In Search of Moby Dick: The Quest for the White Whale - Hardcover

Severin, Timothy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0465076963 ISBN 13: 9780465076963

Publisher: Basic Books, 2000

Synopsis

Adventure writer and explorer Tim Severin follows in the wake of Melville and his legendary creation, Moby Dick, in search of the Great White Whale. . Among travel and adventure writers, Tim Severin occupies a unique place in that, as Jan Morris says, he "uniquely combines in himself the gifts of the adventurer, the historian, and the litterateur. " Over the years, Severin has sailed in a leather boat across the Atlantic, traveled on horseback with the nomads of Mongolia, and sailed the Pacific on a bamboo raft in an effort to re-create the storied voyages and travels of Brendan, Jason, Ulysses, and Genghis Khan. He then spun these rich adventures into literary gold, writing such classics as The Brendan Voyage. Now Severin applies his boundless skills to a quintessentially American subjectMoby Dickin an attempt to retrace the origins of Herman Melville's legendary literary creation. In In Search of Moby Dick Severin sets about determining the likelihood of the existence of one of our most iconic modern mythsthe Great White Whale. To do so he travels to Nuku Hiva in the Marquesas Archipelago where the twenty-one-year-old Melville deserted his whaling ship in 1842 and began to cobble together the legends, tall tales, sea lore, and firsthand accounts garnered from the whalers he encountered, filtering all this material through his own fertile imagination to create his monumental novel. It is here that Severin begins to perceive the lush weave of fact and fiction, actual experience and extravagant yarn, that is Moby Dick, and the complex richness of Melville's tapestry becomes even clearer as Severin sails on throughout the South Pacific.

About this title

Review

Near the beginning of Tim Severin's account of his search for a great white whale, he tells the story of a marine biologist who joined a 1980 expedition of his to spot whales. Riding in a bosun's chair high up on the mast of an Arab sailing vessel, the biologist scanned the ocean with binoculars. He spotted whales--

"but not nearly as many as did two members of the crew far below him on the deck. Again and again one or other would call up to the masthead and draw the lookout's attention to a whale he had not yet noticed ... When the time came for him to leave the ship ... he confessed with a wry smile that the one thing he had really learned was [to] be more sceptical of the observations of marine biologists."

Severin's search takes him around the Pacific and particularly to the Marquesas, where the technique of hunting whales by hand armed only with home-made bill- hooks has not yet been entirely forgotten. Conversations with old whalers bring him closer to true whale lore than any biological treatise. Not that Severin is interested in scoring cheap points. Rather, In Search of Moby Dick is an eloquent demonstration of how much valuable knowledge is locked up in the practices and stories of indigenous people--working people whose very lives and livelihoods, after all, depend upon it.

Melville's Moby Dick was fashioned from the stories and reports of whalers of his day. Severin begins his own hunt in the belief that there is no smoke without fire. He is not disappointed. --Simon Ings

Review

With Melville-like dexterity, Severin stitches together this story of his global search for the "real" Moby Dick and his creator . . . Well worth reading (FINANCIAL TIMES)

Severin is one of the few men living who can genuinely be called an explorer . . . [His] quest has the epic quality of Melville's novel and his conclusions go far beyond the bounds of most travelogues . . . A remarkable investigation (DAILY EXPRESS)

An extraordinary explorer (INDEPENDENT)

Tim Severin is one of the last of the old-style explorers ... His deeds speak to us of the purity of achievement in an age where experience has become blunted by comfort and complacency (THE TIMES)

About this edition

• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0465076963
• ISBN 13: 9780465076963
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 224