Trigger warnings: examination of metaphor comparing the whale to the male member. Frank discussion of spermaceti, cetaceous and otherwise.
Have you ever read Moby-Dick; or, The Whale? That's one title, not two. Or is it two titles; as the novel was originally published in three parts as The Whale? To avoid confusion, let's just use "Moby-Dick" (and I don't want to have to keep italicizing it, so just Moby-Dick, capisce?). I've read it. One and a half times. It was first assigned to me in high school, tenth-grade, I think. I didn’t have to read it all though. My English teacher gave us a list of chapters we could skip. They were all the chapters (and there were a lot of them) that dealt with the logistics and hard information about the whaling industry. Apparently, he felt they were extraneous and had no bearing on the plot; a plot which can be summed up in a sentence or two: (Spoilers ahead, matey):
A guy named Ishmael gets a job on a whaling ship, the Pequod and the gang head out to sea. The captain of the ship, Mr. Ahab, has a peg-leg and he wants revenge on the “great white whale” that had it for an appetizer. One day, they see the white whale, “Moby-Dick”; and Ahab launches the entire crew to make filet ‘o fish out of him. Moby is having none of it; and destroys the ship and kills most of the crew. Ishmael floats away in a coffin with his new boyfriend, a noble savage named Queequeg. The end.
I may be off on a few points (that boyfriend thing may not have happened); but that’s basically it. Unfortunately, the author, Herman Melville takes (depending on the version) around 700ish pages to tell this simple story. But is it unfortunate? Moby-Dick is often found on lists of books (often in the top five) that people say they’ve read; but haven’t. Or started to read but couldn’t finish. Or the most boring or overrated. I can’t say I disagree. It’s all those things. But it’s also a challenge of the most interesting kind. An intellectual challenge. I doubt many people in the 19th century actually finished it.
Have you ever read Moby-Dick; or, The Whale? That's one title, not two. Or is it two titles; as the novel was originally published in three parts as The Whale? To avoid confusion, let's just use "Moby-Dick" (and I don't want to have to keep italicizing it, so just Moby-Dick, capisce?). I've read it. One and a half times. It was first assigned to me in high school, tenth-grade, I think. I didn’t have to read it all though. My English teacher gave us a list of chapters we could skip. They were all the chapters (and there were a lot of them) that dealt with the logistics and hard information about the whaling industry. Apparently, he felt they were extraneous and had no bearing on the plot; a plot which can be summed up in a sentence or two: (Spoilers ahead, matey):
A guy named Ishmael gets a job on a whaling ship, the Pequod and the gang head out to sea. The captain of the ship, Mr. Ahab, has a peg-leg and he wants revenge on the “great white whale” that had it for an appetizer. One day, they see the white whale, “Moby-Dick”; and Ahab launches the entire crew to make filet ‘o fish out of him. Moby is having none of it; and destroys the ship and kills most of the crew. Ishmael floats away in a coffin with his new boyfriend, a noble savage named Queequeg. The end.
I may be off on a few points (that boyfriend thing may not have happened); but that’s basically it. Unfortunately, the author, Herman Melville takes (depending on the version) around 700ish pages to tell this simple story. But is it unfortunate? Moby-Dick is often found on lists of books (often in the top five) that people say they’ve read; but haven’t. Or started to read but couldn’t finish. Or the most boring or overrated. I can’t say I disagree. It’s all those things. But it’s also a challenge of the most interesting kind. An intellectual challenge. I doubt many people in the 19th century actually finished it.
About twenty years ago or so, The Easton Press, purveyors of deluxe volumes of literary classics, was advertising heavily in magazines. It was pretty much a book-of-the-month-club for high-end editions of books like Moby-Dick. In fact, to lure you in to their subscription service, they waved Moby-Dick under your nose. Sign up and get this gorgeous edition of Moby-Dick. You can cancel at any time; but keep Moby as our gift. You only had to buy one other book. I figured, hey, why not? I wanted to read it again to see if my thirty-something brain had something new to see in it (as opposed to my sixteen-something brain). And I was going to read all of it. Every single word of it!
