Day: April 28, 2015

In Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, married couple Shadow and Laura spend time together. Which is not surprising, except for the fact that she’s…dead.

Yup, relationships in literature can sometimes be strange, offbeat, unusual, unexpected, or improbable — making it seem, in comparison, like Felix and Oscar were kindred spirits in Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple. But drama or humor can abound when there’s interaction between people with very different situations, personalities, and demographics.

Most examples I’m about to give are nowhere near as extreme as Laura and Shadow’s “till death doesn’t do us part” union. But the relationships I’ll mention are still of the rather unlikely sort — albeit often positive.

For instance, there’s Queequeg and Ishmael in Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. A masterful black harpoonist and a fairly ordinary white seaman — raised thousands of miles apart in dissimilar cultures — who become pals after their quirky…