Billy Budd, Bartleby, and Other Stories

by Herman Melville, Peter M. Coviello (Introduction)

A new, definitive edition of Herman Melville’s virtuosic short stories—American classics wrought with scorching fury, grim humor, and profound beauty
 
Though best-known for his epic masterpiece Moby-Dick, Herman Melville also left a body of short stories arguably unmatched in American fiction. In the sorrowful tragedy of Billy Budd, Sailor; the controlled rage of Benito Cereno; and the tantalizing enigma of Bartleby, the Scrivener; Melville reveals himself as a singular storyteller of tremendous range and compelling power. In these stories, Melville cuts to the heart of race, class, capitalism, and globalism in America, deftly navigating political and social issues that resonate as clearly in our time as they did in Melville’s. Also including The Piazza Tales in full, this collection demonstrates why Melville stands not only among the greatest writers of the nineteenth century, but also as one of our greatest contemporaries.
 
This Penguin Classics edition features the Reading Text of Billy Budd, Sailor, as edited from a genetic study of the manuscript by Harrison Hayford and Merton M. Sealts, Jr., and the authoritative Northwestern-Newberry text of The Piazza Tales.
 
For more than sixty-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,500 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Classics, Literature, American, 19th Century, School

442 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 23, 2016

About the author

There is more than one author with this name

Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period. Among his best-known works are Moby-Dick (1851); Typee (1846), a romanticized account of his experiences in Polynesia; and Billy Budd, Sailor, a posthumously published novella. At the time of his death, Melville was no longer well known to the public, but the 1919 centennial of his birth was the starting point of a Melville revival. Moby-Dick eventually would be considered one of the great American novels.
Melville was born in New York City, the third child of a prosperous merchant whose death in 1832 left the family in dire financial straits. He took to sea in 1839 as a common sailor on a merchant ship and then on the whaler Acushnet, but he jumped ship in the Marquesas Islands. Typee, his first book, and its sequel, Omoo (1847), were travel-adventures based on his encounters with the peoples of the islands. Their success gave him the financial security to marry Elizabeth Shaw, the daughter of the Boston jurist Lemuel Shaw. Mardi (1849), a romance-adventure and his first book not based on his own experience, was not well received. Redburn (1849) and White-Jacket (1850), both tales based on his experience as a well-born young man at sea, were given respectable reviews, but did not sell well enough to support his expanding family.
Melville's growing literary ambition showed in Moby-Dick (1851), which took nearly a year and a half to write, but it did not find an audience, and critics scorned his psychological novel Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852). From 1853 to 1856, Melville published short fiction in magazines, including "Benito Cereno" and "Bartleby, the Scrivener". In 1857, he traveled to England, toured the Near East, and published his last work of prose, The Confidence-Man (1857). He moved to New York in 1863, eventually taking a position as a United States customs inspector.
From that point, Melville focused his creative powers on poetry. Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866) was his poetic reflection on the moral questions of the American Civil War. In 1867, his eldest child Malcolm died at home from a self-inflicted gunshot. Melville's metaphysical epic Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land was published in 1876. In 1886, his other son Stanwix died of apparent tuberculosis, and Melville retired. During his last years, he privately published two volumes of poetry, and left one volume unpublished. The novella Billy Budd was left unfinished at his death, but was published posthumously in 1924. Melville died from cardiovascular disease in 1891.

Reviews

[Leonard Gaya · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is a fleeting moment in Benito Cereno, where the American Captain Delano comes across an old sailor working some ropes into a large, strange knot, which he describes as a “gordian knot”. Intrigued, the Captain asks him what this entanglement of ropes is for. “For someone else to undo,” mutters back the old man (see Penguin ed., p. 89). So are the short stories in this collection.

Most of these stories were first published in 1856 in an anthology titled The Piazza Tales (from the name of the first story). The notable exception is Billy Budd, found unfinished in a drawer after Melville’s death and published several years later, after many attempts to “undo” what the author had tied up and left behind.

