The Confidence-Man -- ** You can see my review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

The Piazza Tales (and shorter fiction) -- **** You can see my review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Check out the Paradise of Bachelors & the Tartarus of Maids

2nd time through Confidence Man.

Pierre or The Ambiguities
This is truly one of the worst books I have ever read. If he were alive, either Melville or I would be the target of a well-placed bullet. Irretrievably romantic, psychological, depressing and completely impractical, this work is beyond believability. So much is described in a tortuous introspection which, in reality, NO ONE ever contemplates before acting. A mysticism accompanies every motivation. He manufactures conflicts that, in a normal world, would never exist. An affluent, only child of a leading family discovers his late father had a daughter. Within four days of encountering her, he jettisons his perfect fiancé, destroys the wonderful relationship with his mother which leads to her brief insanity then death, rips up his entire future and runs away with his now sister, because he doesn’t want to tell anyone about her - it may cause a scandal! Really? And Melville builds a novel on this foundation? Absurd.
This is so verbose Melville must’ve charged by the word. He employed so many to say so little that this novel resulted in reducing his popularity and was a publishing disaster. Instead of saying, “The carriage splashed water on nodding heads of wheat.”, he’d say something about the carriage maker, the ancestry of the horse, how each seed was strewn on the soil, the components of the soil, how long the rain lasted, the ancestry of the driver, the farmer and anyone within sight, how Boreas decided to send the wind, and on and on. Melville admired his brilliance too much.

Having been so disappointed in this novel, I read reviews of the other two, Israel Potter and The Confidence Man, and decided not to continue to abuse my time with further reading of this volume. The Piazza Tales I have read elsewhere and they are much the better of anything in Melville. And, unwilling to have it pollute my bookshelves, I will sell this work

this is for the short works in this edition.

The Encantadas (In the Piazza Tales) is incredible: bizarre and rending and hopeful, uncanny spiritual textures.
Resembles Moby Dick in little excellent ways.

Benito Cereno! Bartleby! Billy Budd!
what more to say.
except maybe: The Clocktower!

Herman Melville is the Paul McCartney of American Literature. His "Yesterday" is "Billy Budd" or "Moby-Dick", his "Temporary Secretary" is "Pierre". When he is good, he is the best you'll ever read. When he is bad, he makes Dan Brown look like Henry James.

Though, "Pierre" did inspire(?) this from me: Pierre

Reading Pierre.