Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life by Herman Melville
315 pages
Published 1846
Read from May 5 to May 7
Rating: ★★½ out of 5
I would have eaten up this sort of book as a kid. I loved the 19th century adventure narrative back then, and the questions of authenticity, culturally filtered expectations, and massaging the narrative to move copies wouldn't have bothered me at that age. As it is, with no way to determine how much of the book is fiction, and how thoroughly the "true" parts were caricatured to suit the worldview of author and reader, the book's only commendation would be Melville's prose -- yet here, in his first book, he had yet to fully master the wry, ironic tone that elevated Moby-Dick to the short list of my favorite books. Typee is a historical curiosity, but useless as an anthropological document.
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