SPEAKER_03 0:02

But what most puzzled and confounded you was a long, limber, portentous, black mass of something hovering in the center of the picture over three blue, dim, perpendicular lines floating in a nameless yeast. A boggy, soggy, squitchy picture, truly, enough to drive a nervous man distracted. Yet was there a sort of indefinite, half-attained, unimaginable sublimity about it that fairly froze you to it, till you involuntarily took an oath with yourself to find out what that marvelous painting meant. Ever and anon a bright but alas deceptive idea would dart through you. It's the Black Sea in a midnight gale, it's the unnatural combat of the four primal elements, it's a blasted heath, it's a hyperborean winter scene, it's the breaking up of the ice-bound stream of time. But at last, all these fancies yielded to that one portentous something in the picture's mist. That once found out, and all the rest were plain. But stop. Does it not bear a faint resemblance to a gigantic fish? Even the great Leviathan himself.

SPEAKER_01 1:30

So you've been out whale watching. Did you see any whales?

SPEAKER_03 1:35

I'm afraid I did. Yes. Oh my goodness. I'm still absolutely reeling from it. We so we God, I can't believe it. I have been out all day. We left at about nine o'clock this morning, uh, and I got back about half an hour ago. We set out from the northeastern coast of Sardinia into the Tyrrhenian Sea, and we went to the Caprera Canyon, which is about a kilometre deep. And within half an hour of the journey, we saw some bottlenose dolphins, which were absolutely stunning. Then we had striped dolphins following in the wake of the boat, which were absolutely beautiful, really playful, so so stunning. I saw a manta ray. Now I'd never seen one of those close up before. They're huge. Oh gosh.

SPEAKER_00 2:20

Yeah. The boat was the kites of the sea.

SPEAKER_03 2:23

They are, they are. And the boat was stationary at the time, and it came right up to us. And I'm used to the idea of dolphins being curious about humans and curious about boats, but this manta ray just you fully believe that he was looking at it all. It was really, really incredible. And then it got to perhaps about half an hour before we needed to start heading back, and we were sort of thinking, okay, well, are we going to stand out for a bit longer? And then we saw just cresting the water a little away from us, three magnificent beaked whales. Three of them, apparently, two of them were quite young and one was quite old. And when beaked whales get old, they start to turn white. So it was an amazingly Malvillian, oh my god. And we were so lucky because what tends to happen with beaked whales, they're the whales that are actually capable of diving the deepest into the ocean. They can go a couple of kilometers down. They obviously can't do that in the canyon that we were in because it's only a kilometer deep. But when they go down, they can hold their breath for so long. And so they said, if these guys go down, we're gonna lose them for 45 minutes. And they just sort of poked their heads up and then they disappeared. And we thought, oh no, well, that's that's gonna be it then. We've that's gonna be all that we'll see of them. And then they resurfaced and they were really, really nearby where we were. They were so stunning. Wow, they knew they knew level that I was coming back.

SPEAKER_00 3:52

Johnny was there.

SPEAKER_03 3:53

They they knew that yeah, that I was I was gonna need to come back and talk to you two uh about my my trip out onto the Wine Dark Sea. He's gonna be recording a podcast about maybe even the podcast about the works of Herman Melville.

SPEAKER_01 4:07

The podcast, yes. That sounds stunning. That sounds so fun.

SPEAKER_03 4:10

It was I'm still I've got still got so many thoughts to digest about it. I also had two experiences that I had never had before, and it only dawned on me while they were occurring. I thought this is a truly new thing for me. We there was a point where there were no animals around, the boat was stopped, and we were allowed to go for a little swim in the sea.

