Mardi: And a Voyage Thither 2

By: Herman Melville

Narrated by: Bryan Godwin

Length: 9 hrs and 19 mins

Publisher's summary

Presented as narratives of his own South Sea experiences, Melville's first two books had roused incredulity in many readers. Their disbelief, he declared, had been "the main inducement" in altering his plan for his third book, 'Mardi: and a Voyage Thither' (1849). Melville wanted to exploit the "rich poetical material" of Polynesia and also to escape feeling "irked, cramped, & fettered" by a narrative of facts. "I began to feel ... a longing to plume my pinions for a flight," he told his English publisher.

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A bad version is better than no version at all.

Bryan Godwin does not know how to narrate. But at least he tried! Narrating this classic must have been incredibly difficult, and I thank him sincerely for doing it. But if you listen to it, you should be prepared for some major flaws. First of all, the entire book is read as if he's in a race to finish it. It is read with absolutely no pacing and at a breakneck speed. I discovered by setting my Audible app to play at 80% speed on my iPhone actually made it MUCH BETTER. Of course, that doesn't help with the total lack of pacing.

Audible used to have his Volume 1 of Mardi. Myself and several other listeners left it very negative reviews, and now Audible has taken it down, which is a real shame. A bad version of this wonderful book is better than no version at all! Another glaring fault is Mr. Godwin's total lack of understanding for how to pronounce many many English words. GUN-wail, FOREcastle, omniPOtent, archipelLAHgo. He pronounces Beatitude as if it were spelled BEEtitude, personage like perSOHnidge, frigate as FRIDGEit, Zoroaster as zorROASTer, Greenwich as GREENwich. Melville has fun with heteronyms. And the narrator has to be on his toes! Godwin pronounces "ranging" to rhyme with "hanging" when it should be RANGE-ing. He pronounces tier as TEER when the context uses TIE-er. There are many many many other examples. I actually made it into a little game, listening for these boners as they came over the spoken text. Finally, there is not even the slightest attempt to voice the characters. Not that that would have been easy! It wouldn't have been.

So please, Audible, just because of my criticisms, it doesn't mean I regret listening to this book. I never would have read this visually, so an audible version, even one that is this bad, is to be appreciated. To Mr. Godwin -- thank you sir for attempting this book. It must have been extremely difficult. Frankly I don't know how you managed, given the trickiness and verbosity of Melville's writings, to read it so quickly with nary a stumble throughout. In spite of its considerable flaws, your work, sir, is nevertheless a tour de force and I thank you for it.