Billy Budd and Other Tales

by Herman Melville, Joyce Carol Oates (Afterword), Julian Markels (Introduction)

A master of the american short story

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

Genres: Classics, Fiction, Short Stories, Literature, American, Classic Literature, Adventure

384 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1924

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

[Lobstergirl · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unbelievably, Melville had a hard time making a living from his writing.

[That was sarcasm.]

His style is overly archaic. I read a fair amount of classic literature, but this is just ridiculous. In the mid to late 19th century, were people still saying "Hark!"? And "Blah, blah, blah, thought I"? Really? You can't convince me.

1. From that tree-top, what birded chimes of silver throats had rung.

2. Dire sight it is to see some silken beast long dally with a golden lizard ere she devour.

3. Himself became reserved.

REALLY? Himself?? Because "he" is just too simple?

I don't care if you are writing in the fourth century, the fifteenth century, the 19th century, or the 55th century; if you write a sentence like "himself became reserved" you deserve every heap of scorn and lack of income that comes your way.

Billy Budd and Benito Cereno, the two longest stories here, are actually the least offensive and most readable, stylistically. (Least offensive stylistically, I must stress; Benito Cereno is quite offensive racially and makes a fascinating study of that issue.) But The Piazza is one of the most ridiculous things I've ever read. The Encantadas is just barely fiction - it's more of a travelogue. If you can get through its ten sketches, give yourself a pat on the back. The Lightning-Rod Man and The Bell-Tower made me want to throw myself off a cliff they were so dull.

I did feel like his homoeroticism was a little ahead of its time, though. If Billy Budd is not a gay icon, I can't understand why.

"You have but noted his fair cheek. A man-trap may be under his ruddy-tipped daisies."

Now the Handsome Sailor, as a signal figure among the crew, had naturally enough attracted the Captain's attention from the first. Though in general not very demonstrative to his officers, he had congratulated Lieutenant Ratcliffe upon his good fortune in lighting on such a fine specimen of the genus homo, who in the nude might have posed for a statue of young Adam before the Fall.

And "The Town-Ho's Story?" Yes....of course I thought that meant the town ho.

[Nathan "N.R." Gaddis]

Piazza Tales plus Billy Budd ; because I could no longer wait/shop for the correct edition. Which would be the Northwestern-Newberry from Hayford and Parker, ie, Piazza Tales and Other Prose Pieces, 1839-1860. But I’ll still be looking for it.

Here’s the clever One=Liner Review, piece by piece ::


Billy Budd : A lesson in the objective nature of The Law, or, Why one might prefer the capricious judgment of The Wise.

“The Piazza” : An important piece for the thesis that all fiction is (nothing but) autobiography.

“Bartleby” : Prerequisite for the study of Žižek’s strategies of resistance.

“Benito Cereno” : Another lesson ; this one either for The Reactionary in how to put down the movement of freedom ;; or for The Freedom=Mover in how to bore within [we may need this one in coming years].

“The Lightening-Rod Man” : Originally about the silly guy selling salvation from hell ; now a story about atheists saving us from The Poison of Religion.

“The Encantadas, or Enchanted Islands” : Some cool shit in those islands.

“The Bell-Tower” ; < spoiler > Is this one habitually counted among 19th cent. proto=Sci-Fi? < /spoiler > or, maybe an unrecognized genre, the Renaissance=Man Fiction, because it’s distinct from the Rocket=Man variety, science being what it was at that time....

“The Town-Ho’s Story from Moby-Dick ; Did not (re)read. As the only chapter of The Big Dick to be magazine pub’d, this would be an early instantiation of what would become (near) habitual for the encyclopedic novel, it’s work-in-progress’ing.


Pierre is definitely on the menu (still looking for that correct edition) ; and probably Clarel ;; but I’m undecided about Melville’s First Five. Aren’t they little more than Verne-esque adventure stories? ...other hand, didn’t Schmidt dig Verne?