SPEAKER_02 4:30

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_03 4:31

And so I got into the water and I looked around me and I realized this must be the first time that I've ever been on or in the water, and I haven't been able to see land. Wow. And it just felt so vast. I mean, for those that are uh listening along and reading for the first time, they'll come to a chapter eventually called The Castaway. And like that experience was not something that I was ever able to imagine before. Now it's a it makes it a lot more sense to me the way that that chapter is described. I also realized with the canyon being as deep as it is, that that was probably the furthest I've ever been above the ground, unsupported by a vehicle. Yeah, I've never been further above the earth, um unsupported by you know an aeroplane. And just thinking, there is so much underneath me. And it's kind of terrifying but beautiful at the same time as a thought. Because you look down and you can't just see nothing. Absolutely nothing.

SPEAKER_00 5:37

Nah, nah, nah.

SPEAKER_03 5:38

Not for you, Megan. Get back in the scramble back into the boat.

SPEAKER_00 5:44

Yeah. I don't know if I would get out of a of the boat knowing what you just described. I mean, like jokes aside, I think that would be that would be that would be very frightening for someone who relies so much on air conditioning to suddenly not be able to see land um is uh uh yeah, that's a that's an unthinkable thought for me, but obviously very important to uh to the the works that we're discussing. But it sounds like um, Johnny, for you it was like a uh would cleansing be kind of an interesting word to sort of think about the way it that you then relate to sort of the life that you knew you were coming back to, like in an apartment where you could sort of like drink orange juice whenever you wanted, sort of. Did you merge with the godhead?

SPEAKER_03 6:30

Did I merge with the godhead?

SPEAKER_00 6:32

Did you see the loom, his foot on the loom?

SPEAKER_03 6:34

I saw the foot on the loom, I merged with the godhead, and then I came back and I had an orange juice. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:38

There you go. And that's life, isn't it?

SPEAKER_03 6:40

I think I did find it strangely comforting looking out into the vastness of it all, and just it is also just so quiet. That's the other thing that's really bizarre, thinking, okay, well, there's so much life around and in the thing that I'm in, but it's just completely noiseless. And one does feel incredibly small. But I think there's something quite restful about that. But I know that people have really, really different relationships with those experiences that make you feel really, really small.

SPEAKER_00 7:08

I don't think no, you know what you're gonna feel, yeah, until you're floating.

SPEAKER_03 7:12

Yeah, and now I have been including our characters, yes.

SPEAKER_00 7:16

That is for sure. God, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_01 7:22

Uh all right. Uh, well, uh, welcome to the show, everybody. Uh, welcome to Pequad Pod, the podcast on the Wonder World of Herman Melville. Uh, my name is Tristan.

SPEAKER_00 7:32

I'm Meg.

SPEAKER_01 7:34

And call me Johnny Coffin. And uh today we're all we're specifically going to be talking about the first half of the spouter in. So, chapter three is the spouter in. It's uh our longest so far of our chapters, and it is a meaty chapter indeed. And as such, we decided to split it into two parts, part one and part two. So look out for part two after this one. Uh, but yeah, uh, Meg, could you give us a brief synopsis of what we've got in this part one of chapter three, the spouter?

