Customer Reviews:
 Adventure story with a message. September 10, 2009
G. Hodgson (Fife, Scotland.)
An enjoyable enough adventure story based on Melville's own short stay with the Typee people of the South Pacific, as a young man.
His themes of Race,Religion,Western Imperialism,and cultural destruction are developed again in his later book Moby Dick.
The two books could not be more different in format,language, and style. Indeed if I had read Typee without knowing the author,I would not have guessed that it was the same author, who later wrote Moby Dick ,in such a dark,classical,and biblical narrative.
Partly because of this, it lacks the drama, scale,and prophetic power of the great classic, written later in his life,but the younger Melville's format, style,and vocabulary used in Typee, may very well make it more accessible, and readable for the younger, contemporary reader.
 Life among beautiful cannibals January 12, 2008
Trevor Coote (Papeete, Tahiti, French Polynesia)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Although Typee is based on his own experiences in the South Pacific, Melville's popular work is wonderful adventure fiction. Disillusioned with months at sea on a whaling boat Tommo/Melville jumps ship with his friend Toby on the island of Nuku Hiva in the Marquesas archipelago of what is modern day French Polynesia. They are quickly captured by the Typee tribe who carry a murderous and cannibalistic reputation but are surprised to find that they are treated with respect and hospitality by their captors. However, it is soon apparent that the Typee, for reasons that are not clear, have no intention of letting them go for they are shadowed everywhere and under constant surveillance by groups of villagers. Toby makes an early escape with the intention of summoning help for Tommo who is being nursed for a serious leg wound by the fair-skinned beauty, Fayaway. When his friend fails to return Tommo reluctantly acquiesces to his situation. His subsequent anthropological observations are not dry text but a humorous and fascinating glimpse into an inscrutable world where the jollity, sensuality and general indolence of the villagers are lights year away from the puritanical and Protestant New England of Tommo's/Melville's own background. Some of the customs and practices have survived to this day and the words are still in use (recognisable despite Melville's esoteric spelling) as Marquesan is spoken in preference to French throughout the islands. (Some years later the people of Nuku Hiva were to be converted to Catholicism and it must have come as a shock to them to discover that they had been praying to the wrong idols for the previous two millennia.) Although the attitudes of the day were apparent in places - `Kory-Kory, though the most devoted and best-natured serving-man in the world, was alas! a hideous object to look upon' - Melville compares the natural beauty of the many of the Typee, both men and women, most favourably with the over-preened, coiffured dilettantes of the `civilised' world. With the sumptuous Fayaway and devoted Kory-Kory, he passes the days in sloth, lying around, eating, and swimming. He is effectively in a `golden jail'. As months pass, though, he becomes gloomy at his isolation and inability to meaningfully converse with the villagers and, when he makes a gruesome discovery, he develops a dreadful foreboding as to the possible outcome for his captivity. The novel closes with tension and drama.
Today, the village of Taipivai (River Taipi) is as tranquil a place as one could imagine, with the villagers enjoying a pace of life barely changed since Melville's time 170 years ago. Highly recommended to all who enjoy old-fashioned adventure and those who are interested in the history and culture of Pacific island communities. A second book, the less well-known Omoo, continues the author's South Seas escapades.
An Adventure Classic May 15, 2006
Seneca
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This is Melville's first novel and was a bestseller.
It's not hard to see why. "Typee" is based on the true story of Melville's time living among cannibals on a Pacific island.
Later, Melville developed a more difficult, slower style, but this novel is rapid, clear and also funny.
|
