1

http://www.openculture.com/2012/09/the_moby_dick_big_read_celebrities_and_everyday_folk_read_a_chapter_a_day_from_the_great_american_novel.html

2

I couldn't listen to more than a couple of minutes of Tilda Swinton's accent before clicking on the "back" arrow of my computer. Sorry, but a British accent just sounds wrong for Ishmael.

3

Because?

It's interesting that you seem to assume Ishmael is a native New Englander, and therefore would speak with a New England accent (and would a New England accent of the mid-19th century even sound like a contemporary NE accent?) but Melville makes no such stipulation--not that I remember, at any rate. Nantucket at the height of the whale boom would have attracted sailors from around the world.

I won't be listening to the whole thing for other reasons, though: a) because I've already done Moby Dick as an unabridged audio book during one cross-country road trip; b) because I think I'd find the change of narrators after every chapter distracting. However, I think Swinton did a nice job with Chapter 1.

4

You get all that from my comment that the accent sounded wrong? You've read too much into it.

5

I think the presumption that you thought he should have a local American accent is an entirely reasonable one if you think a British one sounds "wrong."

But enlighten me, then: What sort of accent should Ishmael have to sound "right" to your ears? A *non*-New England American one? How would that be more logical?

6

On reflection, I guess it's just Tilda Swinton's accent that seemed wrong. I wouldn't have given a second thought to the accent if that portion of the book had been read by Alistair Cooke or, for a female voice, Judi Dench or Maggie Smith.

7

Ah. Well, then it's just a matter of taste, and de gustibus non est disputandum.

(I do, of course, think some first-person-narrated American classics would be ridiculous with a British-accented narrator. One can't imagine Huck Finn or Holden Caulfield, say, with a British accent. But I think Moby Dick, with its highly formal language and biblical cadences, lends itself well to a wide variety of accents.)