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Herman Melville : Pierre, Israel Potter, The Piazza Tales, The Confidence-Man, Tales, Billy Budd (Library of America)


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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.3
EAN: 9780940450240
ISBN: 0940450240
Label: Library of America
Manufacturer: Library of America
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 1478
Publication Date: April 01, 1985
Publisher: Library of America
Studio: Library of America

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Editorial Review:

Product Description:
Herman Melville's dark and brilliant late works contain some of his most powerful writing. After "Moby-Dick" he turned from the high seas to record his keen, bleak vision of life at home in America. "Pierre," "Israel Potter," and "The Confidence-Man," satirical dissections of moral breakdown and social hypocrisy, anticipate modernist fiction with their black humor and formal experimentation. With them here are "The Piazza Tales"--including "Bartelby the Scrivener," "The Encantadas," and "Benito Cereno"--and the haunting, posthumously published masterpiece, "Billy Budd, Sailor." Rounding out this third volume of Melville's complete prose in the Library of America are many pieces rarely collected, including magazine stories, comic sketches, and reviews of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Francis Parkman, and James Fenimore Cooper.



Customer Reviews
Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - Worth the effort.
Nothing I can write can either do justice to this collection or convince you to read it. Those goals are simply out of my persuasive power.

All I can say is that Melville is one of those rare writers who works in the aggregate. He does not hit the nostalgia button like Twain, or compose a jaw-dropping sentence every other paragraph like Dickens. However, after reading much of Melville, a quality of reflection and thought is induced that is equally as valuable, if not superior, to ... Read More


Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - It ain't all Moby Dick
If you think that you can't read classic American Literature because it's all so big and intimidating (i.e., Moby Dick) think again. Some of the short stories in this collection of Melville's "other" work are incredibly well-written insights into human nature. (As is Moby Dick, but I digress).

Billy Budd's encounter with "justice," Bartleby's statement that he would "prefer not", Benito Cerino's exploration of slavery-- these tales are not to be missed. You should read this book as ... Read More


Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - The Lonesome Latter Years
Darkly humorous, cynical, horrific and melancholy, Melville's later works are the capstone to the author's deepening discontent with his America. The vision here can be frustrating: Melville conjures up the most painful, soul-searching mysteries, and then refuses to knot them up with tidy solutions. Instead, Melville deepens the moral ambiguity that seeped through the skin of the transitional Moby Dick in full-length works like Pierre and Billy Budd, Sailor. And the shorter works--among them The ... Read More
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