Moby-Dick, Second Edition (Norton Critical Editions)

Book Description

For this Sesquicentennial Norton Critical Edition, the Northwestern-Newberry text of Moby-Dick has been generously footnoted to include dozens of biographical discoveries, mainly from Hershel Parker's work on his two-volume biography of Melville. A section of "Whaling and Whalecraft" features prose and graphics by John B. Putnam, a sample of contemporary whaling engravings, as well as, new to this edition, an engraving of Tupai Cupa, the real-life inspiration for the character of Queequeg. Evoking Melville's fascination with the fluidity of categories like savagery and civilization, the image of Tupai Cupa fittingly introduces "Before Moby-Dick: International Controversy over Melville," a new section that documents the ferocity of religions, political, and sexual hostility toward Melville in reaction to his early books, beginning with Typee in 1846. The image of Tupai Cupa also evokes Melville's interest in the mystery of self-identity and the possibility of knowing another person's "queenly personality" (Chapter 119). That theme (focused on Melville, Ishmael, and Ahab) is pursued in "A Handful of Critical Challenges," from Walter E. Bezanson's classic centennial study through Harrison Hayford's meditation on "Loomings" and recent essays by Camille Paglia and John Wenke. In "Reviews and Letters by Melville," a letter has been redated and a wealth of new biographical material has been added to the footnotes, notably to Melville's "Hawthorne and His Mosses." "Analogues and Sources" retains classic pieces by J. N. Reynolds and Owen Chase, as well as new findings by Geoffrey Sanborn and Steven Olsen-Smith. "Reviews of Moby-Dick" emphasizes the ongoing religious hostility toward Melville and highlights new discoveries, such as the first-known Scottish review of The Whale. "Posthumous Praise and the Melville Revival: 1893-1927" collects belated, enthusiastic praise up through that of William Faulkner. "Biographical Cross-Light" is Hershel Parker's somber look at what writing Moby-Dick cost Melville and his family. From Foreword through Selected Bibliography, this Sesquicentennial Norton Critical Edition is uniquely valuable as the most up-to-date and comprehensive documentary source for study of Moby-Dick.

Customer Reviews:

Some "classics" aren't. This one is........2007-09-21

A few years back I made a conscious decision to read (and in some cases re-read) a number of books that fall into the category of "classics." The books that stand the test of time the best have an uncanny ability to feel modern and relevant no matter how long ago they were written. It's almost as if there is a certain current that runs down through the years that flows with a permanence that most don't. If a writer can tap into this current, their writing can be timeless; a classic.

Herman Melville tapped into that current in spades in this story. Despite this book being over 150 years old, the themes Melville selected from many obviously available to him are themes that are just as relevant an engaging today as they were in 1851. Further, Melville somehow had a handle on using language that would not seem outdated even after a century and a half.

What you get is a great story about a revenge-obsessed man, characters to whom you can easily relate and colorful descriptions of the life of a whaleman. It all comes together beautifully.

Any drawbacks? Sure, Melville's story slows in the middle of the book as he goes into a deep examination of the physical characteristics of various whales, but it's still interesting and it's just not enough to take away from the rest of this novel.

Highly recommended.

Slog Through It -- It's Worth It.......2007-09-18

This great American novel of the 19th Century, like some of the great novels of the 20th Century, is at times unreadable. Long riffs about whale biology and whale trivia made me put down this book when I tried to read it many years ago. I got through it this time, with the help of Frank Muller's classic reading on audiotape. Don't bother with anyone else's reading -- go to the library and check out Muller's version. He is one of the top readers and does justice to the poetry and great language of this novel.

The book is not told in the way we would find conventional today -- a fast paced narration of the adventures of men at sea. Melville clearly wants to tell the tale in the epic style. He writes in very short chapters that resemble Biblical passages, both in the poetic use of language and in addressing the most elemental themes of good vs. evil, man vs. nature, and the human condition. In the end, even the whale trivia serves the epic purpose in driving home the extraordinary courage and heroism of these whalers.

I don't buy the idea that Moby Dick, malevolent as he is, somehow represents evil. The sometimes destructive and overwhelming force of nature is more likely the right allegorical symbol. Evil for me is Ahab, given the truly heartless choices he makes in his obsession for the White Whale -- and given what happens to a man after 40 years at sea.

