Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life (Penguin Classics)

The Kindle edition of Typee published by Penguin contains some serious problems.There are typos on every other page, throughout the entire book, which in many cases makes the text incomprehensible. In the appendix, the text examples don't show up - only black boxes appear instead of the text examples. And in the footnotes, the page numbers listed for the footnotes don't match the page numbers used by Kindle, so the footnotes are useless. It really looks like Penguin just scanned the old paper copy & didn't proofread the output at all before publishing it as a Kindle edition.I was so exasperated by this ebook that I had to order the paperback version from Amazon in order to read Typee.If anybody from Amazon or Penguin is reading this review, the Kindle edition needs to be reviewed for quality issues.

I can't imagine what kind of lackluster ethic it must have taken to slap a "Very Good" Sticker on this. The spine of the book is about as wrecked as it could be while maintaining some level of adhesive quality to it; and even then it is just barely held together and already begun to fall apart (see photo). Additionally I'm looking forward to getting to page 71, because the book itself just naturally opens to that page of its own accord. These are "minor cosmetic defects"? I dare say if I happen to drop this thing it might just be enough to finish the job the previous owner started. Sorry A1 Bookstore but there's absolutely no way I'm trusting your judgement in the future.

"Typee" is based on Melville's experiences when, as a young man of 22, he "jumped ship" from an American whaling vessel on the island of Nukuheva in the Marquesas Islands of the South Pacific. It is written in a straightforward narrative manner, but it is a work of fiction, NOT a journalistic report, something that is often overlooked. While, like "Moby Dick", it contains lots of factual details, mostly quite accurate as confirmed by subsequent research, it is a much more complex tale than it appears to be on the surface.For a first novel, written when Melville was only 27 years old, the narrative power is quite impressive, as for example in his description of the escape from the ship over the mountains to the Valley of the Typee. In the early chapters, themes of peace, beauty, and sensuality are combined with Melville's righteous indignation at the activities of Western military and religious intruders to create the illusion of an earthly paradise. Gradually dread, loneliness, horror, and fear of annihilation come to the fore, as "Tommo", the protagonist, becomes convinced that he is being kept for eventual eating at a ritual cannibal feast. He is finally rescued almost by chance, and because of conflict among the Typees.I read the Oxford World's Classics paperback edition, which has an introduction by Ruth Blair, an Australian professor of English. It was very helpful with Melville's historical and literary sources and the geographical and cultural context. The chapter on "Typee" in "Studies in Classic American Literature" by D.H. Lawrence adds a further depth of understanding. Newton Arvin's biography of Melville helps to place "Typee" in the development of Melville as a writer.Highly recommended in its own right as a superb example of 19th century American romanticism, with hints of the impending metaphysical explosion of "Moby Dick".

There are plenty of free electronic versions available of Typee. But I decided to buy this one anyway assuming that the time spent by the editors on the footnotes and on combining several editions of the work, would be worth the money. But to my disappointment, this Kindle edition is just a scanned version of the printed book with OCR software applied to it. The book is not divided into chapters, there is no link between the footnotes and their location in the text (I didn't manage to figure out what the numbers of the footnotes actually refer to) and there are frequent OCR errors. If you want to read Typee on your Kindle, there are probably better versions available than this one.(Review applies to this version of the book:  Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life (Penguin Classics)  )

This book describes the story of Tommo, who finds himself in a valley with the dangerous (rumored cannibal) tribe of the Typee. Through a series of animatedly depicted scenes, Tommo's interaction with the natives is recorded first hand. Melville spent 4 years traveling through several Polynesian Islands and this undoubtedly influenced this book.Expect to see the typical Melvillian depiction of Christianity as oppressive, the culture of the innocent natives praised, all wrapped in the most creative/inventive/genius of language that Melville so strongly commands. My onyl critique is that the middle section of the book is quite slow, and his repeated explanations of the goings on in the natives lives becomes rather cumbersome to read. The volatile and exciting ending is fantastic!

Early Melville writing but you can hear greatness there. The tale is supposed to be true but I think there is a bit of fiction also.The introduction by the noted Melville expert was terrible and pretentious. Skip that and just read the story with out his psycho-bable.

Based on Melville’s time in the Marquesas which is also called Polynesia. If people are only going to read one Melville book, it should be Moby Dick. If you enjoy Moby Dick and like Melville’s style as I do, start with Typee next and read through the rest of the books in publication order.

This is not a review of the book "Typee" but only the Kindle edition. The Penguin edition is based upon modern scholarship, choosing among four texts to create one version that may be close to Melleville's original intent. But the Kindle version is full of typos, word substitutions, and other artifacts of optical character recognition. There is about one typo per pageShame on Penguin for offering such a corrupted version of what was a well-edited edition. Buy the paperback if you care about this.

I read Moby Dick a very long time ago as well as other Penguin Classics Editions of Melville's book. This one was harder to obtain so I was glad to find this copy. Well worth a read - follow up with Omoo.

Excellent book

Texte illisible car incompréhensible : nombreuses erreurs . Ce texte n'a rien à voir avec l'original : on dirait une traductionen anglais faite sur un traducteur automatique de mauvaise qualité . Faut-il rappeler que Melville écrivait en anglais ?Je demande le remboursement de ce produit.

conforme

A marvellous discovery! I am a third year English degree student and I discovered this book with an awesome teacher. I didn't know anything else about Melville except the famous Moby dick, but trust me: you have to read this book!