SPEAKER_00 8:05

I would I would absolutely love to. Yeah, this is a this is a fun one, if only because we start to get radical things like dialogue and a setting. Uh so strap in, uh strap in for this one. So, this chapter, the part that we're talking about today, um Ishmael walks in to the spouter inn, talks to someone, uh, thus finally appearing to be a character in his own novel, and it's just great. Uh, we look at, or technically you look at, uh, a painting in the foyer. We look at some decorative spears on the wall, uh, the bar, which is manned by a man called Jonah, which lives under a whalebone arch. He's got some evil shot glasses. We look at those. Um, Ishmael asks for a room. The landlord says the only bed available is sort of, he's got like a California king, he would have to split it with a harpooner. Ishmael is like, I don't normally do this. But you know, when it's cold, who hasn't had gay thoughts? So that's sort of put on the calendar. The crew of a ship called the Grampus comes in. Um, they immediately fill sort of this small hotel, they get very drunk. Um Ishmael takes notice of one guy in particular who is very handsome and reserved, and tells us that soon this man will be on the whaling ship that they're both gonna get on. Um, that his name is Bulkington, and basically he just says, put a pin in this guy. Uh, don't forget this handsome man. Um by 9 p.m., um, all the drunk men are in bed because this is a civilized establishment. Um Ishmael is like, look, is this other guy I'm sharing this room with coming or not? Like, I gotta go to bed. Um, he doesn't want to get woken up during the night, so he's like, Look, I'll just sleep on this bench. Um, but then it turns out once you reach a certain age, like your back doesn't care about pride or like class distinction. So he's like, I'll just go to the bed. Who is this guy? And the landlord is like, um, no, he is great. He always he always pays. He's out selling his heads right now, which is hard because, like, I told him, this is a saturated market. And Ishmael is like, please don't talk about this. I'm very uncomfortable. Um, but then it's late, and like we gotta get to the next section of the book. So the landlord um leads us up the stairs, takes Ishmael into the room, kind of disappears, and Ishmael is taking stock of his hotel room.

SPEAKER_01 10:44

Love it. Um, a huge gaping hole in the synopsis is the dumplings. We missed the dumplings. Good heavens, dumplings!

SPEAKER_00 10:52

That's true, that's true. Well, we have to give it its its due in its own section.

SPEAKER_03 10:57

I thought we were doing a whole chapter on dumplings. I thought that was the idea.

SPEAKER_01 11:00

Anyway, thank you very much for that synopsis. Um, I think that's a a very useful jumping off point. Um, so yeah, let's talk about this picture. Uh, this uh this boggy, soggy, squishy picture. What do you think about this picture, Meg?

SPEAKER_00 11:14

I love everything that's happening here. I think this is one. If you had to um try to convince someone to read or not to read this book, I think this is one of the first sort of like heavy hitter paragraphs I would offer as this is what this book is gonna be like. Um I especially like the well, there are two things that I love here. I love that he uh says something twice, again, sort of like what we talked about. I I think about the last chapter when he says something like sort of, or there's like a something about it, but or he's still sort of circling around the thing that it is, but just offering that kind of vague word I think is sweet, that there's a pretentious something in the picture smisted and the the idea that we have to do interpretive work there, but he's like pausing that for right now. I think that's really sweet. And I really like that list of I think five things that he offers that you might think that it's a painting of, especially the last one. It's the breaking up of the ice-bound stream of time. I think um, you know, we've all sat in like a dentist's office, and you're like, what is that a picture of? It's usually like a bush in front of a nice house, and like that's fine. Um, but I like the idea of um if you sort of think of Melville as author, he has to give us uh what is this hotel like? And uh the first thing we do is stop, he sees switches to the second person and says, You are standing in front of a painting. And the first thing that we do is this weird interpretive work that is laying the foundation of something that we already know is coming, which is whales. But he's like, Is this a painting of a whale? Maybe we're gonna get into it, uh you know. Um he tries to sort of like lead us by the hand to get us to the fact that it is a whale, um, which is fine. But I like that we take the time before we speak to anybody to not move out of the immediate entrance hall and instead are sort of bewitched by this weird, um, you get the idea that it's just like caked in the grime of fried the fried food of like decades, and you can't really see it. But we're in the passenger seat um of a narrator who finds it really charming. And I I really like that we take the time to look at it and has some of my favorite writing in the New Bedford section.

SPEAKER_03 13:36

It's clearly a really grimy and underloved and underappreciated picture, and yet Ishmael manages to come up with a theory about it, partly based upon the aggregated opinions of many aged persons with whom I have conversed upon the subject. So he's found people who are interested in it. He's managed to he's gone on sort of r slash boggy, soggy, squishy picture.

SPEAKER_00 13:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:00

And he's managed to find.

SPEAKER_01 14:06

Yeah, and I love that quote that you've got there, uh, uh, because it's preceded by a final theory of my own, then partly based upon all these other opinions that I've heard.