The most attractive characters are Ishmael and Queequeg, Ishmael's cannibal friend. Each demonstrates the best quailities of human nature --companionship, courage, acceptance of their lot in life. Given the racial turmoil of the 1850s, Melville may have been making a political point by portraying the nobility of the dark-skinned. I don't buy the idea that the allegory was any more elaborate than that, though it's clear to me that the novel is a gold mine for all sorts of Ph.D. thesis topics.

In the end, I do think that the great themes explored by Melville are more effectively explored less allegorically and more through character development and moral choices. For that reason, I'd say that Huckleberry Finn is the true Great American Novel of the 19th century and that the great Russian contemploraries of Melville wrote better books. But this certainly is a classic work worth the effort.

Free SF Reader.......2007-09-03

This whale hunting job really drives me crazy.

or, longer version:

Take on really stupendously big arse white wale. Add a crazed, obsessive monomaniacal Captain. Add in a couple of narrators and quite a few other unfortunates who get stuck in the middle of his quest for the white whale.

Add in an author waxing lyrical, often at length, and you are left with a pretty decent and often interesting novel.

Strange but..........2007-08-29

The strangeness is what makes Moby-Dick so exceptional and an indisputable classic. It was quite a difficult and long read, but upon completion, it was, without a doubt, completely and utterly worthwhile. The characters were some of the most unique in all of fiction and each of them is leaves their mark.

Key Work of Literature.......2007-08-27

Moby-Dick is a sprawling, unwieldy yet very great novel about the obsessive pursuit of happiness and fulfillment. "Call me Ishmael..." the famous opening lines establishes the omniscient narrator for this whale of an epic. The novel is filled with remarkable characters; their composite comradery is a true achievement of writing. Melville's insistence on explicating precise technical minutia on the craft of whaling and oceanography turned off most readers when the book was initially published (these sections still turn off most who dare penetrate this tome), yet it is really these sections that allow the reader to become immersed in the world of Ahab, the deranged symbol of evil amidst the beauty and sublime grace of the sea. Melville was an undisputed master of literary style, and this masterpiece is difficult to place for the simple reason that its' incomprehensible scale defies categorization. This is a reader's book; it is a divine allegory, a conventional adventure, and a bewitching construction all at once. Not for the weak minded.

Book Description

Homicide detective Samantha Brown is a tough, highly decorated cop. But twelve lonely years after she nearly died of a gunshot wound, she aches with a deep inner longing. In pursuit of a deranged killer, her only clue is a medieval cross inscribed "Lucan"-the name of the owner of a new nightclub near the murder scene. Drawn into a seamy underworld, Samantha falls for Lucan-who believes he's a vampire and Samantha is his reincarnated first love. Now, she must save this mysterious, seductive man who seems beyond redemption if he is to fulfill her deepest, darkest desires.

Customer Reviews:

A different type of vampire romance.......2007-08-02

This is the third book in the Darkyn series. Dark Need features Sam, a homicide detective and Lucan, the executioner of the Darkyn race. Sam is called into investigate the murder of a young woman left posed on a bench across the street from the club Infusion that Lucan owns. The young woman has a medallion around her neck that has Lucan's name on the back. This brings Sam to investigate Lucan as a possible suspect in this murder. When Sam goes to meet with Lucan, he discovers that she is the twin look alike of his old love, Frances. He is immediately drawn to her and her to him.

This book was my favorite in the series. The author brings in the characters from the first book, Alex and Michael. I like the way she has progressed their love story throughout the first three books. Each book however, features a new romance with Alex and Michael as a secondary romance and their continuing saga.
I enjoy reading this series and look forward to each new book. These books have a different take on the vampire scenario and the Darkyn male characters are not always what you think they will be.

Best of the first three.......2007-05-31

I thought that this was a great read. The characters were fantastic together, the storyline had a nice flow to it and never got boring. However, I think it is not fair to market these books as romance. They are more of a dark fantasy, with romance being a subplot among other subplots. Readers that expect to read romance when it's just her and him within the four walls will no doubt be dissapointed. I also agree with other reviewers that John Keller has to go. There are way too many characters running around as it is. I think that Viehl writes very well, and she created a vivid and realistic world that is extremely interesting. One should really give these books a try and not base that decision on all the negative reviews which are often unfair, as it seems that some people just skimmed through without actually reading it. I am glad that i did!

