What do you think?
Rate this book
The Night Inspector
An immensely powerful story, The Night Inspector follows the extraordinary life of William Bartholomew, a maimed veteran of the Civil War, as he returns from the battlefields to New York City, bent on reversing his fortunes. It is there he meets Jessie, a Creole prostitute who engages him in a venture that has its origins in the complexities and despair of the conflict he has left behind. He also befriends a deputy inspector of customs named Herman Melville who, largely forgotten as a writer, is condemned to live in the wake of his vanished literary success and in the turmoil of his fractured family.
Delving into the depths of this country's heart and soul, Frederick Busch's stunning novel is a gripping portrait of a nation trying to heal from the ravages of war--and of one man's attempt to recapture a taste for life through the surging currents of his own emotions, ambitions, and shattered conscience.
Delving into the depths of this country's heart and soul, Frederick Busch's stunning novel is a gripping portrait of a nation trying to heal from the ravages of war--and of one man's attempt to recapture a taste for life through the surging currents of his own emotions, ambitions, and shattered conscience.
295 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1999
41 people are currently reading
770 people want to read
About the author
Frederick Busch
70 books42 followersFrederick Busch (1941–2006) was the recipient of many honors, including an American Academy of Arts and Letters Fiction Award, a National Jewish Book Award, and the PEN/Malamud Award. The prolific author of sixteen novels and six collections of short stories, Busch is renowned for his writing’s emotional nuance and minimal, plainspoken style. A native of Brooklyn, New York, he lived most of his life in upstate New York, where he worked for forty years as a professor at Colgate University.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 90 reviews
July 18, 2021
”It was the War. The interests of money and the will of our Commander decreed it. Battle for the rights of the industrialists, battle for the rights of the agriculturists, battle on behalf of bullyrag Abe, who saw himself, I insist, as the issue: my will, my national entity, my idea of indivisibility. Crush the farmboys and the desperate Negroes into one another with a thunderclap. And see to it--be sure!--one William Bartholomew receives the national hoofprint in his head. I’m a coin imprinted with Abe’s earnestness.”
The Sharpshooter by Winslow Homer on display at the Portland Museum of Art. Billy implies that he was the model for this painting.
I would say that William Bartholomew had just cause in being bitter, but when we weigh the cosmic scales of justice there is generally always a few ingots of information that we may not choose to put on the scale for fear that it will determine a different outcome contrary to our feelings. It is rare that a finger is not on the scale even by those that are duly elected to judge the rest of us. For those of us not wearing robes we may allow emotion to override the details, but then who among us has the right to judge Billy Bartholomew.
He was sanctioned in what he did. He was a killer for Abe.
”The colonel was a girlish-looking young man in a creased but clean-looking uniform, and he had long, fine fingers with which he tapped on the air, as if working out the proper phrase, or, for all I knew, the rhyme scheme of a poem. I put a bullet into the side of his head, which appeared to disintegrate as he went over, hands and elbows loose in the air, a cloud of sprayed blood remaining behind an instant where he had been. The ink spilled, and the pen hung in the air although the writer was gone while the shot still echoed.”
Billy was a sharpshooter. A man lauded and reviled in the same breath.
Every man in that war had the opportunity to become a killer. Some fired their weapons high on purpose. Some thought God was guiding their bullets. Some believed it was just a damn dirty job that had to be done. Some didn’t know they liked killing until the war introduced them to the Devil. Some killed themselves rather than jeopardize their souls in taking the life of another. Some men reveled in finally being able to embrace their baser natures.
Billy was a killer long before he joined the Union army.
His Uncle took it upon himself to see to his brother’s family after Billy’s Dad died. He was reasonably wealthy so the family was not a burden to him. He was a businessman and didn’t see the sense in giving money without something in return. He was very clear in his demands. It was either his brother’s wife or his brother’s son, it didn’t matter which, but one of them was going to have to service his carnal appetite.
It wasn’t so much that Billy killed him, but how he killed him. Which brings us back to his decision to be a sharpshooter. There is a darkness in him. He wasn’t up in those trees shooting men for Abe. He was up in those trees shooting men because he was good at it. He liked it.
Sure, he had doubts. He wasn’t a total psychopath, but maybe it had more to do with the fact that he could hear the hoof beats of retribution. Abe wasn’t going to be there when that horseman arrived. Billy was going to have to face it on his own.
Abe carried the burden of what he asked you to do Billy. His face shows the blemishes of war.
”My head burned from within, like one of the ruined manorial houses, all roasted black shell and sullen embers, which I had seen before the hunters took me down.”
It was an unlucky shot. It was a bullet from a mirror, his counterpart on the other side. It was a bullet meant to kill him, but it exploded the magazine of his rifle, sending shrapnel and liquid fire into his face.
He begged them to kill him, but a debt is a debt and Billy hadn’t paid all of his yet.
He wears a mask. His face is a horror show too damaged to repair.
He moves to New York, the city of commerce. He starts making money. He places investments for himself and others. He meets Jessie a prostitute who lifts his mask and kisses the rigid scars of his battlefield face.
”I wondered who had passed down eyes of such coloration if her mother was African or Polynesian, and her father a slave. There was a white man in the woodpile, I thought. I thought, too, of the loveliness of her face, the strength of her long throat, the savagery in her tattoos. She was a letter I had read with my fingers, like a man long blind who at last has a message he was years before intended to receive.”
Jessie has plans for Billy. Everyone craves affection. A monster needs it more than most. The tattered remnants of his soul are hers for the taking.
Herman Melville
Bartholomew meets the writer of The Whale. A man ignored by readers. A man now besot with drink. A man who instead of devoting his time to scribbling is working for the government as a Custom Inspector on the docks of New York. Frederick Busch does an excellent job bringing Melville to life. For those that are big fans of Melville this will be the next best thing to meeting him. You may not greet him at his best, but you will certainly be left with a view of him that rings true.
To help Jessie Billy Bartholomew knows he needs Melville. He takes him on a tour of the seamier side of town. A look through a peephole in a bordello lends weight to Billy’s request of Melville. It also leaves everyone in the party feeling dirty. ”I showed you a look at bad behavior and sorrow. Like it was minstrels kicking and strumming just for you.” They paid to look through the peephole to give them distance from these disgusting liberties being taken, but by being an observer without action they became part of the problem.
There is ugliness in this novel beyond the disfigured grotesqueness of Billy’s shattered face. With poverty rampant in 1867 and so many more widowed women and orphaned children from the war vulnerable to the desires and profits of the strong, it wasn’t only the South suffering through darkest days. Busch doesn’t shy away from the grit, the stench, and the ruthlessness of this time period. In fact, he pushes the reader up to the peephole and whispers in your ear…”what are you going to do about it?”
The Sharpshooter by Winslow Homer on display at the Portland Museum of Art. Billy implies that he was the model for this painting.
I would say that William Bartholomew had just cause in being bitter, but when we weigh the cosmic scales of justice there is generally always a few ingots of information that we may not choose to put on the scale for fear that it will determine a different outcome contrary to our feelings. It is rare that a finger is not on the scale even by those that are duly elected to judge the rest of us. For those of us not wearing robes we may allow emotion to override the details, but then who among us has the right to judge Billy Bartholomew.
He was sanctioned in what he did. He was a killer for Abe.
”The colonel was a girlish-looking young man in a creased but clean-looking uniform, and he had long, fine fingers with which he tapped on the air, as if working out the proper phrase, or, for all I knew, the rhyme scheme of a poem. I put a bullet into the side of his head, which appeared to disintegrate as he went over, hands and elbows loose in the air, a cloud of sprayed blood remaining behind an instant where he had been. The ink spilled, and the pen hung in the air although the writer was gone while the shot still echoed.”
Billy was a sharpshooter. A man lauded and reviled in the same breath.
Every man in that war had the opportunity to become a killer. Some fired their weapons high on purpose. Some thought God was guiding their bullets. Some believed it was just a damn dirty job that had to be done. Some didn’t know they liked killing until the war introduced them to the Devil. Some killed themselves rather than jeopardize their souls in taking the life of another. Some men reveled in finally being able to embrace their baser natures.
Billy was a killer long before he joined the Union army.
His Uncle took it upon himself to see to his brother’s family after Billy’s Dad died. He was reasonably wealthy so the family was not a burden to him. He was a businessman and didn’t see the sense in giving money without something in return. He was very clear in his demands. It was either his brother’s wife or his brother’s son, it didn’t matter which, but one of them was going to have to service his carnal appetite.
