Moby Dick

By: Herman Melville

Narrated by: Anthony Heald

Length: 23 hrs and 52 mins

Publisher's summary

The outcast youth Ishmael, succumbing to wanderlust during a dreary New England autumn, signs up for passage aboard a whaling ship. The Pequod sails under the command of the one-legged Captain Ahab, who has set himself on a monomaniacal quest to capture the cunning white whale that robbed him of his leg: Moby-Dick. Capturing life on the sea with robust realism, Melville details the adventures of the colorful crew aboard the ship as Ahab pursues his crusade of revenge, heedless of all cost.

Public Domain (P)2009 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

"The greatest of American novels." ( Atlantic Monthly)
"[A]n intense, superbly authentic narrative. Its theme and central figure are reminiscent of Job in his search for justice and of Oedipus in his search for truth."( Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature)

Wonderfully read!...if you can stay awake.

The narrator does an excellent job making each character distinct, but the text was so antiquated and the subject so foreign to me that I found the detailed exposition meandering. And whenever the action started, it was hard to keep pace with the jargon-laced dialogue.

But do not let that stop you! Keep a dictionary handy, even take notes if you have to! The story is well worth the challenge.

Unless you are educated. Then you should be fine.

Hilarious; sublime

phenomenal performance. amazing story. makes me want to get a physical copy to start underlining and memorizing some of the phrases that were so compelling.

Narration is good but story is lacking.

I thought Anthony Heald did a fabulous job of narrating this very difficult and tedious book.

The story lives in the beginning and end of the book, which are very good. The other 80% of the book is nothing more than a reference manual about whales and whaling with tiny bits of story mixed in that act as bridges between reference material. I found this to be very tedious and detrimental to the overall book.

This is not a story with a bit of reference material. This is a reference manual with a bit of story mixed in.

Ron Swanson quote

"No frou-frou symbolism. Just a good, simple tale about a man who hates an animal."

Loomings

This is the third or fourth time I've tried listening to Melville's classic, a book I read for the first time decades ago, and Anthony Heald's narration is the first time I've managed to finish the audiobook--with great pleasure, I'll add at once. In some ways, the novel does not lend itself to a good listen, chiefly because Melville shuns straightforward storytelling. He offers instead many other literary rewards, but it takes a savvy narrator (and I don't mean Ishmael!) to make the listener appreciate those rewards.

What many readers miss in the novel is Melville's humor (I often joke that Melville was drunk when he penned the thing). The problem for the narrator becomes how to convey this sly humor. It's not, for the most part, a laugh-out-loud kind of humor, but rather the raised-eyebrow sort of humor. Somehow (I know not how!) Anthony Heald manages to capture Melville's voice from the first page to the last--and that's saying a lot, given the novel's length.

In short, I cannot recommend Anthony Heald's reading of "Moby Dick" highly enough.

Moby Dud

Well, turns out this classic was not for me. I listened to all 136 chapters but it was a struggle. Why? Well, there was way too much flowery speech and side story. WAY TOO MUCH. Out of 136 chapters only 5 or 6 seemed to tell the main story. The rest was fluff. I listened at 1.5 normal speed and it couldn’t end too soon for me.

This is a great reason for Audible

I would likely have never read this book in the traditional way. There are long asides concerning whales and equipment that may have lost my interest, but not in this format.

A most amazing book. A classic. a very very interesting tale.

My Favorite Way to Enjoy My Favorite Book

Moby Dick has always been my favorite book, but it can be time consuming to read. Reading the book is best done in chunks. I like to revisit it every few years and this recording makes it easy and enjoyable to get through the entire book in a matter of days. A joy to listen to.

What to say?

This is a notoriously "difficult" book, and while I enjoyed the experience immensely, I really don't know if I can recommend it.

Most importantly, Anthony Heald's narration was simply fantastic. Every word is delivered with a storyteller's skill, but so many unnecessary words. I have no problem with extremely long narratives, but what starts as a truly interesting story about a man looking for enough work to cover some adventure and ends with a man's obsession costing him everything is muddled by about 18 hours of nautical lectures. As every chapter flipped and a new chapter began I found myself laughing at the absurdity of the never ending parade of factoids, but still settling in for Heald's masterful delivery. I really did enjoy the experience, but I would never have read this on paper without skipping huge chunks of it, and I don't feel that anything would be lost.

Yes, I know, it's a classic, perhaps THE classic American novel, but if there is some sort of massive subtext buried deep beneath the hours and hours of descriptions of whale anatomy and the kinds of rope used on a ship, I wasn't able to find it. Character, story and world building are paramount, and those are not the strengths of this book.

Classic

Interesting that the epilogue was added later but it was setup perfectly in previous chapters.