By Ed Meek

Applying a litmus test to art — in this case ideological sanitizing — inevitably diminishes the art.

Call Me Ishmaelle by Xiaolu Guo. Black Cat, New York, 426 pages. $18

Xiaolu Guo is a British-Asian writer and the author of a half dozen books. Her new novel is part of a current cultural trend. Taking a classic white male-centered work and recasting it with multicultural characters, drawing on their beliefs and ideology to reinterpret the original work. This can result in a fresh perspective, such as Percival Everett’s James, which was based on Huckleberry Finn or Gregory Maguire’s Wicked, a rethinking of The Wizard of Oz, or the updated version of West Side Story. However, as Ross Douthat of the New York Times has pointed out, this strategy suggests that we have run out of stories — a sign that we are living in a decadent age, where culture has become derivative, dependent on recycling.

Guo has selected Moby Dick, often referred to as the “Great American Novel,” and makes the epic tale’s protagonist a female 17-year-old who pretends to be male so she can take on the position of cabin boy on a whaling ship, The Nimrod. This masquerade might seem to be a stretch, but Guo based the character on a woman who successfully passed as a male on a whaling ship. (Some women also posed as men in order to fight in the Civil War.) Guo casts Ahab as a Black man and gives him a Chinese advisor (Taoist monk Muzi), who regularly consults the I Ching. This gives Guo the freedom to bring in an Eastern perspective, beyond the point-of-view of her young female narrator.

Because the story is told from the point of view of a teenager rather than an adult male, the language tends toward the adolescent; Call Me Ishmaelle comes off as more of a YA novel than a book aimed at adults. Having said that, many adult readers today enjoy reading young adult novels. Still, the approach makes for a quick accessible read, but it’s quite a step down from Melville’s Shakespearean-inspired prose.

Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.

If Guo can write like this, she does not do it here.

Guo has done a lot of research on whaling, although the reader never really feels as if she has the authority of Melville, who spent almost two years working on whaling ships. Guo cleverly uses the I Ching (drawing on her background) as a substitute for the original’s biblical references. As for the storyline, it closely follows the plot of the Moby Dick; her version of Ahab is compelling, but the characters around him are left undeveloped, and that includes the potentially compelling friendship between Ishmaelle and the Polynesian harpooner based on Queequeg.

The remakes of earlier literary works may be good, and they can usefully interrogate the dated or prejudiced political/social beliefs of the now controversial originals. But few of the revised (for modern consumption) versions are better aesthetic accomplishments than the originals. Applying a litmus test to art — in this case ideological sanitizing — inevitably diminishes the art. To her credit, Guo takes considerable risks, particularly having a lone young woman confront the behavior of a ship full of men. Trigger warnings have proven to be ineffective, but be warned, readers may find parts of the novel uncomfortable. Teachers and parents may object to some of the scenes here as well.

Fifty years ago, Moby Dick was assigned in high schools. It’s unlikely that high school students — or even undergrads — read the novel today. Looked at from that perspective, Call Me Ishmaelle presents an alternative for high school students, and for adults, who no longer have the time or attention span to read a classic American novel.

Ed Meek is the author of High Tide (poems) and Luck (short stories).