The New York Times's
David Belcher writes
here on the occasion of the centenary of the discovery of
Herman Melville's
Billy Budd. Excerpt:
Is “Billy Budd” the ultimate modern gay antihero who almost didn’t speak his name?
This year marks the centennial of the random discovery of Herman Melville’s novella by a scholar who was researching a biography of the author, and for a century “Billy Budd” has been analyzed and theorized as the ultimate battle of innocence, envy, voyeurism and latent homosexuality. Or is it just a tragic tale of a ship full of lonely and smelly men who secretly lust after the doomed and unobtainable pretty boy?
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