Bartleby, the Scrivener is perhaps the most well-known of the lot. It’s also one of the most puzzling despite its brevity. It tells the story of an industrious clerk in a law office who, one day, puts his pen down and answers every request or question with the same odd reply: “I would prefer not to”. The story unfolds the tragi-comic consequences of Bartleby’s attitude, but the reasons for it are essentially left unexplained or, perhaps, concealed by the narrator. To a modern reader, Bartleby heralds the absurdist literature of Kafka, Beckett, and Camus. But in essence, Bartleby is a mystery—something for someone else to undo.

Benito Cereno, like Moby-Dick, is a tale of the sea. Based on the true story of Captain Delano, it is about an encounter with a Spanish slave ship off the coast of Chile. Things happening on board feel slightly weird. An epidemic has decimated the Spanish crew, and the attitude of Captain Cereno and his servant Babo is nothing short of confusing. The whole plot is an epistemological “hive of subtlety” and deception. A precursor (along with Edgar Allan Poe’s tales) of the mystery novel—also something for someone else to undo.

The Encantadas is a different story, more like a travelogue about the Galápagos Islands, which Melville had probably visited during his five-year voyage on a whaleboat. It is also influenced by Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle and Dafoe’s Robinson Crusoe. The narrator’s apparent fascination with the giant tortoise is reminiscent of Ahab’s with the white whale, and the general impression of Melville’s detailed description is exotic, strange and allegorical. The short sketches on the Chola Widow and the Hermit Oberlus toward the end are condensed little novels in and of themselves.

However, the main course in this whole collection is probably the posthumous story Billy Budd, yet another tale of the sea. In short, it is about a handsome young sailor, Billy Budd, who is sentenced to death on a warship on unjust and questionable charges. Melville’s style, as in Moby Dick, is luxurious, allegorical and digressive (one may dream how, given a few more years, he could have turned this novella into a second great American novel). The power play between Billy Budd and the other crewmates, and the motivations of Captain Vere and Master-at-arms Claggart, even the legitimacy of the law, are all subject to endless conjectures—once again, something for someone else to undo.

[Scriptor Ignotus · Rating 4 out of 5]

The three standout works of this collection are Bartleby, Benito Cereno, and Billy Budd. Bartleby is far and away my favorite, because it showcases everything I love about Melville: his delightful sense of humor, the quirkiness of his narrators, the opulence of his prose, and his penchant for allusion, whereby he elevates the mundane to the level of the gods. Everything about the story is irresistibly endearing: Three law clerks in Manhattan named Turkey, Nippers, and Bartleby; the fact that the narrator, instead of simply firing Bartleby, is first driven to flights of high philosophical speculation about the mysterious nature of his polite but useless new scrivener. I loved how even the word “prefer” became a punchline.

Benito Cereno is an underrated masterpiece of Melville’s corpus. Written just prior to the outbreak of the American Civil War, it is a scathing allegory on the relationship between master and slave. Off the coast of Chile in the year 1799, an American vessel comes across an ailing ship, showing no colors but clearly in distress. It turns out to be a Spanish slave ship that is missing about half of its crew; and as the American Captain Delano meets the Spanish Captain Benito Cereno and inquires about how the ship and crew came to such a state, he gradually learns that everything aboard the San Dominick is not as it seems.

Billy Budd is essentially a Christian allegory set at sea. The Handsome Sailor is impressed into service on a British warship, earns the affection of the crew through his guilelessness, but also awakens the envious hatred of the ship’s master-at-arms, who sets in motion a tragic chain of events. While I enjoyed the story, the Biblical metaphors often felt forced, even at the expense of the integrity of the plot. It wasn’t clear to me why Captain Vere was willing to believe Claggart’s accusation when he brought Billy Budd to the cabin to answer his charge, but immediately knew that Billy was innocent when he killed Claggart. If someone responds to an accusation by killing the accuser, that would seem to me more an indication of guilt than of innocence. I also found the ornateness of Melville’s language somewhat difficult to imbibe in this piece, even though I hadn’t had that difficulty with any of the other stories in this volume, or with Moby Dick. This may be because I just wasn’t as keen on this story as I was on the others.