It wasn’t so much that Billy killed him, but how he killed him. Which brings us back to his decision to be a sharpshooter. There is a darkness in him. He wasn’t up in those trees shooting men for Abe. He was up in those trees shooting men because he was good at it. He liked it.
Sure, he had doubts. He wasn’t a total psychopath, but maybe it had more to do with the fact that he could hear the hoof beats of retribution. Abe wasn’t going to be there when that horseman arrived. Billy was going to have to face it on his own.
Abe carried the burden of what he asked you to do Billy. His face shows the blemishes of war.
”My head burned from within, like one of the ruined manorial houses, all roasted black shell and sullen embers, which I had seen before the hunters took me down.”
It was an unlucky shot. It was a bullet from a mirror, his counterpart on the other side. It was a bullet meant to kill him, but it exploded the magazine of his rifle, sending shrapnel and liquid fire into his face.
He begged them to kill him, but a debt is a debt and Billy hadn’t paid all of his yet.
He wears a mask. His face is a horror show too damaged to repair.
He moves to New York, the city of commerce. He starts making money. He places investments for himself and others. He meets Jessie a prostitute who lifts his mask and kisses the rigid scars of his battlefield face.
”I wondered who had passed down eyes of such coloration if her mother was African or Polynesian, and her father a slave. There was a white man in the woodpile, I thought. I thought, too, of the loveliness of her face, the strength of her long throat, the savagery in her tattoos. She was a letter I had read with my fingers, like a man long blind who at last has a message he was years before intended to receive.”
Jessie has plans for Billy. Everyone craves affection. A monster needs it more than most. The tattered remnants of his soul are hers for the taking.
Herman Melville
Bartholomew meets the writer of The Whale. A man ignored by readers. A man now besot with drink. A man who instead of devoting his time to scribbling is working for the government as a Custom Inspector on the docks of New York. Frederick Busch does an excellent job bringing Melville to life. For those that are big fans of Melville this will be the next best thing to meeting him. You may not greet him at his best, but you will certainly be left with a view of him that rings true.
To help Jessie Billy Bartholomew knows he needs Melville. He takes him on a tour of the seamier side of town. A look through a peephole in a bordello lends weight to Billy’s request of Melville. It also leaves everyone in the party feeling dirty. ”I showed you a look at bad behavior and sorrow. Like it was minstrels kicking and strumming just for you.” They paid to look through the peephole to give them distance from these disgusting liberties being taken, but by being an observer without action they became part of the problem.
There is ugliness in this novel beyond the disfigured grotesqueness of Billy’s shattered face. With poverty rampant in 1867 and so many more widowed women and orphaned children from the war vulnerable to the desires and profits of the strong, it wasn’t only the South suffering through darkest days. Busch doesn’t shy away from the grit, the stench, and the ruthlessness of this time period. In fact, he pushes the reader up to the peephole and whispers in your ear…”what are you going to do about it?”
May 26, 2025
The Sharpshooter Meets Herman Melville
Winston Homer's celebrated painting of 1862, "A Sharpshooter On Picket Duty" shows a young Union soldier with his legs straddled over a tree branch taking careful aim with his rifle at some undisclosed but surely soon to be dead target. Homer's painting becomes part of the inspiration for Frederick Busch's (1941 -- 2006) dark novel, "The Night Inspector" which creatively imagines the life of Homer's nameless sharpshooter in the person of William Bartholomew, the first person narrator of the story. In Busch's novel, Bartholomew is a ruthless, highly efficient killer during the Civil War whose targets include Confederate mapmakers, officers, prostitutes serving the Confederate troops, enemy sharpshooters, and many others. At length, in an exchange of fire, Bartholomew is hit and his face is blown away. He barely survives the painful injury but has to was a mask or a veil to cover the loss of most of his face. Bartholomew moves to New York City where he lives in the notorious Five Points by night and works on Broadway as successful speculator by day.
The other main character in "The Night Inspector" is the American novelist and poet, Herman Melville (1819 -- 1891). Melville had made a modest name for himself with his early novels, but his now famous novel "Moby-Dick" and a successor novel "Pierre" had been badly received. By 1867, when this story takes place, Melville was in an apparent long decline. He had stopped writing novels and lived In New York City with a low-level Federal patronage job working in the Customs House.
Busch's novel brings Bartholomew and Melville together over drinks one evening, and the two become friends. Melville refers to his companion as "Shipmate" while the former sharpshooter and present sharp speculator refers to Melville as "M". They discuss Melville's books, philosophy, life at sea, and the Civil War. M. also allows his friend to witness his difficult family life. Bartholomew sells Melville a Colt for his son Malcolm who is about to join the National Guard and who has been drinking a great deal and consorting with prostitutes. Malcolm kills himself with Bartholomew's former weapon. The book shows a great deal about Melville's tormented, perhaps abusive family life with his unfortunate wife, Lizzie, the daughter of a Massachusetts Supreme Court Judge.
The book includes other characters, loners and outcasts like Melville and his Shipmate friend. The characters all become in a scheme Bartholomew engineers at the behest of a Creole prostitute, Jessie, with whom he is involved. They include an African American man, Adam, who lives in the Tenderloin, Sam Mordecai, a friend and member of Bartholomew's unit in the War who aspires to be a writer, and one Lapham Dumont, a businessman who owes Bartholomew money. In addition to this group, the novel includes a Chinese widow, Chun Ho, with two children who aspires to become part of American life and who develops an increasingly close relationship with Bartholomew as the book progresses.
The book moves back and forth in time between Bartholomew's pre-Civil War life, his experiences as an assassin, and his life in New York. He is hard, tough, intelligent, and also lonely and vulnerable -- a character type not unknown to Melville. Bartholomew has a cynical view of the Civil War and its purpose, seeing its goals as purely commercial so that the rich in the capitalist society get richer. Melville, who published a volume of poetry about the Civil War in 1865, "Battle-Pieces" tries to work toward a more broadly-based view of the conflict which recognizes what he sees as the potential of the United States.
The plot of the story centers on the effort to free slave children from their chains in the South at the behest of Jennie. This effort culminates in a long chase down the river reminiscent of the final chase scene in "Moby-Dick". The novel builds slowly and it is less about plot than about the characterization and interaction of M. and the Shipmate and about descriptions of place. The portrayal of Civil War life is raw, unromantic and harsh, and Bartholomew's early life is convincingly and slowly revealed. Some of the best scenes in the novel take place in the underside of New York City where Bartholomew frequently walks the street late at night. In a pivotal scene, Bartholomew has his friend Adam lead the characters in the story, including Melville, on a night tour of the Tenderloin. The descriptions are graphic, with discussions of darkness, filth, roaming hogs, bars, violence, gangs, and houses of ill-repute where unspeakable acts take place. The scenes are not for the faint-of-heart.
The book is written in a baroque, highly descriptive manner similar in some ways to Melville's writing. It takes concentration to read this work, but the effort will be rewarded. The novel tries to make sense of the private, inner lives of both Bartholomew and Melville and work towards a kind of closure. The novel also provokes reflection on the nature of the Civil War and of American life in the extraordinarily difficult years following the end of the war.
I read and reread "The Night Inspector" primarily for its portrayal of Melville and for its understanding and literary portrayal of Melville's writings. Melville is central to the book, but there is much more to it. "The Night Inspector" remains an outstanding style for its density and passion, its vision of American urban life and loneliness, and its questions about and hopes for American promise.
Robin Friedman
Winston Homer's celebrated painting of 1862, "A Sharpshooter On Picket Duty" shows a young Union soldier with his legs straddled over a tree branch taking careful aim with his rifle at some undisclosed but surely soon to be dead target. Homer's painting becomes part of the inspiration for Frederick Busch's (1941 -- 2006) dark novel, "The Night Inspector" which creatively imagines the life of Homer's nameless sharpshooter in the person of William Bartholomew, the first person narrator of the story. In Busch's novel, Bartholomew is a ruthless, highly efficient killer during the Civil War whose targets include Confederate mapmakers, officers, prostitutes serving the Confederate troops, enemy sharpshooters, and many others. At length, in an exchange of fire, Bartholomew is hit and his face is blown away. He barely survives the painful injury but has to was a mask or a veil to cover the loss of most of his face. Bartholomew moves to New York City where he lives in the notorious Five Points by night and works on Broadway as successful speculator by day.
