Late celebration of Melville’s 200

I’ve just realised that I didn’t write a word on this blog when it was Herman Melville’s 200th birthday in August this year. Shocking, I know. 
But I shall not write about Moby Dick. It is no wonder that Moby Dick overshadows everything else—it is a phenomenal book, it is a book borne out of genius and madness, and there’s nothing else like it. But I do wish that people know more about Melville’s other works. 
I’m starting to think that maybe the best form for Melville was the novella or short story, not the novel. Well, depends on what “best” means, you say. Or even, what “good” means. But then Moby Dick isn’t even a novel. Is White-Jacket? The Confidence-Man definitely isn’t. 
After Typee and Omoo, Melville changed—he got inspired and found his own style, and made his 1st attempt of a Melvillesque book with Mardi, which was a failure, a crazy, confusing mess of a book. Then he wrote 2 books for money, Redburn and White-Jacket, before embarking on Moby Dick. If Redburn was more about the story, the adventures and development of the main character, and White-Jacket leant more toward journalistic and expository writing, examining life, rules, and hierarchy on a Navy ship, Moby Dick was where Melville found the perfect balance between the story and the expository, and reached the peak of his genius. After Moby Dick, Melville experimented again with the form and explored the possibilities of “the novel”, in Pierre: or the Ambiguities, Israel Potter, and The Confidence-Man, but failed and failed, and never again achieved the greatness of Moby Dick. Melville was called crazy. 
Don’t take that too seriously, by the way, I’m basing most of it on hearsay. Out of those big baggy books, the ones I’ve read so far are White-Jacket and The Confidence-Man.    
Anyway, after Moby Dick, Melville’s best works are his novellas and short stories—let’s call them all short stories for convenience. Some of them are perfection, and the best are the 3Bs, and “The Encantadas”. 
The 3Bs are what to go for if you want “pure fiction”: “Benito Cereno”, “Billy Budd”, and “Bartleby”.  
“Billy Budd, Sailor” comprises of 2 parts. The 1st part is an examination of envy. The 2nd part is an examination of the law, specifically the court-martial. It is a rich work, and readers of “Billy Budd” fall into 2 camps surrounding the character of Vere—is he a good man trapped by a bad law, or is he a tyrant, acting as witness, prosecutor, judge, and executioner? 
“Benito Cereno” is also a complex work, and readers fall into 2 camps—is it a portrait of human depravity, or a condemnation of slavery? In both “Billy Budd” and “Benito Cereno”, Melville touches on the theme of innocence and the inability to recognise evil, but in the latter, he goes further, and tells the story from the perspective of a character who misunderstands and misinterprets everything he sees.   
“Billy Budd” and “Benito Cereno” are perfect, they are well-written, tightly structured, and full of meaning.    
The 3rd B is “Bartleby, the Scriver”. I want to give higher praise to “Benito Cereno” and “Billy Budd” because they’re more neglected whereas “Bartleby” is Melville’s most widely taught and read work, but it is for a reason—it is Melville’s finest short story. Bartleby has escaped Melville’s story and become a concept in popular culture, as a worker who refuses to work and responds to everything with “I would prefer not to”. “Bartleby” has layers and layers of meaning, it can be approached from different angles and interpreted in multiple ways—Marxist/ social, philosophical, psychological, autobiographical, etc. Like Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis”, “Bartleby” is rich and elusive, and cannot be pinned down—no single interpretation can be seen as definitive. Rereading gives more clues and leads to more questions, instead of providing with an answer. 
In that sense, “Bartleby” is like Moby Dick. Perhaps the only meaning is that there is no meaning. 
Readers who don’t like the bagginess of Moby Dick*, or love Moby Dick but don’t like the confusion and madness of Melville’s long works should read his short stories, especially the 3Bs. 
What about “The Encantadas” then, you say. I mentioned it as one of Melville’s best works after Moby Dick. “The Encantadas, or Enchanted Isles” is made up of 10 sketches about the Galapagos Islands, and is compared to Melville’s early travel writings, but I think in a few ways, it’s the closest thing to Moby Dick, in the short form. The blend of fact and fiction, the vividness of detail and richness of language, the hyperbole and mock-heroic prose, the rich symbolism, the way Melville turns the most ordinary and mundane things in nature into something philosophical, that you find in Moby Dick can all be found in “The Encantadas”—just replace whales with tortoises. Like Moby Dick, it has genius fused with madness. 
I haven’t done these works any justice. I’m often in awe when it comes to Melville**. 
Happy Melville bicentennial! 


*: I refuse to say digressions. Digressions from what? The story? Moby Dick is not about the story. 
**: Here are my past writings about these works: 
“Benito Cereno”: 
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2016/06/write-about-benito-cereno-without.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2016/06/benito-cereno.html 
“Billy Budd”: 
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2016/06/billy-budds-character.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2016/06/the-2-halves-of-billy-budd-sailor.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2016/06/vere-tyrant.html 
“Bartleby”: 
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2016/06/revisiting-bartleby-questions-and-more.html
“The Encantadas”: 
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2016/05/tortoises-in-encantadas.html