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Title: Billy Budd, Sailor (An Inside Narrative Reading Text and Genetic Text) by Herman Melville, Merton M. Sealts, Harrison Hayford ISBN: 0226321320 Publisher: University of Chicago Press (Trd) Pub. Date: 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.75
Rating: 5
Summary: Last Testament.
Comment: Whether its considered a novella, a short novel, or whatever else, no matter, Billy Budd is the greatest work of its kind ever written and one of the great works of world literature. Whether it fits neatly into any traditional literary category is of no importance. "Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges."
Such rare substance and depth condensed into a mere 90 pages creates intense heat and blinding light, an incandescence, that only genius could then fashion into the long, smooth, jewel-like chains of the poetic prose sentences that make up this book. Melville forges them in the white-hot smithy of his soul then links them together, beginning to end, giving us the revelation story of Billy Budd. "Welkin-eyed" Billy Budd is a young British merchant sailor, the "Handsome Sailor", the embodiment of spontaneous, good-natured vitality and innocence, naturally loved by his fellow sailors, an "Angel of God." But he is also the "fated boy" with a seemingly minor weakness of stuttering when he is upset, a weakness that proves tragic in a world of darkness. Billy is forcibly enlisted onto a war ship to serve the British king in his struggle against the post-revolutionary France of Napoleon. On ship Billy meets the very intelligent, proper, conservative, highly regarded Master-at-Arms, Claggart. Behind his facade, Claggart's soul is as weak and depraved as Billy's is good and strong. The proud Claggart secretly admires Billy beyond endurance and grows to loathe and detest him because of this. Claggart goes to Captain Vere and falsely accuses Billy of mutiny. Billy is brought in and accused to his face. The shocked Billy is inwardly paralyzed, reduced to "a strange dumb gesturing and gurgling", by the mystery of such maliciousness and evil. He can't comprehend it and doesn't know how to defend himself. Like an innocent tormented animal he strikes out and Claggart falls silent, permanently silent. Then the real horror at the heart of this story is revealed. Captain Vere, the embodiment of all conventional nobility, courage and wisdom, deceives himself with his lofty rationality and with much sentimentality, but no more real feeling than a puppet, he follows protocol and, though he knows Billy is innocent, condemns him to be hanged and given over to the sea. Cuffed with darbies (manacles or irons) and bound in hammock the "Angel of God" is dropped into the darkness.
Fathoms down, fathoms down, how I'll dream fast asleep.
I feel it stealing now. Sentry, are you there?
Just ease this darbies at the wrist, and roll me over fair,
I am sleepy and the oozy weeds about me twist.
This story combined with the author's ongoing pronouncements reveals a realm of American art where Melville stands alone. He is America's greatest, only truly prophetic, artist. Enter this little book openly, seriously, and it will serve you for life. Read it again and again until you hear its voice.
Rating: 4
Summary: Melville an american great
Comment: Herman Melville is one of the lesser known authors.Still his style and skill are not to be ignored.Whenever you wish to explore the development of the United States , and the regionalisms of the sailors of the northeast ,read him . Exciting
and educational ,and extremely well written.
Rating: 5
Summary: The Best Edition of Billy Budd
Comment: Herman Melville's novella "Billy Budd" recounts the tragic story of a young man impressed into service aboard the British man-of-war 'Bellipotent' in the late 1790's. Billy is called the 'Handsome Sailor' no less because of his angelic features than for his absolute moral purity and innocence. Initially aboard a merchantman, where he is revered by his fellows and treated accordingly, once aboard a warship, Billy is not greeted by such universal admiration. John Claggart, the master-at-arms, the policeman of the ship, fosters an intense homoerotic hatred of Billy, drawing the young man into the commerce of realistic human interaction.
Melville does a fantastic job in so short a work of characterization. From the main characters, Budd, Claggart, and the captain/philosopher Starry Vere, to minor characters of significance like the old Dansker, Melville gives carefully detailed and finely nuanced renderings of the players and their roles and responses to the events of the story.
Claggart's conflict with Budd takes on special urgency with the 1790's problem of mutinies aboard British sea-going vessels. Vere and his court must try to distinguish moral responsibility from legal necessity to judge the fatal interactions between Claggart and Budd. Melville is sensitive to late 18th century philosophical currents in regard to both American independence and the French Revolution - Discussions of rights and nature are scattered through the text. Complicating these strains are theological currents of good and evil, innocence and natural depravity. "Billy Budd" is a fine work, and wonderfully complex.
This excellent edition, compiled and edited by Hayford and Seals, is the appropriate one for the scholar or the completist. It includes extensive notes and critical interpretations (sadly only through the initial publication of this edition - 1962), photo reprints of Melville's manuscript, and textual commentary. Absolutely worth reading and rereading.
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Title: China Men by Maxine Hong Kingston ISBN: 0679723285 Publisher: Vintage Books Pub. Date: 1989 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Revolt of the Cockroach People by Oscar Zeta Acosta ISBN: 0679722122 Publisher: Vintage Books Pub. Date: 1989 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: The Account: Alvar Nunez Cabeza De Vaca's Relacion (Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage) by Alvar Nunez Cabeza De Vaca, Jose Fernandez, Virginia Sanchez Korrol, Martin Favata ISBN: 1558850600 Publisher: Arte Publico Pr Pub. Date: 1993 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: The Republic and the Laws: And, the Laws (Oxford World's Classics) by Marcus Tullius Cicero, Jonathan Powell, Niall Rudd ISBN: 0192832360 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 1998 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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Title: Plessy v. Ferguson by Brook Thomas ISBN: 0312137435 Publisher: Bedford/St. Martin's Pub. Date: 1996 List Price(USD): $16.35 |
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