The other main character in "The Night Inspector" is the American novelist and poet, Herman Melville (1819 -- 1891). Melville had made a modest name for himself with his early novels, but his now famous novel "Moby-Dick" and a successor novel "Pierre" had been badly received. By 1867, when this story takes place, Melville was in an apparent long decline. He had stopped writing novels and lived In New York City with a low-level Federal patronage job working in the Customs House.
Busch's novel brings Bartholomew and Melville together over drinks one evening, and the two become friends. Melville refers to his companion as "Shipmate" while the former sharpshooter and present sharp speculator refers to Melville as "M". They discuss Melville's books, philosophy, life at sea, and the Civil War. M. also allows his friend to witness his difficult family life. Bartholomew sells Melville a Colt for his son Malcolm who is about to join the National Guard and who has been drinking a great deal and consorting with prostitutes. Malcolm kills himself with Bartholomew's former weapon. The book shows a great deal about Melville's tormented, perhaps abusive family life with his unfortunate wife, Lizzie, the daughter of a Massachusetts Supreme Court Judge.
The book includes other characters, loners and outcasts like Melville and his Shipmate friend. The characters all become in a scheme Bartholomew engineers at the behest of a Creole prostitute, Jessie, with whom he is involved. They include an African American man, Adam, who lives in the Tenderloin, Sam Mordecai, a friend and member of Bartholomew's unit in the War who aspires to be a writer, and one Lapham Dumont, a businessman who owes Bartholomew money. In addition to this group, the novel includes a Chinese widow, Chun Ho, with two children who aspires to become part of American life and who develops an increasingly close relationship with Bartholomew as the book progresses.
The book moves back and forth in time between Bartholomew's pre-Civil War life, his experiences as an assassin, and his life in New York. He is hard, tough, intelligent, and also lonely and vulnerable -- a character type not unknown to Melville. Bartholomew has a cynical view of the Civil War and its purpose, seeing its goals as purely commercial so that the rich in the capitalist society get richer. Melville, who published a volume of poetry about the Civil War in 1865, "Battle-Pieces" tries to work toward a more broadly-based view of the conflict which recognizes what he sees as the potential of the United States.
The plot of the story centers on the effort to free slave children from their chains in the South at the behest of Jennie. This effort culminates in a long chase down the river reminiscent of the final chase scene in "Moby-Dick". The novel builds slowly and it is less about plot than about the characterization and interaction of M. and the Shipmate and about descriptions of place. The portrayal of Civil War life is raw, unromantic and harsh, and Bartholomew's early life is convincingly and slowly revealed. Some of the best scenes in the novel take place in the underside of New York City where Bartholomew frequently walks the street late at night. In a pivotal scene, Bartholomew has his friend Adam lead the characters in the story, including Melville, on a night tour of the Tenderloin. The descriptions are graphic, with discussions of darkness, filth, roaming hogs, bars, violence, gangs, and houses of ill-repute where unspeakable acts take place. The scenes are not for the faint-of-heart.
The book is written in a baroque, highly descriptive manner similar in some ways to Melville's writing. It takes concentration to read this work, but the effort will be rewarded. The novel tries to make sense of the private, inner lives of both Bartholomew and Melville and work towards a kind of closure. The novel also provokes reflection on the nature of the Civil War and of American life in the extraordinarily difficult years following the end of the war.
I read and reread "The Night Inspector" primarily for its portrayal of Melville and for its understanding and literary portrayal of Melville's writings. Melville is central to the book, but there is much more to it. "The Night Inspector" remains an outstanding style for its density and passion, its vision of American urban life and loneliness, and its questions about and hopes for American promise.
Robin Friedman
February 2, 2015
A captivating and surprisingly tender account of a man, William Bartholomew, whose soul and face have been terribly scarred by his experience as a sniper in the Civil War. The story reflects the pathways he, as well as New York City itself, takes to recover from the war. He wears a mask or a veil in public, and chooses to live in a seedy, dangerous neighborhood of poor immigrants (Five Corners area), despite a good income from investment schemes. Although he is undermined by frequent flashbacks from his successful, but scorned, career as essentially an assassin in the army, he finds much sustenance in a close friendship with Herman Melville. After "Moby Dick", his literary career declined, and he makes his living as a nighttime customs inspector for arriving ships. I appreciated Busch's presentation of William's other key friendships (a prostitute, a Chinese laundry woman, and a journalist who served with him in the war), each of which he tries to help, and is helped by in turn, in moving ways. The mask has obvious symbolism for how one survives traumas--one gains protective hiding at the cost of emotional isolation. Melville recognizes how authors use their characters as masks to reveal truth: "it would be all but madness for any good man-- Shakespeare or Batholomew-in his own, proper character, to utter or even hint of the truth. Remember Lear! I feel so close to him, Billy! That frantic king tears of his mask and speaks the sane madness of vital truth. It is Shakespeare who wears his face, his soul." From reading other Busch novels, I see why Nancy Pearl in her "Book Lust" honored him with her category of "Too Good to Miss."
November 25, 2012
This book is gruesome, many gruesome and terrible scenes, hard to read in places.
What I liked about it is that it tells a lot about Herman Melville, the author of Moby Dick. Mr. Melville is the Night Inspector in this book, he was in fact a Night Inspector for the port of NY. I googled Mr. Melville to see how much of the information about him in this book is accurate and the author does stick to the facts about Mr. Melville. So that is one of the things I liked about the book.
I also liked the character of William Bartholomew (Billy), even as he did things that were so horrible in the war. I even liked him after the war. He was caught in a bad situation (the Civil War) and did his job. He deals with his injury in a way that I found fascinating. He was never a boring character.
I didn't like the ending, it didn't make much sense to me, had a sense of unreality about it.
Now an interesting part of this book had to do with the art of writing historical fiction. A fictional character in this book is Sam, a writer, a former member of Billy B's military unit. He writes a number of accounts of the death of Mr. Melville's oldest son and shows these accounts to Billy. This conversation ensues:
"Sam did he tell you these thoughts?"
"Of course not, Billy. I wrote them. I created them."
"And are you certain of these insights, then? That he--Sam, how can you know this?"
He opened his mouth as if to speak, then seemed to think better of it, and laid a finger upon his lips, and he smiled with a gentle, knowing humor. Finally he did speak, but to say only this: Invention also speaks a certain truth, Billy. Have you not recounted your adventures in battle? And subtly altered what another might term fact?"
I am also always alert to well written expressions of what happens to a parent after the death of a child. This passage struck me as a true expression of what happens to a parent, as happened to Mr. and Mrs. Melvile, when their child dies. Mr. Melville was also suffering the death of his career. He had fallen out of favor as an author. Moby Dick did not gain success until after his death.
"...he drank his drinks and then escaped to walk to work, swallowing his own saliva as it welled like poison in his throat and mouth, and heard, from this remaining friend or that, how many of their other, former, friends were certain he had died.
So he had died. And yet he walked upon the cold or steamy streets. He smoked his pipe. Lizzie's life went on, and the children strove to live in theirs, and he received his pay and bought his books and drank his drinks."
What I liked about it is that it tells a lot about Herman Melville, the author of Moby Dick. Mr. Melville is the Night Inspector in this book, he was in fact a Night Inspector for the port of NY. I googled Mr. Melville to see how much of the information about him in this book is accurate and the author does stick to the facts about Mr. Melville. So that is one of the things I liked about the book.
I also liked the character of William Bartholomew (Billy), even as he did things that were so horrible in the war. I even liked him after the war. He was caught in a bad situation (the Civil War) and did his job. He deals with his injury in a way that I found fascinating. He was never a boring character.
I didn't like the ending, it didn't make much sense to me, had a sense of unreality about it.
Now an interesting part of this book had to do with the art of writing historical fiction. A fictional character in this book is Sam, a writer, a former member of Billy B's military unit. He writes a number of accounts of the death of Mr. Melville's oldest son and shows these accounts to Billy. This conversation ensues:
"Sam did he tell you these thoughts?"
"Of course not, Billy. I wrote them. I created them."
"And are you certain of these insights, then? That he--Sam, how can you know this?"
