Okay, some of you may have heard of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick; or, The Whale. It’s quite a famous book that was first published in 1851. Famously, the book didn’t sell well. But is now a total classic, like.

Oh yeah, it’s also a famous drum solo by John Bonham.

But that’s a different matter for a different day, for now we wish to introduce our direct sequel to Melville’s classic. It’s called Moby-Duck; or, The Mallard. Yes, we went there (yes, we really are idiots).

Moby-Duck; or, The Mallard is the Next Great Literary Classic

Moby-Duck is told from the perspective of a duck. The flapping beast, through a series of unfortunate happenstances, is always in the region where Moby-Dick turns up to wreak havoc on Captain Ahab and his crew.

This annoys the duck to a considerable extent.

But when Moby-Dick; or, The Whale was published in 1851 the duck decided to release a memoir about the whole experience. This wasn’t for any other reason than as a mindless cash grab, although the duck’s publisher claimed it was intended to, “Set the record straight!”

Moby-Dick is some 427 pages long. Moby-Duck is 100 pages long and largely consists of barely intelligible English.

Although the duck did try to learn English before writing the book, the bird decided  this wouldn’t be 100% necessary. However, this did lead human readers to be confused by much of the book’s prose.

Chapter one, for example, is titled Quack.

However, all subsequent 135 chapters are also called Quack. And 99.7% of the prose reads as follows:

“Quack. Quack quack quack quack, QUACK!”

On page 77, the duck finally had a go at writing in intelligible English. It came out thus, in a line now celebrated alongside the likes of Shakespeare’s Exit, pursued by a bear:

“Duck, pursued by a whale, eat plenty good bread from human.”

Famously, Moby-Dick opens with:

“Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world.”

Despite being vastly superior as a book, as aforementioned Moby-Dick was something of a critical and commercial failure.

Ironically, Moby-Duck was a rousing success.

Contemporary critics hailed the book as a “work of art”, believing it to be a staggering breakthrough for narrative prose. The book was so convincing, some critics refused to believe a duck had written the entire book.

The first edition sold three million copies.

Allegedly, Herman Melville was so outraged by this state of affairs he refused to ever go to his local park to feed the ducks ever again.

The Abridged Version of Moby-Duck

Due to Moby-Duck’s great length, you can now buy an abridged version of the work. Its length is reduced to one word, which reads simply as:

“QUACK”

This is printed on a piece of paper and can be purchased from any good book stores at prices starting from £35.

Moby-Duck remains an enduring literary classic read by millions of people across the globe every year (including ducks). There are also claims the NES game Duck Hunt was inspired by the book.

However, in recent years a group of chickens set out to besmirch the name of the duck writer, claiming the book was fabricated and actually the work of a chicken.

This caused consternation and flapping in the global duck community, although Moby-Duck was proven to be written by a duck in 1977 after bread crumbs, a feather, and duck poo were found all over the original manuscript.

Put that into your quack and smoke it, chickens!