Ah, Bartleby! Ah, Benito! Ah, Billy! Ah, Melville! Ah, humanity!

[Inderjit Sanghera]

Weird and wonderful, the short stories of Herman Melville, from the story of the incorrigible scrivener Bartleby, to the homo-eroticism of 'Billy Budd' to Melville's mellifluous imagery 'The Piazza', a kind of lachrymose wisdom is embedded within Melville's stories of lugubrious loners and insouciant individuals who inhabit the fictional world created by Melville.

The bucolic short story "The Piazza" is the tale of an unnamed narrator's perambulations across the idyllic Massachusetts countryside. The narrator, although broadly satisfied with his abode, laments the fact that there is no piazza, thus inhibiting his ability to truly enjoy. A kind of heir to Don Quixote, who is just of the literary characters name-checked by the erudite narrator, he is often too caught up his dreams and fantasies to truly appreciate the beauty of the world around him-nevertheless this is Melville's most poetic work, in which his pen shimmers and shines with beautiful imagery;

"For not only do long ground-swells roll the slanting grain, and little wavelets of the grass ripple over upon the low piazza, as their beach, and the blown down of dandelions is wafted like the spray, and the purple of the mountains is just the purple of the billows, and a still August noon broods upon the deep meadows, as a calm upon the Line;but the vastness and the lonesomeness are so oceanic, and the silence and the sameness, too, that the first peep of a strange house, rising beyond the trees, is for all the world like spying, on the Barbary coast, an unknown sail"

Eventually the narrator comes across a woman-who may or may not just be a figment of his imagination, who is also caught up her sense of isolation-what good is beauty if it is punctuated so often with boredom? During their dialogue she wistfully wishes that she lived in the house she can occasionally see across the valley, whose inhabitant she realises must be a completely happy person-with the narrator realising that the house she is talking about his own. In some ways the novel is about the joys of the imagination, of hours spent in febrile fantasies and delirious day-dreams, but it many ways it is about appreciating what you have, about not spending your life wistfully wondering about what may have been or could have been, but on appreciating what you have. 

"Bartleby", however, is the true highlight of this collection of short stories. The principle character, aside from the narrator, a nameless, nondescript lawyer, is Bartleby, a scrivener whose pretty much sole dialogue in the story is the response of "I would prefer not to" to any work which he feels beneath him which, eventually, applies to any work at all. It is hard to really understand what-if any-moral Melville wanted us to take away from the story, outside the sense of non-conformity and individuality which Bartleby demonstrates in his inability to interact with other individuals in anything approaching a normal manner-instead he acts a kind of phantasm who haunts the life and conscious of the well-meaning if slightly dull lawyer who employ and eventually inadvertently houses him. In some ways the story is a kind of precursor to Kafka's nightmarish descriptions of office life, of its meaningless tasks, the sense of conformity it enforces on and the ultimate meaningless of it all (Nippers and Turkey seem like the kind of characters who Josef K would run into in the office blocks he explores in 'The Trial') however irrespective of whichever moral message Melville was attempting to promote, 'Bartleby' remains one of the most original short stories of he 19th century. 

'Billy Budd' is a story pervaded with homo-eroticism, of the beautiful Billy Budd and the jealous, highfalutin John Claggart who, presumably is swept in a physical passion for Billy which festers into hatred and causes him to falsely accuse Billy of treason. As with Moby Dick, Melville is able to capture both the excitement and dreariness of life at seas, the drudgery of every-day tasks juxtaposed with the excitement of discovery and the raucous dynamics between the crew. However, more than this 'Billy Budd' is the story of loss of innocence, of the innate goodness of Billy Budd, whose death by hanging is captured in the full-light of dawn and which, Christ-like illuminates the innate goodness of his soul in a world too corrupt for Billy to survive in. 

[Maggie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed…. I know Moby Dick is somewhere in my future.

