The first week of reading this for class I was very sympathetic to Melville's skepticism. I'm over it now. Melville needs to make a damn point, and he just never does! He raises too many issues in his stories (*cough cough* "Billy Budd") and never actually reaches any conclusions. "Apple Tree Table" was the only story where he actually concluded something, and it was about weird spiritualism and a ticking table. Think I need to read about Anne Shirley now so that I can revive from the soul rot that Melville produced. I'm so over it.

The stories looming largest on the cover will matter the most to most of you. Melville's other miscellanea draw a hard line between his short-form mastery and Hawthorne's. Practically any Hawthorne story is worth reading, but I can't say the same for entries like "The Two Temples". "The Encantadas" is a little too reminiscent of his earlier novels for me to enjoy, more like a travelogue (one with disquieting tortoise-flipping action) than great literature. "Benito Cereno" seems a little bloated, mocking the "Short Works" section of the title, and isn't as enjoyable as Melville's best. "Billy Budd" and "Bartleby, the Scrivener" are the jewels of this collection in my eyes.

Some stories in this collection were seriously entertaining, and several provided a great look at life in the times of Melville, in the places he lived and visited (the Galapogos, England and the colonies).
On the other hand, many stories open with criticism of the story, and claims of disbelief that it had managed to be printed in its day. These stories manage to be a slower read than Moby Dick itself, and have no place in a collection named the greatest of Melville.

I adore Melville! Every one of his short works or sketches hit me in just the right mood. If you read nothing else in this life, read Melville.

"Bartleby, the Scrivener" and "Benito Cereno" are nice tales, but my very most favorite Melville piece is far and away "I and My Chimney." After reading it I managed to find a few pictures posted on line of the home where Melville was living and of which he was writing in "I and My Chimney." I have started Moby Dick several times and I know I should love it, but to be honest I don't think I have ever managed--even in preparation for a test while in college--to reach the final page. Give me "I and My Chimney," the essays, the short stories. Let the rest of the world and serious readers have that nasty great whale.

Listening to Benjamin Britten's opera Billy Budd not long ago, I realized how long it has been since I read Melville's story, so that's what inspired me to bring out this volume.

There are really only four "great" stories in the book:

* "Bartleby, the Scrivener," that astonishing imaginative bridge between Charles Dickens and Franz Kafka.
* "The Encantadas," an imaginative travelogue to the Galápagos, seen not as Darwin's laboratory of natural selection nor as the ecotourist's endangered paradise, but as the Fallen World in its raw essence.
* "Benito Cereno," the most mechanically structured of Melville's tales but also the one that raises the most unsettling questions about its theme and tone.
* "Billy Budd," that inexhaustible fable about innocence and experience, intellect and nature, beauty and ugliness, good and evil, as well as one of the nineteenth century's most provocative, if veiled, explorations of same-sex attraction.

As for the rest of the stories, none of them stand out. But you should read them anyway to understand the way Melville's moral imagination works. Sadly, Warner Berthoff's introduction is a bit of a slog through the academic fog, but there are nuggets to be gleaned from it.

While I enjoyed some of these (Billy Budd, Sailor; Benito Cereno; Bartleby, the Scrivener; Poor Man's Pudding and Rich Man's Crumbs; The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids; The Apple-Tree Table) - to various extents -, I skimmed most of them because I couldn't get into the story.

Loved this one. I never realized that Melville was such an accomplished satirist and humorist. My favorite selections were "Cock-A-Doodle-Doo!," "Benito Cereno," and "I and My Chimney."

I dunno. The jacket described it as "perfection." I used to live on S Melville St, so I read Moby Dick. Melville does have a way with words and an eye for detail, but it's just sensationalist when it comes down to it.

I first read these stories when I was in my early 20's. And as Mark Twain said Melville is not only smarter now than he was then, he is also a better writer than he was back then. Seriously, these stories contain the undeniable masterworks like Benito Cereno, Bartleby and Bill Budd, which academics have all but exploited to dead, yet are still fresh and readable.But also all the rest of the stories that Melville wrote for the many magazines of his day --most notably Putnam's magazine, put out by Melville's publisher to highlight their writers. There is a richness of mood, setting, character, ambiance, historical time and place to these stories that belie Melville being a "sea story writer." There is a wide variety of mood, feeling, and insight too. Some of the tales are very light, mere anecdotes--or, and this really surprised me, they are "True Stories"--much like my own, but set in his time and place: 1840's to 1850's mostly downtown New York City or that wicked big city, London of his day. Pieces like "The Two Temples" Jimmy Rose" The Happy Failure" The Paradise of Bachelors" are little more than perfect reportage. Even more surprising is Melville being our own social commentator a la Dickens, with his views of how the Industrial revolution had altered life, as in "The Tartarus of Maids" and how commercialization has taken over all "The Lightning Rod Man." Then there are his portraits of American poverty that equal the best of Steinbeck and James Agee, and possibly were their inspiration, Add in funny domestic stories like "I and My Chimney" and "The Apple Tree Table" and the result is an American writer of amazing bravura who can stand next to the greatest authors of any other nation or time in his sweep and variety. Bravo Melville!

