1997 Konemann Classics Moby-Dick

The 1997 Konemann Classics Moby Dick features J M W Turner's The Whale Ship on the cover, and is ubiquitous in bookstores and on line. The paper, type, printing is just so classic and beautiful, with a subtle feel which all combine to make this a "proper book".

 Konemann is a publisher based in Cologne Germany. The book is printed in Hungary. An example of The European Union at its finest (how is that Euro doing guys?). We are unaware, at this time, of any other book in the collection printed abroad yet in the english language. This is something for further study.

Chapter XLV

Owen Chase: The dark ocean and swelling waters were nothing, the fears of being swallowed up by some dreadful tempest, or dashed upon hidden rocks, ... seemed scarcely entitled to a moment's though; the dismal looking wreck, and the horrid aspect and revenge of the whale, wholly engrossed my reflections....

Owen Chase recalls the wreck of the whale ship Essex, his ship, sunk by a whale, (a true story) and in doing so, he points out that it is not the phantoms of the mind, the possible out comes of future events that haunt him, it is the actions of the whale that stove his ship and left him adrift that horrifies and frightens him. 

Melville sets the stage for the ultimate destruction of Ahab and his ship by referencing in this chapter a well known event. Thus he adds strength to the notion that it is not words but actions, it is not the ghosts and goblins of our minds that frame life but actual happenings, real things. 

Real things like a live whale stoving in the side of a wooden ship causing complete wreckage.

We are all warned.

1996 Quality Paperback Book Club MOBY-DICK

1996 Quality Paperback Book Club, Book of the Month Club, Inc. Printed in the United States of America.  This book is pristine, brand new, never read. Perhaps this book was printed at the beginning of the end of the Printing Age. 1996 marks the beginning of the internet boom.

William Ewart Gladstone, Prime Minister of Great Britain during the last half of the nineteenth century, was a Homer scholar. It was he that first noted that the color blue never appears in Homer's works. He speculated that Homer was color blind.

Using Gladstone's logic we wanted to note if Melville was color blind.  We searched the text and found the following: Yellow is mentioned 21 times, Red is mentioned 38 times, Blue is mentioned 46 times, Black is mentioned 82 times and White is mentioned 208 times. But none of the uses of blue are anything but references to the color and not the meaning: melancholy.

Chapter 135 The Chase 3rd Day

...all the past is somehow grown dim. Mary, girl! thou fadest in pale glories behind me; boy! I seem to see but thy eyes grown wondrous blue. 

Melville, it can be assumed was not color blind by his accurate uses of the words. Homer, however, it is agreed uses color in an odd way. The explanation is not that Homer was color blind but that man has become gradually aware of the colors around over time. And why not? In our own short lives we too become aware of the things in front of us as time goes by. 

1991 Everyman's Library Alfred A. Knopf MOBY DICK

The nicest things can come in plain packages. Things with little embellishments, little fan fare, modest statements. This edition is such a thing. The red cloth binding, with a small hint of gold and elegant typeset on the cover, is understated. The overall impression is one of quiet reserve, grace and charm.

Individual people, too, can be unassuming and full of quiet reserve, grace and charm. The best ones become friends and most often are those who don't even know their true nature and strength. 

• Chapter 86 The Tail  ....Real strength never impairs beauty or harmony, but it often bestows it; and in everything imposingly beautiful, strength has much to do with the magic.

Alas, we own an Ipad, it has proven very useful, for watching movies, for writing and reading emails, for surfing the web. We downloaded on to the Ipad both Beethoven's 1st symphony and the Missa Solemnis, which are imposingly beautiful but sound less so on the tiny speakers. This ipad will never be beautiful and no doubt it will be recycled soon. Reading a novel on it may prove rewarding, but never long lasting.

This volume is imposingly beautiful and hence is endowed with real strength and thus the magic of Melville's words radiate from the page. And this volume is long lasting. As long lasting as ours and Beethoven's Unsterbliche Geliebte.

1990 Great Illustrated Classics Moby Dick

 

This Collection has shied away from abridged children's books, for a variety of reasons, as has been discussed in the past.  Yet, here is just that. A twenty one year old copy of the Great Illustrated Classics Moby Dick, a children's abridged book, lovingly inscribed in a female hand: Chris love Gram and Grampy.

The Collection received this copy from SHP, daughter of the editor, who is an ELL teacher at the Donald McKay School in East Boston, Mass.  

