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Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne met in 1850 and enjoyed for sixteen months an intense but brief friendship. Taking advantage of new interpretive tools such as queer theory, globalist studies, political and social ideology, marketplace analysis, psychoanalytical and philosophical applications to literature, masculinist theory, and critical studies of race, the twelve essays in this book focus on a number of provocative personal, professional, and literary ambiguities existing between the two writers.

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A handsome young sailor is unjustly accused of plotting mutiny in this timeless tale of the sea.

This Enriched Classic Edition includes:

A concise introduction that gives readers important background information

A chronology of the author's life and work

A timeline of significant events that provides the book's historical context

An outline of key themes and plot points to help readers form their own interpretations

Detailed explanatory notes

Critical analysis, including contemporary and modern perspectives on the work

Discussion questions to promote lively classroom and book group interaction

A list of recommended related books and films to broaden the reader's experience

Enriched Classics offer readers affordable editions of great works of literature enhanced by helpful notes and insightful commentary. The scholarship provided in Enriched Classics enables readers to appreciate, understand, and enjoy the world's finest books to their full potential. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Ambiguous Greatness
Billy Budd, Herman Melville's last fictional work, is not as outwardly ambitious as his lengthier pieces but has earned a special - and indeed high - place in his canon. It is short with very short chapters and can easily be read in one setting - certainly a less arduous undertaking than, say, Moby-Dick, especially as the prose is relatively simple, at least for Melville, and the actual story is told straight-forwardly. However, as nearly always with Melville, there is far more going on than we may first think. This highly allegorical story reveals layers of meaning on analysis and ends up being one of his most complex works despite - or perhaps even because of - outward simplicity. Many of his usual strengths are also here in full force. Billy is thus essential for fans, and its general accessibility makes it a good place for neophytes to start.

Like most Melville, it can be appreciated on a very basic level as a sea adventure, though its lack of epic sweep makes it more limited here than longer works. However, great verisimilitude and strong characterization pull us in regardless. Billy is immediately sympathetic and eventually fascinating, while other characters - namely Claggart and Vere - are no less engrossing in their own way. Melville draws them and others with considerable vividness, adding much to the book's appeal.

Also like most Melville, Billy is notable for describing ship life so well and memorably that it truly seems alive. Though far more concise than other works, this includes a good deal of detail about everything from how ships looked to how sailors talked and acted. We get a good idea of what it was like to be on one, and this differs from other Melville books in focusing particularly on the late eighteenth century British navy. Readers can thus learn much about an intriguing bygone phenomenon, giving significant historical value.

Far more important, of course, are the deeper themes, of which Billy has many. Oscar Wilde said that all art is at once surface and symbol and that those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril; this proves it. The novel is clearly very symbolic, but as so often with Melville, we are far from sure what it is meant to symbolize - much less what, if any, conclusions he means us to draw. Few works, especially of this length, have been so widely and variously interpreted. The text's interesting history contributes to this. It was clearly important to Melville, who worked at it on and off during his last five or so years, but it was not discovered until the 1920s and correctly printed only in the 1960s. Yet more tantalizing is that, though seemingly complete, it was apparently not done to Melville's satisfaction. Even so, there is good reason to think the ambiguity is intentional, as the last three chapters overtly invoke fiction's limitations as conveyor of truth and indeed call into question how closely, if at all, we can know the truth about anything. The penultimate chapter in particular presents a very different account of events that had ostensibly been given objectively; the narrator suggests that they are distorted, but we cannot be quite sure. It is an unusual trick - yet another example of Melville's relentless form experimentation. Some may think it cheap or question its point and purpose, but it in many ways exemplifies the ambiguities of narrative, truth, and morality that had always been Melville's special territory. It is disorienting and on some level positively disturbing, but this surely is exactly what he wanted. All this brings us to Pontius Pilate's famous query "What is truth?," a truly thought-provoking question that Melville asks over and over again but knows better than to answer - if it can be answered.

Speaking of Pilate, it is at least clear that Billy, Claggart, and Vere are largely archetypal. Most see them as standing for Jesus, Judas, and Pilate, which is clearly alluded to in numerous gospel parallels, e.g., Billy's last words echoing Jesus forgiving his condemners. However, they could almost as easily stand for any number of other figures, such as those from medieval morality plays:Everyman, Vice, etc. Billy certainly represents pure goodness and innocence; he is a sacrificial lamb for Claggart who, like Iago in Shakespeare's Othello and other literary forebears, symbolizes pure evil. On the simplest level, their interaction shows the tragic consequences that can result when the two meet - a bleak illustration of Melville's dark vision. That said, few texts are more ripe for deconstruction. For example, did Billy really kill Claggart accidentally? Indeed, did he kill him in the way shown in the novel proper? It is after all extremely implausible, which can be chalked up to the work's allegorical nature but also seems to give the penultimate chapter credence. We must also wonder about Claggart - did he really hate Billy for no reason? If so, how did he descend from model officer to such inexplicable malice? Was it simple jealousy? This would seem highly out of character. Perhaps he really believed his claim...or maybe there was really something to it. In either case, why was everyone else fooled? The subtlest character of all, though, may be Vere. Is he a good and fair man trapped by absurd bureaucratic rules or out to get Billy in an even craftier way than Claggart? He has traditionally been seen as sympathetic to Billy but sadly obsessed with exactly following rigid rules, yet a close study of naval laws seemingly reveals that the pedantic claims leading to Billy's execution were actually false. Melville had immense knowledge of such niceties, meaning this could only have been intentional. We must then ask if Vere was simply wrong or evil in a truly subtle way. Also, do his dying words imply repentance - and, if so, why? Many other such questions exist; the book could indeed be interpreted near-endlessly, giving value far beyond its few pages. This is one of the clearest signs of just how different Melville's work was from Victorian contemporaries'; it is no surprise that he fell out of favor but even less surprising that he was revived in another era and became enormously influential.

The novel also brings up a multitude of other issues, including the conflict between science and other ways of looking at the world. A chapter following Billy's death pokes hilarious satirical fun at those blindly adhering to pre-conceived ideas contrary to observation out of a perversely misguided belief that they are more intellectually respectable, but it is far from clear if Melville means to mock science generally. Like many other aspects of the book, this leads us to question assumptions and gives great food for thought - a truly remarkable feat considering the length and seeming straight-forwardness. Other close readers have found a plethora of additional subtexts - autobiographical, homosexual, philosophical, and nearly everything else - with varying plausibility degrees. This makes Billy absolutely invaluable for fans and scholars, and few works have spawned such worthy and rewarding secondary literature, which anyone who likes the novel should seek out. Casuals will of course be less interested - if at all -, but the story is after all also strong enough to stand alone.

A good question is how one should purchase Billy; it is available in many editions both alone and in various collections. Most will be best served by collections, as Melville wrote many great short works, and it is more convenient - and of course - cheaper to get several at once. It is hard to justify getting the story by itself, but the dedicated will want to seek out deluxe editions detailing the text's complicated history and/or offering a critical sample. However one chooses to read it, Billy is a story what will not be soon forgotten.

Brilliant but impenetrable
In this brilliant tale of the ambiguous nature of justice, the ambiguous nature of good and evil, and the inexplicable nature of man, Melville seems to forsee the id (Claggert), the ego (Vere), and the superego (Budd) long before Freud. These three men find themselves locked in a struggle over the nature of truth and the nature of justice, drawn into it almost against their will (including the evil Claggert). It's a fantastic work of imagination, and moral uncertainty. BUT Melville's prose style is nearly impenetrable. With constant digressions, and with unforgivably long and convoluted sentences, Melville succeeds most often in confusing rather than enlightening the reader. This could have been written with vigor, power, and poetry, but it was written more like a philosophical treatise by Immanuel Kant.

Is Billy Budd a Political Allegory?
Or is it an oblique admission of latent homosexuality? Or a cautious hatchet-job on a domineering father-in-law? Or a somber biblical morality tale, with Captain Vere standing in for Pontius Pilate? Or simply a prose prologue to a ballad in verse, which spilled uncontrollably out of its frame?

None of those interpretations is as indefensible as it might seem. Literary scholars have advanced all of them in their full armor of earnestness post-modernism. Possibly it's the elusiveness of a final interpretation that has made Billy Budd, like Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Fitzgerald's Great Gatsby, so dear to the critics. Among the writings of Herman Melville, Billy Budd certainly remains the most fraught with ambiguities and uncertain implications.

