Really very entertaining and interesting. Suffers from the same fault as Moby Dick--interrupts the narrative with interminably catalogued details. As with Moby Dick, however, there will be those for whom the constant rabbit trails of detail are half the fun. ( )

i underlined so much, scrawled so many "whoa"s and "WHAT"s in the margins of this book that I wonder what mean part of me originally awarded it only three stars. probably I was cranky that I have no paper to write, no American Romanticism/post-colonial unit to teach. but who am i kidding? chapter 11 is composed entirely of descriptions of Typee clothing (as it were)! i did enjoy this novel...especially while reading sentences like these:

"I can only describe it as a hash of soaked bread and bits of tobacco, brought to a doughy consistency by the united agency of perspiration and rain."

"Had the apples of Sodom turned to ashes in my mouth, I could not have felt a more startling revulsion."

"'A baked baby, by the soul of Captain Cook!' burst forth Toby, with amazing vehemence."

"...whilst a poor European artisan...is put to his wit's end to provide for his starving offspring that food which the children of a Polynesian father, without troubling their parent, pluck from the branches of every tree round them." [I scanned this passage to figure out why I think it is so pretty, but I found no regular meter. hmph.]

"Had the belle of the season, in the pride of her beauty and power, been cut in a place of public resort by some supercilious exquisite, she could not have felt greater indignation than I did at this unexpected slight."

"I frequently passed the little temples reposing in the shadows of the taboo groves and beheld the offerings---mouldy fruits spread upon a rude altar, or hanging in half-decayed baskets around some uncouth jolly-looking image..."

"The idol was partly concealed...It was much decayed...His godship had literally attained a green old age...The nose had taken its departure, and from the general appearance of the head it might have been supposed that the wooden divinity, in despair at the neglect of its worshippers, had been trying to beat its own brains out against the surrounding trees." ( )

Herman Melville began his career as a novelist with Typee (1846), a travel adventure that was the hit that Moby Dick (1851) would not be until long after his death. Typee mixed a lot of exotic facts about Polynesian culture and geography with the bones of a captivity narrative. It gave readers chills about tattooing and cannibalism. It offered just a hint of sex with the lovely Fayaway. Melville criticized the hypocrisy of missionaries in Hawaii, hitting the same targets that Mark Twain would take on twenty years later. His contemporary critics were more concerned with his accuracy than with his skill as a storyteller. Rereading Typee for the first time in years, I was disappointed in all the missed opportunities for building characters and scenes. His first-person narrator treats island culture sympathetically, but he seems more horrified at the idea of being tattooed than being eaten. He is never as self-reflective as Ishmael. Individual islanders never quite come to life. His minder, Kory-Kory, and his lover Fayaway never get to speak on their own behalf. Melville pulls his punches in a way he does not do in Moby Dick. In Typee, he does not have the guts to put Ishmael in bed with Queequeg. 4 stars. ( )

the book itself is a superb production and the art just amazing. the story is not on par with Moby Dick in anyway- i reads like he scribbled it off for some cash. it does give some insight into polynesian culture and the abominable destruction wreaked upon it by europeans. the narrator isn’t likable at all and i just kept hoping they would eat him ( )

Originally marketed as a true account, then very shortly thereafter as a novel, Typee is Melville's travelogue of 4 weeks (presented as 4 months on the tale) in the South Pacific island of Nuka Hiva (which Melville refers to as Nukaheva) in the Marquesas.

A fascinating deep dive into the islander culture, laid out in a series of essay-like chapters, arranged by topic. Thus it definitely does not read like a novel, in the way a present-day reader would think of it.

First published in 1846, Melville's writing style can come off a bit dry and long-winded, so perseverance is sometimes needed to keep going. Yet, when I finished the book, I found my mind kept wondering, "Why am I no longer in the South Pacific?"

Highly recommended to lovers of classics, history, geography, and/or the South Seas. ( )