He opened his mouth as if to speak, then seemed to think better of it, and laid a finger upon his lips, and he smiled with a gentle, knowing humor. Finally he did speak, but to say only this: Invention also speaks a certain truth, Billy. Have you not recounted your adventures in battle? And subtly altered what another might term fact?"
I am also always alert to well written expressions of what happens to a parent after the death of a child. This passage struck me as a true expression of what happens to a parent, as happened to Mr. and Mrs. Melvile, when their child dies. Mr. Melville was also suffering the death of his career. He had fallen out of favor as an author. Moby Dick did not gain success until after his death.
"...he drank his drinks and then escaped to walk to work, swallowing his own saliva as it welled like poison in his throat and mouth, and heard, from this remaining friend or that, how many of their other, former, friends were certain he had died.
So he had died. And yet he walked upon the cold or steamy streets. He smoked his pipe. Lizzie's life went on, and the children strove to live in theirs, and he received his pay and bought his books and drank his drinks."
May 22, 2016
Starkly bleak and stunningly vivid rendition of a 1867 New York City. Sounds great, I love NY stories as much as I dislike the place itself, which is considerably. And yet I didn't love the book, despite all its individually well crafted components, and I've been trying to figure out why. More on those well crafted components...the writing is terrific, this reads like a proper work of literature, the characters are fascinating in their complexity from fictional ones like the former war sniper turned financier to the very real ones, like Melville. Yes, he of the great American novel fame, although in real life success and recognition eluded him to the extent of having to get a real job of the eponymous night inspector. The New York is, of course, a character onto itself in all its gloriously rank, viscerally repulsive, dangerous, violent and mephitic glory. In fact the more I think about it the more New York in particular and the postwar America in general seem to be the proverbial night the story denizens are inspecting...and trying to make it through. Melville, referred to in the novel as M, isn't nearly as interesting and compelling of a character as the former sniper, the man whose life has been indelibly scarred literally and figuratively by hideous violence and yet someone of great intelligence, strong business acumen, even sparks of genuine humanity. He isn't likeable per se, but he intrigues, draws attention and provokes thought. Dispassionate in views (perceiving the war as a merely financial matter) and appearance (through wearing a mask, he reveals himself slowly and often manages to surprise. I read one review comparing this book to Phantom of the Opera oddly enough and yet something about the masked protagonist residing in a dark underbelly, willing to kill yet able to love, does ring a bell. And so all those things are good and great. The main detractors here were the blink and miss it incessant and occasionally disorienting transitions from present to past to present, some of the pacing and some of the moral ambiguity. By latter, I mean constantly having to reevaluate thoughts/feelings about the masked Mr. Bartholomew...his past and his present selves clashing in an almost bipolar sort of way. Mixed bag to an extent, mostly positive, certainly interesting, very dark read.
March 5, 2012
If you think about it, it doesn't take very long for Ebenezer Scrooge to mend his ways. True, he does have four ghosts visit him, but he's already crying after the first vision that the Ghost of Christmas Past shows him (no, that's not a pimple, even though he says it is), and while it is true that Christmas Yet to Come threatens him with the grave, there's none of that quintessentially human trait of weakened repentance when the consequence retreats.
No, it just takes one (very busy) night to turn what his colleagues called Old Scratch into one of the finest men "that the old city knew." And so when Charles Dickens turns up reading at the end of Frederick Busch's "The Night Inspector," the main character, William Bartholomew, is skeptical at the speed of Scrooge's transformation.
Of course, the darkness in Bartholomew's heart has more layers than Scrooge's. A sniper for the Union in the Civil War, who occasionally had to kill dogs, horses and other animals while sneaking up on unsuspecting targets, most of whom still walk the halls of his memory. A mishap with his last target gets most of Bartholomew's lower face shot off, and as a result, he spends his days behind a paperboard mask (or a silk veil when eating).
An investment speculator after the war, Bartholomew is entranced by the beautifully tattooed prostitute, Jessie, who entices him out of his mask and seems to love him, although the more slowly building affections of his laundress, Chun Ho, also intrigue him. Jessie and Bartholomew are hatching a plot that requires the assistance of someone in the New York City Customs office, and Bartholomew meets Herman Melville, currently in the declining years of his self-esteem (and his writing career), having done little after Moby-Dick, which did quite little for him during his life.
This plot only reveals itself slowly, but what at first seems to be a plot to rescue African-American children in the South from the cruelties that still went on, even after Emancipation and Surrender becomes a whirlwind that confirms the cynicism with which Bartholomew and the Anti-Transcendentalist Melville viewed the world.
Busch masterfully hops back and forth from Civil War memories to the narrative's present day, even in the middle of a paragraph, as one imagines must have happened in the mind of this physically and emotionally maimed sniper. The ending is not as neatly tied together as those for which Dickens became famous, but this disfigures soldier will make you wonder about the usefulness of any war, at any time.
No, it just takes one (very busy) night to turn what his colleagues called Old Scratch into one of the finest men "that the old city knew." And so when Charles Dickens turns up reading at the end of Frederick Busch's "The Night Inspector," the main character, William Bartholomew, is skeptical at the speed of Scrooge's transformation.
Of course, the darkness in Bartholomew's heart has more layers than Scrooge's. A sniper for the Union in the Civil War, who occasionally had to kill dogs, horses and other animals while sneaking up on unsuspecting targets, most of whom still walk the halls of his memory. A mishap with his last target gets most of Bartholomew's lower face shot off, and as a result, he spends his days behind a paperboard mask (or a silk veil when eating).
An investment speculator after the war, Bartholomew is entranced by the beautifully tattooed prostitute, Jessie, who entices him out of his mask and seems to love him, although the more slowly building affections of his laundress, Chun Ho, also intrigue him. Jessie and Bartholomew are hatching a plot that requires the assistance of someone in the New York City Customs office, and Bartholomew meets Herman Melville, currently in the declining years of his self-esteem (and his writing career), having done little after Moby-Dick, which did quite little for him during his life.
This plot only reveals itself slowly, but what at first seems to be a plot to rescue African-American children in the South from the cruelties that still went on, even after Emancipation and Surrender becomes a whirlwind that confirms the cynicism with which Bartholomew and the Anti-Transcendentalist Melville viewed the world.
Busch masterfully hops back and forth from Civil War memories to the narrative's present day, even in the middle of a paragraph, as one imagines must have happened in the mind of this physically and emotionally maimed sniper. The ending is not as neatly tied together as those for which Dickens became famous, but this disfigures soldier will make you wonder about the usefulness of any war, at any time.
January 12, 2020
A compelling and disturbing book. Frederick Busch's power of description both pulls the reader in to the dark world of America's Civil War and post-Civil War New York City and repels in his description of the horrors mankind perpetuates on itself. William Bartholomew is a Union sniper during the war who is both feared by the Confederates and loathed by fellow Northern soldiers for his cold-blooded killing. Suffering a gruesome injury himself he wears a mask post-war to conceal half of his face. Half of the story takes place during the Civil War and the characters Busch draws most vividly are the enemies of the North that he is about to kill: the rebel whore, the map-maker, even a team of horses. But the main character during these sections is death itself, as it took over the senses of those still living:
It was a time of odors. You could smell the putrefaction of wounds. You could smell the maggots in them, like the bitter, herbal smell of bats. The unbathed men, the starved, exhausted horses and mules, the shallow breathing of a vast despair — you could smell the staggered nation…
In New York in 1867 William befriends Herman Melville who is an almost forgotten writer at this point. This is a society that would rather believe in a world of relatively easy conversion to good, as in Dickens' A Christmas Carol, then look at the reality of the poor and destitute or to think deeply about the true nature of good and evil or the darkness in humankind. During one episode we are given a tour of of one of the levels of hell by a black former slave named Adam whose life Bartholomew had saved. At the end of the night no one is able to continue looking. Much of what creates this lack of empathy and pathos is that we live in a world in which economics creates battlefields in which the innocent are slaughtered: Bartholomew does not believe there was a moral reason for the war; it was strictly economics, free slave labor in the South and cheap exploited labor for the North.
Where there is compassion and empathy it is in the relationships between Bartholomew and the Creole prostitute, Jessie, the Chinese laundress, Chun Ho, and with Melville and it is when the masks are removed and what is revealed is seen and accepted.
This is a book that should be read and thought about because it presents us with exactly those things we would rather not face and rather not think about. And a reminder that this day and age is not so dissimilar than any other day and age.