I hadn't re-read Billy Budd in decades -- not since college, when I wrote a very long and stuffy term paper on Melville's treatments of the military -- and I didn't foresee reading it now. But one of my nieces graduated from law school last month and, at a family celebration, I found her telling me about one of her favorite professors, who structured a whole class around discussion of 'justice' as depicted in Billy Budd! It turns out that there are reams of opinions, by lawyers and law students, about Billy Budd! That it's a 'classic' of legal literature, although my niece suggested a widespread reliance among students on Cliff Notes! Whoda thunkit?

Denizens of literature departments have been predisposed to read Billy Budd as a personal revelation of Herman Melville's conflicted sexual identity. The story IS dedicated, conspicuously, to an old shipmate, Jack Chase, whom Melville had long previously portrayed in his complex novel Redburn. That novel vividly revealed Melville's 'alarm' at the discovery of homoerotic attractions. In Billy Budd, the nameless narrator explicitly probes the antipathy of the hostile petty officer, Claggart, for the handsome sailor Billy in terms of latent homoeroticism. The opera Billy Budd, by Benjamin Britten, commits the story utterly to such an understanding. Nevertheless, I find this train of thought a stub line, a siding where the engine gets to idle. There's too much of the text that focuses on law and discipline, on the historical mutinies that contextualize the tragedy of Budd's execution. Herman Melville was not just spinning word-wheels. He was too deep and deliberate a writer. Some readers have complained that the "story" of Billy is postponed too long by the narrator's ruminations; in fact, some fifteen pages pass before Vere and Claggart are introduced. Whatever more it may be, Billy Budd is a story about the sociology of life on a sailing ship-of-war. The pluses and cons of naval discipline mattered to the old sailor, even in his obscure niche as a customs officer.

So then, shall we plump for the 'political' or 'historical' interpretation?Billy Budd, according to the text, was conscripted in 1797, in the context of the British naval actions against revolutionary France. Melville wasn't born until 1819. Why then did he set his narrative so long before his own experience on a US military frigate?The merchant ship from which Budd was snatched was christened "The Rights of Man", and much is made of Billy's 'farewell to the Rights' when Claggart accuses him of mutinous intentions. Could we construct an allegorical interpretation, with the Handsome Sailor representing Democracy in its infancy? [If any grad student takes this possibility seriously and writes a thesis on it, I want footnote credit!]

Melville's father-in-law was the Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court, Lemuel Shaw, one of the most influential jurists in the history of American business law. Melville scholars have asserted that Captain Vere is a guarded portrayal of Shaw. That would, I think, imply a mixture of admiration and resentment on Melville's part toward his much more prominent father-in-law. A tinge of inferiority perhaps? I'll wager Shaw was intimidating over the dinner platters during family visits. The narrator of Billy Budd -- unnamed and not to be automatically regarded as the author -- insists that Starry Vere is a paragon of virtue and duty, yet at several points inserts doubts about Vere's deeper character, including a speculation about his sanity! The admirable Vere is despicably inadequate in his handling of the confrontation between Budd and Claggart; both the readers and the sailors on the deck of his ship can be heard to mutter against him. He cloaks himself in patriotic sanctimony but he deserves no adulation for wisdom here. Of course, he stands as a synecdoche for naval authority, for the tyrannical discipline against which Melville had strenuously protested in his early novel White Jacket. What happens to innocent, honorable Billy Budd is a potent example of what was hopelessly flawed in hierarchical society. The reader might be excused, I think, for perceiving Billy as "Democracy" martyred by self-righteous Conservatism.

And how about the Morality Tale? There are flashes of biblical imagery. There is the weird, mysterious description of Budd's execution by hanging, when his body doesn't twitch and jerk, as if he were sublimated into death without suffering. Surely Melville, whose whole life had been an agony of religious impulse in conflict with disbelief, had something in mind, some intended meaning. After all, he COULD have written a different story, a more palatable denouement. Honestly, I find less concern for metaphysics, for questions of God, in Billy Budd than in Moby Dick or in Melville's book-length poem Clarel. I'd argue that in Billy Budd, God no longer has a role. Perhaps that's the message.

Nobody, to my knowledge, has ever made much of the thirty-one line poem that concludes the text of Billy Budd. It turns out that Melville had sketched several such nautical ballads, and experimentally prefaced them with brief prose accounts. These were found in his papers in various stages of incompletion. Billy Budd, please remember, was 'unfinished', published many years posthumously, and subject to the decisions of various editors. There are assorted 'definitive' editions. The ballad Billies in the Darbies strikes most readers as an odd anticlimax to the novella, but if you read it on its own terms, it's as bleak a death-wish as you might find at the end of a Viking saga. The comfort of a burial at sea -- "Fathoms down, fathoms down, how I'll dream fast asleep." -- was denied to Herman Melville, the dutiful husband and conscientious office-holder.

Brilliant but Difficult
Melville is an exceptionally difficult author for the modern reader.His wind-up to the events forming the core of the book is unpardonably long.And he is an intrusive and wordy narrator who can't resist frequent digressions.

Still, once he gets to the confrontation between Billy and his accuser, Billy's impetuous criminal assault, and then the captain's moral dilemma at trial, Melville's tale is riveting.As with Moby Dick, the book is a morality tale with heavy biblical overtones.The captain ends up being a rather attractive, if misguided, reincarnation of Pontius Pilate, convincing himself that he his helpless to prevent the legal necessity of the Christ-like Billy's execution.In posing the moral dilemma of the sometimes impossible difficulty of being able to do the right thing in an imperfect world, the book is truly brilliant.

This book was commonly assigned in high school in the 1970's, which I think is a mistake.Modern readers simply will lack the patience to slog through it.This work is better suited for a college course, and the format of the "enriched classics" is helpful.As for reading it thereafter "for fun", only the hardcore book snob should undertake it. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (4)

Follow the Leader
If you want a taste of Melville's brilliance, but aren't up to the task of slogging through 600+ pages of "Moby Dick," try "Benito Cereno" - a masterpiece of mystery, suspense and intrigue.But, as with Melville's white-whale classic, "BC" ultimately climbs the peaks and plumbs the depths of human spirit and human depravity on multiple levels while taking the reader down a twisting and puzzling path.That so much can be crammed into a "short story" (well, perhaps a novella) illustrates the author's true genius.

It is 1799, and an American sea Captain Amasa Delano has harbored at St. Maria island off the extreme southern coast of Chile to take on fresh water.Sighting a ship without colors on the horizon, Delano with a crew take the whale boat to investigate, finding a near-derelict Spanish slave ship drifting aimlessly on a calm sea.Upon boarding, Dalano finds the ship's captain, Benito Cerino, near death and the ship's human cargo - men, women, and children - unconstrained topside.Cerino is constantly tended to by "Babo," a young Spanish-speaking slave, who never leaves the captain's side, catering to his every wish - the extent that the ship's half-starved inhabitants can accommodate.Cerino tells Delano a harrowing tale of violent storms encountered after leaving Buenos Aires en route to Lima, rounding the Cape and encountering two months of deadly calm that made navigation impossible - drownings, scurvy, and lack of water decimated the crew.Delano finds Cerino's tale dubious, especially since so few of the Spanish crew have survived, taking a much lower toll on the slaves.More troubling is the relationship between Babo and Cerino, which Delano considers beyond odd.The trusting and possibly naïve Delano silently questions Cerino's motives, and several times fears for his own life, each time to be subsequently placated, writing his fear off as mere paranoia induced by the freakish conditions on board the vessel.Tension builds, the enigma grows, and by now, the reader, puzzled by the contradictions, is undoubtedly tempted to jump ahead to see where Melville is taking us.

Melville's writing falls just short of epic poetry, and as such, "Benito Cerino" requires some work and concentration.Much of the jargon is unfamiliar nautical terms or 19th century prose that is now archaic.But the diligent reader will be rewarded with beautiful prose than spins a surprisingly surrealistic atmosphere - an authentic portrait of life at sea at the turn of the 18th century while capturing the period's views of race and slavery.Melville never preaches or cajoles, is never heavy handed, but instead weaves complex relationships and cultural issues so deeply in the fabric that multiple reads will certainly yield fresh insight and new meaning - the kind of story that invokes that "did I really read this?" moment.In short, a powerful short story that deserves more attention - my candidate to replace - or at least complement - "Tess of the d'Urbervilles" or "A Tale of Two Cites" on high school readers' list of required classics.

