This book made me want to take the first boat to the valley of the Typee. Unfortunately, in Melville's attempt to romanticize the people, he made things seem much better than they really were (as noted by more recent anthropologists). However, this is an entertaining collision of cultures very well written in Melville's unique style. It is well worth the read.

The question is whether the book is fact or fiction. Melville, during his life and in this book, stood by the veracity of the story. However, we do know a few facts about his actual adventure: One, we know that he only stayed with the Typee about three weeks (not three or four months as he says in the book). Two, he pulled some of the book's observations and incidents from other books. So do you categorize it as fiction or nonfiction?

This is an important question because Melville is using the Typee culture to comment on the cruelties and absurdities of Western/European culture. That's fair enough, but the argument is diminished if you are embellishing the Typee culture to make it appear utopian, which it was/is not. Human nature is not different there. There's no Typee magic to make people act differently. (It should be noted that Swift lampooned Western culture very effectively by comparing it to fictional cultures in Gulliver's Travels.)