>But what about the +rest+ of Melville (for those too short of space and time
>to harpoon the whale?) -- "Benidetto Cereno" [sp?], _Billy Budd_,
>"Bartletby" ...
>
That's "Benito Cereno." The whole of his short story collection (most of
them are really novellas), "The Piazza Tales," which includes it, "Bartleby
the Scrivener," and "The Encantadas," is great. Typee and Omoo are fun, but
I don't think we'd read them if they weren't by Melville. With "White
Jacket" and "Redburn" they're fairly straightforward narratives. "Redburn"
is to my thinking the best of the lot--there's a great portrait of
Liverpool circa 1840. I've never managed to get more than 2/3 of the way
thru "Mardi" or "Pierre," and considerably less of "Clarel." A few of the
shorter poems (I'm thinking of "After the Pleasure Party") are very good.
"The Confidence Man" and "Israel Potter" are first-rate, but not on a level
with Moby Dick or the stories, or with "Billy Budd," which I didn't really
get until I'd passed 40. It's now one of my favorite books. And something
of an act of sanctity--he wrote it in the last years of his life, after not
publishing any prose in 20 years, and put it away, having made no attempt
to publish. It didn't see the light until he'd been dead 27 years. Written
because he had to. Real, hard-won wisdom, and total, quiet mastery.
What's astonishing is that no two of them, not even the short stories in
The Piazza Tales or the 7 or 8 others he wrote, or his review of
Hawthorne's stories, or his journal of his trip to the Holy Land, are
alike. Melville was always inventing himself.
Mark
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