I feel like this book would be better served if there were also other, different books, with different Melville slash pairings so that I could happily have an alternative Melville OTP. I mean, despite having read Moby Dick, I know next to nothing about Melville's personal life, so this very well might be the slash pairing that makes the most historic sense, but I find The Scarlet Letter so odious that my instinctive reaction to Melville/Hawthorne was "oh no, honey, you could do SO MUCH BETTER" despite also not knowing anything about Hawthorne's life. And, also, in general: if one is going to write slash books about Great American (White Male) Writers then I am not sold on Melville/Hawthorne being the most slashable? I mean, for one, F. Scott Fitzgerald exists and for two The Scarlet Letter is the woooooorst, which is an opinion I believe so strongly I would definitely start an ill-informed ship war over why Melville deserves someone better.