I’ve been thinking about Herman Melville, and two of his novels: Moby-Dick (1851), and Benito Cereno (1855).
Melville is most well-known for Moby-Dick. Love it or hate it, it’s considered one of the greatest novels in English literature.
I really enjoyed Moby-Dick. I read it when I was traveling in Asia in 2013-2014.
But I vastly preferred Benito Cereno.
Benito Cereno isn’t as well known, but I love that novel.
I still remember reading it, for my senior seminar at St. John’s College. I read almost all of it in one sitting, rapt with attention, curled up in an armchair in the Greenfield Library.
Whereas Moby-Dick is infamous for its encyclopedia-like quality, filled with asides on whaling facts, Benito Cereno is slim.
Moby-Dick weighs in at approximately 200,000 words; Benito Cereno is just over 30,000, a mere novella.
It’s an incredible tale—one that respects the reader’s time and attention, telling the story it came to tell—no more, no less.
One of my heretical opinions is that Moby-Dick would have been a better book if an editor had axed and trimmed the tome to the size of Benito Cereno.
Sure, it would have lost some of its charm.
But the story would have improved dramatically. It would have been tighter, clearer.
Melville might have liked it less. But the reader would have enjoyed it more.
I’m currently writing the first draft of a novel. This will probably be my first full-length novel.
I can tell my current draft has heart, and yet there is so much fat and superfluous junk in there.
It’s not time to edit, though.
It’s time to write. To generate lots and lots of pages and scenes, to explore the world and characters I’ve created, to discover where they take me.
When I know what the story is, what it’s about, where it’s going—then I can edit.
I can chop and cut and revise.
I can kill my darlings.
I can pare and trim it down to its essence.
Sometimes U have to write Moby-Dick in order to be able to write Benito Cereno.