Dark Need.......2007-05-18

The fangs come out in this one. If you keep reading, you'll know what I mean. The Darkyn world gets more complicated and interesting in this title. Once again, I enjoy the Darkyn world and the manner in which Viehl reveals its intricacies. Lucan was great. I would love to have had him around for a few books as the villain, but I'm sure there are others out there waiting in the wings. The romance was better this go around. I suspect we'll see Lucan and Sam in future books as we have others from the previous books. However, If you want romance check out Sherrilynn Kenyon's Dark Hunters, L.A. Banks' Vampire Huntress Legends or J.R. Ward's Black Dagger Brotherhood. Enjoy!

Really a three and a half.......2006-08-05

I must say I found Lucan to be extremely sexy. He's tough, scarey, withdrawn, and glass breaks when he has a temper tantrum. Ha! I noticed most reviewers complained of his poor treatment of Sam and his employees, but I think he acted the way he did simply because he didn't think he would survive his confrontation with Michael and someone else I won't mention because then I'll spoil it. As a matter of fact, this is explained at teh very end. I didn't even get it and I always can predict what is going to happen. Another reviewer complained about Sam being ugly. That is totally wrong. Same was NOT ugly. She was beautiful with an incredible body, she just dressed terrible. This too was explained early on. And the only woman that wanted her was her previous next-door-neighbor. I mean really--try picturing the story as you read! Then maybe you'll actually retain the story.

The reason I gave the story 3 1/2 stars was because I can not stand having to read more about John Kellar! He is soooo boring! Why must revisit his miserable life in EVERY book. Then, there was Alex and Michael. Hey! They already had a story. This was suppose to be Lucan and Sam's story! I wanted more Lucan and Sam and less everything else! Unforunately, we'll be stuck with more of Alex and Michael in the next story, too, according to the cliffhanger. Boo!

Different kind of Paranormal Romance.......2006-07-26

I have read all 3 books in this series. I had a hard time getting into the first one. Once I got into it, I loved it.
I have had the same feeling with the other two.
This is my favorite so far.
I find that it's hard to get into each book, but right around the middle of the book, I can't put it down.
She is unlike any paranormal romance author that I have read before.
Anyone could read these book.
I think that people who enjoy Laurell K. Hamilton, would like these books also.

Customer Reviews:

A FANTASY FOR THE AGES.......2004-04-17

"The Ship of Ishtar," one of Abraham Merritt's finest fantasies, first appeared in the pages of "Argosy" magazine in 1924. An altered version appeared in book form in 1926, and the world finally received the original work in book form in 1949, six years after Merritt's death. In this wonderful novel we meet John Kenton, an American archaeologist who has just come into possession of a miniature crystal ship recently excavated "from the sand shrouds of ages-dead Babylon." Before too long, Kenton is whisked onto the actual ship, of which his relic is just a symbol. It turns out that the ship is sailing the seas of an otherdimensional limboland, and manned by the evil followers of the Babylonian god of the dead, Nergal, and by the priestesses of the Babylonian fertility goddess, Ishtar. A force barrier of sorts prevents the two parties from coming into contact with each other, and they have been sailing thus for...nobody knows how long. It seems that, centuries ago, a priest of Nergal and a priestess of Ishtar had been guilty of the sin of falling in love; this eternal cruise is the punishment that has been meted out by the gods. Kenton becomes embroiled in this ages-old strife; falls in love himself with Sharane, a Babylonian princess; eventually takes over the ship; and then goes in pursuit of the Black Priest of Nergal, after Sharane is kidnapped. He is aided in his quest by a sword-swinging Viking, a hugely strong and mace-wielding man of Nineveh, and by a scimitar expert from Persia. The quartet makes for one formidable team, lemme tell you! This is high fantasy done to a turn, and Merritt is at the peak of his game here. While "Ship" does not boast as much of the purple prose and hyperadjectival descriptions as his first two books, "The Moon Pool" and "The Metal Monster," there is still quite a bit, and in places the descriptions of various isles and temples almost reads like prose poetry. The story moves along briskly and builds to a pair of splendid set pieces: Sharane's rescue from the Temple of Seven Zones, in which each floor is dedicated to another Babylonian god and is decked out with its own color scheme, shrines and so on; and a very tense sea battle between the Ship of Ishtar and the Black Priest's bireme. The novel really is a stunning feat of imagination. I wonder if Merritt was perhaps influenced or inspired by the excavations at Uruk (now in southern Iraq, and one of the original cities of Ishtar worship) that had commenced in 1912. He may have also been inspired here by H. Rider Haggard's seminal fantasy work "She" (1887), in which Ayesha, head priestess of Isis, is given an eternal punishment for her own love dalliances. Whatever the inspirations, though, Merritt makes it all work, with great detail, color, action and character.
The book is a fantasy classic, but still, Merritt makes some small booboos. Thus, the gold bracelet on Kenton's left arm is on his right arm several pages later. Kenton is said to have disappeared from his NYC apartment at 8 PM, while later Merritt tells us that is was 9 PM. Sargon of Akkad (an ancient Mesopotamian ruler) is said to have ruled 6,000 years ago, whereas in actuality, it was more like 4,300. Merritt, in the course of the book, is also guilty of some fuzzy writing. But these little glitches should in no way interfere with anyone's enjoyment of this rousing tale. I should perhaps mention here that "The Ship of Ishtar" has been included in Cawthorn & Moorcock's overview volume "Fantasy: The 100 Best Books," and that I personally have no problem with that inclusion. It really is a fantasy for the ages.

