Billy Budd Herman Melville

I was supposed to read this in college, but didn’t. Don’t know why, since I loved MOBY DICK, and this has to be Melville’s next-most-famous work. Didn’t carry me along the way that MOBY DICK did; I don’t know how many of his works have that narrative style, which is completely original and the primary reason that it’s called—rightfully—the greatest American novel. Melville’s prose is dense but rich, an integral element in this meditation on morality and justice on the high seas: a naïve young sailor strikes and kills an officer who wrongly accuses him of conspiring to mutiny, and is sentenced to hang by a morally conflicted captain. Melville’s other short stories, “Bartleby” and “Benito Cereno”, didn’t do much for me either: more than anything, this made me want to pick up MOBY DICK again.