The Power of Darkness
Joseph Conrad's famous story of the Congo was written decades after Melville's story of a mutiny, and it's extremely unlikely that Conrad was thinking of Benito Cereno when he wrote Heart of Darkness, but the two extended stories have a lot in common: scenes of human depravity, ambiguities about good and evil, nightmarish descriptions, an atmosphere of suspended horror. "Benito Cereno" contains some of Herman Melville's most vivid action writing, though the action is all suspense and premonition until the climax. I'm not at all certain why this story hasn't been acclaimed more widely; it would capture the imagination of a 'young reader' in a tighter grip than Billy Budd.

More historically-informed readers will surely guess the mystery of Captain Cereno's behavior on his ghastly ship long before the good-natured American Captain Delano. Readers of Melville's era, recalling the news of the ship Amistad, would have guessed even quicker and more certainly. In fact, the tension between the reader's aroused suspicions and the benevolent opacity of Captain Delano is at the core of the reading experience. The 'Good' seldom have much insight into the "Wicked". But wait, don't rush to judgement about wickedness when you read Herman Melville! Is mutiny a greater wickedness than slavery, and is violence in the act of self-liberation less or more justified than violence in defense of property? And is Captain Delano's good-natured racism, based on his assumption that blacks are docile and unintelligent, not the basis for his nearly disastrous lack of acumen? Babo, the ringleader of the mutiny, may be a horrid beast in Delano's mind but he's surely the smartest Homo sapiens on the scene, a representation that can't have been unintended by Melville.

Apparently Melville used the memoirs of a real Captain Amasa Delano as the inspiration for this spine-tingling story of terror on a becalmed sailing ship. The denouement of the tale is told in the form of court depositions, lending a journalistic credibility to the narrative. Some critics have found that structure disjointed and anticlimactic. I didn't, but even if it were so, the larger part of the novella is every bit as spooky as Conrad's masterpiece. "Don Alejandro, he dead!"

Two movements
It is around 1800. An American sealer on the South Chile coast meets a Spanish slave ship in disarray. Captain Delano from the US ship goes on board the Spaniard and finds things rather disorganized, to say the least. The Spanish captain is not well. His story is about storms and scurvy and fever, which decimated most of the whites and many of the blacks on board and destroyed most of the boats that the ship had. Delano is of best intentions and tries to help, but in the course of time begins to have grave doubts about honesty and capability of the Spaniard, while he is positively impressed by the behaviour of the blacks on the ship.

Finally we find out that the Spaniard has been a hostage all along, that the slaves have mutinied and taken the ship, killing most of the whites in the process.
The US ship overwhelms the mutinous ship and takes it to Peru, where the mutiny survivors are put to trial.

The narration has two parts: the experience of the American captain boarding the mutinous ship without understanding what happens on it, and then the recapitalution 'what really happened' mainly via the court deposition of the title hero Benito Cereno, who is the Spanish captain.

I would like to put aside all considerations of the moral question whether a mutiny of slaves on a transport ship is the same as a mutiny of sailors. Obviously not, and I see no need to go into this aspect further. Of course the narration takes us in on the side of the slave owners. Leave it at that, it is history.

The fascinating part of the story is the first one, when we follow Delano in his blind attempt at understanding what is happening on the ship in distress. He sees what he sees with the eyes of his personal expectations and prejudices. He is an optimist who likes to see the good side in people. Hence he is happy about the jolly good behaviour of the blacks on the ship. He is disappointed in the less than virile stance of the Spaniard. He never even half suspects the truth. Rather he thinks that the captain may be a pirate in collaboration with the black population on board.
This story is a deeply pessimistic one. We can not understand the world. Our benevolent assumptions are likely to be disappointed. The truth is worse than we can expect. Sunshine is an illusion.

The most intense short story ever written
A most powerful story by a most powerful author. The suspense will force you to skip pages, just to see what all the "building up" of emotion and doubt is all about. Highly satisfying.Don't be surprised to find yourself thinking about this story for weeks after you've completed it. ... Read more

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Editor's Note Omoo is so close a sequel to "Typee," that it almost forms a part of that work. Herman Melville's second book appeared in 1847, published (as its forerunner had been the year before) simultaneously in London and New York. In "Omoo," as Mr. Arthur Stedman says- "We leave for the most part the dreamy pictures of island life, and find ourselves sharing the extremely realistic discomforts of a Sydney whaler in the early forties." Both books are without a doubt largely autobiographical, and based on the writer's early sea-adventures, of which his voyage in the "Acushnet" in 1841-2 was the most memorable. Herman Melville was born in New York, on August 1, 1819, and came of mixed Dutch and English stock. His father was a merchant, and died before the boy left school, whose charge then devolved on an uncle, a well-to-do farmer. But Herman, wishing to be free, soon declared a love for the sea, and made his first voyage as a cabin-boy. After leaving the sea finally in 1842, Melville lived first in New York, and then for many years near Pittsville, where he had for a time Nathaniel Hawthorne as his neighbour. For fuller particulars of his career, see the introduction to the companion volume of "Typee." He died in New York, on September 28, 1891. The following is the list of his published volumes. December, 1907.

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Melville's short stories are masterpieces. The best are to be appreciated on more than one level and those presented here are rich with symbolism and spiritual depth. Set in 1797, Billy Budd, Foretopman exploits the tension of this period during the war between England and France to create a tale of satanic treachery, tragedy and great pathos that explores human relationships and the inherently ambiguous nature of man-made justice. Tales such as Bartleby, Benito Cereno, The Lightning Rod Man, The Tartarus of Maids or I and My Chimney, show the timeless poetic power of Melville's writing as he consciously uses the disguise of allegory in various ways and to various ends. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (13)

Good anthology of Melville short stories
This volume is reasonably priced, includes all the short stories a high school student needs and is in a very compact form.Although Melville's style does not easily lend itself to today's reader, the stories are good.Upon completion, you can actually feel a sense of accomplishement.Sort of like running a marathon.Tough to get through but feeling good about having done it.

TIMELESS CLASSIC
I have never found Melville easy or enjoyable to read; his books are almost like a required course in college in English 101, sometimes tedious and over-descriptive. His early books were not commercially successful but he continued to write, and usually involved themes of good vs. evil.Of course, time has shown that "Moby Dick" and "Pierre," as well as "Billy Budd, Sailor," are now considered American classics of literature. Billy is accused of murdering Master John Claggart and is unable to defend himself properly, and ends up executed on the HMS "Bellipotent."Other stories are in the book also: "The Bell-Tower," "The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids," "The Piazza," etc., all of which give us insight to the early times on the sea, but the too-formal style of writing can be exasperating.I would say that if you prioritize your books for reading, this one, although classic, should be near the bottom of the stack.

Mixed feelings about Billy Budd
Melville's short tale of an innocent sailor who is impressed into service and then wrongly accused by a jealous superior unfolds slowly as he builds the impression of the main characters involved in this morally troubling drama. Melville is anything but subtle in his descriptions of Billy Budd's innocence. He is admired as the "handsome sailor" and beloved by all his shipmates save one. As a representative of innocence and purity Budd is as much symbol as he is a character and therein lies my ambiguous feeling about this story. I find it a bit hard to accept the idealized image although the story resonates as an allegory of innocence and evil.
Melville was by his death considered an eccentric if not outright crazy author by his contemporaries. Of course today he is revered as the author of Moby Dick. He clearly was a giant of American literature and his short works are integral to a full appreciation for his talent and craft as a writer.

Juicy nuggets of goodness.
By a freak chance, this collection of stories was my first exposure to Melville. My impression was most favourable. Each of the stories here is eloquent and deep, whether it be a gazette-like overview of the Galapagos or the thrilling story of a revolt on a slaver-ship. Melville's style, wordy and full of Biblical diction, rang pretentious at times, even for 19th-century prose, but was over all delicious to read.