The Greatest Fantasy Novel.......2001-06-06

This exhilerating adventure story is jammed with as much true fantasy creation as the modern writer's ten book series. The Ship of Ishtar is all but forgotten, but deserves to be even more popular than Tolkien's novels.

The story centers around a British man who is wisked into a fantasy world where evil and good are trapped together on a ship. Adrift. To delve too deeply into the plot now would cheat prospective readers, but this is a sexy, romantic, thrilling, brilliant, fantastic, adventure yarn.

No one I've loaned my copy to have ever not loved it.

Romantic Adventure.......2000-07-01

The Ship of Ishtar is one of the better 1930's Indiana Jones style pulp adventure novels. An archeologist unearths a miniature ship artifact that transports him to another dimension, where he becomes a macho hero, who, with the help of an interesting assortment of new friends, assists a lovely priestess in a battle against some evil warlocks. His adventures lead him through some wonderfully imaginative fantasy locales, and the book has a spectacular ending.

Average customer rating:

The Ship Of Ishtar
A. Merritt
Manufacturer: Borden Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000I9JCP2

Average customer rating:

A rip-roaring tale
Ian Myles Slater on: Sailing Through Time's Abyss

The Ship of Ishtar

Manufacturer: Avon Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Magic & Wizards | Fantasy | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Subjects | Books
ASIN: B000BTAUJ6

Product Description

Ship of love, ship of doom. The goddess of love and beauty was adrift on an enchanted ocean in a magic world. The myriad forces of satanic evil plagued the vessel of the red-haired, passionate goddess. Only one man, John Kenton, the American adventurer, could save Ishtar's prietess from the black magic which divides her world from ours.

Customer Reviews:

A rip-roaring tale.......2006-09-05

I entirely agree with Mr. Slater's comments.

There are literary authors and there are story tellers. On all-too rare occasions one writer combines both aspects in his or her work. If A. Merritt was not among that rarified class, he certainly ranked as a master story teller.

"The Ship of Ishtar" is a charmingly old-fashioned, rip-roaring good read.

I have and treasure the Borden Memorial edition with the excellent Virgil Finlay illustrations. The book is everything that Mr. Slater says it is, and more. By all means snatch it up if you ever stumble on a copy. You won't regret it.

Five adventurous stars.

Ian Myles Slater on: Sailing Through Time's Abyss.......2006-09-04

"The Ship of Ishtar," a fantasy novel by A. Merritt first published in the mid-1920s, offers a world in which the Gods of ancient Babylon are real and palpable, if not necessarily Divine, and in which marooned voyagers from many times and lands encounter each other in furtherance of an ancient curse. It is probably to be counted as a version of "The Flying Dutchman," although no sailor on earthly seas ever caught a glimpse of the vessel of Ishtar on its unending voyage across a crystalline ocean. The this-worldly counterpart of the Ship is a relic of ancient Mesopotamia, sealed in a block with (long-unreadable) warnings since before the days of Hammurabi.

And the novel itself is a relic of a "modern" world now slipping into the past.

The King James Bible tells us that "There were giants in the earth in those days" (Genesis 6:4) -- the Hebrew can be understood differently, but the Dead Sea Scrolls show that it was once interpreted to explain Mesopotamian heroes like Gilgamesh ("Glgmsh"). And it sometimes seems that before radio dramas and movie serials, before adventure comic strips and science fiction magazines, and well before comic books, let alone television, Giants were roaming the Earth!

Or, at least, Giants were contributing to magazines like "Argosy" (Frank Munsey's pioneer all-fiction pulp) and "All-Story," "Adventure," "Golden Fleece," and the more general-interest "slicks" like "Colliers" and "The Saturday Evening Post." And some of their characters were Giants too -- prototypes of the superheroes of a slightly later day.