I forgot to write a review of this book.
To begin with, the structure of Melville’s writing is directly associated with the diverse characteristics of one’s nature depicting the idea of such topics as obsession, morality, and existential problem. Besides, language and symbolism of his writings give reader an in-depth literary appreciation skills which pique the reader’s critical thinking ability.
I really liked the edition and Warner Berthoff introduction was amazing.

Jan 15 ~~ I got this book for Billy Budd. I have read all the other selections (except for two sketches) in another book which I reviewed a couple of years ago. Proper review will be coming asap.

Jan 18 ~~ Since reading Melville In Love I have been enjoying my own personal Melville revival. I've read Moby Dick again and I surprised myself by wanting to tackle Billy Budd for the first time since high school.

I knew the book I ordered had other short works by Melville in it, but I thought they would be selections that I had not previously read. Turned out that One first story was actually a chapter lifted entire from Moby Dick, and the others I had read in a book I reviewed on GR a couple of years ago. Of the many entries here, only three were new to me; so my review for this book is really just for John Marr, Daniel Ormes, and Billy Budd.

According to the editor of this volume:
The special pathos of this sketch, written as prologue to one of several poems commemorating the long-vanished glory days of certain old forecastle sailors has to do not only with John Marr's longing for a phantomlike past but also his inability to find anyone who can listen to his reminiscence understandingly.
Poor John Marr. After he could no longer sail the seven seas, he retires and ends up far inland, on the prairie, surrounded by people who would never understand the stories he could tell. And as he becomes more isolated emotionally, he begins to talk with the ghosts of his former crew mates. I have put a volume of Melville's poetry on my Read This Soon list; I found it at Gutenberg. HM's poem about John Marr is listed in the contents, so I will be reading it Someday. I wonder if Melville wrote such a detailed sketch of his man in order to make him seem even more real for the poetry?

The editor says that Daniel Orme, the other sketch here, was also written as a prologue to a poem. I haven't checked in that Melville poetry volme to see if there is a poem about this man there, but I did see that in Billy Budd there was a character very much like Daniel. No name, but similar duties on the ship and similar appearance. The editor says this piece was written at the same time as Billy Budd, and I can imagine HM creating this old sailor for that tale, and then maybe getting interested in him and taking a little time to amuse himself by writing a short piece about him. Or he could have created the piece first in order to have a more rounded character in his mind for the role he was destined to play in Billy's life? Either way, the short piece is quite intense; it made me feel very much a part of Daniel's sad life.

Now to Billy Budd. I don't know if this book is still thrust upon teenagers in high school English courses, but it should not be. I think a person has to live life for more than just 15 or 16 years before being able to appreciate all that is going on in this book. All I remember from my own forced reading of this novella was being confused and thinking that Billy was much younger than he really was.

Here, 45 years later, I saw just how Melville tied together many topics such as the Great Mutiny in the British Navy (that happened just a few months before the events in Billy Budd). The sailors were still not completely content with their lot in life, and there were many many sailors who were impressed into service, literally taken off of other ships and forced to serve in the Royal Navy. This is what happened to Billy.

He was the 'Handsome Sailor' of a merchant ship: the best-looking, hardest working, most able sailor of the crew. Everyone liked him, and he seemed to be able to keep the peace among the various personalities that surrounded him. Then the Navy ship came along and snatched him for their own. What did he think about that? Well, HM portrays Billy as a totally innocent character, almost simple minded in the way of the world. He is a natural human being, without any awareness of understanding of all the plots and games that most men get up to in life. So he simply accepts his new life, tries to learn all the rules about life on a Royal Navy ship, and continues doing his work with a sense of joy as usual.

Contrasting with Billy is the master-at-arms Claggart, whose job like a policeman, keeping order on the ship. But he takes an instant dislike to Billy. Why? Claggart himself was a handsome man but Billy was better looking. Everyone liked Billy, but Claggart's very position left him separated from the types of true friendships that Billy could encounter. So was he jealous? Did he have feelings for Billy that he preferred not to acknowledge? Did he just think that Billy was the ideal target for his own cruelty, which leads to a traumatic end for both of them?

This book made me cry. I became so caught up in Billy's situation, it seemed as if I were right there on the ship with him. And I wanted so much for him to get out of the trouble created for him by his own inexperience. There is so much symbolism here and could be even more than I think there is, that I will never understand how a high school student could be expected to 'get' this book. I am not sure I entirely get it myself, at least not in a way I can put into words. All I know is that it is an impressive and magical piece of work, an amazing way to end a writing career, and that I will be coming back to read it again.