There are eight stories in this World’s Classics edition all written by Melville following the commercial failure of his novels Moby Dick and Pierre, when he needed to earn money from work that could be published in literary magazines. He proved to be a master short story writer with several of these tales acknowledged as classics of their genre. A couple of these stories feel more like sketches or essays, but the quality of the writing remains high throughout.

It is fair to say that when Melville took to writing theses stories in the early 1850’s he was at a low ebb. He was physically and mentally exhausted with a growing family that he found increasingly difficult to support. His novels were not finding favour with the critics and neither were they selling and so if the black moods that sometimes descended on him find their way into the stories then it is hardly surprising. Robert Miller in an excellent introduction to these tales asks “How many of them are tragedies and how many historical, well the short answer is that tragedy looms large in many of them and to a certain degree many of them are historical.

Cock-a-Doodle-Doo seems to me almost perfection as a short story. Written in the first person the, narrator we suspect is Melville himself and he has the blues. His spirits are uplifted by the sound of a cock crowing which in its power and glory seems to defy all of nature. The narrator hears the cock crowing on subsequent walks and vows to find out who owns this “noble cock” so that he can buy it for himself. The narrator is in such a good mood that he is even cheerful with the debt collector the bane of his life. He becomes friendly with Merrymusk his wood cutter a poor hardworking man and when he visits him at his rude shack he finds him the proud owner of that “noble cock”. His wife and children are all sickly living behind a curtained partition but the joyous crowing of the rooster seems to be keeping them all alive. This is a wonderful story enhanced by Melville’s descriptions of the natural world: here he makes the landscape seem just like the sea:

“The old grass and the new grass were striving together. In the low wet swales the verdure peeped out in vivid green; beyond on the mountains, lay light patches of snow, strangely relieved against their russet sides; all the humped hills looked like brindled kine in the shivers. The woods were strewn with dry dead boughs, snapped off by the riotous winds of March, while the young trees skirting the woods were just beginning to show the first yellowish tinge of the nascent spray”

Bartleby, The Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street is equally as good. The narrator here is a bond dealer with offices on Wall street, who hires an additional scrivener(copyist) and says “I can see that figure now - pallidly neat, pitiable respectable, incurably forlorn! It was Bartleby” A partitioned space in the narrators office is found for the new copyist, who is content to remain in that space and when asked to read aloud a document replies “I would prefer not to”.. Bartleby becomes increasingly withdrawn and eventually stops working altogether spending his day staring out of a window at a blank wall a few feet away. All requests for him to do anything are met with his only reply “I would prefer not to” The narrator finds himself being drawn into caring about Bartleby, who seems to have withdrawn from life itself. Bartleby is another tragedy, which in tone seems to echo the futility of Merrymusk in Cock-A-Doodle-Doo.

The Fiddler is a short story of just over six pages. Salvation appears here for the narrator in the form of Hautboy. A child prodigy on the fiddle, who has given up all thoughts of fame to live a more simple life of happiness. Helmstone our narrator like many comes under the spell of the childlike Hautboy, and he hopes to find redemption through him from a life dedicated to fame and fortune. A beautiful little story that has a certain magical quality about it.

The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids is more of an essay. Melville describes a lunch in the city of London with a group of men dedicated to a life of good food and wine. Juxtaposed to this is a visit to a paper making factory in New England where women are employed in intolerable working conditions. It is the women’s suffering that provide for the Paradise of Bachelors.

The Lightning Rod Man takes us back to the world of the short story. Our narrator describes a sales pitch made to him by a man selling lightning rods. He is scornful of the salesman’s ability to persuade him to make a purchase and gently makes fun of him, however this becomes increasingly personal and sarcastic on both sides. The lightning rod man is preying on the fear of his punters and Melville likens this to the hold of organised religion. The narrator ends the story with these thoughts:

“But spite of my treatment, and spite of my dissuasive talk of him to my neighbours, the lightning-rod man still dwells in the land, still travels in storm-time, and drives a brave trade with the fears of man.”

The Encantadas or enchanted Isles are a series of ten sketches based on the remote and largely barren Galapagos Islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. They are a mixture of travelogue and travellers tales, that sparkle with fine writing, but which I found the least enjoyable to read.

