Look at Herman Melville

Gay, gay, gay,

Yeah. Such a genius and such a sad life.

The closet kills

He said soft withdrawal 🤣

He put dick at the pinnacle of American literature.

High forehead, straight brows.

But did he have a weak jaw?

We should be looking at photos rather than flattering drawings

Salty sea cock.

Considering the average age on DL, it needs to be asked: Who's had him?

I mean he did write about his great white whale.

The really handsome one was Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Ernest Hemingway... 's dad!

Show us his moby dick.

His editors forced him to change his titles from the more lurid "Moby's Dick" and "Billy's Butt".

Melvil Dewey was quite striking when young, but was a prick nonetheless.

I remember having to read Moby Dick in college, ugh it was boring. I didn't realize (cause history is "straightened" in most colleges in the US) that he and Nathaniel Hawthorne had a torrid affair apparently?

[quote] …he and Nathaniel Hawthorne had a torrid affair…

Is that documented? Where they living at the same time? In the same city?

Was Melville gay? Or is that just a rumor?

Was Melville a Proto-Uranian?

R17 There is no silver bullet saying yes they 100% were an item, but in most literary circles it's pretty much accepted that they were in love with each other and that their relationship was likely physical. Moby Dick (which was originally dedicated to Hawthorne but the dedication was deleted when the book was rediscovered by academics after his death) contains a lot of homosexual subversion in it that some have taken to be a metaphor for Melville's passion for Hawthrone.

There are some "love" letters that remain in existence ( I say love because it's very much read between the lines), but according to Melville's son Julian, Melville destroyed all his correspondence with Hawthorne after Hawthrone died . In all likelihood, Melville was bisexual as he had several affairs with women during his marriage.

[quote]There is no silver bullet saying yes they 100% were an item, but in most literary circles it's pretty much accepted that they were in love with each other and that their relationship was likely physical.

I don't know what literary circles you run in but that's just gossip without much basis. My impression is that Melville had something of a crush on Hawthorne and Hawthorne knew it and felt awkward about it but thought of Melville as a friend and did not encourage anything else.

R21 As R19 pointed out, there is no 100% proof and besides gay identity as we know it today didn't exist in the 19th century. Clearly, Melville had "erotic feelings" for Hawthrone, but we don't really know Hawthrone's side as all his correspondence with Melville was "lost" believed to have been destroyed either by Melville himself or his son. There is a book called Melville in Love that goes into this a bit more, but for sure the two shared a "passionate friendship" that faded after a couple years, but whether it was sexual or not is still open to debate.

That Melville had homosexual desires is clear to me from both Billy Budd and Moby Dick.

I can't think of anything in Hawthorne's work that strikes me as clearly homoerotic.

Did he ever find a man to quee his queg?

IFHH

As crazy as a box of weasels.

Hasn’t descendant DJ Moby always talked about the similarities of his being gay with his ancestor? Doesn’t he have inside information.

SO much hotter than that queenie bitch Walt Whitman.

Excuse me, he was NOT gay. The only dick he cared about was Moby!

Allegedly Moby was Hawthorne's nickname for his penis.

There is a great novel called The Whale: A Love Story by Mark Beauregard that is a fictionalized version of Hawthrone and Melville's alleged affair that was based on some of their surviving correspondence.