It was a time of odors. You could smell the putrefaction of wounds. You could smell the maggots in them, like the bitter, herbal smell of bats. The unbathed men, the starved, exhausted horses and mules, the shallow breathing of a vast despair — you could smell the staggered nation…
In New York in 1867 William befriends Herman Melville who is an almost forgotten writer at this point. This is a society that would rather believe in a world of relatively easy conversion to good, as in Dickens' A Christmas Carol, then look at the reality of the poor and destitute or to think deeply about the true nature of good and evil or the darkness in humankind. During one episode we are given a tour of of one of the levels of hell by a black former slave named Adam whose life Bartholomew had saved. At the end of the night no one is able to continue looking. Much of what creates this lack of empathy and pathos is that we live in a world in which economics creates battlefields in which the innocent are slaughtered: Bartholomew does not believe there was a moral reason for the war; it was strictly economics, free slave labor in the South and cheap exploited labor for the North.
Where there is compassion and empathy it is in the relationships between Bartholomew and the Creole prostitute, Jessie, the Chinese laundress, Chun Ho, and with Melville and it is when the masks are removed and what is revealed is seen and accepted.
This is a book that should be read and thought about because it presents us with exactly those things we would rather not face and rather not think about. And a reminder that this day and age is not so dissimilar than any other day and age.
February 1, 2025
I’ll be honest the last 3 chapters I have no idea what was even going on . Idk if it’s the way the author writes or what . Shake bc there was alot of exciting material in here, however it quickly faded into confusion.
The civil was flashbacks were amazing and detailed . Everything else … not so much
The civil was flashbacks were amazing and detailed . Everything else … not so much
November 13, 2017
I'm not going to lie, exhausted, I finished this with one eye open last night because I could not put it down, leaving the last 25 pages or so until this morning. At the end, both eyes were tearing up, both with the story itself and for having to say goodbye to such unique characters and writing that was at times so visionary.
If I had to compare his prose, it reminded me of Rules of Civility, which seems unfair since Busch passed long before Towles published his first book. I read and fell in love with Towles first, however.
The blurb on the back was pretty short, thanks to lots of praise quotes that didn't help me at all, and opening the cover I only knew that it was going to be a story of a maimed Civil War vet and how he forged on in NYC after the war.
What I found was magic, not the Harry Potter kind, but the lyrical and living kind. A story of very different people that somehow crossed paths, one of which was the Herman Melville, referred to as M, who at the time was not the literary god he is today and was, in fact, a forgotten man and a Customs Inspector at the port of New York and occasionally had to work a shift as the night inspector, and a cast of varied other characters that were all wounded by life and the war in one way or another. (That Melville was forgotten and became a Customs Inspector is true, BTW.)
The main ringleader of the story, William Bartholemew AKA "Billy", was what we would call today a sniper which at the time was viewed as a very ungentlemanly way to fight the war. He had a few men around him whose job was to keep him safe and ready to move on to his next assignment. These men all had a prickly relationship because of their disgust with his job of shooting men that were unaware (again, it was seen as ungentlemanly) and yet they all did their duty and there was even a bond of sorts while none of the men would ever understand each other or their motives in doing what they did for the war or for Billy. They were at the same time ashamed and treated him with respect, even when he was horribly wounded and stuck up in a tree, they calmly talked to him and slowly got him down and to medical help.
Billy's face was left horrifically damaged to the point where he had to wear a half-assed mask and tended to wander the slummier parts of NYC at night in hopes of hiding his face somewhat as opposed to exposing himself and others to the full light of day and to outrun his nightmares and ghosts from the war. (Most of us have seen those farcical masks that doctors used to the lasting wounds of both the Civil War and WWI, they often made people stand out just as much, if not more because they were so obviously false and left the viewer wondering just how bad it was under that mask, if it was indeed better than exposing the real wound to view. (Like watching a train or auto crash, it seems part of the human condition that while we are scared, we can't turn away.)
He meets M (Melville), saves an African American from being beaten because he is still too afraid to fight back in this new world where he is free, but not quite, befriends a widowed Chinese Laundress, that is determined to leave her Chinese roots behind and become "American" along with her two children who does his shirts and gives her hot water for his occasional bath, a "dusky" prostitute who doesn't seem to be afraid of his wounds, since she has some of her own from the history of slavery of her and her people, reunites with one of the men that was assigned to assist him during the war who has turned into a Boston reporter, and a few other non-important characters other than for the role they serve at one point in the story.
His thoughts on the war and on all wars are of a broader view and almost contemporary. He did his duty and what he was best at, but for not one moment did he see it as freeing the slaves or states rights. I won't spoil it and paraphrase his thoughts.
The point, oh the final point, would be a spoiler, but let's say that it them all even more wounded, dispirited, helpless to change what they see as wrong around them and less likely to trust their fellow man even more so than when we started.
I loved them all and will miss them. Billy, I will miss the most for his clear view of the state of the world and at the same time his naivety in thinking that there was still some good in people and something to fight for. He was a man after my own heart, sees that there are users and the used and thinks that he is the former and can use that only to find that just as in the war, he is, in fact, the used and has to find a way to make a life with that truth.
If I had to compare his prose, it reminded me of Rules of Civility, which seems unfair since Busch passed long before Towles published his first book. I read and fell in love with Towles first, however.
The blurb on the back was pretty short, thanks to lots of praise quotes that didn't help me at all, and opening the cover I only knew that it was going to be a story of a maimed Civil War vet and how he forged on in NYC after the war.
What I found was magic, not the Harry Potter kind, but the lyrical and living kind. A story of very different people that somehow crossed paths, one of which was the Herman Melville, referred to as M, who at the time was not the literary god he is today and was, in fact, a forgotten man and a Customs Inspector at the port of New York and occasionally had to work a shift as the night inspector, and a cast of varied other characters that were all wounded by life and the war in one way or another. (That Melville was forgotten and became a Customs Inspector is true, BTW.)
The main ringleader of the story, William Bartholemew AKA "Billy", was what we would call today a sniper which at the time was viewed as a very ungentlemanly way to fight the war. He had a few men around him whose job was to keep him safe and ready to move on to his next assignment. These men all had a prickly relationship because of their disgust with his job of shooting men that were unaware (again, it was seen as ungentlemanly) and yet they all did their duty and there was even a bond of sorts while none of the men would ever understand each other or their motives in doing what they did for the war or for Billy. They were at the same time ashamed and treated him with respect, even when he was horribly wounded and stuck up in a tree, they calmly talked to him and slowly got him down and to medical help.
Billy's face was left horrifically damaged to the point where he had to wear a half-assed mask and tended to wander the slummier parts of NYC at night in hopes of hiding his face somewhat as opposed to exposing himself and others to the full light of day and to outrun his nightmares and ghosts from the war. (Most of us have seen those farcical masks that doctors used to the lasting wounds of both the Civil War and WWI, they often made people stand out just as much, if not more because they were so obviously false and left the viewer wondering just how bad it was under that mask, if it was indeed better than exposing the real wound to view. (Like watching a train or auto crash, it seems part of the human condition that while we are scared, we can't turn away.)
He meets M (Melville), saves an African American from being beaten because he is still too afraid to fight back in this new world where he is free, but not quite, befriends a widowed Chinese Laundress, that is determined to leave her Chinese roots behind and become "American" along with her two children who does his shirts and gives her hot water for his occasional bath, a "dusky" prostitute who doesn't seem to be afraid of his wounds, since she has some of her own from the history of slavery of her and her people, reunites with one of the men that was assigned to assist him during the war who has turned into a Boston reporter, and a few other non-important characters other than for the role they serve at one point in the story.
His thoughts on the war and on all wars are of a broader view and almost contemporary. He did his duty and what he was best at, but for not one moment did he see it as freeing the slaves or states rights. I won't spoil it and paraphrase his thoughts.
The point, oh the final point, would be a spoiler, but let's say that it them all even more wounded, dispirited, helpless to change what they see as wrong around them and less likely to trust their fellow man even more so than when we started.
I loved them all and will miss them. Billy, I will miss the most for his clear view of the state of the world and at the same time his naivety in thinking that there was still some good in people and something to fight for. He was a man after my own heart, sees that there are users and the used and thinks that he is the former and can use that only to find that just as in the war, he is, in fact, the used and has to find a way to make a life with that truth.