[Tomislav · Rating 2 out of 5]

second read - 6 February 2005 - **. A collection of shorter works by Herman Melville. The contents are:

Billy Budd
The Piazza Tales
The Piazza
Bartleby
Benito Cereno
The Lightning-Rod Man
The Encantadas, or Enchanted Islands
The Bell-Tower
The Town-Ho's story from Moby Dick

The story "Billy Budd" is an extended character description of the impressed sailor Billy Budd, Master-at-Arms Claggart, and Captain Vere on board the Indomitable, and what happens when the innocent Budd is pushed to his limit by the scheming of Claggart. To my taste, Melville descriptions are way too wordy, and make both historical and cultural references to which I cannot relate. My interest did pick up during the trial of Billy Budd, but I was disappointed that Melville explored the resolution of that trial through the nature of the characters as previously exposed, rather than through the ethics of the situation. Well, anyway, it was an interesting experience re-reading this after so long, and I got a sense for the sociology on board an 18th century ship of war.

Even before Karel Čapek's famous R.U.R. (1921) was a short story by Herman Melville called "The Bell-Tower" (1885). It is a story of the death of the clockmaker Bannadonna at the hands of his robotic clock-tower striker. This story not only features a concept which has become a staple of modern science fiction, but it is thematically about the hubris of technology. Incredible, it seems Herman Melville was a science fiction writer!

first read - 1 March 1970 - *. I first read the story "Billy Budd" as an assignment in high school a long long time ago, and hated it. I remember my teacher droning on about how the sounds of the characters' names were intended to give clues about them.

[Brett · Rating 2 out of 5]

I first had to read Billy Budd in my high school literature class, and I didn't especially care for it back then. Not much has changed. It's still a dry, impersonal, and difficult-to-read drag.

It feels weird to write that, since Melville is also of course the author of Moby Dick, one of our immense American classics that goes down relatively easily, and is genuinely a gripping read all these years later. Billy Budd feels like it was written by a different and much less talented author. The language is so artificial and labored that it is struggle to get the basic meaning out of many sentences. Billy is barely drawn as an actual character, and is instead just allowed to occupy space as a symbol.

Billy Budd takes up only the first third or so of this book, the rest being filled out by short to medium length stories of varying quality. Bartleby is a great story; several others are engaging and fun; and there are a couple that suffer from the same faults as Billy Budd. That's pretty much my review of every short story collection: one or two great, some good, some not-so-good!

At any rate, I bought this book at a college book fair when I was probably 19 years old, so it took my right about 20 years to get around to reading it. Kind of wish I had just lost it in a move, instead.

[TYLER VANHUYSE · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Billy Budd and Other Tales" showcased Melville's allegorical, gothic style of writing in its prime. The stories consisted of finely structured settings and carefully crafted character archetypes, both of which contributed greatly to the allegorical content created throughout this collection; however, in the case of Melville, (and many 19th Century English writers), his allegories were moralizing and this did not bode well for 1) character development beyond the setting of the story and 2) the appreciation of a modern reader.

"Billy Budd" centered around the push and pull of iniquity and innocence, respectively represented by Master-at-arms John Claggart and simple seaman Billy Budd. An innocuous set of historical and personal circumstances unravels into a plot that brews and boils over quickly, with the swiftness of summary justice that Captain Vere delivers at the conclusion of the novella. I appreciated the allegorical content crafted by Melville in his discussion of iniquity and innocence aboard a seafaring ship, which often feels like a microcosmic society for Melville's writings. The tale turns tragic, which only heightens its effect for me.

Similarly, "Bartleby the Scrivener" has a tragic turn that slowly builds from a simple outset. Bartleby takes up work with a Wall Street lawyer (the narrator) as a scrivener, copying legal documents in the lawyer's stuffy office; soon, Bartleby takes to idleness, using the common refrain "I would prefer not to" after every request made of him. The impetus for Bartleby's behavior is not obvious or logical, but nonetheless it occupies the mind of the narrator ceaselessly until its tragic end. A consideration of the depths of empathy, a consideration of the nature of work in our ceaseless, capitalist culture just budding at the time of Mellville's writing, a consideration of so much else, "Bartleby the Scrivener" delivered.

I even appreciated most of "Benito Cereno", a short story concerning a mutiny-ridden Spanish ship and a good natured, affable American captain who climbs aboard and saves the ship's crew simply by that good nature. The story sat well with the theme of the other stories before it, essentially the individual vs. society; how one man's actions, or inactions, can take upon meaning in his life and how they're influenced by the expectations of the world around him; however I could not suffer this story, and for the most part the ones that followed until the collection's conclusion, because of its moralizing allegory.

