This is a very nice book. It is a coming of age story loosely based on a real voyage he took in 1839, though the book sets the story about 1848. Redburn is a young man from a formerly well-to-do family who needs to earn his keep and he chooses to go to sea as a common sailor in a merchantman called 'The Highlander'. We learn quite a lot about how life is for the beginner. Redburn signs on as a 'boy', the lowest form of seaman. His age is never specified but he seems to be about 17-18 years of age - and I am assuming he is smaller than a young man would be today. Naturally this is in part a comedy of errors. He has all the wrong clothes and not enough of them. Given his upper class status he looks a bit of a dandy and the first mate calls him 'buttons'. He didn't even bring a mess kit, so he didn't have any thing to eat his food out of. The captain never talks to him and the first mate is a sadist.

We learn a lot about the life for a new sailor. Seasickness was a common problem and the veteran sailors had a cure. That cure is alcohol, something that the young temperance follower had to learn to swallow. Life on shipboard was uncomfortable with crowded and smelly accommodations, poor food and few comforts. One gets the idea that these men were always at the point of exhaustion.

The story involves one voyage from NY to Liverpool and back. Quite a bit of the story is about life in Liverpool during the weeks waiting for the return voyage. In his effort to follow his father's guide book to Liverpool, Redburn encounters quite a bit of life in Liverpool. He also learns that his father's guidebook is terribly out of date. Still he manages to visit all the other docks in Liverpool. He sees real poverty, including a family starving in what sounds like an abandoned building. He later meets a young man, Harry Bolton, of a good background, who for some reason wishes to go to sea. That man takes him on an adventure in London, and adventure that make Redburn uncomfortable, and back to Liverpool.

The return voyage is another matter, the ship is a cargo ship but on the return it seems to be primarily fitted out to take steerage passengers (one might call it human cargo). Life for steerage passengers was horrific. They were given false information about how long the voyage would take and were unprepared for the amount of food they would need. The return voyage is going against the wind and they spent several weeks not getting any father than Ireland. Sanitation is abysmal. Disease breaks out and quite a few of the steerage passengers die.

Finally reaching New York, we find that Redburn and Harry are not going to be paid for their work and their is no recourse.

I would recommend this for anyone who has read Melville.