A few of these writers had star status, or at least their names had special drawing power (think of Lucas and Spielberg). A few of them are still widely remembered by name or by their creations, like Edgar Rice Burroughs and Tarzan. The westerns of "Max Brand" also have a following. (The name was the well-chosen pseudonym of Frederick Schiller Faust-- which looks even more like invention!)

Others, like Homer Eon Flint, are mostly (and sometimes deservedly) forgotten by all but a few. Their prose styles ranged from the workman-like to the florid and baroque, and sometimes sank to the barely intelligible (which helped some of them paper over plot-holes as large as a mammoth.)

Somewhere between still-famous and forgotten is the present author, Abraham Merritt (1884-1943), once instantly recognizable as A. Merritt, journalist and magazine editor, and, mainly in the period 1917-1934, occasional author of novels and short stories of suspense, the supernatural, and, above all, fantastic adventures in exotic places.

In those years, whenever he chose to write fiction, he was a Giant among Giants, inspiring younger writers, and providing a model for those trying to make a living in the pulp markets by meeting the demand he had created. And he was often reprinted in magazines, a common practice before paperbacks dominated the newsstands. But fiction was a side-line, and Merritt produced little in the following decade, although an unfinished novel and various fragments turned up after his sudden death from a heart attack.

His name still had enough selling power to be used for five issues of "A. Merritt's Fantasy Magazine" (1949-1950), just the market for fiction magazines was fading, but before the novels were picked up for mass-market paperback editions by Avon, which for years had a near-monopoly (although Collier Books did an edition of "Face in the Abyss" in 1961, and there were some earlier exceptions, including at least one edition of "Ship").

Merritt has been in and out of favor with readers or publishers in the years since, due in part to whether his lush romanticism and slightly purple prose style seemed exciting or merely unfashionable. (There are those who suggest that the possibilities for enticing cover art were originally more influential with Avon than the books' other qualities, pointing out that Raymond Chandler was the only other author of real merit on their early list, If true, this changed over the years, as the emphasis on exposed skin decreased considerably, although never quite abandoned. Unhappily, more decorous covers did nothing to correct a debatable choice of base texts for some of the books.)

He really didn't throw around adjectives and adverbs nearly as freely as both imitators and parodists would suggest, but he did prefer, for example, "emerald and vermillion" to "green and red" when describing jungle vegetation. He often used simple sentences, among the longer ones. Sometimes just one word. One! (He also liked exclamation marks! A lot!) Not to everyone's taste, but he was actually a skilled writer, and knew that a well-constructed story was more than a sequence of events.

Another factor in the decline of his popularity, if it was more than an accident of publishing policy as corporations consolidated, may have been growing discomfort with the latent (and sometimes explicit) racial overtones of many of the stories. By the standards of the early twentieth century Merritt was far from a bigot, and it is usually possible to distinguish the opinions expressed by the characters from those endorsed by the author, but the casual assumption of white superiority can be jarring -- and prevent readers from continuing to see whether it is borne out by the events. (He sometimes played with readers' assumptions. Watch out for the Frog-People! Or, wait, are they the Good Guys?)

Recognition of problems with his way of putting women on pedestals (they tend to be pagan priestesses, and often turn out to be actual goddesses or avatars of some sort anyway) probably came too late to make a difference.

Whatever the case, Merrit's novels were in print, mainly in those Avon paperbacks, in the 1940s and 1950s, when Burroughs seemed to be vanishing, and again from the 1960s through the 1980s, then alongside not only Burroughs but Tolkien and Howard. Most of his titles then disappeared from publishers' lists at some point in the middle or late 1980s.

He has been straggling back into print under such unfamiliar auspices as the University of Nebraska Press (the Bison Frontiers of Imagination Series) and the Wesleyan University Press (Early Classics of Science Fiction), with in one case an introduction by Jack Williamson, a now-venerable science fiction writer who as a teenager regarded Merritt as a literary god. (Merritt was impressed and flattered enough by Williamson's first published story, a transparent pastiche/homage, to ask for the manuscript.)