SPEAKER_03 14:15

And in particular, I think that helps us to circle back really nicely to what Meg's been saying about that really, really pronounced use of the second person, which is really, really unusual in narrative texts. We're abundantly used to the first person and we and the third person, and we've been trained to expect the first person up to this point. And so what's really fascinating about this whole section for me is just how strongly the reader, you are drawn into multiple different acts of interpretation. You think it's this, you think it's that. But then a little bit like we were discussing last time in Carpet Bag, where several different plot lines were suggested to us and then actually not taken up, we're told, well, you probably think all of these different things, but here's why your interpretation is wrong. We're drawn into the interpretive drama of the opening section of this chapter, and then we're ultimately told any interpretation of this painting is actually ultimately going to be wrong. And I think that's actually we keep coming back to this idea of what Melville is setting up and what kinds of mechanisms are starting to move in Moby Dick in terms of how we're supposed to approach the text. And this is absolutely one of them. We're going to be presented with no end of different interpretations of all sorts of things. Probably first and foremost, the whale in an interior and an exterior, philosophical, spiritual way. But the conclusion, spoiler alert, is going to be we actually, any interpretation that we put forward is going to be stymied in some way, because ultimately we cannot circumscribe the whale in the way that we would want to.

SPEAKER_01 16:01

Yeah, no, I I think you're totally right. Uh, but for fun, uh what what do you see in this picture? What is in this picture?

SPEAKER_00 16:10

What what is it? Um, I like the idea of the um the nameless yeast. It does sound like something is being um sort of made from the ocean up. It could be um I think I think there's a monster in there. I think there's a monster in them, they're hills. I don't know if uh three three masses. He seems to come to a really, really specific picture, which I think is funny. Um, but I like the idea of it's sort of like, hmm, there's just something on I I I imagine this would be a really good episode of that um that guy who does the restorations um on YouTube. Is it Baumgartner? He's got this following of this is this beautiful young man who does who it's sort of it's sort of like ASMR, just like watch me strip down the absolute horrible uh things that have happened to this painting while it's been hanging like inside a chimney for 200 years. And then the painting that comes after it, you're like, my god, it's so it's this little charming picture of a little girl. What idiot put this inside a thing, but it's like the stuff that happens to the stuff on the walls, you don't pay attention to it. It's just gonna passively accumulate grime. Uh but yeah, I would love to see what this painting is once all of the dumpling uh schmucks has been sort of siphoned off of it really carefully with the Q-tip.

SPEAKER_03 17:32

Before you got into the description of what the program actually was, Megan, when you had just said what's the name of that program with that painter, of course I just immediately thought of Bob Ross. And so now I'm just I've just got this image now of just Bob Ross in his wonderful just kind of just put a little something in there. A little bit of dumpling. Happy little dumpling. A little bit of bog and sog and squish.

SPEAKER_01 17:53

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So kind of getting back to a theme that uh I I think in the past couple episodes I brought up, uh this idea of the sea as like this undifferentiated chaos. I really get from this uh description of the painting. Like to me, like it's it's that world before God uh splits up the waters, right? It's this it's it's this uh horizonless, you can't tell this the sky from the sea, you can't tell really anything from anything, but like it's but it has this uh chaotic energy and uh hum to it, this this force to it.

SPEAKER_00 18:29

Like in land before time, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:32

Uh just this uh unstructured, uh irrational C as like a primal force. Wonderful. So the first thing that jumps out to me is like uh in thinking of real-world analogues of this kind of painting is JMW Turner. Um so JMW Turner uh is uh an English painter that's uh about a contemporary with Melville.