A product of the times, Melville's moralizing allegory comes across for me as serious overreach on the part of the narrator. This notion, in turn, is a product of our time, where the modern novel often nudges readers along and expects them to put puzzle pieces together; the modern form is imperfect if you're trying to deliver upon a particular message, unless its a small set of puzzle pieces or a particularly good writer, but I prefer the modern form to the moralizing allegory because the latter often creates a sluggishness and sultry effect in the text; it becomes immovable and insurmountable at times, especially given Melville's 19th century English diction. The moralizing allegory also comes at the expense of grander character development, which, in the eyes of the modern reader, comes across as a piecemeal approach; inadequate for delivering a fictional story with veracity, meaning, and applicability outside the confines of its pages.

Regardless, the content of this collection was 19th century gothic tragedy in it truest American form and for that I thank Herman Melville. I look forward to setting sail with Moby Dick again in the future, as well!

[May Ling · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hard to ever criticize a great like Herman Melville. The story itself, to me was a little weird, but I think that the way he goes intensely into characterizing people, the nuanced emotion, the little details that give you a very deep perspective of what is going on. It's crazy. I mean it reminds me of my mother when she goes into a restaurant (her place of extreme expertise) and notices stuff I would not even begin to pick up on. It's amazing.

This and all the stories in the book are classically what made this guy a great writer. You will def get Billy Bud, all his depth as a character and then the nuance of those that had to do what they had to do.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

didn't love this collection of short stories with the exception of Bartleby the Scrivener, a 5 star for me.

[Max Bodach · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved Billy Budd and Bartleby, Benito Cereno has rich texture but sort of peters out?

[Reet · Rating 3 out of 5]

Billy Budd
3 🌟
Difficult to read because of unnecessary double negatives and backwards-written sentences (hello, Melville, we're speaking English), this book is still likable because of the plot and characters. Billy Budd is an impressed sailor on a man-of-war during the war between France and England at the end of the 19th century. He is an innocent who is mortally done wrong by the master-at-arms, Claggart, who hated him for sheer jealousy. As to Claggart's character:
P.55:
"A ruled undemonstrative distrustfulness Is So habitual, not with businessmen so much, as with men who know their kind in less shallow relations than business, namely, certain men of the world, that they come at last to employ it all but unconsciously, and some of them would very likely feel real surprise at being charged with it as one of their general characteristics."

This book leaves the reader with a feeling of sadness, and of beauty and innocence cut down in its prime, somewhat like a beautiful butterfly snatched out of the air mid-flight, and savagely crushed in the hand of a cruel human.

The Piazza
4 🌟
A man, living (in retirement?) in a farmhouse, has a porch built. He takes the utmost care of which side of the house to build the porch on, as all sides (North, west, south, east) have their own distinct views of scenery, and this porch will be used for appreciating such views. The man, spending much time on the beautiful view of the distant mountains, eventually becomes aware of something glimmering way up yonder, and curiosity overcomes him.

Breathless descriptions of scenery, and a moral lesson for us readers.

Bartleby
3 🌟
A profoundly sad tale that left this reader with a lot of questions and a feeling of hopelessness for the character of Bartleby, who apparently had not the slightest hope or interest left for anything in his life.

This, from a reviewer I follow:
"Recommended for anyone who works in an office: it'll make your favorite slacker colleague seem comparatively industrious."
Lee Klein, Goodreads member
[This review I dedicate to my old co-worker #JuliaPlowman ]

Tadiana Night Owl, another Goodreads member had this observance:
"There's a reference in the end to Bartleby sleeping "with kings and counselors" that the [Tadiana's] professor pointed out is a reference to these lines from the Bible:
" '13 For now should I have lain still and been quiet, I should have slept; then would I have been at rest
"14 with kings and counselors of the earth, who built desolate places for themselves,
"15 or with princes that had gold, who filled their houses with silver'
"Job 3:13-15 (KJV) - A reference not just to death, but to a certain equality men have in death, despite their differences in worldly fortunes. Food for thought, like so much of this story!"

