Ah, the good old days when slender tomes staggered beneath the weight of their titles! This was Melville's one-hit wonder while he was alive, easily his biggest seller and much more embraced by the public than his subsequent whale of a tale. Though Moby Dick easily outstrips this beginning work in drama, action, range, humor, technique, and one-legged psychopaths, Typee is a good first book, sort of an autobiotravelnovelogue.
It's definitely a little strange: is it fictionalized autobiography, or autobiographical fiction? In brief: two sailors abandon their whaling vessel and wind up living among the people of the Typee (now spelled Tai Pi) valley in the South Pacific island of Nuku Hiva. This, of course, is something Melville actually did as a young man, and his fellow adventurer corroborated the story after it was published. It's tough to tell how much is fiction, or how much is post-adventure research folded in to the story. It's interesting enough, however hybridized it might be.
From the time the pair escape, up through their first few days in custody of the Typee natives, things are actually pretty exciting. They cross rough terrain and risk their necks climbing up and down island cliffs; they face hunger, injury, and illness; they are caught by potentially hostile cannibals and brought into the village for a very tense reception. These are all great scenes. Unfortunately, once accepted into the bosom of the native people, not much else happens. Melville paints a Rousseau-like paradise of half naked, carefree people, not slaves to work or class, not bound by Western strictures or religions, blessedly free of "civilization." Of course, he does no editorializing at all, simply unbiased observation...
There are some worthwhile episodes of life in the valley, and there is the inevitable island romance. I do think there are some genuine insights into another culture buried in the editorializing, but I almost think (to do some editorializing of my own), instead of a people still in the innocence of childhood, the Typeans are seen in the twilight of their civilization, and not just because of the Western invaders. The birth rate is low, the people are mostly secular, and the primary occupation is entertainment. Past knowledge has been lost, and previous generations accomplished things beyond the pale of the current inhabitants. Every once in awhile they stir up a fight with the neighboring valley, but then they partake of a sophisticated, not a primitive, evil -- they heap contempt on their enemies by eating the slain.
Of course, the whole cannibalism thing ultimately convinces Melville/the narrator to leave at the first available opportunity, and we get some more action at the end. On the whole, it's not a bad read. Melville would go on to better things.
Arbitrary rating: 3.5 out of 5 breadfruit trees
