Yet as the story crescendos near the end, it achieves a striking and memorable beauty.Įven so, I would rank “Bartleby” as the highlight of this collection. Even so, I think even the most generous critic would call it uneven, awkward at times, and often infelicitously written. Given that it was left unfinished-and that Melville did not try to publish it-I think it would be uncharitable to judge it too harshly. Written during the final years of his life, and published only decades after his death, the manuscript of Billy Budd was, apparently, disorganized and difficult to read. The title piece of this collection has proven to be a challenge to editors. At least, that was my consistent impression as I made my way through these stories. But when he set his sights a little lower, and his ambition is cooled, his defects as a writer come more fully into view. It is like an enormous spark, cast off by Melville’s throwing every bit of his intellectual weight against the rock of immortality. I add this little sketch of Moby Dick because I wanted to explain why that particular book is so special to me-and, by common consent, so much better than anything else Melville wrote. No other book better dramatizes the paradoxical fight to overcome one’s own nature. And yet, the book holds together, in part because Melville’s doomed stabs at greatness reveal him to be another Ahab, chasing the impossible. But like some over-educated Icarus, his soaring flights of gorgeous prose are always followed by plunges into tedious pedantry. One can feel, on every page, Melville straining to write something Miltonic, Shakespearean, even Biblical in its reach and power. It is somehow both brilliant and overly-ambitious. The paradise of bachelors and the tartarus of maids -įor me, Moby Dick is compelling for its flaws as much as its genius. In his introduction Frederick Busch discusses Melville's preoccupation with his 'correspondence with the world,' his quarrel with silence, and why fiction was, for Melville,'a matter of life and death.' The other selections here-'Bartleby,' 'The Encantadas,' 'Benito Cereno,' and 'The Piazza'-also illuminate, in varying guises, the way fictions are created and shared with a wider society.

'Billy Budd, Sailor,' a classic confrontation between good and evil, is the story of an innocent young man unable to defend himself against a wrongful accusation. His sense of isolation lies at the heart of these later works. Stung by the critical reception and lack of commercial success of his previous two works, Moby-Dick and Pierre, Herman Melville became obsessed with the difficulties of communicating his vision to readers. Tales of compelling power by one of America's greatest writers

Herman melville billy budd sailor