Thank you, that’s very well put. I’m musing over the passage in Jim’s journals after he’s declared his love for Betty, then seems to collapse into a private state. “Frightfully depressed this whole day, a sense of inner wrong from defeated thinking from lust which warred against the soul. A day when things did not go well—all things seemed to betray me, and nothing satisfied—a day in the presence of demons, crafty, cruel demons who fight under camouflage.”

The book includes this pic of Jim on the right, with Pete Fleming, a Melville scholar, fellow eunuch for the kingdom and regular companion (also to die in Ecuador), next to him.