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 idées fixe of a gray little librarian with fallen arches whose name-mr
herman melvill-is merely one of the coincidences binding him to his lodestar Herman Melville (I
too resided on East 26th Street . . . I 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 Lowry 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 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 time-may I
say this?-actually a Keeper of the Palace.
