Anyone who loves Moby Dick and is looking for another Melvillean challenge, buy a copy of "Mardi and a Voyage Thither". Alas! many marvels await thee whosoever has the time and fortitude to muse through this early Melville Masterpiece! Reading this novel is like watching Melville's genius grow, while you voyage through his mystical, metaphysical world. The following are some excerpts of what to expect on this joyous journey:

"We are off! The courses and topsails are set: the coral-hung anchor swings from the bow; and together, the three royals are given to the breeze, that follows us out to sea like the baying of a hound. Out spreads the canvas -- alow, aloft -- boom-stretched, on both sides, with many a stun' sail; till like a hawk, with pinions poised, we shadow the sea with our sails, and reelingly cleave the brine."

"But how fleeting our joys. Storms follow bright dawnings. -Long memories of short-lived scenes, sad thoughts of joyous hours -how common are ye to all mankind. When happy, do we pause and say - "Lo, thy felicity, my soul?" No: happiness seldom seems happiness, except when looked back upon from woes. A flowery landscape, you must come out of, to behold."

"For there is more likelihood of being overrated while living, than of being underrated when dead. And to insure your fame, you must die."

"My cheek blanches white while I write; I start at the scratch of my pen; my own mad brood of eagles devours me; fain would I unsay this audacity; but an iron-mailed hand clenches mine in a vice, and prints down every letter in my spite. Fain would I hurl off this Dionysius that rides me; my thoughts crush me down till I groan; in far fields I hear the song of the reaper, while I slave and faint in this cell. The fever runs through me like lava; my hot brain burns like a coal; and like many a monarch, I am less to be envied, than the veriest hind in the land."

"Of the highest order of genius, it may be truly asserted, that to gain the reputation of superior power, it must partially disguise itself; it must come down, and then it will be applauded for soaring...that there are those who falter in the common tongue, because they think in another; and these are accounted stutterers and stammerers."

"The catalogue of true thoughts is but small; they are ubiquitous; no man's property; and unspoken, or bruited, are the same. When we hear them, why seem they so natural, receiving our spontaneous approval? why do we think we have heard them before? Because they but reiterate ourselves; they were in us, before we were born. The truest poets are but mouth-pieces; and some men duplicates of each other;"

"Faith is to the thoughtless, doubts to the thinker."

"Some joys have thousand lives; can never die; for when they droop, sweet memories bind them up."

"Now, I am my own soul's emperor; and my first act is abdication! Hail! realm of shades!" -- and turning my prow into the racing tide, which seized me like a hand omnipotent, I darted through. Churned in foam, the outer ocean lashed the clouds; and straight in my white wake, headlong dashed a shallop, three fixed specters leaning o'er its prow: three arrows poising. And thus, pursuers and pursued flew on, over an endless sea."

Mardi, the forgotten child ,is yet entirely singular and needs to be read by those who have fallen under the spell of Melville. An encyclopaedic romp through an almost fantastical landscape of isles and warriors; Melville attempts to pull off one the most extraordinary acts of metaphysical fiction ever. He doesn't quite rein it all in but the experience of reading Mardi is utterly disorientating in the best way. Coming after Typee and before Moby Dick, it is somewhat of a nutty middle ground. The anthropological concerns of Typee are stretched to the limit. Like the stars in the sky, Mardi is vast; (the word is Polynesian for the world)--and as full of wonder.