{"id":14475,"date":"2023-03-07T17:40:00","date_gmt":"2023-03-07T22:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/hameblog\/2023\/03\/07\/the-whale-original-version\/"},"modified":"2025-09-12T07:50:57","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T10:50:57","slug":"the-whale-original-version","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/2023\/03\/07\/the-whale-original-version\/","title":{"rendered":"The Whale, Original Version"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Some random line of thinking led me to <em>Moby-Dick<\/em> a few weeks ago, and I figured, &#8220;Okay, I&#8217;ll give this a try&#8221; &#8212; fully expecting it might be one of those impenetrable &#8216;classics&#8217; I decide to quit. (Life is short: If something entirely optional, like a book, is beyond me or turns out to not be my thing, I now allow myself to leave it unfinished.)<\/p>\n<p>This book is great!<\/p>\n<p>The chapters are <em>short<\/em>, Dickens-style, making me suspect they were serialized. They&#8217;re the perfect length for reading before bed.<\/p>\n<p>And the writing is so <em>evocative<\/em>, quickly sketching out a very specific, weird, and compelling time and place.<\/p>\n<p>Most surprising, it&#8217;s <em>totally gay<\/em>. One makes allowances for meanings having changed over time, not projecting a postmodern perspective on a different era, blah blah blah. But&#8230; no, this is really gay.<\/p>\n<p>Not having studied this book or researched it before this reading, I&#8217;m wondering why I&#8217;ve never heard this perspective before.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m still just at the beginning, but I was inspired to make this drawing of the two main characters we&#8217;ve spent the most time with (much of which they&#8217;ve spent in bed with each other):<\/p>\n<figure class=\"post__image align-center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-content\/uploads\/posts\/1852\/IshQuee.jpg.webp\" alt=\"Cartoon: Ishmael and Queequeg\" width=\"502\" height=\"505\"><\/figure>\n<p>Queequeg is unquestionably a conglomeration of misinformed racial stereotypes, but he&#8217;s treated with some sensitivity and admiration, so I like him and am glad he exists in my imagination. I can fully appreciate that I might feel otherwise if I were Black.<\/p>\n<p>Again, not having read the book before, I worry for his fate; I have the feeling that things are going to go badly for all involved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Some random line of thinking led me to Moby-Dick a few weeks ago, and I figured, &#8220;Okay, I&#8217;ll give this a try&#8221; &#8212; fully expecting it might be one of those impenetrable &#8216;classics&#8217; I decide to quit. (Life is short: If something entirely optional, like a book, is beyond me or turns out to not [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14475\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}