Typee (1846 original; edició 2011)

This is not like Moby Dick or Billy Budd. Typee is from a fun, young Herman Melville, full of blarney at the beginning of his literary career. It's as if the reader happened to overhear him in a bar regaling his half-drunken chums with wild sea tales of the South Pacific -- and couldn't pull away. It's a fun romp with Gilligan when the cannibals showed up. It's Gilligan dressing up like a cannibal and putting on a show. I loved it! In the midst of it all, Melville makes some interesting social comments about hypocritical missionaries and what "civilized" really means. Later, he will go on to become that tortured artist of the great white whale dedicated to his love for Nathanial Hawthorne, but at this point, he is full of beans and the life of the party. ( )

This book became the model for American writing in the South Seas genre. It would influence everything and everyone that followed in its wake, London, O'Brien, Nordhoff and Hall, Frisbie, and even Michener. First published in 1846, it is an account, fictionalized and certainly embellished upon, of Melville's experiences in the valley of Typee, in the Marquesas.

Labeled by some a "travel book," Typee is actually a romantic adventure novel. And it is perhaps the most enthralling thing Melville ever wrote. Not of the stature of Moby Dick, it nevertheless became Melville's most enduringly popular book. In it, he describes the adventures he had (or may have almost had) among the cannibal Typee on Nukuheva. But it is a world where cannibalism is put into a certain perspective as a religious ritual limited to the priestly elite and chieftains. The rest of life among the Typee Melville describes in almost paradisical terms. Savages the Typee are, says Melville, but they are noble savages, living in better harmony with nature, work, and their fellow beings than the enslaved workers and enfeebled elites of civilized countries.

Compared to other works of the era, there is an immediacy to Typee that is gripping. It almost seems modern in its impact on the reader. The stilted language and carefully polite words and images of such writers as Hawthorne gives way to a language that is descriptive, active, and undiluted by the "civilization" it criticizes. At book's end, all that is left to wonder is why Melville never returned. The beautiful and beguiling Fayaway may have been a literary invention, but her like and what she symbolized in Melville's imagination must have remained with him the rest of his lengthy life. ( )

Melville's recollections of being held by the cannibal tribe in the Marquesas Islands. A great look at island life through the eyes of an excellent chronicler. ( )

Typee was Melville's first published novel and it was a popular success. It is based on his sailing experiences aboard a whaling ship, as were his other famous works. In this one, two men - our narrator and his companion Toby - aboard a whaler conspire to leave the ship and its loathsome living conditions, and escape inland in the Marquesas Islands where they are anchored. Thus begins their adventure in the Typee Valley.

The text is very well written and accessible for today's readers. It flows easily as the narrator describes the village life of the Typees - what they eat, what they wear, how they spend their day, their festivals, and so on. But there are also reflections on the relationship of the white man to the natives:

It is no wonder that the natives call the European "savages." They welcome them first; but when they plunder, kill and burn they earn their name.

I picked up this book because I hadn't read Melville and knew I wouldn't get through Moby Dick. I still probably won't tackle that novel, but I just might read another Melville.
( )

I bought this book at a friend's garage sale almost nine years ago, and put off reading it because I expected it would be pretty blatantly racist. And, you know, it is. It's also Melville's first novel (published in 1846) and the one that sold the best in his lifetime -- allowing him to marry and to dig into the writing of Moby Dick.

This is the story of Tom and his friend Toby, two men (whose adventures are loosely based on Melville and his friend) who abandon the whaler they've been working on and hide out on the island Nuku Hiva in Marquesas Islands in the South Pacific. They quickly get lost, lose all their food, and are at the mercy of the elements before coming into the valley of the Typee. A first the two sailors are afraid because they heard from other sailors and islanders that the Typee were vicious cannibals, but they are treated well and soon settle in to island life. The conflict comes when they try to leave -- the islanders will not let them go back the way them came or approach the sea, and when Toby finally does convince them to let him greet a ship that has pulled into the bay, he disappears and no one will tell Tom where he went.

This book is at its best when it skews to the adventure genre -- the first third of the book with Tom and Toby planning their escape, hiking through the wilderness, and searching for food and shelter is great. It's not so good when it gets anthropological. Melville consistently either infantilizes the native people on the island or puts them up on a pedestal of purity because they are untouched by "civilization." Melville has nothing nice to say about missionaries either (which scandalized his publishers almost as much as the nudity!). These racial attitudes are true to Melville's time, but still pretty frustrating to read.

Luckily, Melville is also frequently hilarious, which helps balance out the text. I wouldn't recommend this book to everyone, but I would recommend paragraphs like this one where we see Melville really play around with the English language:

"When I remembered that these islanders derived no advantage from dress, but appeared in all the naked simplicity of nature, I could not avoid comparing them with the fine gentlemen and dandies who promenade such unexceptionable figures in our frequented thoroughfares. Stripped of the cunning artifices of the tailor, and standing forth in the garb of Eden -- what a sorry set of round-shouldered, spindle-shanked, crane-necked varlets would civilized men appear! Stuffed calves, padded breasts, and scientifically cut pantaloons would then avail them nothing, and the effect would be truly deplorable." - p. 164 ( )