Still, whenever you see a story about dolls which come to life and commit crimes (remember Chuckie?), or about ill-assorted explorers stumbling on a lost civilization of humans and non-humans menaced by both the outside world and its own ancient powers (say, "Atlantis -- The Lost Empire," or "Dinotopia"), chances are that a Merritt story is lurking in the background. Even if the authors themselves never read "Burn Witch Burn" (1932) (filmed as "Devil Doll"), or "The Moon Pool" (as "The Moon Pool" and "The Conquest of the Moon Pool," 1919; book version 1919), "Face in the Abyss" (1923, 1930, revised for book, 1931; author's ending restored in some later editions), and "Dwellers in the Mirage" (magazine and book versions, 1932). Not that Merritt invented the themes, but his versions of them dominated American imaginative literature for much of the twentieth century.

And, partly by way of Williamson and other writers of his generation, any grotesque-looking alien life-form who wins your sympathy may owe something to Merritt as well. (As will be understood by those who have read "Face in the Abyss," many are the progeny of the Snake Mother!)

Merritt made his greatest reputation among lovers of fantastic adventure with slightly more archaeologically plausible and somewhat science-fictionalized versions of the "Lost Race" novel, made popular in the nineteenth century by Bulwer-Lytton and H. Rider Haggard. He added some creepy super-beings who may have contributed more than a little to H.P. Lovecraft's Old Ones, and, when editors allowed, a rather pessimistic view of human nature (its real gods being Greed and Folly).

In 1924, however, Merritt had moved all the way into what would later be recognized as alternate-world heroic fantasy, with "The Ship of Ishtar," originally published in "Argosy All-Story Weekly." (A combined version of two older titles -- "Argosy" would survive the death of its rivals, only to spend its last years as a "Men's Magazine," finally, mercifully, dying in 1978.)

Instead of an archeologist or explorer stumbling into an underground world, or through a Veil of Illusion, this time the archeologist, John Kenton, examining an inscribed block from ancient Babylon, falls from his mundane twentieth-century New York penthouse right onto the deck of a model ship on a crystal ocean -- and finds himself in a world as material and dangerous as the one he has left. He finds that he is acting out (as mentioned) a sort of implied prototype of every Flying Dutchman yarn ever written, along with other castaways in time, such as Sigurd the Norseman, who recognizes the Irish-American Kenton as a Man of Eirinn.

Kenton is caught up in a struggle between Ishtar, Goddess of Love and Beauty, and Nergal, the God of War and Death, as decreed by Bel-Marduk, King of the Gods. (Yes, Ishtar herself was an often-nasty war-goddess -- but Merritt was mostly dressing up his story with Assyriology, and taking a lot of material from Herodotus rather than cuneiform texts. And the interpretation of the gods wasn't implausible, circa-1920.) Of course, this being a Merritt novel, Good is represented by an incredibly beautiful woman, who takes a liking to the Mysterious Stranger who appears and disappears from the Ship she has sailed on since the days of Sargon of Akkad, believing him to be a messenger of Nabu, God of Wisdom. (Again, Nabu emerged later in history, as did the routine designation of his father Marduk as Bel [The Lord], but never mind.)

Or possibly Kenton really isn't doing any such thing, and Sharane, Priestess of Ishtar, Klaneth, Priest of Nergal, Gigi, Sigurd, and all the others on the Ship, aren't really there -- and neither is the Ship.

In the full text, as published in the magazine version, the reader was carefully informed that wealthy young John Kenton had passed up the excavation in Mesopotamia he had funded in order to join up in 1917, and had returned from the war a victim of "shell shock" -- close enough to post-traumatic stress disorder to make little difference.

In this context, Kenton's initial reaction to his unexpected experiences, shifting from passive acceptance to violent action, and back, made perfectly good sense, and allowed the skeptical reader to wonder if Kenton really was finally cracking up completely, as he himself suspects, until persuaded otherwise.

In the 1926 book version from Putnam, the text used by Avon in numerous reprintings, and by far the most widely-read version, the opening paragraphs were truncated, and Kenton's behavior can become rather a puzzle, as does the attitude of his servants back in New York to "the Master's" odd behavior. There are several discussions of the book, some available on-line, which stumble over just this incomprehension. (The reverse situation befell "Face in the Abyss," in which the magazine tampered with the ending.)

The full text of "Ishtar" (and the difference in wordage is not large) was restored after Merritt's death, in the undated "Memorial Edition" from Borden (1948, 1949, and 1951 are all given). It was beautifully illustrated by Virgil Finlay, one of the best of the many artists inspired by Merritt. This was reprinted in hardcover in 1990, and reproduced in the Collier Nucleus Fantasy & Science Fiction series paperback edition in 1991, apparently after the Avon option had finally lapsed.

