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Moby Dick

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Moby Dick

Written by: Herman Melville
Narrated by: Anthony Heald
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One of the great works of American literature, Moby-Dick is the epic tale of one man’s fight against a force of nature.

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 maniacal 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. This masterfully symbolic drama of the conflict between man and his fate has a special intensity that listeners will not soon forget.

(P)2009 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Classics Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Adventure

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What the critics say

“The greatest of American novels.”

(Atlantic Monthly)

“Even tenth-grade-me could have appreciated the book as read in Anthony Heald’s sardonic, Silence of the Lambs intonation. Generally speaking, witty books seem to have the most to gain in audio form…particularly when read by great voice artists.”

(BookRiot (audio review))

“Narrator Anthony Heald not only creates vivid characterizations—Captain Ahab’s gruff mania, Starbuck’s doubtful sensitivity, the prophet Elijah’s visionary shakiness—he also dramatizes the many moods of the Pequod crew and the mercurial ocean itself. Heald’s voice has the range of a piano, and he uses it like a virtuoso…Heald’s voice bristles dryly with humor or sinks with dread—a range necessary to tell this complex story.”

(AudioFile)

“An epic, rewarding, sea-worthy journey awaits you in one of literature’s classic tales.”

(Amazon.com)

“A work tantalizingly subversive, and yet somehow if not affirming at least forgiving of the blind destructiveness of human nature and of nature itself.”

(Elizabeth Hardwick, American literary critic)

“Responsive to the shaping forces of his age as only men of passionate imagination are, even Melville can hardly have been fully aware of how symbolical an American hero he had fashioned in Ahab.”

(F. O. Matthiessen, literary critic)
All stars
Most Relevant
The performance is great -animated and talented reader. The story is dry and long though. It took me a while to get through. Certainly more useful as a historical snapshot with a vaguely Hemingway-ish smattering of the philosophy of masculinity.

It was nice to see race acknowledged and not have it whitewashed and I liked how racial comments and views on the part of the characters which would be considered taboo today and framed as terms of endearment and fellowship.

It’s not bad. Think of it as a rite of passage.

Long and Dry

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This American Classic is a timeless beauty and a refreshing listen in these troubled tumultuous times.
#1Audible

#1Audible Classic

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...he would have written Moby Dick. Glorious, baroque, and witty, The narration was exceptional. I will surely listen again someday.

If Shakespeare had been a whaler...

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More footnotes than... I can't think of anything that has more footnotes. Textbooks have less. Long plodding story which doesn't see the white whale until the last 1:45 left in the book. It's a classic true enough but what was a great book then doesn't mean it holds up to books today. Lots of errors and misconceptions about whales that I had a hard time overlooking.

A classic but it hasn't weathered the storm

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It very well may be the great American novel, it is however no matter of light reading - or in our case, listening.

I see why people like it.

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