[*❆ Kαɾҽɳ ❆* · Rating 3 out of 5]

Only read "Bartleby"

[Merry · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid collection of one of my new favourite writers' shorter works. I absolutely adore Melville's style, humour, and creativity.
My favourites are The Piazza, The Encantadas, Benito Cereno and Billy Budd - which probably surprises no one who knows me at least a little. XD

[Isabelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

billy budd: too pretty to die, too stupid to live

[Reyer · Rating 3 out of 5]

This bundle contains a selection of eight short stories and novellas by Herman Melville, all written in the 1850s, except for Billy Budd, Sailor, which was written in the late 1880s and published posthumously in 1924. The stories were written during a time when the author was short on cash due to some commercial failures. As the title suggests, Billy Budd, Sailor and Bartleby, the Scrivener are the highlights of the collection, though Benito Cereno also deserves considerable attention.

As with Moby-Dick , I struggled with Melville’s language. On the one hand, it is beautiful beyond measure, and often humorous (Bartleby) or sensual (Billy Budd). The author is unique in his ability to describe landscapes (notably in The Piazza Tales and The Encantados) and build atmosphere. On the other hand, that same language often obscures a lack of narrative, leaving me somewhat unfulfilled. In that sense, Melville is a writer who perhaps requires better preparation than I had.

Billy Budd is a five-star contribution to the bundle. Set on a battleship of the British Royal Navy in 1797, a period following two notorious mutinies, this historical novella offers everything in terms of drama and suspense. I was surprised by Melville’s attempt to psychologise Master-at-Arms John Claggart, whose envy – handsome is as handsome did – leads to poor Billy’s downfall. I’ve seen the opera adaptation by Benjamin Britten, and I understand why the story continues to hold such appeal for gay artists.

Bartleby is the funniest story. It is hard not to sympathise with the impudent clerk, whose mantra – ‘I would prefer not to’ – becomes increasingly intriguing. Unfortunately, this is one of those well-structured stories that just fizzles out. In that respect, I found Benito Cereno more interesting. The narrative left me with many questions; I imagine it must have provoked even more existential doubts at the time, ten years before the official abolition of slavery and involuntary servitude in the United States.

Melville once again impressed me with his style, but for now, I’d be happy with some lighter reading.

[Chad E Spilman · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a young reader, in school at the time, my librarian was trying to explain an arbitrary point system to accumulate for prizes or grading, I don't remember which. But she mentions Moby Dick. It has a large point scorer well above any other book. I was immediately intrigued. I still have never read it. But last year I read the Art of Fielding and there is an obsessed dean at a university somewhere in the northern United States that absolutely loved Herman Melville and the writing. I became, once again intrigued. I decided to read these short stories to dip my toes in the water of his writing and I can see why Herman Melville has this effect on people. His stories are so enigmatic and interesting. I am once again intrigued to read Herman Melville. Maybe Moby Dick will be read soon, I hope.

I highly recommend it if you like the old classics. It is a bit challenging but the penguin edition helps you out with the notes in the back.

[Darryl Suite · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow, this is (mostly) a stunner. Melville flexed. I wasn’t expecting these stories to be as strange and hallucinatory as they were. I was entranced. The best stories were “Billy Budd: Sailor” (ahead of its time, I’d say) and “Bartleby, the Scrivener” —a perfect story imo. This collection is making me reconsider my vow to never read “Moby-Dick.” Hmm. Oh my.

[Johnnie]

Highlights include: "The Piazza", "Bartleby, the Scrivener", "Benito Cereno", and "The Encantadas, or Enchanted Isles"

Melville can be dense at times so it feels like a lot of his details went over my head... strongly encourage everyone to read "Bartleby" though. It is funny.

[Rhys · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wish I had read these stories before reading Moby Dick. I would have appreciated more the craft of Melville.

[Chris Dech · Rating 3 out of 5]

The big ones are better than the small ones, so rating this is hard.

