Spadework for a Palace

A grumpy librarian! Named herman melvill! Bound in other ways to that other Melville! And who wants to hide books away from people!

Wonderfully misanthropic. But the final two-thirds of this 80-page, single long sentence don’t bear out the promise of its quietly weary start. Big points for the premise though; I can definitely identify with it.

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!