June 21, 2014
The Night Inspector is, I should say up front, Herman Melville after publication of The Whale which made him only mildly famous in 1867, in New York City, where the story is set. Busch has taken a fairly obscure part of Melville’s life (Busch is a professor of literature so no surprise there) and attached it to a gruesome, very taut story of life in the big city. Our narrator is a Civil War veteran who has been wounded and now is a “businessman” which is in high regard, apparently, but gets involved in the replanting of slave children from the south to the north.
Things don’t quite work out the way they were planned.
Busch goes the distance with details, however. Smell being one of his favorites, I guess. The city stinks. He uses death by drowning in an outhouse as one method to remind us of stink. The forest, when he is on the hunt as a sniper, never smells like some pine scented room deodorizer. The forest (it is partially true) has a musky scent of its own. The story is set in NYC and Busch is not nice about anything in the city. It was a maze of trash, prostitutes, dirt, dead animals, broken people, and commerce which, for the narrator, did not care about the Civil War nor the ruination of the city.
There is a bit of a set up with the “book award” badge and the author interview and the reading guide. This is not a book, I think, for discussion groups. I found it a bit raw in spots, a useless raw, that is.
But, his details and his dialogue are hard to beat! Aspiring authors could learn a thing or two from Frederick Busch.
Things don’t quite work out the way they were planned.
Busch goes the distance with details, however. Smell being one of his favorites, I guess. The city stinks. He uses death by drowning in an outhouse as one method to remind us of stink. The forest, when he is on the hunt as a sniper, never smells like some pine scented room deodorizer. The forest (it is partially true) has a musky scent of its own. The story is set in NYC and Busch is not nice about anything in the city. It was a maze of trash, prostitutes, dirt, dead animals, broken people, and commerce which, for the narrator, did not care about the Civil War nor the ruination of the city.
There is a bit of a set up with the “book award” badge and the author interview and the reading guide. This is not a book, I think, for discussion groups. I found it a bit raw in spots, a useless raw, that is.
But, his details and his dialogue are hard to beat! Aspiring authors could learn a thing or two from Frederick Busch.
March 13, 2009
A beautiful account of what life may have been like in immediate post-Civil War America. It is a difficult balancing act of a novel as I suspect the feeling was everywhere in the United States at this time.
William Bartholomew is one of the more ambiguous heroes I've come across in literature in a long time. Is he good or just not as bad as the people with whom he associates. His mask is representative of what the United States tried to show to the world, but underneath...a terrribly maimed country.
The presence of Herman Melville throughout the novel, as the novel's conscience, is perfect. As he represents a past that has disappeared, he also stands for the morality that has also disappeared -- an innocence. His disappearance from the literary world (this despite his greatness) also emphasizes a sort of baby-with-the-bath-water feeling that may have existed at the time. Ev erything is to be swept under the rug after the Civil War.
The images of New York are also powerful...the dirtiness, corruption and moral decay grab you throughout.
Finally, the ending...when Bartholomew is walking through the streets with his Chinese lover, and is observed by citizens who laugh at the interracial couple, represents an America to come.
After this, I'm forced to read more of Frederick Busch's work as well as Moby Dick, which I've never read...
William Bartholomew is one of the more ambiguous heroes I've come across in literature in a long time. Is he good or just not as bad as the people with whom he associates. His mask is representative of what the United States tried to show to the world, but underneath...a terrribly maimed country.
The presence of Herman Melville throughout the novel, as the novel's conscience, is perfect. As he represents a past that has disappeared, he also stands for the morality that has also disappeared -- an innocence. His disappearance from the literary world (this despite his greatness) also emphasizes a sort of baby-with-the-bath-water feeling that may have existed at the time. Ev erything is to be swept under the rug after the Civil War.
The images of New York are also powerful...the dirtiness, corruption and moral decay grab you throughout.
Finally, the ending...when Bartholomew is walking through the streets with his Chinese lover, and is observed by citizens who laugh at the interracial couple, represents an America to come.
After this, I'm forced to read more of Frederick Busch's work as well as Moby Dick, which I've never read...
July 6, 2010
I was impressed by this book in many ways. It teased you with flashbacks that blurred into the present, and the confusing language helped convey the tone of guilt, desolation, and shame the protagonist felt. Billy was a likable, realistic character who elicited sympathy and compassion. I enjoyed the subtle love between him and Chun Ho, and the interesting inclusion of Herman Melville as a character. The book was disturbing as well as exciting, but it was also annoying in certain ways - the writing was full of misplaced modifiers and the style made me miss/misunderstand events and thoughts. I'm not sure if it was an intended style or simply lazy editing. Either way, that was my main issue with the book. It was great though, for the themes of racism, secrecy, war, memory, immigration, and regret flooded the text with meaning. The novel was dark and gritty, but an excellent read.
November 20, 2009
This is one of those extraordinary pieces of historical fiction that change the way you think about the period and about your own time. Set in NYC just after the Civil War with Herman Melville as a main character and the protagonist a maimed Civil War veteran who must deal with his past and his love of a prostitute -- she is like no prostitute you've ever read about! Beautifully written. Frederick Busch is an artist of incredible skill and insight.
December 18, 2014
This was my most recent book club selection. I hated it! I thought the rhythm of the writing was distracting and it was unnecessarily gruesome. I'll be interested to see what the other members think of it. I read Moby Dick about 6 months ago and was excited about the premise of this story. I often enjoy historical fiction but this book I just read as possible to get it over with.
February 21, 2017
Tries way too hard and ends up just being confusing.
December 8, 2014
A JON AND HIS MA BOOK CLUB SELECTION
After the smoke clears, the bodies are buried and the blood has soaked deep into the cold ground, Civil War veteran William Bartholomew returns to New York sans visage.
An accomplished woodsman and eagle eye, Bartholomew served in the war as a marksman, sniper, assassin or thug, depending on the perspective. He was a great hunter of Rebel soldiers until he was brought down by a hideous, disfiguring wound, requiring him to wear a strap-on pasteboard, painted face crafted specially for him. "I'm a coin imprinted with Abe's earnestness." In New York, he stays to the shadows -- masked, despairing of humanity and disillusioned with his country.
America, then as now, gets squeamish when faced with the consequences of the awful things it asks its young men to do.
"Passersby regarded us with curiosity, with disquiet, with sorrow and pity and disgust. Men with pinned or flapping sleeves and men on crutches jerked and wobbled on Broadway. Men with specially fitted masks, with artificial jaws and gleaming ivory temple plates or metal cheekbones, swelled the crowds at Madison Square." Bartholomew's own wound "made me think of pink roasted beef left for weeks in the cupboard and still, somehow, damp."
In a darkened dive run by a fellow veteran, he takes respite from horrified reaction. There he meets Herman Melville, out of critical favor and also given to philosophical brooding. A friendship forms over glasses of wine and slightly suspicious cuts of meat as the men sit and debate human nature, American expansionism and whale metaphors.
Bartholomew also engages in long talks with a Creole whore named Jessie, discussing the (un)ethics of economics -- such as "the last crop of slavery" in Florida, forcibly orphaned children for whom the market no longer exists.
For all his disdain toward upper-class avarice, Bartholomew shows great skill in speculation: "I was an importer-exporter, a student of the markets, and therefore a man who was watchful of human needs. I lamented the deaths at the minehead in Wales, but I celebrated the retrieval of every lump and boulder of coal." As a stockbroker, he's willing to play the leg-breaker, slapping around clients who don't cough up the dough they owe. War, having effectively cauterized his conscience, has made him perfectly suited for Wall Street. "And that is how capital works."
The marketplace is not so kind to his friend Melville. "He had invested his efforts, his construction of language, upon the national markets of England and the United States. His initial offerings were seized upon, his latter efforts were ignored. It was that simple. ... It wasn't fair, perhaps, but it was true. Once famous, he was now unknown, a deputy inspector of Customs with his badge and government notebook and his locks. I wondered if he wrote his private stories in the federal book. I wondered how deep in his soul he accepted the verdict of the marketplace. The waters would roll over him, and he would be forgotten if, already, he wasn't yet; and someone else, who wrote what the public would have -- stories of investment, I thought, and who can tell? -- might be remembered."
Melville works the night shift on the Hudson pier, monitoring the steady stream of river commerce. "One could turn a powerful profit if the night inspector turned his head at the right moment. It was chancy, of course, but a businessman must never close his eyes to chance."