Billy Budd and Other Stories by Herman Melville show the great author at the top of his game
Herman Melville (1919-1891) is the great misunderstood and underappreciated genius of nineteenth century American literature. In Penguin's compilation of some of his best short stories we see his genius at full display of the authorial craft.
Billy Budd is the tale of an innocent naive young foretopman on a British ship during the time England fought Napoleonic France. A recent mutiny of British tars at Nore had recently been put down. Billy is picked on by the burly and crude John Claggart. In retaliation against Claggart young Billy hits the bully. Claggart dies and Billy is forced to undergo a drumhead court martial. Captain Vere is forced to execute Billy for mutiny even though he knows the lad is an innocent soul. This tale presents the reader with a moral dilemma. Should persons in authority be merciful or should they see that strict justice is accomplished.? Vere
(his name means "truth") is a complicated man. Billy Budd has been seen symbolically as a Christ figure beloved of the men aboard the ship upon which he serves. Composer Benjamin Brittain later turned this tragic tale into a successful opera. Billy is the innocent outsider who is a sacrifice to the realities of a tough world. I wonder if Melville who had lost a young son saw himself as Captain Vere and Billy as his deceased son?
Benito Cereno deals with a seizure of a slave ship by Africans on their way to America. The ship is commanded by Benito Cereno a Spaniard but when it encounters the American whaler ship under Captain Delano deception is planned by the slaves. Delano believes the ship is still led by Cereno only to learn he is a prisoner under the crafty slave Babo. Melville was against chattel slavery. The story is a complex examination into the stain of slavery and the deceptions we face in life.
Bartelby is an unusual story about a New York scrivener who labors in a laid back lawyer's office. Bartelby likes to say "I prefer not to..." in refusing to do certain duties he is asked to perform. He later is sent to the Tombs prison and dies. We learn he once worked in the dead letter office. Bartelby may be a portrait of Melville whose works were received as dead letters by the fickle public.
The Encatantas or Enchanted Islands is a series of vignettes of visits made to the Galapagos Islands. Melville considered penguins to be the most worthless animals on earth. There are also stories of shipwrecks and the strange flora/fauna of the islands. I found this story to be a delight.
The Bell Tower deals with an inventor who dies following making a clock striking device. The story is set in the Middle Ages and indicates the futility of human striving and creation.
The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Women is a slight tale of the joys of being a bachelor and the hades of women forced to worked in a paper mill.
Herman Melville is not an easy author to digest and understand. My few comments on these profound works only scratch a small surface of their
complex artistry. The reader who wants to understand Melville is invited to a lifetime of reading pleasure as the stories yield a multiplicity of
interpretations. ... Read more

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This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

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By the American novelist, essayist and poet, widely esteemed as one of the most important figures in American literature and best remembered today for his masterpiece Moby-Dick (1851). His short story "Bartleby, the Scrivener" (1856) is among his most important pieces, and has been considered a precursor to Existentialist and Absurdist literature. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Both Marx and Durkheim would immediately recognize Bartleby
Hemrman Melville's Bartleby the Scrivener presents us with a 19th century character who would be instantly recogniazble by the social theorists Karl Marx and Emile Durkehim.For Marx, though Bartleby works in an office rather than the shop floor of industirial production, Bartleby is an instance of wage labor.From his earliest writings, including the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, Marx often asked (to closely paraphrase) what are the consequences of the emergence of wage labor.Bartleby manifests a primary conseuqnece in thoroughgoing form:Bartleby is alienated.

Bartleby's work alienates him from himself because long hours spent doing nothing but hand copying of the work of others forestalls development of the richly variegated potential that Marx thought existed in all of us.Instead of developing into a socially competent, self-actualizing person of multiple attainments, Bartleby copies, and that's all he does.He is a machine-like commodity who works because he has to at work, doing what he can get paid for.He occasionally and pathetically manifests a bare modicum of self determination by refusing to do other menial tasks or varying the pace of his copying, but that's it.

Bartleby is also alienated from the work itself -- relentless copying of the legalistic words of others -- because they are not his production and do not serve his interests.He has no control over the work, no way to manifest his innate but undeveloped creative capability, no way to do anything but the mindlessly mechanical task of word-for-word copying.There's nothing in this process of value to him except a modest wage.Lacking control over his work, he lacks control over himself and what he becomes.In extreme form he would become The Elephant Man, horribly disfigured mataphor for the Nineteenth Century working class, possessed of real but unrealized developmental potential.

Bartleby is also alienated from his co-workers.Their work is solitary, they interact little, cooperative endeavors on the job are out of the question.There are intimations that one of his co-workers is an evening alcoholic and the other suffers from stomach ulcers.Since they function as machines but are really something quite different, it is predictable that each would manifest this gross distortion in self-mortifying ways.

Durkheim would regard Bartleby as a victim of the excessive and dehumanizing specialization that is characteristic of the modernizing industrial world.Specialization, in instances such as Bartleby, vastly limits our horizons, our development as human beings, and leads to the kind of social isolation that makes suicide and other forms of social pathology more likely to occur.

When most of a man's life is spent in this sort of solitary, mindless, and self-abnegationg work, human beings become not only socially isolated, giving rise to a society charactrized by the pathological condition that Durkheim called egoism or the absence of a sense of belonging, they also lack a common culture based on shared experiences other than those that exist in denaturing work.This condition of cultural deregulation, or anomie, in which norms and standards are unknown or without founation, also gives rise to widespread social pathology.

Living an alienated life in a society characterized by egoism and anomie, it makes perfect sense that Bartleby would cease to exist.When your world is inconsistent with your nature, and membership and guidance are missing, motivation is hard to find.Even the motivation to eat or, for that matter, not eat.Bartleby has a lot to tell us about ourselves and the ailments of the present day.

Bartleby's journey into passive aggression...
I had to read Melville in high school and had so few cultural references in those days that little had relevence for me.This is a funny, complex, very brief story of a lawyer's troubles with an uncooperative aid.What is amazing to me is that Melville wrote it so long ago.I think Michael Moore recommended it in this year's election guide.It will take you about an hour to read if you read 400 words per minute comfortably. ... Read more

Product Description
A single novel, an eternal classic, established him as a founding father of American literature. Now, a century after his death, a new popular surge of interest in Herman Melville calls for Elizabeth Hardwick's rich analysis of "the whole of Melville's works, uneven as it is, and the challenging shape of his life . . . a story of the creative history of an extraordinary American genius."

Hardwick's superb critical interpretation and award-winning novelistic flair reveal a former whaleship deckhand whose voyages were the stuff of travel romances that seduced the public. Later, a self-described "thought-diver" into "the truth of the human heart," Melville harbored a bitterness that knew no bounds when that same public failed to embrace his masterwork, Moby-Dick. Invaluable for enthusiasts of American literature, Herman Melville is itself a masterpiece of critical commentary in the tradition of D. H. Lawrence's Studies in Classic American Literature.Amazon.com Review
Ernest Hemingway famously declared Huckleberry Finn to be the true font of American prose--and in the case of his own stripped-down stories, he was right. But there's another, more rococo strain in our literature, of which fish fancier Herman Melville would be the undisputed king. So who better to chronicle his life in brief than Elizabeth Hardwick? This deliciously acerbic critic and novelist hasn't, of course, attempted to mimic Melville's language, which often sounds like the sort of thing Shakespeare would have written if he'd been an ichthyologist. But she, too, is the possessor of an eccentric, sometimes shaggy style, and has already written about Melville with rare penetration. Even her opening salvo has an appropriately over-the-top ring to it:

Herman Melville: sound the name and it's to be the romance of the sea, the vast, mysterious waters for which a thousand adjectives cannot suffice. Its mystical vibrations, the great oceans "holy" for the Persians, a deity for the Greeks; forbidden seas, passage to barbarous coasts--a scattering of Melville's words for the urge to know the sparkling waters and their roll-on beauty and, when angry, their powerful, treacherous indifference to the floundering boat and the hapless mariners.

Customer Reviews (15)

Melville's Sleepless Nights
After reading Elizabeth Hardwick's lyrical introspective 1979 novel, "Sleepless Nights".Sleepless Nights (New York Review Books Classics), I turned to this book to learn how Hardwick viewed one of my favorite authors. Born in Kentucky, Elizabeth Hardwick (1916-2007) was a co-founder of the New York Review of Books and a critic and essayist who had written about Melville's "Bartleby"Bartleby in Manhattan and Other Essays She also endured a long difficult marriage to the American poet Robert Lowell.

