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Rating: 
Summary: shrouded in mystery
Review: Melville is, of course, best known for his epic novel Moby Dick, but he also wrote some great short fiction, including Billy Budd and Bartleby.In Bartleby, he may have written one of the first significant pieces of literature to give voice to the dehumanizing aspects of the modern industrial compartmentalized workplace. Has there ever been a less desirable job title than scrivener? They were employed by lawyers to transcribe legal documents, and if that isn't inhuman enough, the office in which Bartleby works has windows which face the brick walls of surrounding skyscrapers. Bartleby mystifies his employer, our narrator, first by refusing to assist in proof reading documents, averring "I would prefer not to." But in short order he is preferring not to do most anything, including leave the building after he is fired. Bartleby is finally removed by the police and starves to death in the Tombs, preferring not to eat. Melville keeps Bartleby, like Moby Dick, shrouded in mystery. The only explanation offered for his behavior is that he was forced to leave his patronage job in a dead letter office when administrations changed over. This leaves the reader free to freight Bartleby with any significance one desires and makes him a truly haunting figure. GRADE: A
Rating:
Summary: shrouded in mystery
Review: Melville is, of course, best known for his epic novel Moby Dick, but he also wrote some great short fiction, including Billy Budd and Bartleby. In Bartleby, he may have written one of the first significant pieces of literature to give voice to the dehumanizing aspects of the modern industrial compartmentalized workplace. Has there ever been a less desirable job title than scrivener? They were employed by lawyers to transcribe legal documents, and if that isn't inhuman enough, the office in which Bartleby works has windows which face the brick walls of surrounding skyscrapers. Bartleby mystifies his employer, our narrator, first by refusing to assist in proof reading documents, averring "I would prefer not to." But in short order he is preferring not to do most anything, including leave the building after he is fired. Bartleby is finally removed by the police and starves to death in the Tombs, preferring not to eat. Melville keeps Bartleby, like Moby Dick, shrouded in mystery. The only explanation offered for his behavior is that he was forced to leave his patronage job in a dead letter office when administrations changed over. This leaves the reader free to freight Bartleby with any significance one desires and makes him a truly haunting figure. GRADE: A
Rating:
Summary: THE Collection to buy...
Review: This edition of Melville's short fiction is, I think,
the best...certainly a real bargain at this price.
In this one volume, the reader gets all of Melville's
short fiction -- plus the novella, *Billy Budd, Sailor*
(the Harrison Hayford/Merton M. Sealts, Jr. "definitive"
Reading Text published by the Univ. of Chicago in 1962).
The collection is edited and has an excellent
"Introduction" by Warner Berthoff.
The selections are each preceded by a very informative
"Note" which tells you when the piece first appeared
and in what periodical. Berthoff also supplies in each
"Note" delicious suggestive context insights...which
help the appreciative/analytical/interpretive process
begin to percolate.
The 1st selection is "The Town-Ho's Story" (a
chapter from Melville's novel *Moby-Dick*). But
this chapter was printed in *Harper's New Monthly
Magazine* in October 1851 (according to Berthoff's
"Note")as a portion of a work-in-progress.
The collection presents the pieces in the CHRONOLOGICAL
order of their publication in various magazines.
But it also contains "The Two Temples," which
Berthoff says was rejected for publication. So,
the collection contains all of Melville's "short"
fictional pieces, including prose pieces meant to
accompany poems. These pieces in the collection
include: "The Marquis de Grandvin," "Three 'Jack
Gentian Sketches,'" "John Marr," and "Daniel Orme."
The collection concludes with *Billy Budd, Sailor."
All of the *Piazza Tales* are in this collection
along with "The Piazza " piece, itself.
This is a fine collection. The Northwestern/
Newberry editions of Melville's works are nice,
but expensive. And you would have to get 2
separate volumes to also get the *Billy Budd,
Sailor* which you get included in this one
volume.
However, what the N/N edition of Melville's
prose pieces gives you which this collection by
Berthoff does not (their title is: *The Piazza
Tales and Other Prose Pieces: 1839-1860*)are:
"Fragments from a Writing Desk" (1839),
Melville's inspired essay of idolatry and
insight, "Hawthorne and His Mosses" (17 and 24
Aug. 1850), many other uncollected pieces,
Melville's reconstructed lectures from his
stint as a public speaker/"performer" (Yikes!)
