Spadework for a Palace

eBook, 80 pages

English language

Published Aug. 15, 2022 by New Directions.

ISBN:
978-0-8112-2841-1
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5 stars (1 review)

Spadework for a Palace bears the subtitle “Entering the Madness of Others” and offers an epigraph: “Reality is no obstacle.” Indeed. This high-octane obsessive rant vaults over all obstacles, fueled by the idées fixe of a “gray little librarian” with fallen arches whose name―mr herman melvill―is merely one of the coincidences binding him to his lodestar Herman Melville (“I too resided on East 26th Street . . . I, too, had worked for a while at the Customs Office”), which itself is just one aspect of his also being “constantly conscious of his connectedness” to Lebbeus Woods, to the rock that is Manhattan, to the “drunkard Lowry” and his Lunar Caustic, to Bartok. And with this consciousness of connection he is not only gaining true knowledge of Melville, but also tracing the paths to “a Serene Paradise of Knowledge.” Driven to save that Palace (a higher library he also serves), …

2 editions

A Glorious Spew

5 stars

Another great little book from the New Directions Storybook imprint. Written in one long sentence, Spadework for a Palace is a sprawling monograph written by one herman melvill, a self-described gray little librarian with several overwhelming obsessions and an incredible plan. Obsessed with triangulating the lives of Herman Melville (the "real" one), Malcolm Lowry and the architect and writer Lebbeus Woods our narrator expounds upon New York and the nature of the universe, reaching an incredible crescendo right before crashing back down to reality. There's a late-stage cameo by one of lower Manhattan's most unbelievable buildings!