« […] The prize goes to Melville, with his story Taipi, which played a decisive role in the literary and vagabond vocation of the young Jack London and in the collective memory of Westerners.
Melville tells the story of his desertion - with his teammate Toby - from a whaling ship calling at Nuku Hiva and his escapade into the unexplored valley of Taipi to take refuge with the eponymous tribe of fearsome reputation - who had nicknamed him Tommo.
He rehabilitates there, in his own way, a marvellous Marquisian "good savage" opportunely accused of cruel anthropophagy by abominable French colonists in order to better despoil him. Nothing else here a priori than the faithful transcription of a historical reality, but expressed sometimes with such flights of fancy that one can legitimately wonder if this story is not full of literary tricks, in the pure lineage of orientalist fables likely to seduce an audience in search of exoticism. »