William Bartholomew, a maimed veteran of the Civil War, returns to New York City bent on reversing his fortunes. Busch's stunning novel is a gripping portrait of a nation trying to heal from the ravages of war and of one man's attempt to recapture a taste for life through the surging currents of his own emotions, ambitions, and shattered conscience.
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William Bartholomew, a maimed veteran of the Civil War, returns to New York City bent on reversing his fortunes. Busch's stunning novel is a gripping portrait of a nation trying to heal from the ravages of war and of one man's attempt to recapture a taste for life through the surging currents of his own emotions, ambitions, and shattered conscience.
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Winston Homer's celebrated painting of 1862, "A Sharpshooter On Picket Duty" shows a young Union soldier with his legs straddled over a tree branch taking careful aim with his rifle at some undisclosed but surely soon to be dead subject. Homer's poem becomes part of the inspiration for Frederick Busch's (1941 -- 2006) dark novel, "The Night Inspector" which creatively imagines the life of Homer's nameless sharpshooter in the person of William Bartholomew, the first person narrator of the story. In Busch's novel, Bartholomew is a ruthless, highly efficient killer during the Civil War whose targets include Confederate mapmakers, officers, prostitutes serving the Confederate troops, enemy sharpshooters, and many others. At length, in an exchange of fire, Bartholomew is hit and his face is blown away. He barely survives the painful injury but has to was a mask or a veil to cover the loss of most of his face. Bartholomew moves to New York City where he lives in the notorious Five Points by night and works on Broadway as successful speculator by day.
The other main character in "The Night Inspector" is the American novelist and poet, Herman Melville (1819 -- 1891). Melville had made a modest name for himself with his early novels, but his now famous novel "Moby-Dick" and a successor novel "Pierre" had been badly received. By 1867, when this story takes place, Melville was in an apparent long decline. He had stopped writing novels and lived In New York City with a low-level Federal patronage job working in the Customs House.
Busch's novel brings Bartholomew and Melville together over drinks one evening, and the two become friends. Melville refers to his companion as "Shipmate" while the former sharpshooter and present sharp speculator refers to Melville as "M". They discuss Melville's books, philosophy, life at sea, and the Civil War. M. also allows his friend to witness his difficult family life. Bartholomew sells Melville a Colt for his son Malcolm who is about to join the National Guard and who has been drinking a great deal and consorting with prostitutes. Malcolm kills himself with Bartholomew's former weapon. The book shows a great deal about Melville's tormented, perhaps abusive family life with his unfortunate wife, Lizzie, the daughter of a Massachusetts Supreme Court Judge.
The book includes other characters, loners and outcasts like Melville and his Shipmate friend. The characters all become in a scheme Bartholomew engineers at the behest of a Creole prostitute, Jessie, with whom he is involved. They include an African American man, Adam, who lives in the Tenderloin, Sam Mordecai, a friend and member of Bartholomew's unit in the War who aspires to be a writer, and one Lapham Dumont, a businessman who owes Bartholomew money. In addition to this group, the novel includes a Chinese widow, Chun Ho, with two children who aspires to become part of American life and who develops an increasingly close relationship with Bartholomew as the book progresses.
The book moves back and forth in time between Bartholomew's pre-Civil War life, is experiences as an assassin, and his life in New York. He is hard, tough, intelligent, and also lonely and vulnerable -- a character type not unknown to Melville. Bartholomew has a cynical view of the Civil War and its purpose, seeing its goals as purely commercial so that the rich in the capitalist society get richer. Melville, who published a volume of poetry about the Civil War in 1865, "Battle-Pieces" tries to work toward a more broadly-based view of the conflict which recognizes what he sees as the potential of the United States.
The plot of the story centers on the effort to free slave children from their chains in the South at the behest of Jennie. This effort culminates in a long chase down the river reminiscent of the final chase seen in "Moby-Dick". The novel builds slowly and it is less about plot than about the characterization and interaction of M. and the Shipmate and about descriptions of place. The portrayal of Civil War life is raw and unglamorous, and Bartholomew's early life is convincingly and slowly revealed. Some of the best scenes in the novel take place in the underside of New York City where Bartholomew frequently walks the street late at night.In a pivotal scene, Bartholomew has his friend Adam lead the characters in the story, including Melville, on a night tour of the Tenderloin. The descriptions are graphic, with discussions of darkness, filth, roaming hogs, bars, violence, gangs, and houses of ill-repute where unspeakable acts take place. The scenes are not for the faint-of-heart.
The book is written in a baroque, highly descriptive manner similar in some ways to Melville's writing. It takes concentration to read this work, but the effort will be rewarded. The novel tries to make sense of the private, inner lives of both Bartholomew and Melville and work towards a kind of closure. The novel also provokes reflection on the nature of the Civil War and of American life in the extraordinarily difficult years following the end of the war.
I read and reread "The Night Inspector" primarily for its portrayal of Melville and for its understanding and literary portrayal of Melville's writings. Melville is central to the book, but there is much more to it. "The Night Inspector" remains an outstanding style for its density and passion, its vision of American urban life and loneliness, and its questions about and hopes for American promise.