And I did read every word of it. It took me about a year (I’m a slow reader, even with the shortest of books); but I did it. So, what did I learn? Well, I learned that the chapters that my English teacher had let us off the hook for, actually had a lot of the most interesting material in the book. Most of the deep metaphorical stuff happens in chapters like A Squeeze of the Hand where Melville takes a really deep-dive into whale blubber. Or rather, spermaceti. And it’s a bizarre kind of Victorian erotic fantasia about…well, let’s be honest…ejaculate. Ejaculate, you say? Come now Chris, let’s not be silly. But seriously; when you start looking at Moby-Dick from the viewpoint of Melville having a homoerotic opium dream about whaling; it all starts to make sense. And it all adds up to the inescapable conclusion (at least for me), that Moby-Dick is actually a massive 700-page dirty joke. It's not just that, of course. It's still an amazing kaleidoscope of the scope of the mind of man who was waaaaaaaaaaay ahead of his time.
Allow me to spin my theory further. Melville was “good friends” with this gentleman:
And I did read every word of it. It took me about a year (I’m a slow reader, even with the shortest of books); but I did it. So, what did I learn? Well, I learned that the chapters that my English teacher had let us off the hook for, actually had a lot of the most interesting material in the book. Most of the deep metaphorical stuff happens in chapters like A Squeeze of the Hand where Melville takes a really deep-dive into whale blubber. Or rather, spermaceti. And it’s a bizarre kind of Victorian erotic fantasia about…well, let’s be honest…ejaculate. Ejaculate, you say? Come now Chris, let’s not be silly. But seriously; when you start looking at Moby-Dick from the viewpoint of Melville having a homoerotic opium dream about whaling; it all starts to make sense. And it all adds up to the inescapable conclusion (at least for me), that Moby-Dick is actually a massive 700-page dirty joke. It's not just that, of course. It's still an amazing kaleidoscope of the scope of the mind of man who was waaaaaaaaaaay ahead of his time.
Allow me to spin my theory further. Melville was “good friends” with this gentleman:
In fact, it was Nathaniel Hawthorne who had inspired Melville to write Moby-Dick. Melville had read Hawthorne’s Mosses from an Old Manse and believed the collection of short stories to be a compendium of Hawthorne’s genius. He dedicated Moby-Dick to Hawthorne. Why? Well, I suspect that Melville was madly in love with Hawthorne; and deeply in lust. I think Melville wanted to harpoon Hawthorne with his entire being. I think he was obsessed. Obsessed, you ask? Who else is obsessed? Well, Captain Ahab. He’s literally consumed by his pursuit of the great white whale. What does a great white whale resemble? Well, what would Freud say? I think he’d say: “Za vale ees an extweemly wahge penis.” Did Nathaniel Hawthorne have a trouser whale? The pants of his day were rather revealing...
In other words, Moby-Dick is about sexual addiction. In particular, the preoccupation of some gay males with extremely large members. In the gay parlance: a "size queen." The name of the whale, Moby-Dick was actually based on the name of a real whale named “Mocha Dick” (I’m not making this up). Mocha was an island that the whale was often sighted near. Mocha, of course, conjures up the color of chocolate. So why did Melville make such a point of the whale being white? It raises a whole other set of questions.
Chapter 94: A Squeeze of the Hand, which I’ve previously mentioned, contains the line “Would that I could keep squeezing that sperm forever!” It’s literally a chapter about playing with a load of spunk. The book is loaded (so to speak) with such things. Melville isn’t even really trying to cage it in metaphor. Moby-Dick is literally a gargantuan novel about chasing gargantuan Dick. Chasing that Dick even if it’s gonna end up killing you. It's right there in the title! Melville dedicated the book to Hawthorne. He presented a copy to the silver lit-dilf and it wasn’t long after that, that Hawthorne drew away from their friendship. He must’ve seen some stalker red flags. Did the pair ever cross their quills? We’ll probably never know for sure. But they did spend a lot of weekends together out in the woods, away from the wives, to drink brandy and “smoke cigars.”
I too have a dear friend who is a writer. We both hail from Hawthorne’s neck of the woods. Joe wrote a novel entitled A Map of the Harbor Islands which was published in 2006:
In other words, Moby-Dick is about sexual addiction. In particular, the preoccupation of some gay males with extremely large members. In the gay parlance: a "size queen." The name of the whale, Moby-Dick was actually based on the name of a real whale named “Mocha Dick” (I’m not making this up). Mocha was an island that the whale was often sighted near. Mocha, of course, conjures up the color of chocolate. So why did Melville make such a point of the whale being white? It raises a whole other set of questions.