Benito Cereno
2 🌟
A strange story about two captains, two ships, a big mystery, and a lot of racism. Capt Delano is at anchor off Sta Maria island, Chile, when another ship comes into view. It is in sad, bad shape, and Capt Delano, thinking the crew in need of help, goes to them in his whaler-boat. The ailing ship is a slaver, full of blacks, with a Spaniard for a captain. But he seems terribly I'll, and despite Capt Delano sending him supplies and promising additional aid, this captain will barely speak. Moreover, the black man who assists him, consoles him, gives him medicine, who seems supervisor to the slaves, will not at any time leave him alone. The suspense and the racism is dreadful.

The Encantadas
3 🌟
10 "Sketches" of tales about the Galapagos islands off the coast of Ecuador. Each sketch has a particular story to tell about something that happened in its past. For example, on one island, a ship that has stopped on an island to fetch firewood and pick up turtles to eat, is about to embark, when a sailor catches sight of something White moving in the distance on the island. They end up rescuing a widow, a "chola," whose husband and brother died and left her all alone. Their Enterprise was to make turtle oil out of the turtles that were native there. (In Melville's story, a Chola is a mix between an Indian and a Spaniard. Not like the cholos in California.) The most fun of reading these stories was looking each island up on Google maps, and exploring the coasts to find the parts that were talked about in the story. Most were easy to find, but some had obscure parts that I couldn't relate to the story. Interesting and educational.

[Frankie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having never read Melville beyond Moby Dick and Billy Budd, and with a mild distaste for "seafaring tales," I was pleasantly surprised to read several quite good, non-seafaring stories in this collection.

Bad news first. Billy Budd to me has, and always will, represent that stark allegory of fable or parable, without the blessed brevity of a fable or parable. I don't enjoy reading constant reminders that Billy's character represents pre-fall Adam. Without the agony of the details, this story boils down to a very interesting paragraph. If Melville's verbose and choppy style is meant to simulate tossing waves, he succeeds. For example, his use of reverse negatives ("not unabashed" or "seldom unheeded") make reading slow. The story Benito Cereno exhibits similar problems, though with a more interesting twist. Unfortunately, Melville grinds out 10 extra pages explaining the twist at the end, just in case the reader hasn't understood. The intro to this story, however, deserves mention for its uncommonly poetic and lovely opening description– "The sky seemed a gray surtout [19th century word for overcoat]. Flights of troubled gray fowl, kith and kin with flights of troubled gray vapors among which they were mixed, skimmed low and fitfully over the waters, as swallows over meadows before storms. Shadows present, foreshadowing deeper shadows to come."

Melville proves himself capable of natural description most in The Piazza, a subtle allegory of the experienced writer withdrawing from the world. The story Bartleby is my favorite. The setting is more modern and apt than any other. It's a dark, middle class office-worker tale about a man that loses his reason. The mystery of the tale balances with the pathos of his effect on those around him.

The Encantadas is a group of journalism/collected folklore about the Galapagos Islands. Fairly good and easy in style. Finally The Bell-Tower is an interesting story, told in a gothic style. It seems to be an indictment of industrialism, and feels upon reading like an H.G. Wells. It may be the very first appearance of a robot in literature.

*Added August 2012*
The story "The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids" (not in this edition, in Penguin's Billy Budd and Other Stories) is a sort of binary parallel. The style is very jovial, especially in the warm, sumptuous first half, but by the second half Melville's elemental nature returns. Gender difference is a major theme, with industrialism and class pictured as well. I was surprised by the narrator's affected voice. Was Melville just playing his character emphatically, or was he being sarcastic? His delight at low ceilings, hushed conversations, taking snuff… I'm not sure I understood...

[Sanjay Varma · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read the 3 novellas in this collection: "Benito Cereno", "Billy Budd", and "Bartleby". I heartily recommend all three. Melville is extremely gifted at foreshadowing, symbolism, and moral ambiguity. His characters are allegorical and fatally flawed like greek heroes, but with detailed psychologies like you would expect from a Dostoevsky novel. However, Melville is mediocre at depicting action sequences, and quite terrible at endings.

"Benito Cereno" is a novella about a ghost ship, in which the easy assumptions we bring with us to interpret new situations are shown to be inadequate to explain the crew's behavior on a ship in distress. The story is narrated from the point of view of Captain Delano, of a whaler ship. When captain Delano comes aboard, he constantly tries to see reality through his expectations of how a crew will behave on a ship at sea. But he is baffled by the odd behavior of Captain Benito Cereno, and the sensation that nothing is quite what it seems to be.

