Moby Dick

By: Herman Melville

Narrated by: Duncan Carse

Length: 24 hrs and 21 mins

Publisher's summary

Moby-Dick by Herman Melville is a classic of American and world literature.

Written in 1851, this is the incredible story of the crazed captain Ahab who, consumed by his desire for revenge, drives his crew to scour the oceans of the world for the fearsome white whale, Moby Dick. It soon becomes clear that Ahab will stop at nothing and is prepared to risk everything, his ship, his crew members, and his own life.

Herman Melville (1819 - 1891) was an American novelist short story writer, essayist and poet.

Please note: This is a vintage recording. The audio quality may not be up to modern day standards.

Public Domain (P)2009 RNIB

Critic reviews

"You will learn more about life, your own and other people's, from Middlemarch, Madame Bovary or Moby-Dick than you are likely to from yards and yards of memoir."( The Times)

The Voice of Antiquity and Experience

When I decided to get Moby Dick I took some time listening to the many samples and reading the reviews.
In the end I opted for this version (at the time there weren’t many good reviews) and I am so glad that I did. I enjoyed every minute of it and encourage you to get this one too. Why?
Some reviewers have criticised Duncan Carse’s delivery from various angles - being dated, questionable accents, poor editing etc.
I am not sure when this recording dates from, but I guess from 1940’s or 50’s.
While the received pronunciation might seem to be from a different age, Carse’s voice and delivery is perfectly suited to the story. I also thought his accents were great. They are not perfect renditions, but they do not lack character and Ahab in particular inspires dread and foreboding. The often archaic terms and expressions do not trouble Carse in the slightest and seem completely natural to him. As for the recording. It isn’t perfect, but I found the sighs, sounds of pages turning or of corrected mispronunciations to be charming - they lend a warmth from which you can imagine the reader sitting by a roaring fire on a cold night.
It turns out that Carse was an explorer himself who surveyed the antarctic and South Georgia for the Royal Geographical Society either side of WW2, during which he served in the Royal Navy. His bio is full of adventures not unlike that undertaken by our hero Ishmael and he would have been familiar with many of the sights that Ishmael describes as well as the nautical terms.
Some reviewers have advised getting an abridged version.
Please don't!
I think these reviewers are missing the point. The plot is a vehicle for all the tangents and asides about whaling, philosophy, religion, culture, relationships, the human condition. On it’s own, the plot doesn’t amount to much. If you want an abridged version how about (Spoiler Alert): Man joins whaling boat. Man describes whaling boat. Man discovers captain has unhealthy obsession with Big Whale. Search for Big Whale. Find Big Whale.
The joy of the book is in the wandering narrative and detailed descriptions.

Great listen

Read beautifully and clearly. It is easy to get lost in the story and characters with this reader. Audiobook is an easy way to dive into the classics while exercising, working or traveling. Moby Dick is an incredible adventure with lovely and formidable characters challenging "evil" in the mysterious, primordial ocean.

THANK YOU...

I am writing this review in response to all the other reviews that were critical of Mr. Duncan Carse narration. If the listener takes the effort to listen, he or she will realize Ishmael is not an illiterate seaman as played by Richard Basehart in the movie version of Moby Dick. Ishmael is well educated, as indicated
within the first few pages. Ishmael speaks of the Old Persians, the Greeks. This is the language of an educated man, especially in 1851. The other readers(god bless them as Joe Biden would say)pass over these lines without a twitch. Mr. Carse speaks them as if he has experienced them. Everything can be criticized in some manner, which the modern intelligence seems to relish. It is truly difficult to feel sorry for some one who has broken his arm if you haven’t broken a bone. Mr. Carse make you feel he has experienced everything he talks about. I think the problem is not with the narrator, but with the readers. Oooops

A challenge

This is a difficult read filled with multiple allusions to science, natural history, geography, mythology, religion(s), multiple cultures... It is clearly a masterpiece that requires multiple reads. I did War and Peace last year and Moby Dick was a more difficult read. I looked up as many of the allusions as I could and this took time. I don’t know how people did it before Google, Wikipedia...I wasn’t required to read M-D in high school and know now that I couldn’t have done so effectively. How Melville put it all together is what made me appreciate his genius. I think I’ll read Nathaniel Philbrick “Why Read Moby-Dick.”

I Changed My Point of View

I bought this version so I could contribute to the reviews. I grew up on Cape Cod, lived on Martha's Vineyard, and I presently live in New Bedford, so this is a very special story for me. I've listened to Moby Dick a number of times and seen both movies (the first one's better if you can get a copy). I agree with all the good things that have been said about the story, and said better than I could have.

I had wanted to put in a good word for the narration, because in the mid-1800's American accents had not been homogenized by radio and TV and many people must have sounded like the British sound to Americans today. And Duncan Carse started out sounding well enough.

But alas, he should have stayed away from accents altogether. Besides his attempt at early American, which would have been all right with me, his entire repertoire of other accents sound like Scotsmen, and that's enough to distract me from the enchantment of the tale.

Narration reveals Melville's poetry.

Having spent some (variously more or less disappointing) time with other versions, I finally landed on the Duncan Carse performance. I heartily second other high recommendations for this version. What a gem! Bolsters my theory that a great narrated performance can add insight even after long experience with the printed page. Carse's voice and delivery is convincingly natural and he seems at ease in this universe and era. Melville's old fashioned rambling sentences are revealed as the alliterative waves of oceanic poetry they often are.. If you've had trouble getting through Melville's wandering endless chapters, try this. Don't be put off by Carse's British accent, He has an old-school(?) way of somehow taking Melville's words seriously and with unconscious dignity, and his voice fits Melville's prose like a comfortable old corduroy jacket.

Painfull

I wanted to read this since it's considered a classic. However, I ignored the reviews that recommended the abridged version over the unabridged. I wish I have chosen the abridged. There was so much of this book that detracted from the story, that it made much of the book very boring and painful to get through. Also, this version is terribly narrated. He does a god job with Ishmael, and Ahab. But nearly all the other characters are read like nails on a chalkboard.

Ugg

I couldn't even get past the first half hour, it was just way too boring and the narrator is obnoxious.

Very poor narration

The narrator is British, which creates terrible dissonance for the "great" American novel. The narrator has zero command of American English accent, which is fine, except that he tries to fake the accent when reading lines from American characters. He butchers the accent and greatly distracts from the novel. The narrator does, however, read at a leisurely pace, which is at first annoying until you realize it's a perfect fit for a 3-year voyage at sea: unhurried and plenty of time to tell the tale. The novel itself is rough going, with some parts very smooth and others, such as the cataloging of whale species, murderously boring. On the whole, however, this audio book has made my morning commute in LA a joy.

Go for the abridged version

Way too long winded, wish I had bought the abridged version instead of this one.