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Okay, so on principle, I want to encourage books like The Whale: A Love Story. It would have been very easy for Mark Beauregard to write the kind of nonfiction that drives me up a wall, involving a lot of unverifiable internal monologue and speculation, and instead he just went directly to publishing Nathaniel Hawthorne/Herman Melville slash fiction! In theory, I respect this!
In practice, I don't think any narrator in my recent memory has filled me with QUITE so much secondhand embarrassment as Beauregard's obsessively horny Herman Melville?
Hawthorne's features were so fine that they could have belonged to a woman: eyebrows that prettily framed his coffee brown eyes; a hawkish Roman nose; sensuous red lips, the bottom lip a wide devouring flare; and waving chestnut hair that fell in ringlets behind his ears.
Hawthorne was fifteen years Herman's senior, but his face seemed to Herman to defy the laws of earthly decay. So noble did Hawthorne seem that Herman conjectured that some unique mechanism had gradually been transferring his inner beauty touch by touch outward towards his external features with each passing day [...] that his face would become almost ethereal.
Here is an actual daguerrotype of Hawthorne, for context:
I mean he's a perfectly appealing-looking dude but I don't know if 'ethereal' and 'sensuous' are the words I'd use?
[Hawthorne]'s only concessions to the cold were his knee-high black boots and a black scarf that he had tied around his waist, but which now he unwound and wrapped dashingly around his neck - mostly but not completely covering the bare flesh of his exposed chest. He did it so self-consciously that Herman suspected for a moment that he might be flaunting himself: he was even more beautiful and sexual than Herman's wood-chopping fantasy had been.
While reading this, I could not help but think about those tumblr posts that attempt to slut-shame Alexander Hamilton ... let Nathaniel Hawthorne wear a scarf without being subject to the male gaze!
The book covers the period from 1851-52 when Hawthorne and Melville were literary neighbors and also, in occasional scholarly speculation and definitely in this text, literary gaybors. Their relationship largely consists of Melville showing up, wild-eyed and lustful, at Hawthorne's door and Hawthorne repeatedly explaining that it's not that he's not into Melville but also, he is happily married and does not want to cheat on his wife, sorry!
Meanwhile, Melville makes terrible decision after terrible decision, acts like more and more of a dick to his wife and family, and goes deeper and deeper into debt in order to hang onto the thin thread of hope that he might someday work his way into Hawthorne's heart and maybe also his pants. "It'll all be fine once Moby-Dick sells a million copies!" he tells himself, repeatedly. Buddy ..... I and history have bad news for you there .....
Some moments when I literally had to put my hands over my face so I didn't scream out loud at Melville's bad decision-making abilities:
- Melville flips out internally at Hawthorne giving him a book! in front of his WIFE! the tenderness with which he made this gesture seemed absolutely shameless to Herman
- Melville promises his wife that she can buy a house that will be hers, with her money, and then promptly goes and buys a house that she doesn't like because it's walking distance to Hawthorne's place
- Melville attempts to confess his crush to his EXTREMELY STRAIGHT, EXTREMELY STRESSED cousin: "I have the feeling that I have not yet begun to unfold the inner flower of myself, but I believe that I can do so now, with the help of this special person."
- Melville forgets that he is living in the 1850s and invites a random teenager with a crush on him upstairs to his study, and closes the door, with his entire family downstairs and 100% convinced he's having an affair
- Melville GETS CAUGHT SKULKING OUTSIDE HAWTHORNE'S WINDOW IN THE DARK, WHILE HE'S HAVING GUESTS OVER, LIKE A CREEPER
And, I mean, for all I know the events as provided by this text are a thousand percent factual; Herman Melville really does seem like a person who was indeed extra enough to make exactly these consistently bad decisions. But I think possibly he might also have had slightly more of a sense of humor and self-awareness about it? Or maybe not, I don't know, I've never actually read Moby-Dick. Anyway I spent a lot of this book with my hands over my face, but if you are less affected by this than I and have been longing to read novel-length Great American Author published slash fiction then here is for sure your chance!
This review courtesy of![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
obopolsk, who has been trying to hand me her copy of The Whale for YEARS and finally successfully ambushed me last week.
In practice, I don't think any narrator in my recent memory has filled me with QUITE so much secondhand embarrassment as Beauregard's obsessively horny Herman Melville?
Hawthorne's features were so fine that they could have belonged to a woman: eyebrows that prettily framed his coffee brown eyes; a hawkish Roman nose; sensuous red lips, the bottom lip a wide devouring flare; and waving chestnut hair that fell in ringlets behind his ears.