[Brian O'Connell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, Melville really is that good. The centerpieces here constitute some of the best short fiction you’ll ever encounter: awe-inspiringly sophisticated in terms of construction and technique, but also effortlessly compelling (even at great length) and so beautifully written you’ll find your eyes widening as you read. “Bartleby, the Scrivener”—I don’t even know what there is for me to say about that story. It’s one of the most incredible stretches of prose in the English language. “Benito Cereno” offers a darkly ironic, macabre, masterfully sustained exercise in point-of-view, eventually coming to encompass all sorts of fascinating ideas vis-a-vis the blindness of privilege and the construction of whiteness and blackness. (Many of these stories remain remarkably prescient and contemporary as regards their political implications.) And reading “Billy Budd, Sailor”, you can see why it remains the ur-text for so much of our finest homosexual tragedy. What it says is devastating, and what it doesn’t say—what it invites us to infer, often to our frustration—is dizzying. The other stories range from sketches (“The Lightning-Rod Man”) to weightier experiments (“The Encantadas”, “Paradise...Tartarus...”), but even when the subject is slight, Melville mostly compensates by gilding it with stunningly beautiful prose (“The Piazza” is mainly remarkable for its downright hallucinatory cocktail of words and allusions). The only true dud is “The Bell-Tower”: it’s got some nice atmosphere at the start, but there’s nothing in there whatsoever that Poe, Bierce, or Shelley haven’t done better. These are stories rich in dread, humor, and wonder; they’re also just drunk on the sheer exhilaration of language, and offer more food for thought than most novels. I’ll be returning to them many a time.

[Jonathan Brooker · Rating 1 out of 5]

The excitement was high in picking up a book of supposedly classically written short stories. Imagine how fun it will be to work through a full narrative in a relatively brief time; coming to meet a variety of fantastic characters, encounter their various dilemmas, and then watch the turn as those dilemmas get resolved. No such luck with Melville!

From the beginning I was thrown off by the general oddity of the Piazza Tales that begin this particular collection. It didn't seem to have as much of a storyline as it did a mysterious way of painting scenes, piecing them together, and then more or less just ending. But then things got worse when "Bartleby, The Scrivener" became the next short story. It was generally unenjoyable to read as I went along, but eventually I found myself pulled it by the peculiar nature of this mysterious character. I thought, "Melville's finally done it! He's captured my intrigue." And in the whole of the various stories that would follow, this one stood out in that way! I was eager to find out what was behind such strange behavior of this employee! As it would turn out, the author had no desire in giving the reader any such satisfaction. The story ends with all of the mystery still fully hidden, all of the questions still unanswered. Perhaps this could be done in some narratives and leave the reader contented to let that unknown remain as such, but I can't imagine I was the only reader to find it simply annoying.

As for the rest of the short stories, I pressed myself to read each one in order to complete the collection. None of them were particularly entertaining to me. I picked up a work of fiction to get lost in some intriguing story-telling and instead felt like I was having to work through a piece of literature like I would work through a school assignment.

[Brad Mariano · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rating for this edition in particular, which seems to be the best collection of all his shorts. Quality fluctuates as any shorts collection invariably will do, but rating is based on the high water mark(s) rather than some aggregate.

Bartleby, the Scrivener ***** - genuinely funny, induced anxiety
Benito Cereno ***** extraordinary, complex adventure yarn - like if one of the many ship meetings in Moby Dick was fleshed out into a Twilight Zone episode
Billy Budd, Sailor ***** endlessly interpretable
Paradise of Bachelors, Tartarus of Maids ***** as good a treatment and experience of privilege as anything written in the last 150 years- Melville's secret weapon is his limitless empathy
Lightning-Rod Man **** did Melville invent infomercials?
Bell-tower *** Surprisingly simplistic in its central moral, reads as a Poe knock-off
Piazza *** Barely registered
Encantadas *** Melville loses me when he goes full descriptive, when not held together by a compelling POV/protagonist. Didn't take much away from this long series

[Davis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty good.
Bartleby was awesome (tho not as good as I remembered for some reason)
some of the longer shit really dragged on, definitely didn't need to be so long but idk definitely just a product of time
he has really good sensibilities sort of and idk got more emotional than I thought it would,,,, pretty nice parts definitely.
Billy Budd is pretty cool, really ahead of its time and just nice and good
some good writing, but took a long time, also a lot a lot of just boring shit describing shit way too long. pretty good

