My Podcast Weblog

lewdness in MD

Lewdness and the use of the scatological in Moby Dick - for Melville Scholars only - the rest of you will think this is boring - BTW this is just me free-thinking, rambling into a voice memo box about the most common base ideas i can think of then into the ideas I think Melville integrated into Moby-Dick - this is raw, unedited and just me brainstorming but you gotta start somewhere and lewdness persists in this novel -

Ishmael in Blackface

Only read this post if you are a true melville scholar and then email me if you think I am crazy, if I read too much into the scene, or if I am fucking right-on. I've read as much Melville scholarship as anyone and I can't seem to find any reference to this anywhere.
This is going to be a controversial post - I don't think Melville was being an asshole like many of the whites of his day, but he did include a coy usage of Ishmael in blackface in his novel, Moby-Dick. Not in a minstrel way but in an attempt to say that Ishmael 'passed' or at least communed with his fellow humanity for a few minutes. Let me know what you think.