Benito Cereno is a very different proposition altogether. Melville has taken a story from Captain Amasa Delanos “Narratives of Voyages and Travels, in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres” and bought to life a chapter that describes a mutiny on a slave ship. Melville eschews the original first person narrative to tell this tale in the third person and paints a picture of events that seem only too real, with violence and unlawful acts taking place by men on both sides of this conflict. Cowardice, bravery, foolishness and insight are all mixed together sometimes in the same person to present a portrait where it is hard to judge right from wrong.. An extraordinary story and the longest of the short stories in this collection

I and My Chimney is a pure delight. Melville likens himself to his grand chimney in his family house, which is constantly under threat from his wife and daughters. Amusing and thoughtful by turns; another gem of a short story.

Billy Budd, Sailor (An insider narrative) was written some thirty years after the last short story in this collection. It was left unfinished and finally published in 1924 three decades after Melville’s death. At first glance it appears to be a compelling tale of injustice or rough justice on the high seas, but there is much more to it than that. A powerful story that shows Melville's skill in creating characters whose thoughts and actions will always give the reader pause for thought. What was Melville doing creating the angelic figure of Billy Budd, How culpable was starry Vere in his execution, why was he persecuted by Claggart. Biblical references abound to present the reader with any number of ambiguities as does the character of Billy Budd himself. In spite of these contradictions and ambiguities the story is strangely satisfying. Melville at his finest and that is very fine indeed.

This is a brilliant selection of stories, which will remain on my bookshelf to be read again and again. Well worth spending time with and a five star read. . ( )

Writing Herman Melville, the author of Moby Dick, down on my list of new favorite authors.

Last year I had to read Bartleby the Scrivener but technically didn't -- I skimmed it, poorly. This year I was supposed to read it again, but, again didn't. Unfortuantely, we discussed it more throughly in class this time and I was *completely* lost! So I finally read it. We also had to read The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids, as well as, Benito Cereno, both of which I sincerely enjoyed! I'm so glad I actually own this book!

Adrianne ( )

This is an interesting collection. Bartleby is a wonderful conundrum; "I and My Chimney" is a bizarre but beautiful portrait. Billy Budd is a difficult tale.

Melville makes wonderful observations on the individuality of people, with dry depictions that don't lose their accuracy. ( )

This volume contains "Bartleby, the Scrivener," which is my favorite Melville. I love the way he portrays processes of speculation. Bartleby’s bad behavior is fairly steady, and it sets off a chain of assumptions in the narrator which generally lead him to acquiesce. The assumption that informs all other assumptions for the narrator is that Bartleby shares in his notions of morality. The repetition of this process of speculation and forgiveness made my skin crawl the first time I read this. There are people in my family who allow others to take advantage of their kindness. They always want to think the best of people; this is, I have been taught, honorable on some level, but I struggle with thinking that it is also terribly naïve. Among a number of things, I think this story underscores the notion that moral systems should not be arbitrarily assigned to complete strangers.

Anyway, there are other stories in this collection (obviously). "Benito Cereno" offers a nice critique of heroism in an unheroic world. "Cock-A-Doodle-Doo!" is a marginally entertaining story of a loathsome idiot.

In “Billy Budd, Sailor,” Melville draws some interesting distinctions between the objectivity of the world and the subjectivity of human nature. When the narrator asks a wise professorly man about whether “knowledge of the world assuredly implies the knowledge of human nature," the scholar asserts that worldly knowledge can only provide an incomplete insight into humanity; he explains that “’to know the world and to know human nature [are] two distinct branches of knowledge, which while they may coexist in the same heart, yet either may exist with little or nothing of the other.’” While civilized society is characterized by complex legal, political, and religious organizations, each of its various systems are knowable, for they exist on the surface of human experience. Knowledge of humankind is significantly less accessible, for it requires – among many things – an accepting and sympathetic attitude towards human diversity. It is thus possible for a man to master the systems of his social universe while he simultaneously experiences a profound human disconnect. Melville believes that ignorance of humanity is significantly more dangerous than ignorance of the world “since its lodgment is in the heart and not the brain,” and the menacing John Claggart serves as a pure example of this threat.

Billy Budd is himself dumbly one-dimensional in his innocence. However, if you haven't read them before, this volume is worth the price of admission for "Bartleby" and "Benito Cereno" alone. ( )