SPEAKER_03 19:05

He's born in 1775, so a little bit a little bit before Melville. But there's just there is a substantial overlap, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:11

Yeah, yeah. Um, and so it's not certain that uh so uh Melville visited London in 1849, and it's uh it's been conjectured that Melville may have seen some of JMW Turner's uh paintings while he was there. Um, but we as far as I know, we don't know that for certain. But we do get uh Melville's earliest documented reference to Turner's uh pictures of whalers. So some of uh Turner's work um includes whaling ships and whales. Um an annotation he wrote on the title page of Beale's Natural History of the Sperm Whale, which he got on July 10th, 1850. And so um we do know that Melville was thinking about Turner while he was writing Moby Dick. Um and if you if you look at uh you can go to the Instagram, I I post a lot of JMW Turner uh paintings. Um but to me, like there's a there's absolutely a a resonance between like this description of this painting and JMW Turner's, especially like later work, where it like it's it really is this sort of boggy soggy sort of thing. Um very indefinite work.

SPEAKER_03 20:18

Absolutely indefinite is completely the right word, Tristan, but where you certainly you inescapably see certain things and you are so sure what they are, then it's one of those things where you look away and then it's they're wonderfully kaleidoscopic paintings because then you look at the you look away, you look away and then you look back and you think that you're looking at something else, but again, some other incredible kind of image will present itself to you in in the in the seascapes, especially. You'll I almost I always feel when I'm looking at a turner, if you if you accidentally jostled the the frame, the sea would move, you know, it would suddenly it would tip with the frame.

SPEAKER_00 20:54

Yeah, for sure, for sure. Um yeah, I think if you if if you if you haven't seen a Turner painting before, and just in this moment you listening, you googled it, I think you would feel that they are they still look radical. Um it's like a watercolor that can somehow contain like the I like ideas of like violent atmospheric movement, they're gauzy, they're like dramatic. Does this sound familiar? Like there's a reason why over the years people um um have linked the the sort of oeuvre of these of these two artists, whether or not um they could have ever interacted with each other's art. We now, even at this remove, like to do so. So even if they he didn't see his paintings, I think it still behooves us to be able to discuss sort of the cross pollinating of like style or the um what was important to them in the ways that they wanted to depict things. And I I have one resource for us um that might be kind of juicy if this is a sort of thing that's interesting. Oh, please, please. Um, which is that in the spring of twenty sixteen, uh, the Met in New York borrowed um two of Turner's Wailing Pictures from the Tate and put on an exhibit called Turner's Wailing Pictures, um, which helpfully describes what it was, which was three uh weren't uh Turner's Wailing Pictures uh all put together. And you can read the beautiful art bulletin that they wrote about it on the website, or you can go on eBay and buy it for $12, which is what I'm holding up, listeners, for the boys to see. I bought it with my own hands. And if you would indulge me, I can read one paragraph from we eventually get to Melville. There's um an interesting thing that one of Turner's wailing pictures includes the Erebus, which is if there's only Franklin expedition fandom spilling into this one, then that's exciting for you. But this is so this is one paragraph when they start to say, Tristan, like you just said, they're like, Did Melville ever see his paintings? Dunno, but wouldn't it been cool if they did? But she's um kind of discussing her name is Alison Hawkinson. So she's kind of discussing like what overlap is there between these two, uh, these two artists. So I'll just read this one short paragraph. Turner and Melville both mind the subject of whaling for similar themes, an epic confrontation between humankind and the natural world, humanity's hubris, which leads to both victory and tragedy, and the manifold moods and vistas of the sea. Artist and writer also saw whales and their deep ocean habitat as manifestations of the sublime. Some of the tropes they employed to evoke the awesome spectacle of nature were commonplace, dramatic water and light effects, ominous weather and ships in distress. But other motifs were more exceptional, like pervasive whiteness, swirling seas and skies, and a reliance on vagueness and incompleteness to convey nature's ineffable power. Critics of Melville even occasionally compared his style to Turner's. That sounds like our boggy, squishy picture.

SPEAKER_01 24:22

Definitely does.

SPEAKER_00 24:22

What do you think?