However, the Avon edition is perfectly satisfactory on most counts; and, with a couple of decades of reprintings, usually the easiest to find. It had various covers over the years; the 1960s-era Douglas Rosa portrayal of Kenton and Sharane, with a glimpse of one of the supernatural battles fought in and around the Ship, is particularly lovely.

(Note: although presently unavailable new in English, "The Ship of Ishtar" has been translated into, among other languages, French and German, and these versions seem to be in print. -- see Amazon.fr and Amazon.de. The French editions appear as "La nef d'Ishtar," a literal translation. The German translation for some reason is called "Insel der Zauberer." Although Chapter Twenty-One is indeed entitled "The Isle of Sorcerers" [plural], this is a curious choice for the book title, and changes the focus away from the Goddess, and the Ship and its destiny, for no clear reason. To add to the confusion, the very attractive cover art of "Insel" suggests that someone either doesn't know the difference between Babylonia and Egypt, or Isis and Ishtar, or just doesn't care.)

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THE SHIP OF ISHTAR
A. Merritt
Manufacturer: Avon Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000WB0RAK

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The Ship of Ishtar
A. Merritt
Manufacturer: Tom Stacey
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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The Ship of Ishtar
A. Merritt
Manufacturer: NY G. P. Putnam's Sons 1926.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000HFFO3Q

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Ship of Ishtar
A Merritt
Manufacturer: AVON NOVELS INC
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000TXLIWC

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The Ship of Ishtar
A. Merritt
Manufacturer: Avon Book Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000GOLP90

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Ship of Ishtar
A Merritt
Manufacturer: AVON BOOKS
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000TMHMF0

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Ship of Ishtar
A Merritt
Manufacturer: AVON BOOKS
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
ASIN: B000Q0U8VA

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Worth every minute

social scientific conclusions about American teenage religiosity

Really important stuff, especially "moralistic therapeutic deism"

soul searching...

National Survey of the Spiritual Lives of Teens

Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers
Christian Smith , and Melinda Lundquist Denton
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Sociology | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
Children's Studies | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
General | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 019518095X

Book Description

In most discussions and analyses of American teenage life, one major topic is curiously overlooked--religion. Yet most American teens say that religious faith is important in their lives. What is going on in the religious and spiritual lives of American teenagers? What do they actually believe? What religious practices do they engage in? Do they expect to remain loyal to the faith of their parents? Or are they abandoning traditional religious institutions in search of a new, more "authentic" spirituality? Answering these and many other questions, Soul Searching tells the definitive story of the religious and spiritual lives of contemporary American teenagers.

Customer Reviews:

Worth every minute.......2007-07-18

Although this book can be somewhat slow at times (it's a book of analyzing statistics, what else would one expect?), it is a great glimpse into the minds of U.S. teenagers. Anyone who works with youth should read this book.

social scientific conclusions about American teenage religiosity.......2007-01-18

First the good news. In their ground-breaking National Study of Youth and Religion funded by the Lilly Endowment, the results of which are published in their new book Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (Oxford University Press, 2005), Christian Smith (the Stuart Chapin Distinguished Professor of Sociology at UNC and a committed Christian) and Melinda Lundquist Denton of the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill) document that teenagers overwhelmingly admire their parents as the single greatest influence in their lives, and gladly imitate their religious beliefs. Further, their study showed that teenagers actually like church. The conventional wisdom of teenage alienation from parents and hostility toward religion is an entrenched but erroneous stereotype, they argue.

Now for the bad news. When Smith and Denton asked these teenagers to describe the particulars of their religious faith, they were "incredibly inarticulate" about even the most basic tenets of their beliefs and practices. Rather, the vast majority of kids were abysmally ignorant of the religion they espoused. Here, for example, is the response of a 15-year-old who attends church four or five times a week, when asked to articulate her faith:

"[Pause] I don't really know how to answer that. ['Are there any beliefs at all that are important to you? Really generally.'] [Pause] I don't know. ['Take your time if you want.'] I think that you should just, if you're gonna do something wrong then you should always ask for forgiveness and he's gonna forgive you no matter what, cause he gave up his only Son to take all the sins for you, so..."

This from their scientific survey of 3,290 teenagers (ages 13-17) and parents, and 267 personal interviews, conducted across four years (2001-2005). Smith and Denton conclude that most "Christian" kids really operate with a vague sort of Moral Therapeutic Deism: be nice, don't do bad, for a remote deity wants you to be happy and feel good about yourself. In other words, says Smith, "we can say here that we have come with some confidence to believe that a significant part of 'Christianity' in the U.S. is actually only tenuously Christian in any sense that is seriously connected to the actual historical Christian tradition." If these kids reflect the biblical illiteracy of their parents, which I suspect is the case, and if we add to this portrait the depressing conclusions about Christian lifestyles in Ron Sider's The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience (2005), then American born-again believers have a long, long way to go in fidelity to the apostolic way of life.

