Talk:Typee

Feedback
For anyone, anyone who happens to be as interested in Typee as I am, I'd love to know what people think of my revision of this page, previously a stub. There's more to come...
 * Looking good. Please consider opening an account.  Also, please consider signing your comments on the talk page, by simply typing ~ at the end.  Then your comments will be signed (with your own acct name, obviously), like this: Tomer TALK  03:38, July 25, 2005 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure if you're responsible, but there is a hell of a lot of original research and unreferenced material in the article - for example, the bit about it being the most intelligent written material about 19th Century European-Polynesian contact, which is just hogwash. See, for example, Augustus Earle's A Narrative of Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand (1827). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 180.75.116.238 (talk) 05:53, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Versions
Since there are at least two versions (original-complete and censored), the references to online versions should be labelled/organized. And ideally there should be an online set of the differences -- the censored passages would certainly be educational about the times.69.87.200.44 01:26, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

The Melvilles
Someone should add material about the Melvilles, as described by Hermester Barrington (Malibu Lake, California) in his October 24, 2000 Amazon review of this book.69.87.200.44 01:26, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

accurate description?
Need much more online detailed discussion etc of the accuracy of all the details in the book Typee -- the language of the natives, behavior, etc.69.87.200.44 01:26, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

In line citations
In line citations are needed; the analysis is useless and can be considered WP:OR without it. My guess is the original editor that added most of it (an anonymous account) is long gone. --Midnightdreary 22:03, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree. The Analysis section is completely unsourced, and yet contains a rather lengthy blockquote that presumably came from somewhere.   -- Oswald Glinkmeyer (talk) 12:25, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

"Novel," "Memoir," "Travel Book," "Romance" or just "Book"?
I appreciate MackyBeth's attention and intelligent work on this and other pages, but I wonder if it wouldn't be better to avoid a discussion of Typee (and Omoo)'s genre. "Book" is perfectly neutral, but "novel" -- as I recall from a search a few years ago and could be wrong -- is not used in the Northwestern-Newbury "Historical Note." I agree that it should be listed in the WikiProject Novel, however, since it historically led to HM's later novels. ch (talk) 21:13, 4 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the compliment, and for your contribution to the new Sealts article. You are right about avoiding that discussion, to me it was so self-evident that the book is a novel that I didn't even give it a thought when I was trying to give the opening lines of the articles on Melville's individual works something of a standardized appearance. The NN "Historical Note" you are referring to is almost half a century old and better insights into the nature of Typee may have emerged since. I have here at hand John Bryant (ed.), A Companion to Melville Studies (Greenwood Press, 1986), where Bette S. Weidman writes on Typee: "To the vexed question of whether his first two books, Typee and Omoo, are novels or autobiographies or varieties of travel literature, let it be said at once that Melville is best defined as a writer: one who writes in order to explore what he knows" (p. 85). So this raises the issue rather than settle it. Unfortunately, I do not yet own Vol I of Hershel Parker's Melville biography from 1996, but the best place to start might be John Bryant's Penguin edition of Typee, which also explores the manuscript leaves that were discovered in 1983, which discovery in itself renders the NN Historical Note obsolete, but perhaps not its discussion of the genre.MackyBeth (talk) 14:44, 5 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Good -- I don't have your useful erudition on this point, but I think we agree that "book" is the appropriate neutral way to avoid this "vexed question" (not the only one regarding HM's oevre!). ch (talk) 19:38, 5 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Yep--agreed, let's not go into this minor issue further when there is still so much major knowledge lacking on these Wikipedia Melville pages.MackyBeth (talk) 21:12, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

External links removed
The External Links section has a whole list of online versions, some of which have no added value. I kept the Project Gutenberg version, and also the link to the photographs of the first edition of 1846. Only one of the two audio versions remained.MackyBeth (talk) 08:13, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Charles S. Stewart
Section Background: One of the books Melville used is by Charles S. Stewart. I'm not sure if this was Charles Stewart (American Navy officer). His biography indicates he could be the author of the book, but unfortunately I cannot find that he wrote any book. Maybe someone knows whether this is the author, so that his name may be wikilinked. MackyBeth (talk) 18:46, 23 April 2024 (UTC)