"Billy Budd" is a slow developing character study. The captain, Billy, and the master-at-arms are all portrayed with a fatal depth. Then they proceed to act out their respective fates. Billy, an innocent young sailor, earns the enmity of a minor officer, the master-at-arms, who then contrives to frame Billy Budd for mutiny. When Billy is called before the captain and accused of this crime, it sets off a chain of events that lead to tragedy.

"Bartleby" is an unbelievably prescient story, as relevant today when the plight of the 99% is debated by politicians as it was in the 19th century. Bartleby is a clerk who arbitrarily stops complying with some of his boss's orders, but will only say "I'd rather not." The boss does not know how to deal with this unresponsive employee! He tries reasoning, authoritative force, pleading, and bribery. Melville has found a spooky way to depict his social commentary on the economics and the class system.

[Tim Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good friend introduced me to an alternative reading of this novel, in which the narrator is obsessed with upholding the heroic myth of Billy Budd. Every incident is spun out by the narrator to show Billy in the most positive light possible, and Claggart as his evil opposite. If you look closely at the text for the 'facts' of the story though there's not a shred of evidence to support this romantic view of Billy.[return][return]In fact, reading between the lines, it's possible to read Claggart as a basically decent man stuck in an impossible situation, and Billy as a charismatic psychopath with a tyrannical grip on his shipmates.[return][return]A benefit of this interpretation is that it makes sense of the circumlocutions of the narrator's dialogue, as he turns somersaults trying to maintain the myth of The Handsome Sailor.[return][return]It's also an appropriately cynical response from an author near the end of his life, looking back at the success of his earlier, more romantic, adventure stories.

[E. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read Billy Budd in 2006 and read Bartleby the Scrivener sometime later. This time I read all the remaining tales in this volume, most of them from the Piazza Tales.

I wrote the other day on my blog about The Lightning-Rod Man. That was my favourite of the bunch. Some of the stories aren't as strong or engaging, but even they express Melville's command of the language and the sense of dread and the exotic which overhangs everything. Plus, they keep your interest.

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed Billy Budd and Bartleby and Benito Cereno of The Piazza Tales. The Town-Ho's Story (Ch 54 of Moby Dick) reminded me why I have started reading Moby Dick several times, yet finishing it remains on my bucket list. If you read only one of the novellas/short stories in this collection, I recommend Benito Cereno.

[Michael P. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Judging by the way some respond to Melville's other masterpiece, I think this book does not suit our times. For me this story of a man too good to live makes a book too good to put down. I remian a Billy Budd fan.

[Brian Eshleman]

The innocent sacrificed. Powerful stuff.

[Jay · Rating 4 out of 5]

"that peculiar glance which evidences that the man from whom it comes has been some way tampered with and to the prejudice of him upon whom the glance lights"

[Lawrence · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can’t believe the lack of enthusiasm in the comments/reviews!! Melville is one of the USA’s greatest writers. Here are my thoughts on "Bartleby the Scrivener" and "Billy Budd" in this collection of Melville stories.


The story in Bartleby is as much a riddle as the character of the same name. IMO the story is about the narrator faced with a human conundrum who is both autonomous, albeit unconventionally and dangerously, and helpless and, yet, aggressive. The narrator goes through levels of reaction to Bartleby. At first, there is frustration and anger, then confusion, then escape, then deep compassion. Bartleby is a moral problem writ large: What do we do with societal issues that are beyond the ability or power of one man (the narrator) to address? In the story, the narrator meets this problem not in the form of my question just stated, but in the form of a person.

So, what does Melville, who is an immensely moral writer, think about the problem. In the story of Bartleby, he is pessimistic. Bartleby leaves the scene. He makes enough of an impression on the narrator that the narrator tells his story. But that's all.

"Billy Budd" is a very painful story. The pain it caused me, and I think also causes most other readers, is due to the helpless rightness or goodness or defenselessness of Billy who is so beautiful, simple, and childlike. Billy cannot even read. Billy attracts the attention of Claggert, a petty officer on the warship on which both sail. Claggert envies Billy’s attractive purity and either is naturally depraved and evil (my opinion) or his envy corrupts. Whatever the reason, he wants to destroy Billy who naturally has no inkling of Claggert’s nature.

