"Clips" from Meville's Stories
Read most of Hemingway's stories, especially those connected to Michigan but also some old faves, e.g., "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place." Now am rereading some Melville. Started with "Billy Budd" and am now picking through The Piazza Tales. *** From "Billy Budd": The Pharisee is the Guy Fawkes prowling in the hid chambers underlying the Claggarts. And they can really form no conception of an unreciprocated malice. * Bluntly put, a chaplain is the minister of the Prince of Peace serving in the host of the God of War — Mars. As such, he is as incongruous as a musket would be on the altar at Christmas. Why then is he there? Because he indirectly subserves the purpose attested by the cannon; because too he lends the sanction of the religion of the meek to that which practically is the abrogation of everything but brute Force. *** From "The Piazza": Pausing at the threshold, or rather where threshold once had been, I saw, through the ...