By day, Bartholomew is a fearsome corporate player; by night, he sleeplessly wanders the filth of New York's backstreets, defending the downtrodden and performing acts of charity. (I just made him sound like Batman.) His motives for such behavior remain a mystery, even to himself. "Children, here, were always in tears, and dogs were always howling. It was what gave vent to the general life of the Points -- a voice, if you will, for what the populace could never say." There are clues rattling around in Bartholomew's recollections of war and his childhood, but I'll leave all that for your own book club to ponder, though Bartholomew says, "You needn't trouble yourself to make sense of me. I prefer, in fact, not to be made sense of."
Whatever his reasons, Bartholomew plies and manipulates Melville in a scheme with Jessie the whore to rescue the children in Florida who remain enslaved, regardless of presidential proclamations and Confederate capitulations. As an object lesson on the abuse and exploitation of children, particularly black children, Bartholomew takes Melville on a tour of the foulest perversions New York's tenderloin has for purchase. Properly shocked, Melville says, "I salute your gallant cause." I had to wonder if author Frederick Busch hadn't labored overmuch to rub his readers' noses in the degradation. Some of his descriptions, rather than invoking righteous outrage, stray dangerously close to tacky voyeurism.
Belaboring the point is a running problem throughout "The Night Inspector." Busch doesn't let many pages go by between mini-lectures on how capitalism renders every human interaction into a transaction in which the rich are rewarded and the poor get pulverized. I very much enjoyed Busch's baroque and stately writing -- a fitting style for a period story about Herman Melville. The preaching? Not so much. Although Busch leaves many issues of character open to reader interpretation (his female characters are particularly sketchy), he bangs the "Capitalism BAD" bongo like Little Johnny One-Note. It seems a copout to blame an inanimate system for societal ills as if it were a rapacious, voracious entity driving mankind, rather than the other way around. Ranting against commerce in itself too easily exculpates humanity, which rarely fails to act the turd, given half an opportunity.
"Also," my brother said of the novel, "you might not have noticed, but it's about the masks people wear." Then we both laughed. Busch is not exactly crafty in his use of metaphor. Perhaps he could have taken a lesson from his literary idol and title character, Herman Melville. Melville's whale is an all-purpose symbol, open to almost infinite reader interpretations (or none at all if you'd rather read "Moby Dick" like a great simple seafaring adventure). Busch appears unwilling to surrender control and leave any of that work to his readers. He's generous in sharing his wonderful talent for storytelling, but he can be as stingy as a robber baron in permitting audience interaction.
After the smoke clears, the bodies are buried and the blood has soaked deep into the cold ground, Civil War veteran William Bartholomew returns to New York sans visage.
An accomplished woodsman and eagle eye, Bartholomew served in the war as a marksman, sniper, assassin or thug, depending on the perspective. He was a great hunter of Rebel soldiers until he was brought down by a hideous, disfiguring wound, requiring him to wear a strap-on pasteboard, painted face crafted specially for him. "I'm a coin imprinted with Abe's earnestness." In New York, he stays to the shadows -- masked, despairing of humanity and disillusioned with his country.
America, then as now, gets squeamish when faced with the consequences of the awful things it asks its young men to do.
"Passersby regarded us with curiosity, with disquiet, with sorrow and pity and disgust. Men with pinned or flapping sleeves and men on crutches jerked and wobbled on Broadway. Men with specially fitted masks, with artificial jaws and gleaming ivory temple plates or metal cheekbones, swelled the crowds at Madison Square." Bartholomew's own wound "made me think of pink roasted beef left for weeks in the cupboard and still, somehow, damp."
In a darkened dive run by a fellow veteran, he takes respite from horrified reaction. There he meets Herman Melville, out of critical favor and also given to philosophical brooding. A friendship forms over glasses of wine and slightly suspicious cuts of meat as the men sit and debate human nature, American expansionism and whale metaphors.
Bartholomew also engages in long talks with a Creole whore named Jessie, discussing the (un)ethics of economics -- such as "the last crop of slavery" in Florida, forcibly orphaned children for whom the market no longer exists.
For all his disdain toward upper-class avarice, Bartholomew shows great skill in speculation: "I was an importer-exporter, a student of the markets, and therefore a man who was watchful of human needs. I lamented the deaths at the minehead in Wales, but I celebrated the retrieval of every lump and boulder of coal." As a stockbroker, he's willing to play the leg-breaker, slapping around clients who don't cough up the dough they owe. War, having effectively cauterized his conscience, has made him perfectly suited for Wall Street. "And that is how capital works."
The marketplace is not so kind to his friend Melville. "He had invested his efforts, his construction of language, upon the national markets of England and the United States. His initial offerings were seized upon, his latter efforts were ignored. It was that simple. ... It wasn't fair, perhaps, but it was true. Once famous, he was now unknown, a deputy inspector of Customs with his badge and government notebook and his locks. I wondered if he wrote his private stories in the federal book. I wondered how deep in his soul he accepted the verdict of the marketplace. The waters would roll over him, and he would be forgotten if, already, he wasn't yet; and someone else, who wrote what the public would have -- stories of investment, I thought, and who can tell? -- might be remembered."
Melville works the night shift on the Hudson pier, monitoring the steady stream of river commerce. "One could turn a powerful profit if the night inspector turned his head at the right moment. It was chancy, of course, but a businessman must never close his eyes to chance."
By day, Bartholomew is a fearsome corporate player; by night, he sleeplessly wanders the filth of New York's backstreets, defending the downtrodden and performing acts of charity. (I just made him sound like Batman.) His motives for such behavior remain a mystery, even to himself. "Children, here, were always in tears, and dogs were always howling. It was what gave vent to the general life of the Points -- a voice, if you will, for what the populace could never say." There are clues rattling around in Bartholomew's recollections of war and his childhood, but I'll leave all that for your own book club to ponder, though Bartholomew says, "You needn't trouble yourself to make sense of me. I prefer, in fact, not to be made sense of."
Whatever his reasons, Bartholomew plies and manipulates Melville in a scheme with Jessie the whore to rescue the children in Florida who remain enslaved, regardless of presidential proclamations and Confederate capitulations. As an object lesson on the abuse and exploitation of children, particularly black children, Bartholomew takes Melville on a tour of the foulest perversions New York's tenderloin has for purchase. Properly shocked, Melville says, "I salute your gallant cause." I had to wonder if author Frederick Busch hadn't labored overmuch to rub his readers' noses in the degradation. Some of his descriptions, rather than invoking righteous outrage, stray dangerously close to tacky voyeurism.
Belaboring the point is a running problem throughout "The Night Inspector." Busch doesn't let many pages go by between mini-lectures on how capitalism renders every human interaction into a transaction in which the rich are rewarded and the poor get pulverized. I very much enjoyed Busch's baroque and stately writing -- a fitting style for a period story about Herman Melville. The preaching? Not so much. Although Busch leaves many issues of character open to reader interpretation (his female characters are particularly sketchy), he bangs the "Capitalism BAD" bongo like Little Johnny One-Note. It seems a copout to blame an inanimate system for societal ills as if it were a rapacious, voracious entity driving mankind, rather than the other way around. Ranting against commerce in itself too easily exculpates humanity, which rarely fails to act the turd, given half an opportunity.
"Also," my brother said of the novel, "you might not have noticed, but it's about the masks people wear." Then we both laughed. Busch is not exactly crafty in his use of metaphor. Perhaps he could have taken a lesson from his literary idol and title character, Herman Melville. Melville's whale is an all-purpose symbol, open to almost infinite reader interpretations (or none at all if you'd rather read "Moby Dick" like a great simple seafaring adventure). Busch appears unwilling to surrender control and leave any of that work to his readers. He's generous in sharing his wonderful talent for storytelling, but he can be as stingy as a robber baron in permitting audience interaction.
January 16, 2017
What a strange, pitiless book! Busch manages to capture the sad and sordid aftermath of the Civil War perfectly. His 'hero', if one can call him that, is a revelation - for all he wears a mask. William Bartholomew is a sharpshooter, not just with a gun but also in his dead-on (and deadly) assessment of Reconstruction NYC. The agricultural slavery of the South may have ended but it has been replaced with the grind of industry. Money is the soul of America and its getting and spending is what drives the nation. Billy's city is the same as the one depicted in Gangs of NY - a merciless underworld fit only for ghosts - or demons. It is up to the reader to decide which of these groups Bartholomew - and Hermann Melville, referred as M - fall into. After having recently read Moby Dick, I have been on the lookout for all things related to it. If the strange baroque and economic metaphors of Moby Dick appeals to you, check out this late born descendent. It will not disappoint.