Melville is studying the problem whether creation has meaning. He uses Billy, Claggert, and Vere, and, to a degree, the three members of the drumhead court. Billy is as good as good can be, the evil is as natural and hypocritical as the historical Titus Oates to whom Melville compares Claggert (p. 29). When dispute arises as between Good and Evil, Melville inserts a human mechanism -- the Law. The irony is that the Law and its application by the persuasion of Captain Vere lead inevitably to a correct, yet immoral conclusion. Thus, our human solution fails. The only solace is the ironic death of Claggert, which satisfies the reader's urge for vengeance, but his death, in a double irony, leads to the achievement of his goal of harming Billy. Claggert’s death and the brief glorification of Billy's body by the Morning sun are not cosmic or even meaningful events. The story closes with dramatic and false newspaper clipping.

Billy Budd is a story of such moral bleakness that it is no wonder it was found in Melville's desk and published only in the 1920s long after Melville's death. There is one positive factor, however, that redeems the bleakness. The reader, like Vere and the drumhead court, are moved and pained by the sense that a wrong has been committed. This is an emotional and inarticulate argument, as inarticulate as Vere’s dying words, for some kind of human solidarity and meaning

The story is a masterpiece of literature. Melville provides information by which the reader has license to go outside the story to long for alternate endings. The scene, the black and white characterization, the context are so well-drawn even though one suspects the story verges on allegory. Once again, as in Moby Dick, Melville tells the story with long asides that serve in the end to build an entire literary world for the characters. Once again, Melville displays the most amazingly beautiful, though remote, periodic prose of a complexity that requires the reader to stay slow. I suspect that Melville, as a boy, was a superior student of Latin for his sentences and diction have the same clarity, pointedness, and length as in Latin's great rhetorical writers.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a collection of Herman Melville’s more popular short stories, headlined by Billy Budd, a posthumously-released sea-faring novella. Most were good reads, though occasionally involve slogging through and retracing your steps along Melville’s frequent paragraph-long sentences and clauses, which can be challenging at times.

Billy Budd: an impressionable and well-liked sailor commits manslaughter when defending himself from another sailor accusing him of conspiring mutiny. The even-keeled captain (see what I did there?) acts as judge though weighs on the jury in the dispensation of justice on the high seas. Took a while to get this going, but when it did, it was a good read and with a shocking ending.

The Piazza: solitude and longing in the mountains. A dreamy, well-written short story. Conflicting, as I felt sadness for the character’s loneliness, but also appreciative of the beauty and tranquility of the country. Melville did a good job with this.

Bartleby: story about an intransigent, obstinate worker who refuses to work or even leave work, and his perplexed and frustrated employer. Somewhat amusing in Bartleby’s determinism but could now be viewed in a different light considering current social issues, with homelessness and drug use coming to mind.

Benito Cereno: a sea story of two captains who encounter each other’s ships off the coast of Chile. One, an old Spanish warship, is suspiciously (in the eyes of the other captain) crewed by Black sailors and its Spanish officers are evasive and tacit. The observing captain, Delano, of an American fishing vessel, pries around the Spanish ship alongside its captain, Cereno, who is mentally weakened by an unknown ailment and “supported” by his trusted, sycophantic Babo, who is obviously (to the reader) controlling Cereno while in the presence of the Delano. What sounds like a good, psychological story is weighed down by its slow burn. Maybe too slow for me. But it’s still a solid read, you just want to ring the neck of Cereno at times and have him somehow surreptitiously signal to Delano that he’s under duress. And for Delano to pull his blinders off and believe his intuition of the dire situation. Classic Melville sea story, though, and it ends well.

The Lightning Rod Man: a surprising and enjoyable short read about an itinerant lightning rod salesman who visits the home of a prospective buyer during a violent lightning storm. The salesman is essentially selling peace of mind in the face of fear and pressures the homeowner to buy or risk losing his home--or perhaps his life. I enjoyed the protagonist homeowner’s passionate rebuke of the salesman. It could be relatable in so many ways: insurance sales, religious fearmongering, or buying that extended warranty for your car. Good sense, limits of control, and fear vs freedom are the big themes here.

