/lit/ - Literature

It’s a piece of endearing, comedic exposition. What more do you want?

>>10237251
Melville was a closet homo and it's very clear in his work. I wrote an essay on that. There are many other moments of implicit homosexual behavior in his work.

>>10237295
I'm just a little disappointed because thematic cohesion makes my wee wee hard and I was hoping Moby Dick would fully deliver. Not a wasted word, and all that.

>>10237251
>I thought Moby Dick was renowned for its thematic cohesion, after all.

Is everything that ever happens to you "thematically cohesive"? Is it surely not more naturalistic to have things happen that aren't necessarily related to an over-arching plot or theme?

I haven't read the book in years but part of the point of the beginning, aside from the comedic element mentioned above, is to contrast the sense of nervousness and agitation with Ishmael sharing a bed with a man for one night, with the degree of closenessness (??) and brotherhood required while at sea for months in a cramped ship. The experience of him sharing the bed is a first step in his preparation for his life to come, and an important step in shedding his land-based perspective.

>>10237251
It's not gay, it's just a level of male intimacy that society frowns on but comes naturally to two instant bros like Queequeg and Ishmael.

>>10237318
Okay, this is more what I'm looking for. I like the idea that it connects to brotherhood
>Is your life thematically cohesive
I don't read books to see a mirror image of life though.

>>10237371

They literally fuck in the book though

anyone who automatically thinks that section of the book is gay outs themselves as maldjusted manchild who has never actually had any close male friends or sense of any real camaraderie or brotherhood with other males. If you've ever been in the military youd know sharing a bed with another man is just about the least gay thing one could do.

>>10237318
Wasn't Ishmael already an experienced sailor by the beginning of the book, though?

>>10237251
What's gay about sharing a bed with your bro when it's cold?

>>10237471
>tfw you're the only one of your friends who ever even played a sport
>tfw they call every shower scene gay
>tfw they try to convince you that all critical theorists believe sports to be mostly an outlet for homoerotic impulses

>>10237371
>>10237471
>>10237481
>tfw you will NEVER know this level of brotherhood

>>10237251
no dummy Moby Dick isn't "renowned for its cohesion" half the book is an encyclopedia. Herman wrote that part because he was gay and it made him horny.

>>10237298
>companionship with another man is implicit homosexuality
Kys

>>10237472
He is, but that doesn't mean that he's immediately back in that frame of mind upon deciding to go to sea again. It takes some time, and his experience with Queeqeg is something that happens to further that process.

>>10237444
>I don't read books to see a mirror image of life though.

Of course, but Moby Dick does try to present itself with a strong degree of realism. I mean it starts with a lengthy history and description of whales and whaling, after all.

>>10237502
I thought the encyclopedia parts were supposed to be about how Man amassed all this knowledge but still comes up short

>>10237472
yes he was

>>10237298
I've read several of his other works and never got that feel, but who knows. Yet I feel hacks who aren't creative enough to examine anything else but an authors sexuality aren't to be taken serious, as it is such an easy thing to analyze and argue over without gaining any new insight that previous biographers haven't already made.

>>10237502
You've never read Sartor Resartus.

>>10237623
This guy gets it.

>>10237562
It's well documented how bad he wanted Nathaniel Hawthorne's Raw Thorne.

>>10238098
i mean who didn't? that's not gay if he's a good lookin' dude.

>>10237251
Honestly I didn’t buy into the homo Melville meme at first but if you look at his friendship with Hawthorne and how he worshipped him it does look a little suspicious. Maybe he was bisexual.

>>10237298
>tfw Moby Dick is literally a big white Dick

>>10237318
next time I want to pressure my best bud into giving me a brojob i'll remember to kek disdainfully at his petty "land-based perspective"

>>10237471
This argument holds 0mL of water when you see the stats for homosexuality among in-service males vs. civilian population

>>10237251
>Oh! ye whose dead lie buried beneath the green grass; who standing among flowers can say - here, here lies my beloved; ye know not the desolation that broods in bosoms like these. What bitter blanks in those black-bordered marbles which cover no ashes! What despair in those immovable inscriptions! What deadly voids and unbidden infidelities in the lines that seem to gnaw upon all Faith, and refuse resurrections to the beings who have placelessly perished without a grave. As well might those tablets stand in the cave of Elephanta as here.

Was he better than Shakespeare? Literally turn to any random chapter and you will find god-tier prose.

>wow look at that sailor
>his black tight body
>he is so strong, so mysterious
>I can't handle all the muscle
>wet shirtless sailors everywhere
>did I tell you about all these muscular sailors and how strong and flexible their bodies are?
>Queeqeg please notice me

>>10238197
damn

>>10238166
WHITEZILLA - the book

It’s not just that, I mean there are gay elements through the whole book, like when all the sailors hold hands while squeezing the whale gristle, that’s gay as fuck.
As for the purpose or how that ties into the rest of the book I’m not sure. My first instinct is that such a book couldn’t take place with women - women hate revenge and violence against animals. But I’m not sure.

>>10237251
Ishmael and Queeqeg have a brotherly bond throughout the book - a bond that can never be beaten. How did you not pick that up?

>>10237468
No

>>10238539
In killing the whale, one must penetrate the thick, oily (i.e. sexually lubricated) skin of the animal with a harpoon (i.e. the phallus) in a primal struggle of sexual simulacra wherein an intense emotional bond is formed between both the self and the crewmen and the self and the animal. The death of the animal - the release of life and the release of the self from struggle - serves as a potent petit mort of the whaling experience. Very sexual and homoerotic subject matter, thematically.
For a woman, lacking a physical phallus, this scene loses a lot of its charged depth. It wouldn't work with female characters.

>>10238166
With lots of sperm.

>>10237251
How do I go full autism with supplementary reading for this book?

I’ve read it twice and loved it, then read Call Me Ishmael by Charles Olsen. Considering reading Hershel Oarker’s Melville biography which I have heard good things about. I think I want to focus on Pre-20th century American lit for my graduate studies, maybe with a Hawthorne/Melville focus.

Help me out bros, I want to be the rainman of Moby-Dick someday.

>>10238629
In the Heart of the Sea is a non-fiction book about the whale attack on the Essex, which inspired Melville.
I can't vouch for it, but my dad liked it. I think it one some book award for non-fiction when it came out, too.