Publisher Description
Written in seclusion following the intense negative public reaction to the publication of his novel Pierre, The Piazza Tales is Herman Melville’s accessible and entertaining collection of short stories concerning love, labor, and loss. The collection includes the author’s three most important achievements in the genre of short fiction, Bartleby, the Scrivener, Benito Cereno, and The Encantadas, his sketches of the Galapagos Islands.
Melville had originally intended to entitle the volume Benito Cereno and Other Sketches but settled on the definitive title after he had written the introductory story, which concerns the coincidental meeting of mutual long-distance admirers separated by a valley in the mountains.
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“Michael Lackey…delivers ‘Bartleby, the Scrivener’…a story about two men who are emotionally dead, in different ways…[and his narration] throbs with life despite the main characters.”
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About Herman Melville
Herman Melville (1819–1891) was born in New York City. Family hardships forced him to leave school for various occupations, including shipping as a cabin boy to Liverpool in 1839—a voyage that sparked his love for the sea. A shrewd social critic and philosopher in his fiction, he is considered an outstanding writer of the sea and a great stylist who mastered both realistic narrative and a rich, rhythmical prose. He is best known for his novel Moby-Dick and the posthumously published novella Billy Budd.
About the Narrators
Mark Owen is a former member of the US Naval Special Warfare Development Group, commonly known as SEAL Team Six. In his many years as a Navy SEAL, he participated in hundreds of missions around the globe, including the rescue of Captain Richard Phillips in the Indian Ocean in 2009. He was a team leader on Operation Neptune Spear in Abbottabad, Pakistan, on May 1, 2011, which resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden. Owen was one of the first men through the door on the third floor of the terrorist mastermind’s hideout, where he witnessed bin Laden’s death. Mark Owen’s name and the names of the other SEALs mentioned in No Easy Day have been changed for their security.
Pete Cross is an Earphones Award–winning narrator. He holds a BA in theater from the University of Toledo and an MFA in acting from the California Institute of the Arts. His experience on stage includes Carnegie Hall, and he has also acted in film. He has served on the faculty at Cal Arts and with Aquila Morong Studio in Hollywood. He has coached for film and theatrical productions and continues to work with private clients all over the world.
Michael Lackey has more than thirty-five years of professional theater and music experience. He is a stage veteran of more than forty productions and has performed with four companies of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera, doing more than three thousand performances and playing the title role more than two hundred times. He can also be heard on national television as an announcer for skating specials on NBC and USA, as well as in several commercials.