The Encantadas, or Enchanted Islands: a series of 11 “sketches” about the Galapagos Islands, each of a different flavor. One is about the desolate, austere environment there, another about the failed attempts to colonize the archipelago, a third about a murderous hermit on one of the islands. One memorable sketch was about a woman unfortunately marooned there for years and was later miraculously saved. These sketches weave fact, fiction, effective symbolism, and Melville’s vast experience as a seaman, so they make for good, if not different reading. I wasn’t sure I’d like this unconventional series on a niche subject, but it heightened my pre-existing desire to visit these strange and special islands.

The Bell Tower: a psychological goth-horror type story, where an architect wishes to build a belltower in his town, but later realizes no one can hear the bell ring because of the design of the tower. His obsession threatens his sanity.

[Nerea G · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sinceramente le he cogido manía a este libro. Está dividido por tres partes. La primera parte empecé y no me enteraba de nada en inglés cuando en otros libros lo entiendo casi todo menos alguna palabra suelta... Pues busqué el libro a ver si estaba traducido y me di cuenta que cada parte eran historias diferentes así que busqué la primera y si estaba traducido, volví a empezar de zero. Busqué la segunda y eran diferentes historias así que fui buscando y no todas estaban traducidas. Y después, por la cara, la tercera parte es un capítulo de otro libro del autor... Y que habían partes del segundo que eran igual de largas o casi que la primera parte. Así que hay de historias que me he enterado y estan bien, y otras que no me enterado de nada ni aunque lo haya intentado. Me ha frustrado porque hubiera preferido ir leyendo por partes y no tenerlo todo junto en un mismo libro, y que no entiendo lo del capítulo suelto... He intentado disfrutar de esta lectura pero se me ha complicado bastante. Y tendré que mirar bien los libros antes de decidir si leerlos en inglés. Obviamente hay con cosas que he aprendido con este libro y de épocas que aunque sepa de algo, no habría leído y menos desde esta perspectiva y eso esta bien.

[Daniel Carey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Melville requires you to really put on your thinking cap. As modern readers, please be prepared to labor through his often archaic prose. His didactic context can often daunt contemporary readers. Its as if Melville was stubbornly refusing to write in the style that would garner him more readers. He remains the quintessential American writer grossly underrated in his own time as many modern critics now view his masterpiece Moby Dick as the greatest American classic novel.

I had to pay extra attention and sometimes reread the text I was on. I often found myself pondering exactly what Melville was saying in his moral lessons and his characters seem not to represent characters so much as ideas used to inspire his philosophies. Still well worth the effort. I first saw the 1998 Signet Classic edition of this book while perusing my way through my local Barnes & Noble store and was always intrigued to pick it up one day. While still a challenging read, I'm glad I finally got around to it.

[Bill O'driscoll · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Billy Budd" is Melville's great novella -- the last fiction he wrote before his death, and not published till decades after his death (he never officially completed it). A rumination on human nature and the future of the nation disguised as a tragedy of the sea, it still packs a wallop (though it helps if you know about Melville's concern the U.S. was losing its soul to public avarice and militarism). A second novella, "Benito Cereno," is a canny and subtle meditation on racism, also set on shipboard. Some of the short pieces here, like "the Encantadas" (a kind of South Seas island dossier), are merely charming. "The Bell Tower" is sneakily eerie. But the crowning glory is "Bartleby the Scrivener," one of the greatest works of short fiction in English, and one that prefigures the existential crises of mass man (as written by Kafka, et al) by decades; it's also extremely funny. "Bartleby" is of course heavily anthologized, but if you havent' had the pleasure, it alone is worth the price of this paperback.

[Spartacus7 · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting set of tales but variable in quality. A chief limiting factor to the enjoyment of Billy Budd is the abstruse use of language. In many sentences, Melville ties himself in knots to deliver a simple message. It is different to the convoluted sentences of, say, Henry James, which are delivered to provide a range of possible meanings and nuances. So, the question for me was, do I read and re-read passages in Billy Budd to extract the simple essence of what is being said? In many cases, I didn't.

If the timing is to be believed, Melville 'grew into' this obscure style - Billy Budd was left unfinished at his death in 1891. On the other hand, the Town-Ho Story (which is a chapter taken from Moby-Dick, and the last tale in this volume) is a 'similar' tale, published 40 years earlier. Here, the language does not obscure the narrative and Melville's view of the human condition. It is a much more interesting and accessible story.

