Preface to Abridging Moby Dick

I was introduced to the 1956 movie, Moby Dick, as a young kid. I vaguely remember watching it with my father, which added to its gravitas, but it’s a bold, memorable, riveting story and cast of characters that assuredly would have stuck with me anyways. My father gave me the book, the British version as it turns out (see below), for Christmas 1969, with his inscription, which mentioned notable characters from the book that I would likely run across in life, but not Ishmael, perhaps because he saw himself in Ishmael, as do I – I don’t think I would feel entirely at ease with anyone who didn’t recognize some substantial amount of Ismael in themself. I recall reading the book soon after that gift from Dad, and then again in college. I still have it – I am looking at it now. Since then I have learned from and enjoyed the Frank Mueller reading of Moby Dick on Audible, over and over and over again, for more than a decade, on runs and walks.

The abridgment started because I decided that as a recently retired man of leisure I wanted to read the novel again – I relate to and admire Melville’s identifying meaning and connection in even the smallest details of processes, people, other beasts, designs, and objects, and it seems a better use of time than political talk shows. And if I was to read it again, abridging it seemed like a good way to actively engage with it at this late date. Plus, I like editing, and am competent at it, and that’s what this abridgment is in large part – editing under constraints. The abridgement is, I hope, in the tradition, though not necessarily the format, of Reader’s Digest condensed books, which my mother always had in our house.

The abridgement of the original American version, copied from the Melville Electronic Library (MEL), is essentially done at the time of this writing. As I review and refine it again, I expect to post an abridged chapter each day, if not more than one. This abridgement is a roughly 50% reduction of the original, as measured by bytes (roughly characters, in Word). 50% seems like a substantial abridgment, but gave me wriggle room so that I was not forced into removing important themes or beloved narrative.

I will also post the original text for each chapter, showing ~~crossed out text~~. The abridgement was created by deleting text only, which shortens the narrative, while maintaining syntactic validity and the sequential appearance of those words that remain. Ideally, much of the style and vocabulary of the original’s author is retained, as is most of the intended meaning of the original narrative. I added no new text to the original, including no new words. This implies that any connective words or phrases so as to yield syntactic correctness be pieced together from selected bits of otherwise deleted text. I change punctuation, interchanging ‘;’, ‘.’, ‘,’ ‘—’, ‘!’, etc., in the interest of syntax, or replace ‘!’ with ‘.’ on rare occasions to alter tone, but never from ‘.’ to ‘!’. Melville uses ‘!’ a lot. I change the case of words from lower-case to upper, perhaps vice versa, as necessary.

The MEL annotator’s informative comments are not present in this abridgement, but can be found on the MEL site. I abridged the American edition, instead of the British edition, since some text was redacted by the British editor because, in that editor’s mind, the text hinted at blasphemy or homosexuality. Chapter 25 Postscript was also removed in the British edition. Also, every chapter is abridged, none is (completely) removed, in part to be true to Melville’s encyclopedic approach. Melville was at heart an educator.

In addition to the abridged and original text, I include abridger notes on my chapter-specific abridgement thoughts, decisions, and commentaries, and those comments of others, as appropriate.

The abridgment retains passages that I’m fond of, that I grew up with, that knocked my socks off, and I sought to retain themes introduced by Melville, though with many theme-specific redundancies deleted. Moby Dick is full of metaphor, worldly observations, and minute details – an interesting and fun combination, but sometimes Melville explains, elaborates, and hammers a point home to an extent that seems like overkill to me, where my bias was abridgement in the direction of understatement, and of placing a comfortable, inferential burden on the reader. But that Melville thought all of what he wrote is part of what draws me to Moby Dick and to Ishmael.

I’m sure I will continue to tinker with this project over the years, to include relaxing my abridgment constraints.

Here are some final comments that may be of interest.

Originally, “prefaces” to the novel were included, entitled “Etymology” (word history of ‘whale’), and “Extracts” (quotes about whales and whaling). In the British edition these were placed at the end of the book. I don’t abridge these, but replace them outright by recent etymology (from Wiktionary) and quotes (since 1852), taken for example from Merriam Webster and search with ChatGPT 4o, including from Star Trek IV the Voyage Home. See MEL for the original entries of Etymology and Extracts.

This abridgement was done without AI, though I had tried AI out of curiosity and as research for another writing project with a colleague, on AI for academic libraries, before starting my own abridgment – I researched, taught, and administered AI as my profession. Results with AI at abridging were disappointing, and arbitrary, sometimes rendering Cliffs Notes instead of Readers Digest, and of course not reflecting my biases and constraints. But those experiments will continue, perhaps using my abridgment as training data. There is nothing wrong with Cliff Notes, BTW, its just not an abridgment.

I, however, talk to AI, notably ChatGPT 4o about Moby Dick – interpretations, symbols, history, and the like. I talk to AI about the theory of formal languages, automata, and computation too – who else would spend an hour talking to me about these subjects? Some discussions with AI are sampled in the abridger notes.

There are other abridgments available, but I have deliberately not read them, but will review them when my own abridgment is completed. I want to investigate my own process of abridgment first, though I suspect that the process I use will include elements behind other abridgments too. While I have read some commentary on Moby Dick, which I cite, the level of scholarship will generally increase when this abridgment is done, and comparisons are made with other efforts, to better inform what I may want to do with AI. AI seems great at expressing Moby Dick narrative into more recent English, for example. If AI hasn't been used for that yet, I'm sure it will be very soon.

I will also likely post public domain images, by chapter, or links to images as well – there are some good ones out there.

Image 1 Book Cover.

Image 2 Book Cover.

Book Covers Ranked.

Cover of gift from my father.