It is tempting to see a connection between the reclusive, lonely narrator of "Sleepless Nights" and Melville (1819 -- 1891) himself as Hardwick portrays the man.The subject of many lengthy and perceptive biographies, Melville remains a stubbornly elusive figure, a loner and an outcast of ambiguous beliefs and sexuality as are many of the characters that people his novels. I also thought that Hardwick might be viewing her subject from the standpoint of Melville's long-suffering wife, Elizabeth Shaw. The daughter of an illustrious Massachusetts judge, Elizabeth remained married to Melville for 44 years. She endured her gifted husband's frustrations, long silences, drunkenness, withdrawals and possible violent behavior. She also suffered the suicide of the couple's son Malcolm at the age of 18 and the subsequent early death of another son, Stanwix. At the midpoint of the marriage, Elizabeth thought seriously of leaving Melville. But the marriage endured. Perhaps there are parallels between Elizabeth Shaw's marriage to Herman Melville and Elizabeth Hardwick's marriage to Robert Lowell.

Hardwick's biography is part of the "Penguin Lives" series which has the aim of presenting the lives of famous persons from a variety of walks of life in short, accessible formats for busy readers. (Another similar such series is the American Presidents series edited by Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and Sean Willentz.) Hardwick's book thus is only 160 pages in length and can be read in an extended sitting or two. Especially for a figure as complex as Melville, a short study must if it is to succeed capture its subject in a few words, present the subject insightfully and provocatively, and encourage the reader to pursue the subject on his own. While Hardwick's book received mixed reviews, I think it succeeds admirably in its aims.

Hardwick considers both Melville's life and his writings with an emphasis on the latter.The book is written in a passionate, novelistic style which bears little resemblance to academic or journalistic writing that might be expected in a short biography. The book is in the voice of a writer deeply committed to the work of a fellow-writer, shortcomings and all. The book describes Melville's early life, his marriage, the friendship with Hawthorne, his period of novel writing, and his long "withdrawal" late in life in sufficient detail to give a picture of the man in a short compass. While sympathetic to her subject, Hardwick shows the reader a troubled, enigmatic individual.

Melville's life, in Hardwick's account, is intertwined with his novels.She begins with a tough-minded portrayal of life at sea in mid-18th Century America and of how Melville saw such a life. She is drawn to the loners and outcasts that made up seafarers in Melville's day, as she points out the traits Melville shared with his fellow sailors and the ways in which he would differ from them.

Hardwick gives selective descriptions of Melville's books. For a short book, she gives an extensive treatment of "Moby-Dick" which helped me think about this difficult American masterpiece.Hardwick also offers good insight into the two other books for which Melville is best remembered: "Bartleby" and the posthumous "Billy Budd".Of the rest of Melville's writings, Hardwick offers praise for Melville's fourth novel, "Redburn", for his first novel, "Typee" and for his final novel, "The Confidence Man."She values "Redburn" especially highly and made me want to revisit the book. I was somewhat surprised by her negative judgment of "White Jacket", of Melville's Civil War poetry, and, perhaps, of "Mardi".

Hardwick's book captured something of Melville and gave me a fresh perspective on his life and writings. She made me eager to read Melville, an author I have already read and read about many times. The book makes no pretense of being definitive. But it offers insight into how one author views a great predecessor and thus is more than a simple introductory book. Hardwick has written a valuable short study for readers who wish to engage with Herman Melville.

Robin Friedman

Thar' She Blows! A Weak Take on a Great Writer
Elizabeth Hardwick's short take on Melville is a mess and simply not up to many of the other biographies of the Penguin series. Years fly on a single pageand Hardwick often spends more time offering her descriptions of the books instead of telling about the life of her subject. Even worse, she ignores a good deal of scholarship on Melville while pulling in material that simply is not relevant. For example, Hardwick tells us that Elizabeth Melville was her husband's amanuensis but there is not that much information about it. So what does Hardwick do? She goes to Russia to tell us about Tolstoy's wife in the same role for her famed literary husband. That's interesting but it has nothing to do with Melville. That's the chief problem with this biography. Hardwick knows the man's work but she does not know the man and, more than a few times, seems to lose sight of him. While the book gives a decent if short overview of Melville's major works (though Hardwick does not cover his poetry to any extent), this biography simply fails to offer any insight into the life of Herman Melville.

Catch and Release
Elizabeth Hardwick's entry in the Penguin "Brief Lives" series is a tremendous disappointment. Although the great figure of letters professed a deep affinity for Melville throughout her writing career, this short biography of the great 19th-century novelist (one of the last books she ever finished) is neither illuminating nor particularly helpful. Like several other of the biographers in the series, Hardwick affects a somewhat experimental style to pursue her subject that is meant to echo the subject's own writing. But whereas Edna O'Brien did something in her entry into the series "James Joyce" that helped the reader understand that Irish novelist by her vaguely Joycean style, Hardwick's pastiche of Melville here helps us understand almost nothing of the writer--it just seems like an oddly florid way to write. She does come through with a few choice phrases and sentences, but overall the whole thing seems all flair with no substance. Hardwick brings in discussions of Melville's famous novels and tales but mostly to summarize them rather than to interpret anything about them. Worst of all, you come away from the book with almost no sense of who Melville was, which should be the test of any biography, long or brief. It's a real let-down.

Worst Biography of a Major Literary Figure I've Ever Read
This book is appalling.

Consider this: many people find Herman Melville--especially the Melville of "Moby Dick"--to be slow going and difficult to fathom. But in Hardwick's biography, the ONLY passages that are at all lucid are the Melville quoatations. This is, without a doubt, the worst biography I've ever read. Self-indulgent, obscure, boring... it's not really worth my time (or yours) for me to go on.

Read Andrew Delbanco's "Melville" for a much more readable, penetrating insight into the man and his work.

Good reading but not what I bought the book for
The Penguin Lives series has been very good to me.It understands that I don't want to burn all the minutes left in my reading life on dry, styleless steamer trunk sized biographies that beleaguer with minutiae when I want to get acquainted with a historically or artistically significant figure.It also understands that I value good style and original thinking, to avoid a "Cliff's Notes" version of a life.To date it has not disappointed.

That said, I found Elizabeth Hardwick's entry on Herman Melville to not be quite like the others in the series I've read, and it comes down to this:she is really using the occasion to do a critical essay on Melville, not so much a life.In fact, at some point she says, if you want life detail you can get it from reading the exhaustive biographies on him.That she skimps on his life's events can be frustrating when you realize that her treatment is far shorter than most of the Penguin Lives.She could have added 20 - 30 pages and still have been in the series' pagination comfort zone.

That said, I enjoyed the rereading of my favorite Melville books and the introduction to those I'd not read--though be warned: she spoils all the plots.Her rationale for spending far more time on his output than his life is conceptually warranted:here is a man who very much lived in the creation of his books all the while toiling in a small, stressed household filled with extended family.In other words, she is saying the life he led was the books, so that's where she went looking for him.She spends considerable time on the late 20th century theme of his possible homosexuality, the only clues in what is now viewed by some as the employment of homoerotic imagery.However, she refuses to judge and leaves that as a mystery.Ultimately, she says, so much of Melville is "perhaps."

I wish she had spent more time on his life as well as more time on the revival of Melville's reputation in the 1920's and its persistence.I'm not sorry I read this book at all--it is very well written in a fluent, vervy voice--but it wasn't what I'd hoped it to be.
... Read more

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This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

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This text, part of the "Literature and Life" series, provides a study of American novelist and poet Herman Melville (1819-1891), author of works such as "Moby Dick" and "Billy Budd". It gives an account of his life and work, and is complemented by a chronology, bibliography and index. ... Read more

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This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

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A master of the american short story

Included in this rich collection are: The Piazza, Bartleby the Scrivener, Benito Cereno, The Lightning-Rod Man, The Encantadas, The Bell-Tower, and The Town-Ho's Story. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (43)

Mankind Adrift in an Amoral Universe
Reading, be the target novels, short stories, poems, or road maps, demands an investment from readers of a certain number of hours from their life spans.Perhaps I am too demanding, but I feel that, if I am to trade a portion of my life for the message left for me by an author, the message should be meaningful, and I should lay down the completed book feeling that I have gained something positive from having read it:a new insight, a new word added to my recognition vocabulary, or a new vicarious experience.I also detest having my attention diverted from the author's message by having to stumble around malapropisms, misspellings, or nonstandard punctuation.This collection of short stories (and I have no objection if one wishes to characterize "Billy Budd" as a novella)does not disappoint.From these eight stories I have gleaned new vocabulary and new vicarious experiences, and in none of them is the writing any less than superb.

