(no subject)

It's been a quiet week. I've been even more in my shell than usual lately -- just feeling introverted. I'm sorry for having disappeared entirely from cyberspace in that time. I'm feeling flu-ish today, and the weather outside is balmy -- -15 Celsius downtown, going down to -38 Celsius (no windchill) in some of the suburbs.

I've been reading Moby Dick very slowly, and getting back to work on my writing. I'm revamping it structurally -- many of the parts of the novel still work, but have to be rearranged. Overall, I'm still happy with it, but I just feel it needs to be punched up a little -- more has to happen -- and I still have a problem with the lopsided feel of it (mostly in the present, told through flashbacks, with a let-down climax in the end).

I'm also still trying to negotiate the right balance between supernatural and mundane elements. I don't actually want it to become a fantasy novel, but I think that in some of the supernatural aspects is the key to illustrate my ideas.

( book meme )

Great moments in American literature

"Hurrah for gold cup of sperm, my boys!"
...
"So, so, so, then;--softly, softly! That's it--that's it! long and strong."
...
"There's a hogshead of sperm ahead, Mr. Stubb, and that's what ye came for. (Pull, my boys!) Sperm, sperm's the play! This at least is duty; duty and profit hand in hand!"
--- from "The First Lowering," Chapter 48 of Moby Dick

I bet very few of you knew that Moby Dick was America's first great work of gay porn, did you? ^_^

Actually, given the intense homoeroticism between Ishmael and Queequeg, and given that Melville actually did write a short story entirely about homosexuality on the high seas ("Billy Budd"), and given that ships in those days were seen as floating San Franciscos, to the point that many sailors' bars around the world doubled as gay bars -- given all that, I'm not so sure it's unintentional.

Now I'm reading Chapter 54, entitled, "The Town-Ho's Story." I kid you not.