You all are lucky to not have me as a friend on facebook honestly. For about a week and a half my statuses were all me raging about how I had to read the book Bill Budd, Sailor: An Insider’s Narrative by Herman Melville. It was extremely wordy and incomprehensible for the first half of the book. He even digressed I don’t know how many times and even state that he just didn’t care because he was going to do it anyways.
However, something interesting happened: the second half of the book. It was far less wordy, much more beautiful in phrasing, and made perfect sense. There was constant action and not a single digress, there was a climax reaching of a potential mutiny even. I wanted to keep reading, I wanted to see what was to happen to poor Billy Budd. In the end I was still disappointed. No mutiny happens, not even a single outbreak. Instead the sailors return to their work without a single argument.
Can you say this was a bad book? Quiet possibly yes. Why was it such a bad book is the real question. I learned the book was never actually finished and editors had put their grubby hands on it after Melville passed to try and recreate a masterpiece from nothing. Perhaps if Melville had finished his book I would have enjoyed it much better. As it stands I refuse to touch this book after this Literary Study class is over and will ignore that I ever read it again.