"Statues in Rome," "The South Seas," and
"Traveling." There are also copious notes,
scholarly information, photo facsimiles,
and other helpful items in the N/N edition.
But, unless you are a scholar, a Melville
fanatic, or financially unfrugal, BUY this
edition by Berthoff and published by the
Perennial Library of Harper & Row.
* * * * * * * * *
Rating:
Summary: truth comes in with darkness
Review: This is the beginning of American literature. And these short works I think tell the tale more clearly than that confusing (though still great) big book Moby Dick. Melville wrote from an outsiders perspective and he was an outsider as perhaps all Americans were because we did not yet have an identity as a people. Melville explores our institutions of justice and our ability to comprehend life through them in Billy Budd in the way a foreigner would examine justice and understanding in a land whose logic he was unfamiliar with. He seems to ask "how will our sense of justice be different than France's or England's and therby make us a different nation than theirs?" or even more simply "Is real understanding(of ourselves, or others) ever possible?" Melville is very much the anti-idealist in a work like The Piazza in which one valley dweller imagines existence on the upper slopes to be grander than his own only to travel there one day and be made aware of the opposite. So there is no dreaming colonist in Melville, in him we have a measured study of ourselves as we were in his day, and perhaps still are, a dreaming people,a restless people with only the vaguest notions of what life and its true nature is. The strangest story in this collection is Benito Cereno which is perhaps the work which most defines a democratic nation's uneasy alliance of peoples and points of view. In that work there is no one defining perspective, only differing views of one event that remains disturbingly unclear as all of Melville's worlds are. In Melville we have an author defining what we are or perhaps more importantly what our problems will be in the future. Interesting short works full of that rare kind of insight that does not seem to be trapped in its time but somehow seems to have seen what is to come. There is the idea that a new nation has of itself and a confidence that in the works of Melville is challenged. The mystery in these works is the mystery at the heart of existence and life remains inscrutable even here in this new land with its new ways. In Moby Dick the innocent Ishmael is the only one spared, in Billy Budd(Melville's last tale) the innocent is the one sacrificed. Melville's vision is not a comfortable one. The strange Bartelby,the Scrivener is a tale where personality is consumed by an impersonal system. The story strikes an odd alienated tone which will later be taken up by Kafka and Pynchon and countless others.
Rating:
Summary: truth comes in with darkness
Review: This is the beginning of American literature. And these short works I think tell the tale more clearly than that confusing (though still great) big book Moby Dick. Melville wrote from an outsiders perspective and he was an outsider as perhaps all Americans were because we did not yet have an identity as a people. Melville explores our institutions of justice and our ability to comprehend life through them in Billy Budd in the way a foreigner would examine justice and understanding in a land whose logic he was unfamiliar with. He seems to ask "how will our sense of justice be different than France's or England's and therby make us a different nation than theirs?" or even more simply "Is real understanding(of ourselves, or others) ever possible?" Melville is very much the anti-idealist in a work like The Piazza in which one valley dweller imagines existence on the upper slopes to be grander than his own only to travel there one day and be made aware of the opposite. So there is no dreaming colonist in Melville, in him we have a measured study of ourselves as we were in his day, and perhaps still are, a dreaming people,a restless people with only the vaguest notions of what life and its true nature is. The strangest story in this collection is Benito Cereno which is perhaps the work which most defines a democratic nation's uneasy alliance of peoples and points of view. In that work there is no one defining perspective, only differing views of one event that remains disturbingly unclear as all of Melville's worlds are. In Melville we have an author defining what we are or perhaps more importantly what our problems will be in the future. Interesting short works full of that rare kind of insight that does not seem to be trapped in its time but somehow seems to have seen what is to come. There is the idea that a new nation has of itself and a confidence that in the works of Melville is challenged. The mystery in these works is the mystery at the heart of existence and life remains inscrutable even here in this new land with its new ways. In Moby Dick the innocent Ishmael is the only one spared, in Billy Budd(Melville's last tale) the innocent is the one sacrificed. Melville's vision is not a comfortable one. The strange Bartelby,the Scrivener is a tale where personality is consumed by an impersonal system. The story strikes an odd alienated tone which will later be taken up by Kafka and Pynchon and countless others.
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