Billy Budd Book

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?