Chapter 94: A Squeeze of the Hand, which I’ve previously mentioned, contains the line “Would that I could keep squeezing that sperm forever!” It’s literally a chapter about playing with a load of spunk. The book is loaded (so to speak) with such things. Melville isn’t even really trying to cage it in metaphor. Moby-Dick is literally a gargantuan novel about chasing gargantuan Dick. Chasing that Dick even if it’s gonna end up killing you. It's right there in the title! Melville dedicated the book to Hawthorne. He presented a copy to the silver lit-dilf and it wasn’t long after that, that Hawthorne drew away from their friendship. He must’ve seen some stalker red flags. Did the pair ever cross their quills? We’ll probably never know for sure. But they did spend a lot of weekends together out in the woods, away from the wives, to drink brandy and “smoke cigars.”
I too have a dear friend who is a writer. We both hail from Hawthorne’s neck of the woods. Joe wrote a novel entitled A Map of the Harbor Islands which was published in 2006:
It is a fantastic novel. I urge you to procure and read it at once. It was Joe’s first novel. He also has several collections of short stories. His first, This Thing Called Courage contains one of the best short stories I’ve ever read: The Rain. It’s amazing. It should be a movie.
Like my novel, 83 in the Shade, A Map of the Harbor Islands is about two young men, both gay, who are best friends. Both books are set in the Boston area. That’s pretty much where the similarities end. But I’m realizing now just how influenced I was by Joe’s book in writing my book (I self-published my book in 2015). I was also heavily influenced, I’ve discovered in some re-reading, by The Catcher in the Rye (which I was conscious of); and A Separate Peace, even more so (which I was not conscious of). Joe’s book had really great chapter titles, which inspired me. I think chapter titles in a novel are important. I don’t know why; but they somehow infuse things with more, oh, I don’t know…immediacy? Significance? Portent? Comedy?
Joe and I both have our own mutual obsessions. Things we share through “in-jokes” that have gone on over the years and spiraled into “in-tales”. Things like the movie Aliens and The Parent Trap (the original). Yard ornaments. The song “I Love the Nightlife”. Nathaniel Hawthorne. Any combination of the preceding. Yes, we’re kind of obsessed with Hawthorne (I mean, just look at him!). We’re kind of Hawthorne groupies. We have not only mad crushes on his writing; but the man himself. We also enjoy making fun of him and his writing. Satirizing it. Infantilizationing it. Etc. We get a boot out of it. You can’t take everything so seriously. I’m pretty certain that Melville was a joker of the highest order. Old Nathaniel seems like he had a subtle sense of humor. We need to poke fun at things like high American Literature and the men (and women) who wrote it; lest we become snobs.
Like my novel, 83 in the Shade, A Map of the Harbor Islands is about two young men, both gay, who are best friends. Both books are set in the Boston area. That’s pretty much where the similarities end. But I’m realizing now just how influenced I was by Joe’s book in writing my book (I self-published my book in 2015). I was also heavily influenced, I’ve discovered in some re-reading, by The Catcher in the Rye (which I was conscious of); and A Separate Peace, even more so (which I was not conscious of). Joe’s book had really great chapter titles, which inspired me. I think chapter titles in a novel are important. I don’t know why; but they somehow infuse things with more, oh, I don’t know…immediacy? Significance? Portent? Comedy?
Joe and I both have our own mutual obsessions. Things we share through “in-jokes” that have gone on over the years and spiraled into “in-tales”. Things like the movie Aliens and The Parent Trap (the original). Yard ornaments. The song “I Love the Nightlife”. Nathaniel Hawthorne. Any combination of the preceding. Yes, we’re kind of obsessed with Hawthorne (I mean, just look at him!). We’re kind of Hawthorne groupies. We have not only mad crushes on his writing; but the man himself. We also enjoy making fun of him and his writing. Satirizing it. Infantilizationing it. Etc. We get a boot out of it. You can’t take everything so seriously. I’m pretty certain that Melville was a joker of the highest order. Old Nathaniel seems like he had a subtle sense of humor. We need to poke fun at things like high American Literature and the men (and women) who wrote it; lest we become snobs.
