2009 Japanese Language Edition, Moby-Dick

Purchased in 2009, During a visit to NYC.

In 1987, working for a multi-national corporation, the editor was due to make a swing thru the far east on a business trip. The trip was aimed at finding suppliers of the product we were selling here in the US. That trip was to start in Taipai and continue to Hong Kong and end in Toyko.

In his mid 30's, he was in the the midst of prolonged funk, asking existential questions and coming up with little to show.  It made sense to turn back and to reexamine things from the past and he choose to reexamine the books from boarding school that he was supposed to read and never did.

As the cab for the airport pulled up to the house he just grabbed his high school copy of Moby-Dick.

he read it on the flight over...

Thus started this obsession.

2007 Longman Critical Edition MOBY DICK

The MDC has received over the last few months a bevy of new editions, and hence we are a bit behind.

This is the fascinating Longman Critical Edition. Fascinating in that the editors have pieced together a treasure trove.  We hate to use trite sayings like treasure trove, but really this is a fun book.  The text as Melville saw in print in 1851 and on page displays of the revisions made over the years. And Explanatory Notes in the aft add beef to an already beefy product.

The cover art by Geoge Klauba is nothing short of wicked awesome. No, it is wicked awesome, in a Norman Rockwellien style Ahab's boat is screaming heavenly, a jumble of arms and legs with peg leg himself (right legged) leading the way. 

Chapter 53 The Gam

A social meeting of two (or more) Whale-ships, generally on a cruising ground, when, after exchanging hails, they exchange visits by boat's crews

Last week was a big week here at TMDC, it was BP's birthday and as such he held a GAM. Everyone was there: Starbuck, Subb, Flask, Pip, yes the harpooners, and all the rest of the crew.

Is BP Ahab? We are not too sure, we suspect so, but we know who all the other players are, and they may or may not know the roles that have been assigned to them...

MOBY DICK is too much fun!

2009 Chinese Language Moby Dick

电话我以实玛利


A second Chinese language edition arrived the other day. We used google translator to obtain the "Call me Ishmael" phrase above, and we are betting its not really close.


There are 42 chapters and 169 pages so we figure its abridged, dah..

The cover art, however, gets the golden TMDC WTF award, as the all time weirdest cover art.

That clearly is Venice, that clearly is a transparent Moby Dick flying thru the air, that clearly is  a motorized ferry boat at the dock on the other side of the canal, and there is someone, not Ahab, not Queegueg, holding a harpoon with his back to us.

Ah.. we dont get it... hence the award.

from coorespondence to the editor from V S one of our dearest chinese speaking friends:
Your current translation up there translates better as "phone me Ishmael." A better translation would be 称我(insert sinoticization of Ishmael here). I don't know what the official translation would be but 乙石馬 seems good to me and has the bonus of translating as "yi (a meaningless word) stone horse." That sounds pretty cool. Hope that helps. NOTE to VS: we sailed out of the STONEHORSE YACHT CLUB, Harwichport so its ok with us. Ed.

2008 Webster's Afrikaans Thesaurus Edition

When we first conceived of The Moby-Dick Collection, we envisioned a catalogue of the various printed editions of the masterpiece. It was to be a kind of a stamp collection like endeavor. At the least it was to be a catalogue of each of the known printed editions, with the collection's holdings to be examples of as many books as could be gathered together given the resources.

As many of you seasoned TMDC readers know it quickly turned into more than that, with the edition of foreign language editions. And as this blog progressed, the individual books themselves begin to tell stories, who owned them, where they came from, and so on.

This post is a combination of all of the finest quirks of TMDC.

Here is a recent addition, the 2008 Webster's Afrikaans Thesaurus. As the picture shows, this is the english text of the book with a thesaurus on each page with the Afrikaans words for various english words, presumably this is for the Afrikaan speaking person, who is learning to read English. So one can see that the Afrikaan word for Whale is Walvis. If we are not mistaken there is a Walvis Bay in South Africa.

This book came into our position this year as a birthday gift from my sister, Sarah, to celebrate my 61 st birthday.

Sarah P. D___ is a world traveler for her vocation and avocation. There is not a month that does not go by that she is not off to some far off land. Immediately, Dubai, Manila, Istanbul, and Ireland all come to mind as places Sarah has been in the last year or two.

