num_pages: 96
description: Spadework for a Palace bears the subtitle Entering the Madness of Others and offers an epigraph: Reality is no obstacle. Indeed. This high-octane obsessive rant vaults over all obstacles fueled by the ides fixe of a gray little librarian with fallen arches whose namemr herman melvillis merely one of the coincidences binding him to his lodestar Herman Melville (I too resided on East 26th StreetI too had worked for a while at the Customs Office) which itself is just one aspect of his also being constantly conscious of his connectedness to Lebbeus Woods to the rock that is Manhattan to the drunkard Cowley and his Lunar Caustic to Bartok. And with this consciousness of connection he is not only gaining true knowledge of Melville but also tracing the paths to a Serene Paradise of Knowledge. Driven to save that palace (a higher library he also serves) he loses his job and his wife leaves him but people must be told the truth: THERE IS NO DUALISM IN EXISTENCE. And his dream in fact will be realized for I am not giving up: I am merely a day-laborer a spade-worker on this dream a herman melvill a librarian from the lending desk currently an inmate at Bellevue but at the same timemay I say this?actually a Keeper of the Palace.
language: English
title: Spadework for a Palace
publisher: New Directions