One of my favorite novels is The Scarlet Letter. Yeah, right, I hear you saying. But it is! Sure, Hawthorne uses ten more words than is probably necessary to construct a sentence; but then, he was being paid by the word. Once you get into the flow of his idiosyncratic—by way of the 19th century—style; he actually becomes a pretty fast read. In The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne never explicitly names what the scarlet “A” stands for. We assume it’s “adultery.” But what if it was something more banal. Like, “Antagonistic”? Or, “Apathetic”? Or maybe just that Hester Prynne was an asshole. What if her Puritan judges pointed their collective finger at poor Hester as she stood on the scaffold and said (a la John Waters) “Hester Prynne, you stand accused of…(in a heavy Baltimore accent): ASSHOLEISM!”
One of Joe’s favorite books is Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven Gables. The two leads of the story are the put-upon Pynchon siblings: elderly Hepzibah and Clifford. At one point in the story, Joe tells me (the would-be climax, no less); Clifford and Hepzibah take flight from the house and board a train. They are let off in the middle of nowhere. Then the book returns to a sub-plot. When next we see the brother and sister, no explanation of what happened to them when they got off the train is forthcoming. They simply reappear and then the book wraps things up. One day, during one of our Hawthorne-over-the-phone coffee klatch/book club meetings (we’re currently reading Legends of the Province House, which, if you ask me, sounds like the title of a gay porno) Joe suggested that we write the missing pieces of the story. I gave him a hearty Yes! And this is what I came up with. I think I did a pretty good job of aping Mr. Hawthorne. And it was surprisingly easy. Having been recently “aped” myself; I’m sure now that it is. Anyways…Joe, this one is for you.
Chapter ?:
The Dark Nocturne of Two Gloomy Night Owls
Hepzibah continued to gaze at the firmament, but could not see past the gathering iron hued clouds that seemed to be growing rather than regressing; an apt atmospheric representation of our own erstwhile spinsters’ clouded judgment. Had the Almighty Father deserted his two children, Hepzibah wondered to herself? Had the brother and sister’s failure to pay the proper respect to their cousin, the Judge (undoubtedly now laughing from the silence of his makeshift sepulcher) resulted in this mocking indifference from His domain; a domain that though not Earthbound, was indeed a courtroom of sorts? Was the greatest Judge of all withholding his sentence as he weighed his decision? Giving grave consideration to the punishment or reward he would deliver to two naïve fugitives? Was God, Hepzibah wondered, mulling over two of his children’s fates; basing the outcome on the rubric that ignorance was no excuse for guilt?
She glanced at Clifford who had sunk to the sole wooden bench on the platform and whose head was now hung and his gaze, if his eyes had been open, directed at a line of ants who were marching across the stone platform. A slight tremor, an echo of his earlier excitation or a simple palsy—Hepzibah did not know—caused her brother to intermittently emit a muffled cry. Or perhaps the chill in the air imparted by the drizzling rain had permeated his top coat and Clifford was suffering from some form of chilblains. Hepzibah watched the ants as they unswervingly approached their goal: a grounded butterfly that was soon overcome by the swarming mass of crimson insects. The color of Hellfire, surely! When she could no longer watch this cruel display of nature’s indifference she once again turned her creased and troubled face to the sky and cried: “Dearest Father…would you leave us to the ants? Would you cruelly pluck our wings and leave us to die here, we, two of your butterflies? Or do we deserve this fate? The freedom of our will revoked?” The skies only answered with a low rumble of thunder and a more pronounced darkening of the stratosphere. The rain grew stronger still and ran down Hepzibah’s face like a mourning veil.
Clifford once more put forth a cry; louder than the preceding and possessed of an alarming rattle that Hepzibah feared could be the start of some dire respiratory malady. Not knowing when, or even if a train would ever return to this God-forsaken locale, the cowering woman realized that the pair would have to seek shelter somewhere and that the lone wooden bench was certainly not up to (or designed for) the task. Her gaze left the sky and settled on the dark farmhouse. She grasped her brother’s knee and drew up her gaunt frame to its full height. Clifford became somewhat more animated by this sudden burst of activity and raised his head to meet his sister’s eyes where he saw there the glint of some newly forming motivation. Yes, the farmhouse! It’s roof still intact and the entire edifice apparently uninhabited—if not abandoned altogether—the structure offered the only option for passing the night which seemed to be approaching hand-in-hand with the darkness of the rain clouds: another pair of siblings cast from the Garden!