[Miles Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Melville's last piece of fiction is often considered his greatest after Moby Dick. Its posthumous publication in 1924 resulted in the resurgence of Melville and ultimately led to the resurrection of Moby Dick. Billy Budd is a very different work than The Whale in that it is a sort of psychological work, while Moby Dick is deeply spiritual. Melville's dispositional Calvinism is on full display in Billy Budd. The reader is forced to confront questions of justice and mercy, law and rule of law. In many ways Captain Vere, not the title character, emerges as the great moral personage.

[Dylan Rock · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fine collection of Herman Melville under appreciated short fiction that displays his mastery of the form.

[John Majerle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Up to now the only Melville story I have read was Moby Dick and so I was pleased to find an anthology of his shorter fiction. Typical of mid 19th century fiction, these stories are long in description and short on dialog and plot so it takes a bit of patience to get adjusted to the rhythm of the story telling. Once done I wasn't disappointed.

By the time I finished I gained much empathy for the people of that time, better understanding a psychology significantly displaced from my personal timeline. We may not have the exact same challenges as they, but reading how these characters responded to their situations makes me consider how people of our time respond to ours, and makes me wonder how well we do.

[D. Sawyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

A good collection of Melville's short stories, containing the six present in "The Piazza Tales", as well as Billy Budd and more, however I bought it for Bartleby exclusively. This copy by Penguin Classics also includes an introduction and more importantly a notes section, which helped greatly in understanding some of the references Melville makes. As for the story of Bartleby, I dont have much to say (fittingly), other than that it is my favorite of his shorter works.

[Martin Moriarty · Rating 5 out of 5]

From Billy Budd: “Through the rose-tan of his complexion no pallor could have shown. It would have taken days of sequestration from the winds and the sun to have brought about the effacement of that. But the skeleton in the cheekbone at the point of its angle was just beginning delicately to be defined under the warm-tinted skin. In fervid hearts self-contained, some brief experiences devour our human tissue as secret fire in a ship’s hold consumes cotton in the bale.”

[Katy Kessler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full disclosure - I only read Billy Budd - but this was my first time reading Melville, and the moment I finished I wanted to reread. Melville gives voice to things that only lie on the fringe of my thoughts, things that I wish I was smart enough to wonder about. Here’s to spending the rest of my semester researching this tale & hoping I don’t hate it by the time it’s all said & done!

[Zydeco Lamaze · Rating 5 out of 5]

Billy Bud they could never make me hate you. Imagine if your boss hated you for your joyous whimsy and open heart and beautiful soul? And also that he was gay for you, that’s also a huge factor. BILLY THEYLL KILL YOU!!! You’re too blissful, too handsome!!! Billy!!!!

[spoon · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would read almost all of these stories again.

Maybe it’s just my messy mood at present (and it might be blasphemy to say this) but I think I like Barbara Johnson’s essay on Billy Budd more than Billy Budd itself, at least at the present anyway.

[Simon · Rating 5 out of 5]

So! Much! There!

Will be rereading, reading more critical appraisal.

[Mark O'Rawe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bartleby and Billy Budd are two of the best stories I’ve ever read.

[Magdalena · Rating 4 out of 5]

So many ways to beat around the bush, every time this man starts telling you a story you have to sit through one thousand disclaimers and ruminations first but once you get used to it you slow down you are rewarded because the stories are crazy

[Wuutroe · Rating 4 out of 5]

First time reading Melville, the first story, The Piazza as well as The Bell-Tower instantly reminded me of H.P. Lovecraft, which I loved.
However, my favorite story was Billy Budd, a beautiful and tragic story.

[Chris Michaels · Rating 4 out of 5]

I only read Billy Budd and Bartleby, there’s a clear winner among the two.

I liked the courtroom drama element of Billy Budd but it feels very proto-Moby Dick like experimenting with the historic immersion thing. Good story overall but I’m not raging for Billy Budd