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W.D. Clarke's Reviews > Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas
Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas
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2.5* For Melville completeists only.
Utterly lacking in the cohesiveness of his debut, Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life.
Here, rather, the reader is sustained only by the writer's still-nascent voice, which if anything seems to gone a bit retrograde in its development after that first novel. The cadences are still there, urging us on, but Melville's rhetorical flights of fancy are held much too much in check, and the questing, metaphysical vision is lacking utterly.
In its stead are episodic episodes of Tahitian life, as witnessed by one admittedly open-eyed and -hearted Yankee sailor—which, due to a preponderance of such muchness, soon wearies.
Onwards, then to his third book (and first self-confessed novel), Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I....
Utterly lacking in the cohesiveness of his debut, Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life.
Here, rather, the reader is sustained only by the writer's still-nascent voice, which if anything seems to gone a bit retrograde in its development after that first novel. The cadences are still there, urging us on, but Melville's rhetorical flights of fancy are held much too much in check, and the questing, metaphysical vision is lacking utterly.
In its stead are episodic episodes of Tahitian life, as witnessed by one admittedly open-eyed and -hearted Yankee sailor—which, due to a preponderance of such muchness, soon wearies.
Onwards, then to his third book (and first self-confessed novel), Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I....
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