Hawthorne was fifteen years Herman's senior, but his face seemed to Herman to defy the laws of earthly decay. So noble did Hawthorne seem that Herman conjectured that some unique mechanism had gradually been transferring his inner beauty touch by touch outward towards his external features with each passing day [...] that his face would become almost ethereal.
Here is an actual daguerrotype of Hawthorne, for context:
I mean he's a perfectly appealing-looking dude but I don't know if 'ethereal' and 'sensuous' are the words I'd use?
[Hawthorne]'s only concessions to the cold were his knee-high black boots and a black scarf that he had tied around his waist, but which now he unwound and wrapped dashingly around his neck - mostly but not completely covering the bare flesh of his exposed chest. He did it so self-consciously that Herman suspected for a moment that he might be flaunting himself: he was even more beautiful and sexual than Herman's wood-chopping fantasy had been.
While reading this, I could not help but think about those tumblr posts that attempt to slut-shame Alexander Hamilton ... let Nathaniel Hawthorne wear a scarf without being subject to the male gaze!
The book covers the period from 1851-52 when Hawthorne and Melville were literary neighbors and also, in occasional scholarly speculation and definitely in this text, literary gaybors. Their relationship largely consists of Melville showing up, wild-eyed and lustful, at Hawthorne's door and Hawthorne repeatedly explaining that it's not that he's not into Melville but also, he is happily married and does not want to cheat on his wife, sorry!
Meanwhile, Melville makes terrible decision after terrible decision, acts like more and more of a dick to his wife and family, and goes deeper and deeper into debt in order to hang onto the thin thread of hope that he might someday work his way into Hawthorne's heart and maybe also his pants. "It'll all be fine once Moby-Dick sells a million copies!" he tells himself, repeatedly. Buddy ..... I and history have bad news for you there .....
Some moments when I literally had to put my hands over my face so I didn't scream out loud at Melville's bad decision-making abilities:
- Melville flips out internally at Hawthorne giving him a book! in front of his WIFE! the tenderness with which he made this gesture seemed absolutely shameless to Herman
- Melville promises his wife that she can buy a house that will be hers, with her money, and then promptly goes and buys a house that she doesn't like because it's walking distance to Hawthorne's place
- Melville attempts to confess his crush to his EXTREMELY STRAIGHT, EXTREMELY STRESSED cousin: "I have the feeling that I have not yet begun to unfold the inner flower of myself, but I believe that I can do so now, with the help of this special person."
- Melville forgets that he is living in the 1850s and invites a random teenager with a crush on him upstairs to his study, and closes the door, with his entire family downstairs and 100% convinced he's having an affair
- Melville GETS CAUGHT SKULKING OUTSIDE HAWTHORNE'S WINDOW IN THE DARK, WHILE HE'S HAVING GUESTS OVER, LIKE A CREEPER
And, I mean, for all I know the events as provided by this text are a thousand percent factual; Herman Melville really does seem like a person who was indeed extra enough to make exactly these consistently bad decisions. But I think possibly he might also have had slightly more of a sense of humor and self-awareness about it? Or maybe not, I don't know, I've never actually read Moby-Dick. Anyway I spent a lot of this book with my hands over my face, but if you are less affected by this than I and have been longing to read novel-length Great American Author published slash fiction then here is for sure your chance!
This review courtesy of
obopolsk, who has been trying to hand me her copy of The Whale for YEARS and finally successfully ambushed me last week.
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I shall just leave this article here: "Herman Melville's Passionate, Beautiful, Heartbreaking Love Letters to Nathaniel Hawthorne."
(My two cents' impression: Melville was absolutely that extra about his feelings for Hawthorne, but less embarrasment-squick-triggering creeperish about communicating them, which probably limits the scope for wacky litfic hijinks but makes for a better track record as a human being.)
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That is also my sense of Melville. (Moby Dick is pretty f*ing extra.)
I laughed out loud at the quoted description vs. image of Hawthorne. Just mostly because of his 19th century Evening Cloud Hairsaucer.
(Puts books whence this comes on hold) - "the bittersweet beauty of asymmetrical and half-requited loves"? Hi, my whole life.
Man
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This is true.
Just mostly because of his 19th century Evening Cloud Hairsaucer.
It's like he decided to grow his own cocked hat!
(Puts books whence this comes on hold)
Oh, good?
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No, no, I could tell which book you were putting on hold—I just hoped it was a good thing that I was introducing you to more unequal affections. (We were speaking different dialects of elliptical.)
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A lesson there someplace.
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Now that you mention it, the epistolary novel was a gimme for this pairing and I'm not sure why the author didn't go for it.
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AWK. WARD.
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I must be doing reading wrong