Markes

Jan Needle abridges Herman Melville’s epic to focus on the intensely dramatic story of Captain Ahab’s ill-fated quest for the white whale, while Patrick Benson’s powerful illustrations evoke the lost world of whalingin enormous detail.

Bingus Bumbo

Moby-Dick [adaptation]

Prelude: This series, Walker Illustrated Classics, is supposedly for children!! But why let them have ALL the fun???!!!?? I've been buying multiple copies of their superbly illustrated (by Inga Moore) "Wind in the Willows" for my adult friends who don't have to have "adult" covers on their 'children's' books to read what they love in public.(Pooh on Harry Potter!!!) This one has been "cut to the bone" to quote Jan Needle(male)who did the cutting for children and for adults like me who wonders whether he has long enough to live to read Melville's genuine Opus Magnus. But I do have time to read this and relish the superb illustrations by Patrick Benson. Walker's Classic Poetry is selected by Michael Rosen, a stalwart, and Paul Howard has done more surpassing illustrations.  Post-Prelude to come!!!  THE REVIEW: Begin a Ten Week series of lectures on American Literature at the Art gallery of New South Wales, Sydney on Friday 11th March 2011.Happily the lectures are spread over the next 4 months, so one has time to read EVERYTHING!!!...or so we hope!!!  The first lecture deals with Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter" and Melville's "Moby Dick".  This is a heavily illustrated abridged children's version, if such a thing is possible. The illustrations are very informative re the times and whale hunting. The text from the original so one gets the real flavour of Melville. Abridged,so one has the time to get an overview when a literature course is breathing down your neck. I have the original, which is as big as a whale, and hopefully, appetite now whetted,I will find time and motivation to tackle the adult version and sink my teeth deeper into its mysteries and profundities and philosophical turns. Somewhere I read that the novel is really an encyclopedic entry on whale-hunting dressed up as a novel. If so, I found both genres beautifully blended. The archaic spelling, language and punctuation just added to the flavour as true spices and sauces should.  The bite-sized addicted and instant gratification people on Goodreads will have declared this Magnus Opus "BORING", as they usually do. Thankfully you will ALL be dead when Melville's book will still be swimming on. A delightful vision.  Now on to the unabridged, illustration-lacking, much shorter pot-boiler of Mr Nathaniel Hawthorne. I've already begun and it ain't bad at all!!!

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Moby-Dick [adaptation]

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