This is not to claim that the writing is always easily read.The acceptable and educated writing style of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was far more periphrastic than is today's streamlined and, at times, abbreviated and almost staccato style.Simple sentences were not preferred over compound-complex sentences.Writers were not hesitant to select words that best fit their purpose, the number of syllables and the antiquity of a word notwithstanding.We tend to see such writing today as "dense, impenetrable and boring," but just think of the opportunity to expand one's vocabulary and to practice concentrating on the meaning being conveyed by those wonderfully detailed sentences! Communicating through the written word requires a joint effort on the part of both the author and the reader, and only those readers who are willing to put forth the effort are likely to truly enjoy Melville's stories.

I find it strange that most of the reviews posted here deal only with "Billy Budd" for the other seven stories are magnificent and deserve attention.Each one makes its own comment on the nature of mankind and of humanity's relationship with the universe.None is a "happy" story, for Melville did not see mankind's place in the cosmos as a happy one."The Piazza" shows us how much our dreams and imaginations exceed reality and how mundane, unfulfilling and prosaic reality is compared with the gilded sheen with which we adorn our imagined perceptions of things unknown, being certain that they are better than our own reality.

"Bartleby" is, for me, the most demanding story to grasp, and it still defies my feeble attempts at explication.Bartleby certainly prefers (to use his own term) not to comply with the expectations and requirements of the society around him, and in fact he is quite successful in not conforming to the social norms--but at a terrible price.Is Melville commenting on the fact that individuals are never truly free to pursue their own preferences?I believe so, but I also believe that this too simplistic; there is more to be found in this story.

"Benito Cerino" is a surreal account of the captain of a slave ship who becomes the slave when the slaves become the masters.Eventually rescued, the captain remains a broken man, freed of his bondage only to face an early grave.The fascination of this story lies in the masterful way Melville reveals the true nature of things to us through the perceptions of Captain Amasa Delano, who boards the Spanish slaver with helpful intentions and a large measure of innocent naivete.The story slowly unfolds through his eyes and ears as, very slowly, his suspicions increase that all is not right aboard Don Benito's ship.This is by far one of the most suspenseful stories in print in the English language.

"The Lightning Rod Man" shows us how successful charlatans can be when they prey on the fears of their victims, unethical behavior made even worse by the fact that the charlatans create those fears themselves.Perhaps there is also an implied comment here on the gullibility of those who become such prey, for the successful man in this story is the charlatan himself.

For vivid description of a desolate and hostile environment, it would be difficult to trump the series of vignettes grouped under the title "The Encantadas."If there is an enchantment to these barren volcanic islands, it is surely an evil one in Melville's view.His introducing each vignette with an epigraph, largely from Spencer's Faerie Queene, effectively sets the tone and mood for what follows, and the tone is always somber.

"The Bell-Tower" is rather intriguing in that it could have emerged from a contemporary science fiction story, a genre quite unknown in Melville's day.It is a pithy commentary on man's increasing reliance on his own inventions and creations rather than nature's (or God's if one prefers).The message is, as we should now come to expect, that man suffers from such misplaced reliance.

"The Town-Ho's Story" is reminiscent of "Billy Budd" and the reader feels that one has strongly influenced the other, although the outcomes are surprisingly different.I'm a little surprised that none of the reviews that I've found here have drawn a parallel between Billy Budd (the handsome sailor) and Jesus Christ or between John Claggart and Judas Iscariot or between Captain Vere and Pontius Pilot.Now before another reader takes me to task, please note that I am not claiming that Melville intentionally made any such parallels, yet I believe that Melville's symbolic characters can be seen in a somewhat similar light as those of the Christian allegorists.

All of these stories reveal the amoral nature of the universe, an amorality that mankind sees as dark and painful because it does not cater to his desires.Melville's skills at drawing verbal pictures for his readers are masterful but, like an artist executing a complicated painting, he is not always quick and easy to interpret.If the reader will approach these stories slowly and thoughtfully--and with a dictionary at hand--thenhe or she will be rewarded with a memorable experience.

The Fall of Billy Budd
Set in the 1790s during the Napoleonic Wars, Herman Melville's short story, Billy Budd, Sailor, is an exposé of the classic debate over the nature of man.Melville's story is filled with long and often pointless sentences, and the story lacks a clear sense of organization. Despite the difficulty of the read, Billy Budd is still a worthwhile piece of fiction due to Melville's marvelous ability to present the themes of the subjectivity of justice and the fragility of innocence.

Billy Budd is a young, handsome, naïve sailor aboard the English ship the HMS "Bellipotent".He has been forced into service but works hard and follows orders anyways. One day, he is accused by the ship's master-at-arms, John Claggart, of attempted mutiny. Claggart lies to the captain out of his own envy of the young sailor even though the penalty for mutiny is death by hanging. The situation is especially serious due to several recent mutinies aboard other ships in the navy.Captain Vere is then presented with a difficult situation. Billy Budd had always been a hard worker and favorite of those on board the ship, but naval laws were inflexible. The main focus of the book revolves around Vere's choice of conscience or the letter of the law.

The story is short, but it is by no means a quick read. Billy Budd was published after Herman Melville had died. Sadly, the book was unfinished. Although the themes are present, the structure of the book is in total disarray. The dialogue is fragmented in places, and there appears to be lack of true development for any of the characters. However, Billy Budd's situation still allows Melville to expound his themes. Billy represents innocence and Claggart represents evil. Melville pits these age old opponents against each other in a decidedly new way which makes this book a good read for any mature reader. Like the Biblical story of The Fall, Billy Budd has his innocence corrupted by a man who hates Billy for his favored status aboard the ship. Naval Law would see Billy hanged, but Captain Vere has a hard time consenting to this. Vere, along with the reader begin to question the true nature of justice. Who says what is right and what is wrong, and how are we to really know? Billy's tragedy will ultimately leave any reader with more questions than answers.

I had to read this book twice, but after the second time, I was able to fully appreciate Melville's brilliance. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who enjoys classical literature. However, I would not recommend this book for anyone who just wants an entertaining story. Try something in the James Clavell or Ken Follett catalogue if entertainment is what you seek.

Bill Budd : Ishmael's Idiot Cousin
I went into Billy Budd expecting fully unique characters, dynamic adventure scenes, amusing-to-analyze homoeroticism, and original themes. What I got was a flat, uninspired narrative that would have been furiously marked in red by any high school English teacher for its excessive description and dull prose. Melville, what the heck!?? I go from a breathtaking adventure novel to this yawn-inspiring allegorical novella?

When Moby Dick indulges in diversions, it's like humoring a genius uncle who interrupts a riveting tale of his past for an educational discourse on different types of whales. When Billy Budd breaks up its narratives it's like suffering through a boring lecture from a professor who assumes his idiotic students haven't done the assigned reading.

Talk about a disappointment! I suspect that many people who claim to like Billy Budd do so because it's short and easy to analyze, and you can say things like "Oh, Moby Dick is next on my list. I loved Billy Budd." Did you really? I'll admit that the issues are compelling- innocence corrupted by evil, religion's role in perpetuating war, the condemnation of modern warfare which honors efficiency over valor... and so on... but they are not explored in an interesting or particularly thought-provoking way.

I agree with some other reviewers that this story reads like a draft rather than a finished work. Perhaps if Melville had further developed this it would have evolved into something brilliant, but he died before that could happen. I find the notion of Starry Vere arguing strongly for a decision which he finds unconscionable compelling, and I like Claggart's sociopathic obsession with handsome Billy. These could have been fleshed out- perhaps at the expense of the over-long professions of Billy's ethereal beauty- but they were left awash in a sea of messy, weak plot.

I doubt I will bother reading most of the stories. Herman Melville remains one of my favorite authors because of the intense enjoyment I derived from Moby Dick, but my opinion of him has been tarnished after reading this.

Sailors' Favorite Framed, Takes Rap
*BILLY BUDD, a classic tale by America's Herman Melville, was written 40 years after his burst of creative energy.Melville still possessed the feeling for a good story, but he wrote it in a language so ornate and (to our modern eyes) stilted, that one can hardly absorb it.Nevertheless, BILLY BUDD deals with a timeless human issue---the nature of justice.Billy, a handsome young sailor, has been impressed into the British Navy where he incurs the jealousy or instinctive dislike of an officer.Billy has done nothing to warrant his wrath and is highly popular among everyone.This officer, rather more intellectual than most, proves tenaciously vindictive.He endeavors to trap Billy in a mutinous plot, but Billy rejects the idea.At last the officer goes to the captain and accuses Billy of mutiny directly.The captain too likes Billy and cannot believe the accuser.He calls Billy, who in tense circumstances is apt to stutter or be tongue-tied.When presented with the officer's accusations, Billy cannot speak.He strikes the officer.The conclusion is swift and sad.I should not reveal the ending, but the question of "what is justice ?" lies at the center of it.

