Christopher Benfey ... said plenty of scholars get bummed out by talk of Melville's sexuality.
"I’ve been to academic conferences when Melville scholars almost came to blows with one another," Benfey said. "To have our national writer, the writer of the great American novel, be a gay or bisexual man is something that some scholars still find difficult to accept.”
Life-long Melville biographer Hershel Parker is one of them. "The problem, Andrea, for me is, I was raised as a prude,” he confessed to me on the phone from his home in California. “I’ve never told a dirty joke in my life, I’ve never bragged about a sexual conquest, and I find it very hard to think about how Melville talked with other men about sexual matters, and I work at it because we’ve got a certain amount of evidence.”
Melville's homoerotic impulses have been established in the academy, Parker conferred, but whether he acted on those impulses is up for debate. And he says it’s highly unlikely that Hawthorne had reciprocal feelings for Melville. Parker calls Parini’s novel “a fantasy” — and Parini buys that. In his own defense he said, "I hope my novel is a version of what might've happened."
The biographer and the novelist can agree on one more thing: they both hope this new book will stimulate interest in Melville. And that’s Parini’s motivation. "I'm hoping my novel will actually be a huge entertainment for readers, and that it will draw them toward the life of Herman Melville," he said, "and if they read my book, then move on to 'Moby Dick' and 'Billy Budd,' my work will have been accomplished
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