Themes & Projects

Mysteries, December 2008–January 2009

Maritime literature, January–March 2009

Melville read-through, part I, TypeeWhite-Jacket, December 2009–January 2010

Whirlwind tour of Russian literature, February–May 2010

Epistolary literature, July 2009–June 2010

Melville read-through, part II, Moby-DickBilly Budd, July–September 2010

The Unstructured Clarel Readalong, August–September 2010

The Art of the Novella Challenge, August 2011

The bibliographing Reading Challenge, January 2011–present



Authors

“[A]s the pain of his body increased, his mind seemed to detach itself from the pain, to rise above it, so that he could see himself and Miller more clearly than he had before.”

Will Andrews, the protagonist of Butcher’s Crossing, is a young man who heads West, leaving behind Harvard and everything else familiar to him to do so. He is one of the yarb-doctor’s “sick spirit[s],” sent “to green pastures, like lame horses turned out unshod to the turf to renew their hoofs.” Will the [...]