In The Pale Usher, the author, masculinity historian James LaFond, examines the text and subtext of the 25-chapter overture to Moby Dick as an allegory of Civilized Man’s awakening to his socially submerged self—a primal quest within the domesticated human in search of his authentic self.

In this work, the author goes on to examine the works of such authors as Robinson Jeffers, J. R. R. Tolkien, Clark Ashton Smith, Thomas Ligotti, Dan Simmons, Bram Stoker, Ambrose Bierce, Phillip K. Dick, Carl Jung, Robert Bloch and H.P. Lovecraft.