The Piazza Tales by Herman Melville

This book only convinced me more of Herman Melville's genius. Aside from "Benito Cereno" and "Bartleby the Scrivener," these tales were new for me, but even the first two had new things to unfold (it's funny how crafting a reading of a text can put blinders on you to what else is going on in the text). Although the subjects and styles of the stories are all different, this time I was intrigued by the various manifestations of power and the way that power fosters both assumptions and blindness to situations. The stories also seemed to argue for an interconnectedness (if only by their juxtaposition of things otherwise quite far apart.