- Hardcover: 288 pages
- Publisher: Harmony (April 20 1999)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0609602357
- ISBN-13: 978-0609602355
- Product Dimensions: 23.1 x 15 x 2.8 cm
- Shipping Weight: 567 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
In his fiction, at least, Frederick Busch is no stranger to the Victorian era: his 1978 novel The Mutual Friend was a meticulous reconstruction of the Dickensian universe, right down to the last wisp of pea-soup fog. In The Night Inspector, he ventures an equally deep immersion in the past. This time, however, Busch takes us to post-Civil-War Manhattan, where a disfigured veteran named William Bartholomew rages against the Gilded Age--even as he demands remuneration for his own losses.
And what exactly has the narrator lost? As we learn in a sequence of flashbacks, Bartholomew served as a Union sniper, picking off stray Confederate soldiers in an extended bout of psychological warfare. Eventually, though, he received a taste of his own medicine, when a enemy bullet destroyed most of his face. Outfitted with an eerie papier-mâché mask, Bartholomew tends to shock postwar observers into silence:
I imagine I understand their reaction: the bright white mask, its profound deadness, the living eyes beneath--within--the holes, the sketched brows and gashed mouth, airholes embellished, a painting of a nose.... Nevertheless. I won this on your behalf, I am tempted to cry, or pretend to. The specie of the nation, the coin of the realm, our dyspeptic economy, the glister and gauge of American gold: I was hired to wear it!Bartholomew has, it should be obvious, a formidable mastery of rhetoric. It's appropriate, then, that he should hook up with that supreme exponent of the American baroque, Herman Melville--who at this point is a burnt-out customs inspector (and candidate for some Victorian 12-step plan). Together these outcasts embark upon a plan to rescue a group of black children from their Florida servitude. This caper--along with Bartholomew's attachment to a gold-hearted, elaborately tattooed prostitute--allows the novel to veer in the direction of the penny dreadful. Yet Busch's mastery of period detail, and of the very shape of century-old syntax, remains extraordinary on every page. And true to its title, The Night Inspector is a superb investigation of darkness--in both the physical and psychological sense. "I was reckless," the narrator insists, "and born with great vision though not, alas, of the interior, spiritual sort." By the end of the novel, most readers will decide that he's undersold himself. --Bob Brandeis
From Publishers Weekly
Sweeping pathos, historical knowledge, philosophical density and gruesome violence make Busch's 19th work of fiction both profound and a page-turner. Busch's articulate narrator, William Bartholomew, served as a Union sniper in the Civil War until an explosion maimed his face; now it's 1867, and Bartholomew works as an investor in New York City, hiding his scars behind a pasteboard mask. The Civil War may be over, but slavery isn't: slave children are stuck at a Florida school, and Jessie, a Creole prostitute romantically involved with Bartholomew, entangles him in a plot to bring them North to freedom. Bartholomew seeks help from Herman Melville, once a bestselling novelist, now a customs inspector (the "night inspector") in Manhattan's shipyards. Rapacious journalist Samuel Mordecai tags along, hoping for scoops on the demimonde of the docks. After struggles with corrupt bureaucrats and money-hungry merchants, Bartholomew's mission collapses in a grisly climax. Flashbacks intersperse the 1867 plot with Bartholomew's horrific wartime experience. Busch's rich work can be savored simply as historical suspense, or as a detailed picture of Civil War combat and post-Civil War New YorkAfans of The Alienist should like it. So should fans of Billy Budd as Bartholomew and Melville himself (called "M") enliven and deepen the novel with allusion and argument: "Do I seek a stay against oblivion on behalf of my little actors on the vast page? Or do I seek my own eternal life?" Bartholomew is a strange mix of self-hatred, honor, vulnerability and violence, Melville a morbid, self-declared defeatist. People back then used longer, slower sentences, and so do Busch's characters: learning to hear them is part of a reader's reward. Buttressed by Bartholomew's backstory and all the characters' thoughts, The Night Inspector becomes a serious, nuanced meditation on history, redemption, commerce, conscience and literary vocation, as well as a gripping read. Author tour.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Most helpful customer reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
How shall I kill thee, let me count the ways.,
By Wordsworth (Greenwich, CT) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Night Inspector (Paperback)
This lyrically written novel is dark, grim, cruel, bleak and just plain ugly. It's akin to reading poetry about a nuclear waste site or a slaughterhouse -- if that's your cup of tea, you'll love this profusely bloody tome. Busch is adept at describing in graphic detail the many ways that the bullets of an assassin can assail the human head. His protagonist is so hideous a human being that Busch had to disfigure him grotesquely and then involve him in a futile humanitarian gesture for the reader to sympathize with him: neither worked for me -- Billy it utterly and unredemptively odious although he has the olfactory sensibilities of a bloodhound and the night vision of an owl. The female characters struck me as one-dimensional women of easy virtue and the graphic detail of the visit to the Tenderloin was tasteless, pointless and loathesome beyond belief. The only character in the novel worth the read was Melville and the dialogue at the outset seemed as if Busch was too intimidated to be his mouthpiece. Gradually, Melville begins to round out and the suffering of this genius at the lecture by England's greatest hack, Charles Dickens, seemed truly poignant. I loved the beauty of the style of Busch and the vividness of his descriptions but I hope his next work does more than articulate mankind's utterly hopeless condition. It takes little imagination as an author to cast darkness upon life and real talent to shed new light upon it. While I admire the author's creative risk-taking in the plot of this tale, Busch inspects the night with his intellect and then leaves his worthy readers in a state of even greater darkness. Of what real value is this work to those of us seeking a glint of illumination in the great, black, cosmic void?
5.0 out of 5 stars
Insightful, brilliant work,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Night Inspector (Paperback)
It has been over a month since I finished Night Inspector, yet it continues to resonate with me, and I think about the main character, Billy, often. Busch provides great insight into Billy's experiences and life, and his will to continue on, as so many wounded men have. The book jacket describes Billy as limitlessly cruel, but I think that is an unfair description. I would describe Billy as limitlessly complex, facing the cruel circumenstances of war it's aftermath. Many men have lived with horrible physical loss. Some survive, some barely live. The plot was not nearly as important to me as the meditation on character. The Victorian language was fascinating, but the viewpoint inside his mind was completely modern. This is not an easy book, but a very rewarding and well imagined book.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Exquisite...,
By
This review is from: The Night Inspector (Paperback)
Billy Bartholomew served as a sniper in the Union Army during the Civil War. He survived a minnie ball to the face, but after the war, has trouble dealing with his disfigurement and the memories of his work as a sniper. He tries to isolate himself in a slum neighborhood in Manhattan but his humanity gets the best of him. He helps his poor neighbors. He befriends an alcoholic Herman Melville whose writing has been ignored. He plots to rescue a group of children from slave dealers. He even falls in love. Busch's writing is exquisite. His complex characters have a mystery about them which is enticing. He presents a fascinating picture of New York and America embarking on a new era. A great work of fiction!!
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