Review of a short story from the March 21, 2017 issue of The New Yorker... Victor Lodato is the author of two novels (one just recently released this past Spring), and three New Yorker short stories. One of those stories was "Jack, July," one of the best short stories I've ever read in The New Yorker , in nearly five years of doing this. But whereas "Jack, July" had a kind of seductive, woozy urgency to it, "Herman Melville, Vol. 1" just kind of plods along for page after page and feels bloated, interminable, and overwrought, just a swirling mass of excessive detail, memories, and needlessly detailed conversations. I don't know what happened to Victor Lodato between the writing of "Jack, July" and now (maybe success?) but I'm much less compelled now than I was when I first read his stuff. "Herman Melville, Vol. 1" is the story of a runaway in her late teens / early 20s whose eccentric, enigmatic, and selfish travelin
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