*Other Tales---these are neither very enjoyable nor easy to read except for BARTLEBY THE SCRIVENER, an amusing story that might remind readers of one episode from "Sinbad the Sailor". Bartleby, a copyist or scrivener arrives at a lawyer's office and is hired.He seems to have no past, no present.We discover that he even lives at the office, never goes out.He gradually refuses to do all work, but will not leave the premises.How to get rid of him ?I could tell you the end, but in the immortal words of Bartleby himself, "I would prefer not to."This is a minor classic.

The difference between to be right and to be moral!
Billy Budd has never known a home beside the sea.Orphaned, and apparently un-cared for, even though he has a personal innocence, and beauty about him, he is at one with the sea.

In his innocence, he is unaware that his superior, Claggert, is also his nemesis, and one can only speculate why Claggert has such antipathy towards him.

Although there is nothing Captain Vere can do to save the poor boy, after Billy Budd unexpectedly lashes out at Claggert, we are waiting for something to happen to avoid the unfair morality of the story.While Vere has right in his decision to condemn Billy Budd, it is an immoral decision.Is what is right and what is moral it always the same thing?Not in this case, and perhaps that is Melville's point.Well meaning people can do what is right, can act in a manner that is correct, but isn't there a higher consideration.Why does there have to be a conflict with morality and correctness, with humanity and duty.

This short novel provides yet another addition to the literature in which to question right and wrong, good and evil.I think that this is an unanswerable question.

While the themes within this story and universal, and well presented, the language is nineteenth century.Parts of the narrative are difficult to get through, and many of the metaphors require a nineteenth century outlook.But the issues it raises are worth thinking about, and that certainly comes through, at least to me, ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (12)

Thar she blows! It's a classic!
I had always been hesitant to begin reading this book, knowing about its celebrated history and crucial place in American literature. Now having read it, I can't imagine why I was ever hesitant. This book ROCKS!!!!! In nearly every page Melville imbues his work with a sense of lyricism and even chivalry. His description of the Pequod's officers likening them to heroic knights of the Medieval period took my breath away. And while the scientific chapters on whales and whaling were boring, I did find myself being enraptured not by the information, but by the expectation of meeting the famous White Whale himself. By the time Ahab was in site of his quarry, I was obsessed with the Whale too. Too me, this was a near-perfect book, and worthy of the epithet "epic.". I would say that you shouldn't pick this book up until you've reached adulthood and had experience reading classic works of this caliber. Otherwise, you won't be able to appreciate it as much as I did.

imperfect - but very much a classic
First the bad: The author goes off on tangents that seem to have little or nothing to do with the rest of the book. If he reduced the volume of text by 20% this might be the best book ever written!

Now the good: Moby Dick is fascinating, riveting, entertaining, amusing, imaginative and very educational (at least when it comes to 19th century whaling - and life aboard a whale boat). Melville brings the characters alive and gives them depth as unique, vibrant individuals, each with a fascinating story of his own. You feel that you know the crew as real sailors rather than fictional characters - and near the end, it hurts to know that they're sailing aboard a doomed ship. . .

After reading this book I'm inspired to seek employment on a Japanese whale boat, just to personally "know what whaling is." (For all you whale lovers, I'm kidding about going out on the whale boat.)

Disjointed
There are a lot of fascinating things in this book: reflections on the nature of civilization, religion, obsession. A lot of it is surprisingly nuanced for a mid nineteenth century account, and delivers a story with a lot more ambiguity than I was expected. Unfrotunately, none of those are the central focus of the book, the essence of the authorial intent. That main intent is focused on providing an array of facts on whales and whaling. This element really grinds down the conventional story, both in the sheer length given the minutia of detail and the stalling of momentum the back and forth goes.

It's interesting to read this work in the light of hard science fiction, which similarly often carries huge amounts of exposition and background setting. I'm not sure if I can hold this piece as objectively more flawed because it's talking about details I'm not interested in, but at the end of the day I'm not terribly interested in whales, and feel the author went too far into his own specific interests in representation. That gives the book a strange kind of meta element to the Ahab obsession for which it is best known.

Still, I can't dismiss it entirely, and am at a level curious to see how similar Melville's other stuff is. I can believe from the strength of concept in visualizing many of the characters and the dramatic build that there's a great novel in him, but in the end this text is too padded, slow and disjointed to be a success.

A classic--for the 19th century.Now, verbose and not to the point
This book is a classic.Many high schoolers and college students are made to slog through it.Not that it is bad, but it is verbose, and tells you all that you ever wanted to know about whales.And, a lot that you didn't care to, nor even wanted to.Like the difference between all species of whales.(At least, the important ones.)How their appearance varies, both with and without their heads.Why you want to put one head on one side of the ship, and another on the other.Detailing of the "filleting" and rendering of the whale blubber.Why the ambergris is so valuable (it smells good).Why some whales are more desirable to the whaler than others.There's even some hint of the impending extinction of whales, and some empathy for them.It seems as if Melville was trying to show off his knowledge of whaling.Of which he, admittedly, had a lot, considering that he had been on whaling expeditions previously.

There's even a chapter written like a musical, with staging, characters (like The Irishman, the Welshman, the Scot, the Arab, and virtually every nationality known at that time, whether their difference makes any difference to the story or not), everything but the music.Why, I don't know.But, there's a lot about this book that I don't know.Like the use of early 19th century English, full of thees and thous, and a lot of other antiquated terms.

But, the thing that I did not like about the book mostly is that the story, itself, (if you are familiar with the Gregory Peck movie of the '50s) is compacted into the first few chapters, then skips to the last two.Considering that the book consists of 135 chapters, you can see how much of the book contains "filler".Except to the early 19th century reader, perhaps.

If you want to, or have to, slog through this book, you will see why it is a classic.I don't.But, I am probably literally illiterate.(See?) If you want the essence of the story, from the famous "Call me Ishmael" through the end, read the first three or four chapters, then skip to the last two, and there you have it.A short story, without the filler.But then, what's the purpose of reading the book, if that's all you want?

The frustration, the grandeur
If it were possible to simultaneously give a book one star and five stars, this book would deserve it. It's easy to see how people could hate it, and any teacher who assigns it is either brilliant or as mad as Captain Ahab. Being forced to read this could only be punishment. A friend of mine who had to read it years ago said it read like a whaling encyclopedia with a short story injected into it. This is pretty accurate. Indeed, the overwhelming amount of whaling data broke Melville's streak of commercially successful novels and his popularity never recovered in his lifetime.

For the first eighty or so pages, Moby Dick comes across as probably the queerest of nineteenth-century American novels, but then suddenly there is a chapter outlining all known whales and their physical characteristics. This is followed by chapters discussing things like the awfulness of Moby Dick's whiteness, which includes an exhausting list of every symbolic connotation for the color white that Melville can remember. And it doesn't stop. Ninety pages towards the end, when the Pequod finally encounters a ship that has recently spotted Moby Dick, you'd expect the next chapter to describe the crew racing to Ahab's nemesis. But no! There is a discussion of the skeleton of whales, including physical measurements and the location of known skeletons (like the whale museum in Hull, England). Not kidding. And then towards the end the dialogue starts sounding like Shakespeare and becomes extremely difficult to understand. I guess this was an attempt to convey a sense of tragedy, but it violates the realism the work had up to that point. In short, historians of nineteenth-century sailing might wet themselves over all the detail about onboard life, but it's easy to imagine a coerced student crying in mind-numbed frustration instead. And if more people could get through it, there would be a lot more one-stars. But they give up and don't write reviews.

Okay, so that's why someone might hate this novel. But let's say you've read the sea stories of Joseph Conrad or Patrick O'Brian or simply have an overactive imagination and some patience.This doesn't feel like a novel as much as a relentless succession of brilliant images. Like the shark frenzy around the whale carcass tied to the ship or the little hole in the deck where Ahab secures his peg leg or the deck tilting at such an acute angle as the weight of the whale pulls down one side of the ship, or Moby Dick coming up out of the deep, starting with this little white blur. Melville seems perfectly aware of how powerful these images are when he abandons all pretense of plot and writes experimental chapters that read a lot---a lot---like mood-establishing excerpts from modern screenplays.

