Billy Budd

For me, Moby Dick is compelling for its flaws as much as its genius. It is somehow both brilliant and overly-ambitious. One can feel, on every page, Melville straining to write something Miltonic, Shakespearean, even Biblical in its reach and power. But like some over-educated Icarus, his soaring fl......more

This, ladies and gents, is what we call round these parts a darn good sentence: "By the side of pebbly waters--waters the cheerier for their solitude; beneath swaying fir-boughs, petted by no season, but still green in all, on I journeyed--my horse and I; on, by an old saw-mill, bound down and hushe......more

Distinctly we see the difference of the colors, but where exactly does the one first blendingly enter into the other? So with sanity and insanity. Billy and Bartleby are old friends, portraits of bejeweled philosophy. Strange as it may appear, the selection which punched me in the jaw was Cock-A-Dood......more

Sailors' Favorite Framed, Takes Rap *BILLY BUDD, a classic tale by America's Herman Melville, was written 40 years after his burst of creative energy. Melville still possessed the feeling for a good story, but he wrote it in a language so ornate and (to our modern eyes) stilted, that one can hardly a......more

One of Melville's finest. I like to think it took his whole life to write this short piece because it condenses his finest diction, symbolism, and commentary on human nature. By story’s end, Melville’s descriptions have created a singular character of innocence, one he calls a “childman” of simple-m......more