A Rationale

This blog is a way of cleaning house, putting out public lectures and fugitive writings, most of them previously unpublished. Early in 2011 my THE POWELL PAPERS is in press.MELVILLE BIOGRAPHY: AN INSIDE NARRATIVE was "finished" when I abandoned it in May 2010, letting it marinate while I worked on the first of three print volumes of THE NEW MELVILLE LOG (with the help of Robert Sandberg in layout and coding). The surviving members of the Northwestern-Newberry THE WRITINGS OF HERMAN MELVILLE team and some newer recruits are at work on the last of the 15 volumes, "BILLY BUDD, SAILOR AND OTHER UNCOMPLETED WRITINGS," on which I am General Editor.  After that, I am going to write ORNERY PEOPLE, stories about my American ancestors whom I always thought had left no written record at all. If I didn't have the blog I might be tempted to try to work some of these pieces into books at a time when anyone who has a contract and a solvent press is not just deserving but very lucky.