[Paul Mckinley · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've read Moby Dick three times and consider it great, if a bit odd stylistically. Having read nothing else of Melville's, I was particularly interested in Bartleby the Scrivener, and Billy Budd, which readers generally consider to be his next best works.

His style didn't work as well for these shorter stories. He mostly shows rather than tells, and often goes far too long without a dialogue. He's also very slow as he waxes poetic and brings in many allusions, but very little action happens altogether.

Perhaps what worked so well in Moby Dick is the way he would change the style between chapter, with some being narration, some being dialogue, some being Shakespearian in style, and some being reference material (all the encyclopedic chapters about cetations). Without that, these stories didn't have much of a chance for you to get settled in and appreciate his story-telling style.

[Adam Bregman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've just gotten around to Billy Budd, Melville's short lauded novella. But equal or greater in this collection is the short story, Benito Cereno, the subject and brutally racist perspective of which is deplorable, so it is perhaps destined not to be taught in school and will never be part of the canon like Melville's Billy Budd or Moby-Dick. Reading Benito Cereno with no prior knowledge of its subject (don't read the back cover, which is a spoiler) is recommended, as it's a slow-burning fuse with constantly shifting tension. This is something that Melville had mastered throughout his career, despite the sometimes tortoise pace of his works. The Encantadas are also classic seafaring tales, taking place on each island of the Galapagos, while the landlubbing stories are skippable. Also, don't miss Joyce Carol Oates' afterword.

[Karl · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Struck dead by an angel of
God! Yet the angel must hang!"

My first Melville read, and it definitely took me some time to settle into his lofty style of writing and his intentions for this short, but ultimately very rich moral tale.

"But your scruples: do they move as in a dusk? Challenge them. Make them
advance and declare themselves."

The setting, plot, characters are all set in service to one powerful, plaintive speech from the pained Captain Vere plumbing the novella's central question of how a moral man must act when conscience, duty, righteousness and the greater good all seem at odds.

"You sign sad assent. Well, I too feel that, the full force of that. It is Nature. But do these buttons that we wear attest that our allegiance is to Nature? No, to the King."

I also learned some cool boat stuff.

[Christopher Walker · Rating 4 out of 5]

'Moby Dick' is one of the most intense, amazing books I've ever read, but until recently it was the only thing of Melville's that I'd worked through. 'Billy Budd' appears on the 1001 list, and I found a copy, so I thought, why not?

It was a struggle at times to see the plot for the words, so to speak; Melville's prose is not the refined English that one would expect from a more modern writer. It's full of excuses for why the story is being written, why characters are introduced, why places and scenes were chosen or visited. Nowadays this is all extraneous, and rightly so.

The stories themselves were interesting though, and once I got used to Melville's style again I did quite enjoy myself.

[J Shu · Rating 3 out of 5]

This particular book was composed of Billy Bud and a grouping of short stories called The Piazza Tales. I originally wanted to read Billy Bud but ended up reading The Piazza and Bartleby, too. Billy Bud - a story of tragedies caused by jealousy, anger, and fear, told with unusually long and flowery prose. The Piazza - ideas of beauty and wonder can be influenced by physical positioning. Bartleby - an excentric do-nothing takes advantage of the goodwill of a businessman. I might have been tempted to read further into The Tales, but the physical layout of spacing and font size didn't make for pleasant reading.

[Albert Meier · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting mix of short works including themes both nautical and not. All were enjoyable. Melville's prose can be daunting at times. Not easy to get into, yet clear and understandable. I can see why Moby Dick is considered great and yet rarely read.

The scholarly introduction claimed to find themes and tensions in Billy Budd that just weren't there. I hate reading modern ideas into previous eras where they did not exist. It shows and ignorance of and lack of appreciation for the attitudes of those time periods.

[Peter Z. · Rating 5 out of 5]

About all I could have hoped for from my uncontested favorite author in the world.
Special awards to Bartleby and Benito Cereno for being highlights of the book. I didn't love the Piazza. Then again, I didn't love Mardi either, but I'm not going to say a bad word about Melville.

This edition has some end notes that give an opinion/perspective and historical context to the stories that's may feel helpful to a contemporary reader. I prefer to take Melville's stories at face value, more or less, but some readers may be interested to know what some other guy thinks a story is "really" about.