I would have loved it simply for the depiction of the Chinese washerwoman - so tender and beautifully drawn!
I would have loved it simply for the depiction of the Chinese washerwoman - so tender and beautifully drawn!
April 28, 2018
An amazingly different book about a maimed Civil War sniper who relives his past while making a life again in New York. During the day, William Bartholomew is a businessman; at night, he lays in the arms of Jessie, a Creole prostitute, and befriends a deputy inspector of customs and the author of "Moby Dick," Herman Melville. And at first that is pretty much the story ... Bartholomew, who looks inward to his military career and the men he killed, and Melville, who looks at his successes and now relative obscurity as a customs agent. But there is a deeper story than a disfigured man and a forgotten novelist — we soon learn that Jessie has engaged Bartholomew in a highly risky venture, one that he can only do by pulling in not only Melville but others to pull off.
This book was slow at first, mainly because I thought it was something than what it is but there is so much to this book: the story of Melville and his fractured family, Bartholomew - is he simply a man or a monster? Jessie and more. Its a story of that period in our nation as the country tried to heal and move forward; its about man's inhumanity and strength in the face of adversity. It is ultimately a powerful tale.
This book was slow at first, mainly because I thought it was something than what it is but there is so much to this book: the story of Melville and his fractured family, Bartholomew - is he simply a man or a monster? Jessie and more. Its a story of that period in our nation as the country tried to heal and move forward; its about man's inhumanity and strength in the face of adversity. It is ultimately a powerful tale.
October 12, 2018
This is the novelization of the life of William Bartholomew, a sharpshooter in the Civil War, and the model for a Winslow Homer painting of a Union sniper in a tree. With a small group, he terrorized Confederate soldiers. He was shunned by his own troops who hated all snipers. He waswounded in the war and now wears a mask to hide his disfigured face. He is now involved in commerce in New York City and is much an observer of the night life he runs across. One of the people he runs across is Herman Melville, now apparently with no more stories to tell who works at the Port of New York as a Night Inspector. Bartholomew lives a life of guns and masks, and is capable of murder before he becmes a sniper. However, he enlists Melville in a plot to do a good deed, or so it seems. Well written, great dialogue and insights. I enjoyed the story very much.
August 23, 2021
William Bartholomew was a soldier in the Civil War until he was shot in the face. Now a few years past the end of the war, Billy is living in New York, wearing a mask to cover his ruined face and making a dubious living trading on futures and stocks. He meets a man who intrigues him, a failed writer working the night shift as a customs inspector and they become friends. His other friends include a Black prostitute whom he loves, a Chinese woman who makes her money taking in washing, and a man who served with him in the Union Army. When his lover asks him to help her in a daring plan to rescue children from the South, Billy gathers his friends and a few others and comes up with a plan.
This is mostly a story of what daily life was like in post-Civil War New York, from the relative comforts and financial insecurity of a family clinging to the middle class to those scraping by with nothing at all in shocking circumstances. Frederick Busch tells a nineteenth century tale, seen through modern eyes but told in the voice of the nineteenth century. It's a difficult juggling act, but Busch manages to make it work. Here's a novel that reads like it could have been written 150 years ago, but which sees women, immigrants, the formerly enslaved and those making their livings as they can as full human beings and which looks unflinchingly at how they are preyed upon by the wealthy and white dominant class. But this isn't a lecture, but an action-packed and heart-breaking story of an morally-complex man making his way in the world and how his past, both his childhood and his experiences in the war, inform his present.
This is mostly a story of what daily life was like in post-Civil War New York, from the relative comforts and financial insecurity of a family clinging to the middle class to those scraping by with nothing at all in shocking circumstances. Frederick Busch tells a nineteenth century tale, seen through modern eyes but told in the voice of the nineteenth century. It's a difficult juggling act, but Busch manages to make it work. Here's a novel that reads like it could have been written 150 years ago, but which sees women, immigrants, the formerly enslaved and those making their livings as they can as full human beings and which looks unflinchingly at how they are preyed upon by the wealthy and white dominant class. But this isn't a lecture, but an action-packed and heart-breaking story of an morally-complex man making his way in the world and how his past, both his childhood and his experiences in the war, inform his present.
Read
February 25, 2020This book has been driving me nuts... It is a very weird book, and I am so empathizing with a writer who wants to become friend with Melville, but really that is pushing things to imagine your hero involved in the death of Melville's son... almost disrespectful...
And the women, my god, the women...
His image of women is so 19th century: all strange women image and described in a whorish way even when they are not...
Women are a mystery to the hero, and i am afraid a mystery to the writer...
So very unlikable book, but I do understand the desire to meet/write about the years of Melville as an employee in New York...
So below him...
And the women, my god, the women...
His image of women is so 19th century: all strange women image and described in a whorish way even when they are not...
Women are a mystery to the hero, and i am afraid a mystery to the writer...
So very unlikable book, but I do understand the desire to meet/write about the years of Melville as an employee in New York...
So below him...
April 9, 2025
Busch’s nightmarish tour of Civil War-era NYC (1999) has to be among the most relentlessly grim literary journeys you’ll ever take. But that doesn’t mean it’s not gripping. We’re in the company of a scarred veteran, his disfigured face behind a ghoulish mask, whose past won’t leave him alone. He schemes through Lower Manhattan’s Five Points, along rat-infested shipyards, pig-slop alleys & remorseless poverty. Glimmers of kindness appear from a Chinese laundress & a Creole prostitute. Herman Melville’s the title dock-cop, living out his post-Moby Dick days in sullen obscurity. Despite excesses (particularly with children), Busch is after a redemption tale.
August 18, 2018
As the reviewers note, the style of writing in this book is superb. The language, and thought, is so true; capturing the main character's essence. And that essence is of a ghost, or a reaper (a gui) drifting through the seamy side of New York on one page, and haunting southern war scenes the next. You feel the wet, the smell, the humidity, the bugs. The story is good, but secondary. The Melville part is also secondary, but fits as a fellow traveler through their long nights. Can't recall another book like it.
January 9, 2020
An incredibly grim tale of the civil war and its aftermath, centering on the character of a hideously wounded, both spiritually and physically, sniper trying to make his way in the venal, twisted underbelly of NY city. On the way he befriends Herman Melville, and other characters of the NY underworld. Syntax not always easy to follow. Still, the setting, the horrors of war, poverty and racism are masterfully presented
December 12, 2019
It was an interesting read but I must warn readers that there is one very disturbing instance of child sex slavery. It was a little too graphic for me. Other than that, I enjoyed the book. It was a little confusing when he switched back and forth between the present and past or when William reminisced about something and then went right back to the present with no break or cadence.
January 15, 2021
Tohle se četlo těžce, ale ne kvůli textu, ten je skvěle napsaný. Šlo spíš o pochmurný tón, jímž to bylo napsané, a o všechnu tu smrt a zoufalství. Jistě, koukám na to dnešní optikou a přijde mi to strašné, zatímco tehdejší člověk to opět vnímal jinak. No, i tak to bylo zajímavé čtení mimo můj obvyklý rámec.
January 16, 2025
This book is well written but emotionally hard to take. I could not read much at a time. But it evokes an era just after the Civil War, when veterans had wounds and trauma to process. Everyone seems to be grappling with those they killed, or a death in the family or trauma from slavery. I would not have finished it without the character of M, the creator of Ahab.
May 1, 2025
Confusing. There were about four different scenarios happening in each chapter and there was no distinct break from one scenario to another. I would all of a sudden read and I have no idea why I was reading what I was reading and when that happened. It was very hard to follow. I couldn’t even finish the entire book.
September 30, 2022
A Civil War sniper crosses paths with many vividly portrayed characters, including Herman Melville in this clever, insightful and strikingly written novel whose language is at times brutal, sensual, playful, poetic and always inspired.
May 29, 2023
Gritty post-civil war tale of a wounded veteran who teams up with a depressed but thoughtful Herman Melville to solve crimes near Boston. Strange dark story about a strange dark time - after Lincoln’s assassination - when there was little order but so much brewing desire.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 90 reviews