If you cannot read Soul Searching, there are two brief reviews that I enjoyed. See Andy Crouch, "Compliant But Confused," in Christianity Today, April 2005, p. 98; and Michael Cromartie's interview with Christian Smith, "What American Teenagers Believe," in Books and Culture, January-February 2005, pp. 10-11.

Really important stuff, especially "moralistic therapeutic deism".......2006-08-12

A sociological analysis of conducted between 2001 and 2005 at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill under the title, "National Study of Youth and Religion."

According to the research of Smith and Denton, the vast majority of U.S. teenagers identify themselves as Christian, have beliefs that are similar to those of their parents, believe in God, and have a positive general attitude about religion. About half say that faith is important in their lives, and four out of ten say they attend religious services weekly or more often. Most of them have never heard the phrase "spiritual but not religious" or have any idea what that means. "The vast majority of the teenagers we interviewed, of whatever religion, said very plainly that they simply believe what they were raised to believe; they are merely following in their family's footsteps and that is perfectly fine with them" (page 120).

But wait -- there's a problem. What is it that these teenagers have been raised to believe? "Our impression as interviewers was that many teenagers could not articulate matters of faith because they have not been effectively educated in and provided opportunities to practice talking about their faith. Indeed, it was our distinct sense that for many of the teens we interviewed, our interview was the first time that any adult had ever asked them what they believed and how it mattered in their life" (page 133). Yikes! Smith and Denton argue that "we suggest that the de facto dominant religion among contemporary U.S. teenagers is what we might well call 'Moralistic Therapeutic Deism'" -- a simple belief in a god (who is not very personal), with an emphasis on moral values and feeling good about oneself. Smith and Denton argue that this "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism" is "simply colonizing many established religious traditions and congregations in the United States." (Moralistic therapeutic deism is discussed in detail on pages 162-170.)

Their analysis of moralistic therepeutic deism concludes: "We have come with some confidence to believe that a significant part of Christianity in the United States is actually only tenuously Christian in any sense that is seriously connected to the actual historical Christian tradition, but has rather substantially morphed into Christianity's misbegotten stepcousin, Christian Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. This has happened in the minds and hearts of many individual believers and, it also appears, within the structures of at least some Christian organizations and institutions. The language, and therefore experience, of Trinity, holiness, sin, grace, justification, sanctification, church, Eucharist, and heaven and hell appear, among most Christian teenagers in the United States at the very least, to be supplanted by the language of happiness, niceness, and an earned heavenly reward. It is not so much that U.S. Christianity is being secularized. Rather more subtly, Christianity is either degenerating into a pathetic version of itself or, more significantly, Christianity is actively being colonized and displaced by a quite different religious faith" (page 171).

Wake up, church planters and church builders! I think we've just heard the voice of a prophet speaking.

soul searching..........2006-03-22

excellent content.

rather hard to read due to the font size.

National Survey of the Spiritual Lives of Teens.......2006-03-14

Chris Smith did a marvelous analysis of the religious and spiritual life of teens in the United States. I am using this comprehensive research to assist us as we plan for the teens in our parish. The analysis is "user friendly" and certainly touches on a very important part of the lives of our teens.

The spiritual life of teens in America study finds that the Catholic church does a poor job of attending to its youth.(SOUL SEARCHING: THE RELIGIOUS AND ... An article from: National Catholic Reporter

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The spiritual life of teens in America study finds that the Catholic church does a poor job of attending to its youth.(SOUL SEARCHING: THE RELIGIOUS AND ... An article from: National Catholic Reporter
Andrew Greeley
Manufacturer: Thomson Gale
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

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This digital document is an article from National Catholic Reporter, published by Thomson Gale on December 16, 2005. The length of the article is 1413 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: The spiritual life of teens in America study finds that the Catholic church does a poor job of attending to its youth.(SOUL SEARCHING: THE RELIGIOUS AND SPIRITUAL LIVES OF AMERICAN TEENAGERS)(Book Review)
Author: Andrew Greeley
Publication: National Catholic Reporter (Magazine/Journal)
Date: December 16, 2005
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 42 Issue: 8 Page: 16(1)

Article Type: Book Review

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