If Moby-Dick has been on your reading bucket list for years, the time has come to cross it off. Plymouth University in England has just completed its three-year project to convert Moby-Dick into an audiobook and podcast. And the question is, why did it take a British University to decide the world needed to hear one of – if not THE – greatest American novels of all time?
Herman Melville, the author of Moby-Dick and other anti-Transcendentalist tales, is a stalwart of American literature. A great pal of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Melville defined not only what it meant to be an American, but also what it meant to write like an American
The fact, then, that his greatest literary accomplishment is being narrated by non-American voices, thanks to a British institution, seems to place him in the wrong canon.
In its “about” section on The Big Read, as it is being called, Plymouth University equates Moby-Dick with the likes of Frankenstein, Wuthering Heights, and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner – all British works. It makes no mention, though, of its relation to and place in American literature, where it belongs. It is as if Britain is usurping it for themselves; that all great and influential works must be British, or fit into the British canon, or the British mold. Whereas, in fact, Melville was coming from a line of authors trying to disprove just that.
Unfortunately, contemporary Americans feed into this Anglophile frenzy. The podcast is fun to listen to and makes Moby-Dick more accessible precisely because of its British narration. British accents make it sound like a story, or, better yet, like a movie. In their recent article on the project, Open Culture attracted listeners with a title boasting readers such as Benedict Cumberbatch and Tilda Swinton. Indeed, many famous celebrity voices are among the narration, including British Prime Minister David Cameron. But is there a Barack Obama? A George Clooney? No. The few Americans involved in narrating are those in the writing profession, most notably poet Mary Oliver in the Epilogue.
Is American culture so removed from Moby-Dick that the only Americans who can see its value are authors and writers? Plymouth, in the very second line of its “about” section, implies this with a not-so-subtle dig about the book being “the great unread American novel.” Though Moby-Dick is a household reference, its size and content has often alienated readers. I can vouch for this personally, having myself never read Moby-Dick previously because I was told by an English teacher once: “Don’t read Moby-Dick until you’re ready to read Moby-Dick.” For years I have tortured myself trying to determine if I am ready, never picking up the book for fear I would have to put it down, and somehow fail. As much as The Big Read may want to place the novel with the likes of Shelley, Bronte, and Coleridge, they are nowhere near it in size and scope. Has America, then, bred a culture of literary fear? And if so, what exactly are we afraid of?
Our British cultural obsession has led us to pleasantly accept Brits dramatizing American culture. We see this often in film, from Daniel Day-Lewis’s award-winning portrayal of Abraham Lincoln to Tom Hiddleston’s portrayal of Hank Williams in the newly released I Saw the Light. Americans still see the British as the cultural authority, so they see Brits playing “great” roles and reading “great” books as natural and right.
But American culture is great, and it has produced great things; we should be proud of our uniquely American literary tradition and embrace it as avidly as the world embraces American popular culture. We shouldn’t shrug when the British present Moby-Dick as if it is part of the British canon. We should politely remind them that it is ours. While the novel may sound really awesome in the voice of Benedict Cumberbatch, perhaps Americans need to hear it in the voice that Melville had in his own head when he wrote it: an American voice.
Moby-Dick is the great American novel; it needs to be read, or heard, but not at the expense of forgetting it is American. Americans need to take ownership of their literary history, and face whatever it is trying to tell them. Like Ishmael, we need to go to the sea to feel alive again.
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