Hepzibah seized Clifford’s trembling hand and assisted him as he stood. Yes they would make haste to the farmhouse Hepzibah thought, and perhaps the Heavenly Farther would bless that place and watch over them; but just as she was sighing her weary relief, something caught her eye. A dark figure, quick as a wink, Hepzibah was certain she saw slip through the foreboding farmhouse door! She was overcome with a feeling of dread. For the figure was too tall to have been a fellow citizen of the Earth. Hepzibah was certain she had just seen Old Scratch himself slink into that dire and dreary place: one she was certain she and her brother’s footsteps must avoid!
Chapter ?:
The Dark Nocturne of Two Gloomy Night Owls
Hepzibah continued to gaze at the firmament, but could not see past the gathering iron hued clouds that seemed to be growing rather than regressing; an apt atmospheric representation of our own erstwhile spinsters’ clouded judgment. Had the Almighty Father deserted his two children, Hepzibah wondered to herself? Had the brother and sister’s failure to pay the proper respect to their cousin, the Judge (undoubtedly now laughing from the silence of his makeshift sepulcher) resulted in this mocking indifference from His domain; a domain that though not Earthbound, was indeed a courtroom of sorts? Was the greatest Judge of all withholding his sentence as he weighed his decision? Giving grave consideration to the punishment or reward he would deliver to two naïve fugitives? Was God, Hepzibah wondered, mulling over two of his children’s fates; basing the outcome on the rubric that ignorance was no excuse for guilt?
She glanced at Clifford who had sunk to the sole wooden bench on the platform and whose head was now hung and his gaze, if his eyes had been open, directed at a line of ants who were marching across the stone platform. A slight tremor, an echo of his earlier excitation or a simple palsy—Hepzibah did not know—caused her brother to intermittently emit a muffled cry. Or perhaps the chill in the air imparted by the drizzling rain had permeated his top coat and Clifford was suffering from some form of chilblains. Hepzibah watched the ants as they unswervingly approached their goal: a grounded butterfly that was soon overcome by the swarming mass of crimson insects. The color of Hellfire, surely! When she could no longer watch this cruel display of nature’s indifference she once again turned her creased and troubled face to the sky and cried: “Dearest Father…would you leave us to the ants? Would you cruelly pluck our wings and leave us to die here, we, two of your butterflies? Or do we deserve this fate? The freedom of our will revoked?” The skies only answered with a low rumble of thunder and a more pronounced darkening of the stratosphere. The rain grew stronger still and ran down Hepzibah’s face like a mourning veil.
Clifford once more put forth a cry; louder than the preceding and possessed of an alarming rattle that Hepzibah feared could be the start of some dire respiratory malady. Not knowing when, or even if a train would ever return to this God-forsaken locale, the cowering woman realized that the pair would have to seek shelter somewhere and that the lone wooden bench was certainly not up to (or designed for) the task. Her gaze left the sky and settled on the dark farmhouse. She grasped her brother’s knee and drew up her gaunt frame to its full height. Clifford became somewhat more animated by this sudden burst of activity and raised his head to meet his sister’s eyes where he saw there the glint of some newly forming motivation. Yes, the farmhouse! It’s roof still intact and the entire edifice apparently uninhabited—if not abandoned altogether—the structure offered the only option for passing the night which seemed to be approaching hand-in-hand with the darkness of the rain clouds: another pair of siblings cast from the Garden!
Hepzibah seized Clifford’s trembling hand and assisted him as he stood. Yes they would make haste to the farmhouse Hepzibah thought, and perhaps the Heavenly Farther would bless that place and watch over them; but just as she was sighing her weary relief, something caught her eye. A dark figure, quick as a wink, Hepzibah was certain she saw slip through the foreboding farmhouse door! She was overcome with a feeling of dread. For the figure was too tall to have been a fellow citizen of the Earth. Hepzibah was certain she had just seen Old Scratch himself slink into that dire and dreary place: one she was certain she and her brother’s footsteps must avoid!