That school is a just  a few blocks north of the site of school's namesake's ship yard, where in 1851 he built the Flying Cloud, perhaps the most extreme of extreme clippers. A mere 99 years later the Editor of TMDC would be born west of the site by sixty miles.  Ironic, no?

When SHP gave us this copy, she was in the company of several other gradeschool teachers from the Donald McKay School. There was a most interesting and lengthy conversation about the quality of the Great Illustrated Classics as a body of work, whether they were good for young children, true to the original work, and a viable teaching resource. We think that the opinions tended to be on the negative side. 

We just love imagining who Grampy was. He could still be alive, he may have lived in East Boston and worked at one of the remaining ship yards there, but most certainly he was something special to a young reader.

1998 Dutch Language Moby-Dick

Noem me Ismael.

When my tenants, Peter and Lynn, told me that they were moving out, I was saddened. They lived in the third floor flat of building I own here in Albany, and had been there for several years.

I remember the day that I rented to them. There were several people who were interested in it, thanks to Criags List, and I said I was going to show it on this particular Thursday at noon. Lynn came and several other people.

Lynn immediately said she loved it and wanted to move in. Great said I. We did the paper work and she told me that she was moving in with her boyfriend, Peter. Both were studying at SUNY Albany for advanced degrees and Peter was Dutch.

They were great tenants, always curteous and pleasant. Lovely people, and when they got married I silently rejoiced. So it is the normal course of events that my tenants move on and sure enough they got jobs in the lower Hudson River Valley.

The day they left Lynn called and said she had a gift for me. And thus this addition to the Moby-Dick Collection arrived. Words will never properly convey the sum of our relationship for those years, it was easy going at its best...

Good Luck Lynn and Peter!

1994 English Edition Moby-Dick

Here is the example of the English Language edition in the collection.

It was pretty easy to pinpoint which of the many english language books is the official "English Language" representative, but I choose this book for two reasons, 1) It is priced in pounds, and 2) it was printed in England by Clays LTD for Penguin Books.

It is a bargain book... my children and I always laugh when we go to a big box book store and walk by the Bargain Book bin at the door. The we ask each other: "Why are bargain books bargains? - because they suck!" Well maybe now we know not all bargain books suck. At least in the UK!

1994 The Young Collector's Illustrated Classics Moby Dick

The Young Collector's Illustrated Classic is an abridged big type confection brought to the public by Kidsbooks, Inc.

There is no indication as to who the illustrator was, the graphics are by and large bounded by a solid boarder, but this portrait of a right peg legged Ahab, has elements extending to the very edge of the paper, to what purpose, I have no idea.

Head gear is fast becoming an item of interest to me, as Ahab's cover has has some foreshadowing of WWII German naval attire.

And truly his peg leg is just that a peg!

Graphic Novel, Moby-Dick

#71 is the 1999 graphic novel from Scholastic, part of the READ 180 series.

The Moby-Dick Collection will contain no abridged editions. - Part of the unwritten by laws of the Collection.

However, how could I turn this gift down? It was a Christmas gift from Sasha Schlegel my soon to be daughter in law. Special!

Sasha works in Manhattan at BrainPOP, animated science, health, technology, math, etc, and school homework help for K-12.. its her field!

Additionally, its not the first abridged, illustrated, children's edition of Moby-Dick she has given me, so now there is a small and growing section of modern children's Moby-Dick.

NEXT POST: another Christmas gift, unavailable on line and unavailable in the US.
The acquisition of this edition was a quest in itself.

1995 Italian Language Edition, Moby-Dick

In 2003 on Ebay I aquired this edition, #65 in the collection (the collection number is meaningless) and no record has survive of how much I paid for it or from whence it came.

The book is a 1995 printing and on the back cover the price is listed as Lire 17.600 nicely predating the EURO.

I thought it was a bit thin, but what the heck for all I know Italian could be a very precise language so less words are needed. But later I noted the line on the title page: Riduzione e traduzione di Giorgio Bertone. Traduzione could mean translated but what is Riduzione? It seems that means reduced so: drat this is an abridged copy.

This collection is to have no abridged copies, that is my rule, hard and fast... except any book given to me by my soon to be daughter in law, Sasha, she has given me the comic editions and uber abridged editions from her childhood, and those I cherish...

Oh well, so much for hard and fast rules....

So who is Giorgio Bertone? Check here for other books he wrote.

and here