In this episode, we discuss Herman Melville’s seminal work, Moby Dick.  It’s the story of an unlikely love affair between Ishmael, a young, naive New Yorker, and Queequeg, a swarthy islander with an impressive harpoon.  Oh, there’s also a whale and a captain with a grudge.  But really, we’re just here for Ishmael and Queequeg.  We also take a look at Melville’s relationship with author Nathaniel Hawthorne.  Enjoy!

We dive into this week’s novel, Bayard Taylor’s Joseph and His Friend: A Story of Pennsylvania, a story of how a chance encounter on a train turns into what looks a lot like romance.  Travis’s research about the author gives us clues about Taylor’s potential queerness, and one detail from the author’s biography gives Charles a new life goal.

In this world of Botox and butt lifts, it’s easy to forget that once upon a time, the only surefire way to keep your looks was to sell your soul to the devil.  In this, our obligatory Oscar Wilde episode, we discuss The Picture of Dorian Gray, a tale of vanity, loose-living, and a not-insignificant amount of queerness.  In Queer and Now, Travis sheds light on No Promo Homo laws, which are just as terrible as they sound, and Charles gives a certain movie studio a piece of his mind.

Travis and Charles discuss Alan Dale’s A Marriage Below Zero.  This novel has it all: jealousy, deceit, plot twists galore …and, oh yeah, two dudes in love.  Sure, one of them has a wife, but what’s the worst that could happen?  Meanwhile, in Queer and Now, we discuss a whole bunch of stuff.  It’s a queer, queer world, after all, and since this is our last episode for a while, we decided to let our freak flags fly.

The Moby Dick episode has turned us into die-hard Melville fans.  In this episode, Charles and Travis explore Billy Budd, Herman Melville’s last novel.   Billy’s the new boy on the boat.  He’s very handsome and very popular with all his shipmates…except one.  Haters gonna hate, as they say.  And in the Queer and Now segment, we discuss toxic masculinity and some sad news out of Brazil.