
Omoo
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Narrated by:
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Robert Blumenfeld
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By:
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Herman Melville
Following the commercial and critical success of Typee, Herman Melville continued his series of South Sea adventure-romances with Omoo. Named after the Polynesian term for a rover, or someone who roams from island to island, Omoo chronicles the tumultuous events aboard a South Sea whaling vessel and is based on Melville's personal experiences as a crew member on a ship sailing the Pacific. From recruiting among the natives for sailors to handling deserters and even mutiny, Melville gives a first-person account of life as a sailor during the nineteenth century filled with colorful characters and vivid descriptions of the far-flung locales of Polynesia.
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Editorial reviews
Narrator Robert Blumenfeld does not sound like a sailor, but like a scholar performing a work by Melville. Blumenfeld’s diffident and professorial tone will make listeners feel as if they are hearing a rare lecture on life along the South Seas in the mid-1800s. Although it lacks the action of Melville’s other works, Omoo excels in reportage concerning every aspect of life for natives, missionaries, and sailors. One can see beyond the romance and caricature provided by other writers, and hone in on real life. Melville is unerringly honest; he critiques what he sees, and takes his humor where he finds it. Omoo is Melville’s closeted take on autobiography. A seasoned sailor, Melville imparts his own calm alertness and wit to protagonist Tomas.
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In Typee Melville fashioned a remarkably Hollywood plot out of his experience of "indulgent captivity" among the cannibals. Suspense, action, adventure, humor, romance, a thrilling climax. This material lacks the same readymade structure, yet sails along quite delightfully. I loved it. I'm nearing the last of the popular Melville, the books praised in his day and our own (and yes, that includes Moby Dick), and can see in the offing the more notorious productions. It'll be hard to go from such an eminently sane work as Omoo to ones that caused fear, even for Melville himself, that he'd gone mad.
The narrator is quite good, especially at dialogue, but he has a curious habit of ending declarative statements on an up-note.
Melville continues where he left off...
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The narrator and a tall companion he calls Doctor Long Ghost eventually make their way from Tahiti to the neighboring island of Imeeo now known as Moorea). They wander around the island, courting the native girls (sometimes being stabbed with a thorn for their troubles), attending feasts, witnessing special dances. Eventually the narrator decides to leave, signing on to a visiting whaler; Long Ghost decides to remain behind.
The book is entertaining: Melville has a wry sense of humor and a humane sensibility. He respects the natives as human beings in a way few other Europeans or Americans do. He accepts them on their own terms. He believes the Christian missionaries who frequently visit the island have done more harm than good: mostly, under their influence, the happy, languid and hospitable life of hunting and gathering is exchanged for uncomfortable clothes and even more uncomfortable ideas. The novel is also surprisingly discreet - surprising at least to me, who grew up with a far more sensual image of Tahiti. Once or twice, the stages of undress in which they find the natives are referred to, but whether any of the various young women the wanderers take up with are more than friends is never really discussed.
Robert Blumenfeld is an excellent narrator, reading most of the book in a cheerful style and providing a variety of voices. If you've read or listened to Typee, you probably should take this one in too. (Arm yourself with a map or two before you go.)
Sequel to Typee
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South Pacific Ramble
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Melville writes travel memoirs the same way my father-in-law would tell stories of his youth: built on a solid framework of veracity, but completely filled-out and fattened with fiction. Both my wife's father and Melville, however, were d@mn good storytellers. Early Melville is fun because after reading these books one grasps a firmer hold of the author and the influences that brought on his later, great novels. Here is a man writing a memoir and you see the fiction genius pushing hard against the boundaries of his own narrative.
Melville's prose is straightforward and his narrative is quick. He also approaches the people of the South Pacific with a dignity and reporting that was very very forward thinking for the time. He avoids both the 'savage' and the 'noble savage' world views that so dominated Western thinking at the time. Melville's views of Christian missionaries (although he heavily redacted them before publication) still managed to keep it from being printed in the US.
See Melville's Fiction Genius Pushing Hard
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The ways western civilization corrupted the ways of the native island people.
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