Super cool to read Dirty Herman before he started bumping uglies with Hawthorne. So /lit/, what do you think? Should Dirty Herms have avoided plowing Nathaniel over the sink or would he have never been able to generate his masterworks without Hawthorne?
Melville himself wrote about this in the allegory of the candle-maker in the Confidence Man. He needed Hawthorne even if it ruined him.