When she went to Manila,I began silly requests like, "bring me some envelopes" and last year when she was in Vienna, "Hey, how about bringing back some sausages.. you know the little fellas in the can!"

Im not sure Sarah at first appreciated my oblique humor. But she became a bit of a sport.

This year she travelled to South Africa, and it occurred to me to combine my silly requests with The Moby-Dick Collection, so I asked her to pick up an Afrikaans edition of Melville's classic. She had a bit of a layover between safaris and work, and she searched the bookstores but to no avail. However, she did manage to score this edition, which she proudly shipped to me, and it arrived in time for the big birthday doings! Three Cheers to Sage (as we called her in our youth)

Which brings me to this picture: Here is a little something I have kept in the WOPettit archives all these many years, this is Sarah's passport foto from I believe 1966 when she traveled overseas for the first time from our childhood home to Germany. Since that moment she has never really looked back....

Bravo Sarah!

2003 Russian Language Edition, Moby-Dick

The 2003 Russian language edition of Melville's Moby-Dick, printed in Moscow, the Russian Federation, uses the Rockwell Kent illustrations from the 1930 Random House edition, which I find that fact amusing to speculate about.

Specifically, while I don't read Russian and the cryillic type is difficult to decipher, it does appear to me that nowhere on the title page or in the entire book for that matter, is there anything appearing to be an attribution for the illustrations, leading me to believe that there is some left-over soviet editor who figured since Mr. Kent was a communist, they could just requisition his work, as property of the state, so to speak. HAHA...

Also, I find it interesting that this book can no longer be found on line... Check: Amazon, ABE, and Paperback Swap

Next post, one of the older editions..

2007 Chinese Language Edition, Moby-Dick

Try and type in the google box: Chinese Edition of Moby-Dick. You will find its pretty much of a dead end. Actually, go to EBAY or ABE BOOKS and try to search for Moby-Dick in Chinese... doesn't really work.

After I bought the Japanese edition (earlier post), I decided I needed a Chinese edition... so on the next visit to my son's home in Brooklyn, I took a side trip to Canal St. to find Moby Dick in Chinese. Oh, that was a chore as well, try to google search Chinese Book Store in Manhattan...

While the clerk at the Kinokuniya Bookstore (Japanese Bookstore in NYC) knew what I was talking about... The clerk in the Chinese Bookstore had no idea what I was talking about. Granted if they asked me if I had an English edition of Dream of the Red Chamber I would have no idea... oh wait I have one... well anyway..

So, later I was sharing the Moby Dick collection with Adam O'Brien, Library Specialist at the Schaffer Library of Union College, and he took a keen interest in the foreign language section, he was able to get me the ISBN numbers for the Chinese editions:

9787535027016 2004

9789576833137 1995

9789575517397 1994

9787506812085 2005

9787508357782 2008

However, searching the internet brought me only to Chinese bookstore websites only in China, and the google translate this was not very helpful.

Alas, this was taking more than a year now... I called the local bookstore, BOOKHOUSE and had a nice chat with them, gave me the name of a bookstore in Cambridge MA, that does a nice business in foreign language books, so I called them, the gent there said "sure no problem, we can get you one. Let me check on price and availabilty and Ill call you back." I am still waiting for that call... HAHAHA.

Dead ends abound, "Have ya seen the Chinese white whale" Nope, no, nyet .. but thanks to Adam I know it exists... I caught but a glimpse.

Enter my daughter, Sarah, over for a visit from Boston. While I was telling her this story, she said,"my colleague, Stephanie, was born in China, maybe she can help." Stephanie proved to be the key to this. Apparently, Sarah and Stephanie had a lot of back and forth about how to even translate the title "Moby-Dick" into Chinese to quiry someone in China, however she ultimately contacted a friend in Beijing who had a friend in Shaghai, and on Christmas Day, my daughter proudly handed me a DHL package... right from China.. and #72 was in it..

One interesting note about this edition, the text runs left to right, front to back. The Chinese Government, decreed that all books would be printed this way, not the traditional Top to bottom, back to front.. as the Japanese edition is.

SO, I am thinking .... I need an older version... maybe the 1994 or 1995 were printed top to bottom.. or an edition from Taiwan, or Korea.... ... hummmm mmm

Next Post: Moby-Dick in Russian with illustrations.