Closet Writing/Gay Reading: The Case of Melville's Pierre

by James Creech

One of the most urgent tasks for gay studies today, James Creech argues, is the retrieval of a repressed, "closeted" literary heritage. But contradictions and problems cloud even the most basic theoretical What does a lesbian or gay reading of a literary text require or presume? Can we talk about a homosexual writer expressing him- or herself before the invention of "homosexuality"? Was it possible for a writer like Herman Melville, for example, to create literary works linked to his own prohibited eros?

In Closet Writing/Gay Reading, Creech shows how a literary critic can be receptive to implicit and closeted sexual content. Forcefully advocating a tactic of identification and projection in literary analysis, he lends renewed currency to the kind of "sentimental" response to literature that continental theory—particularly deconstruction—has sought to discredit.

In the second half of his book, Creech sets out to analyze what he considers the exemplary novel of the nineteenth-century closet, Melville's Pierre, The Ambiguities. By approaching Pierre as the gay man Melville longed to have as its reader, Creech is able to decipher the novel's "encrypted erotics" and to reveal that Melville's apparent tale of incest is actually a homosexual novel in disguise. The closeted "address" to queer-sensitive readers that Pierre disseminates finally receives a critical reading that strives to be explicit, shareable, and public.

216 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1994

Reviews

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

A missing verse from Asher Roth's "I Love College":

In sum, this imperative to avoid seizure and subjection which I had found in much post-Foucaldian theory was, precisely, a negative imperative that tended to neglect the affirmative basis on which any particular sexuality might be reinscribed positively.

Great book, but the language is a bit too jargony for anyone not in the academy.

[Rambling Reader · Rating 3 out of 5]

funny

[Richard K. W. Hsu · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just read the 40 pages long preface. Not impressed on the argument since the author is not very inventive in developing the thesis statement.

Creech's points of view of sounds a bit cliche for me. Maybe just because I prefer deconstrutionist reading of queer that he strongly writes against.

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

homosexuality theory c1993

what is active and what is passive? vs what is a donor and what is a receiver? consider the way words are used in ref to oral sex and anal sex