GR's Moby-Dicks

[jm]

Joel writes:
>In my last read of GR, I realized Moby Dick is in the very
>foundation of GR, from chasing down "whiteness" (pick up your free melanin
>test kit at the door) to looking for some sort of new American malehood
>on the (watery) road -- 'cause ain't nothin' worth doin' around
>the ol' Puritan home.
>
>To wit:   GR's whole opening scene of males waking up and stroking each
>others bananas for breakfast reproduces Moby Dick's utopian male democracy
>scene on the Pequod when the men are all a-wash in sperm oil.  The
>Pequodniks are so delirious with happiness as they collect the sperm oil
>from the whale, and rub it on themselves and each others, they almost
>hallucinate with joyous homoeroticism.  In GR, Pynchon grounds this male
>bonding in war, I suspect because war is the ancient social basis for
>all-male bonding

You have an admirable grasp of both texts as well as perhaps "the Wake," cuz
it shows in your puns.  (Phall if you must.)  However, I think you're
over-emphasizing the homo-erotic element, and playing fast and loose wiv
both texts.  Is all "play" homo-erotic?  Is all _phallic_ play homo-erotic?
The opening bannana scene in GR is phallic, without a doubt.  But these
aren't exactly a bunch of men stroking each other's bananas. Technically all
of the bananas belong to Pirate, I would say--even the one that falls from
the sky.  And in citing the chapter from Moby-Dick, "A Squeeze of the Hand,"
you've painted a more lurid picture of it than Melville's text supports.  

"...pondering all this, the palsied universe lies before us like a leper;
and like wilful travellers in Lapland, who refuse to wear colored and
coloring glasses upon their eyes, so the wretched infidel gazes himself
blind at the monumental white shroud that wraps all the prospect around
him."                           -jm