Status Updates From Billy Budd and Other Stories
Billy Budd and Other Stories by
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Tromber
is starting
Bartleby haunts.
So many ways to spin meaning out of 35 pages.
Is it about the necessity of stopping action before it achieves momentum, patterning becomes enmeshed, then it fits perfectly as a contemporary political explainer.
Is it about isolation and the wasted best efforts of well meaners who can’t pierce the fog of depression, then it’s an elegant capstone on the mental health crisis.
It’s got so much.
— Jan 26, 2026 11:54AM
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So many ways to spin meaning out of 35 pages.
Is it about the necessity of stopping action before it achieves momentum, patterning becomes enmeshed, then it fits perfectly as a contemporary political explainer.
Is it about isolation and the wasted best efforts of well meaners who can’t pierce the fog of depression, then it’s an elegant capstone on the mental health crisis.
It’s got so much.
Tromber
is starting
Melville’s prose is heaven, swooning.
Billy Budd slips from ode to courtroom drama to a third place, the flattening of people and their history via art and subjective carelessness. The further Melville backs away, seeking an objective view, the muddier and more tragic it becomes. Time becomes myth, then is forgotten. The most Kiarostami-coded piece of written fiction I’ve found.
Piazza is clean, melancholy.
— Jan 19, 2026 04:27PM
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Billy Budd slips from ode to courtroom drama to a third place, the flattening of people and their history via art and subjective carelessness. The further Melville backs away, seeking an objective view, the muddier and more tragic it becomes. Time becomes myth, then is forgotten. The most Kiarostami-coded piece of written fiction I’ve found.
Piazza is clean, melancholy.
