Arguing in favour of a retrieval of a repressed, "closeted" gay literary heritage, Creech shows how a literary critic can be receptive to implicit and closeted sexual content, and analyzes what he considers the exemplary novel of the 19th-century closet, Melville's "Pierre; or, 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.