My favorite part is a chapter called rather innocently 'The line'. It describes in painstaking detail where all the rope is stored in the little boats used to attack the whales. Then it describes how that line unfurls once a harpooned whale tries to flee. The rope goes flying off so fast---smoke comes off of it---that the crew momentarily feels like it is trapped inside a steam engine. My description is clumsy, but the chapter is brilliant. But it's hard to process all the brilliance because the chapter is where it mentions in passing that these attack boats are made out of wood a half inch thick---the same thickness as my bookcases---and they're going after the largest toothed predators on the planet. I would have to say that it's the only novel I've read that's so vivid that I could `hear' a soundtrack to it.

And the feeling you get that Moby Dick didn't only get Ahab's leg but also accidentally swallowed a whaling version of Wikipedia? Personally, I felt that the long descriptions of sea life helped with the pacing, that they gave the sense of the passage of time, of giving the Pequod the opportunity of crossing half the globe.

I'm pretty sure everyone who might read this novel knows the ending, but I was still floored by it when I read it. Knowing what happens doesn't protect you against the suspense. Once I was done with it, I felt battered and bruised myself, torn between a sense of "That was amazing" and "Please don't ever ask me to read another line of Melville again in my life." But it's been over a week since I finished it and its images linger. I've started to accept that sooner or later, I will read it again.

So this is a high risk book, provoking strong reactions. But Thrift Dover edition is all but giving the book away, so it's not an expensive risk. (The font size could afford to be slightly bigger, but it's not a huge issue.)
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Product Description
White Jacket written by Herman Melville (best known for his classic whaling novel) was first published in 1850 and is considered to be a semi-biographical book, written from Melville's own personal experiences while returning home to the Atlantic Coast from the South Seas with the American Navy on a man-o'-war vessel. In the note preceding the novel, Melville states, "In the year 1843 I shipped as 'ordinary seaman' on board of a United States frigate then lying in a harbor of the Pacific Ocean. After remaining in this frigate for more than a year, I was discharged from the service . . ." ... Read more

Product Description

This collection was designed for optimal navigation on Kindle and other electronic devices. It is indexed alphabetically, chronologically and by category, making it easier to access individual books, stories and poems. This collection offers lower price, the convenience of a one-time download, and it reduces the clutter in your digital library. All books included in this collection feature a hyperlinked table of contents and footnotes. The collection is complimented by an author biography. Author's biography and stories in the trial version.

Customer Reviews (3)

A good bargain collection
I recently used the "Moby-Dick" text in this collection during the 2010 "Moby-Dick" marathon reading at the New Bedford Whaling Museum.I've often wondered just how accurate might be the texts used in the mobi collections of classic writers' works.The marathon provided a good opportunity to check, since I could follow along while others read from various print editions (I noticed the Modern Library, LOA, and Norton Critical in use).

Well, I was happy to find that the text in this collection did not noticeably vary from that of the common print editions.On the downside, however, it does not include the etymology and extracts that Melville appended to the front of "Moby-Dick."I can't imagine why that should be the case.

It's also unfortunate that this collection does not include "Pierre," Melville's most maligned and bizarre book, or the complete text of his long narrative poem "Clarel," which critic Newton Arvin considered one of his best works.

With those caveats, this is still a good place to come for the bulk of Melville's published prose and a good chunk of his poetry.

Superb collection!
Works of Herman Melville. (100+ Works) Includes Moby Dick, Omoo, Billy Budd, Sailor, The Piazza Tales and more. Published by MobileReference (mobi)

While White-Jacket seems to have little overall relation to Melville's other works in the sense that it appears as a self-contained, highly enjoyable novel, Redburn is one of those central turning points in this great writer's life that makes it extraordinarily important. Forget "adventure" or "romance." This is a novel of psychological destruction, a disasterous novel of "growing up" that displays the shattering of a young mind and the destruction of "young America." Any reader who loves Moby-Dick should devour Redburn again and again as one of Melville's most important works.

Works of Herman Melville
Complete Works of Herman Melville. Huge collection. (100+ Works) FREE Author's biography and stories in the trial version.

This ebook contains all of author's acknowledged masterpieces: "Moby-Dick," "Billy Budd"...It is indeed a very good deal. ... Read more

Product Description
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

Product Description

Herman Melville's peerless allegorical masterpiece is the epic saga of the fanatical Captain Ahab, who swears vengeance on the mammoth white whale that has crippled him. Often considered to be the Great American Novel, Moby-Dick is at once a starkly realistic story of whaling, a romance of unusual adventure, and a searing drama of heroic courage, moral conflict, and mad obsession. It is world-renowned as the greatest sea story ever told.

Moby-Dick, widely misunderstood in its own time, has since become an indubitable classic of American literature. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

moby dick
Tthe book came as promised, and in the advertised condition, but it is NOT part of the Enriched Classic Series.
It's an Airmont Classic, which only includes an intro by a PhD.It's a wicked old version, which is actually
kind of fun 1964--- to read an american classic with old and yellowed pages.I like that part.

It is complete and unabridged,but I thoughtI was getting a lot more "Enrichment"
when I ordered.

Sadly, it's just a copy of Moby Dick, a bit weathered... lacking the scholarly info
i thought I had ordered.

:(

all-time great narrator
Huck Finn, Holden Caulfield, Scout Finch - they're all classic American narrators. But for my money, the king of them all is Melville's Ishmael. Listening to him tell this story is like listening to a rakish old grandpa tell his half-remembered, half-made-up stories of youthful adventures, complete with rambling, yet interesting, digressions. Sometimes the details can be confusing to modern minds, but once you've fallen under Ishmael's spell, it doesn't seem to matter much; the point is listening to that voice and hearing the way he says things. Sure, at some points you might feel like saying, "Get on with the story, Grandpa!" But at the end of the story you'll be saying, "Tell me another one!" Ishmael's what I'd call a considerate narrator; for all his wandering asides about whales and what not, he always makes sure you know where you are in the narrative. After all, he only digresses during those long stretches of time when the Pequod is sailing along and not much is happening. The minute something happens, he stops rambling immediately, and then you're right there in the boat, catching a whale. I love Ishmael! To spend time in his company is well worth any effort the reading may require.

Book club selection
This is a select for a book club I am a member of.This book is our October selection and we are meeting on a members sail boat.I recently saw the Greggory Peck movie on the book and I look forward to reading and discussing the book on the lake under sail.

This book will cure all types of insomnia
I am in the middle of reading a number of classics and this book was on my list. I've moved on to War and Peace (thankfully). I can't imagine a more rambling, nonsensical, self-indulgent piece of tripe than this horrid book.

If you don't believe me, just read the reviews written by the journalists in the prologue. Even they thought the book was exhausting and convoluted.

If you want to read the classics, I suggest you read this. Once complete, you can spout your intellect by shouting "WHAT A TERRIBLE BOOK!!!"

A sometimes incomprehensible, always masterful story containing everything you ever wanted to know about whales and whaling.
This epic story begins, as most readers are aware, with, "Call me Ishmael." Unfortunately, that is where the easy reading ends. It follows the adventures of Ishmael and his friend, cannibal and harpooner Queequeg (my favorite character), as they first meet in Nantucket before heading off on the Pequod with a vengeful Captain Ahab and his crew. The chapters run chronologically, although some find the narrator going off on tangents about whales, whaling and other related subjects. Those involving encounters with whales are the most easily read and comprehensible. Others are extremely detailed and difficult to follow. Although nowhere near the top of my list of favorite novels, the time, energy and concentration required to get through Moby Dick are well worth the effort, even if one is unable to fully appreciate or understand each and every word. It might be better read as part of a high school or college course, where the nuances of the symbolism and goings on in various chapters could be studied and discussed in great detail. An excellent but challenging read - better swallowed with a dose of Cliff Notes. Other interesting sea creature-related books include: The Whale Rider by Witi Ihimaera, The Devil's Teeth (sharks) by Susan Casey, The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger, The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway, The Highest Tide by Jim Lynch and The Grim Grotto (book 10 in the series) by Lemony Snicket (for its Moby Dick-related plot elements).
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Product Description
John Marr and Other Poems is presented here in a high quality paperback edition. This popular classic work by Herman Melville is in the English language. If you enjoy the works of Herman Melville then we highly recommend this publication for your book collection. ... Read more