SPEAKER_01 24:24

No, I think you're absolutely right. Um and I so uh some of the really interesting stuff that uh I would love to eventually get like a Melville scholar on to talk about is like some of the details we know about um like things that Melville owned and things that he read. We do know that he at least owned some engravings like of uh uh uh JMW Turner's works. So like we would we know that there like he was interested, he was aware of him. He had seen at least later in life, he had like uh like kind of prints more or less of like JMW Turner's stuff. Um, but yeah, no, it's it's a really juicy topic, and one thing we'll absolutely do for our our budding Melville and series is absolutely we'll do a bit of Melville and Turner. Um gotta find some uh a really good Turner art historian.

SPEAKER_00 25:15

It'll be soon if Simon Shamma would just answer my emails.

SPEAKER_03 25:20

Shout out to Simon Shamer if you're listening. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:24

One of these days. One of these days. But yeah, I think the most important, one of the most important things to just think about when we hit this part of the chapter is why does Melville give us a picture that is difficult to see, as opposed to just like this could have been a hotel where it's like, here's a diagram of a whale. We've all seen one because this is a whaling hotel. We all know what we're talking about. Why give us this painting?

SPEAKER_03 25:47

Well, why give us a painting at all? I think that's the last thing that I'd want to say about this is that this is the earliest example in Moby Dick of what we would call ek phrases, which is using literary language to describe visual works of art. And it's not something that Melville invented by any means. It goes all the way back to the foundations of Western literature. There's the very famous description of the shield of Achilles in uh in the Iliads, for example. And Dante does it and Proust does it, and it through Melville, but even into our own times, we've got artists like or poets like Alice Oswald and Anne Carson who um who do an awful lot of this kind of stuff. They're trying to translate visual works of art into words. And this is not the only time that Melville will do this. We'll have an entire run of chapters where Melville describes to us other depictions of Wales. Now, we could get all sorts of uh distances into the weeds on why artists through time, why writers through time have chosen to do this. The thing that most interests me here, especially at this fairly early stage of the novel, is that Ecfraestis is on some level always impossible. It's not possible on any objective level to convert a piece of visual media into words. I could go and stand in front of Monet's ninfe, and when I'd stop crying, I could write you a very, very detailed description of what I saw, or I could write you a creative response, I could write you a novel, I could write you a short story, a poem, whatever it might be, but I'm still not going to recreate that experience for you. So an open question really for us to think about is why do writers do this, but more specifically for our purposes, why does Melville do this here? And then why does he go on to do it a bunch more in a few chapters' time?

SPEAKER_01 27:46

Yeah, uh, hitting off a tangent on that point, um, really just like thinking about translation in general. And one thing I'd love to do at some point is uh an episode on like uh translations of Moby Dick. Um, one uh there's a couple of things that like uh I have heard that I've really loved before uh about translation, uh even just like you know, you know, like English to Spanish or something like that. Um one in Italian there's a phrase uh tradutore traitore or translator traitor.

SPEAKER_03 28:17

Traduttor traditore, yes.

SPEAKER_01 28:20

Okay, there you go. Perfect, even better. Um and then I I've also loved the metaphor of uh reading a work in translation, like uh looking at a tapestry, but like the back half, like the the uh like if you flipped it around, if you flipped up, you just could just see where the stitches were, or like you could see like you could kind of get a sense of what the picture is, but like there's a an aspect of it that's that's always cut uh missing here, like doubly so, like you're saying, with works of art.

SPEAKER_03 28:46

I love that metaphor for the act of translation. That's beautiful, and it feels really representative of what it actually is. I also want to consult every translation I can find in every language to find out how boggy, soggy, squishy picture truly is translated.

SPEAKER_00 29:01

Yes. Phonetically, perhaps. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:05

Maybe wonderful. So moving moving further into uh this uh this dive bar slash hotel that is this battery in. Um so we go from our our painting on the wall. And one of the things I really love about this is like uh you you could pretty much like kind of recreate this bar based on the description. Like it's it's it's it's a very detailed description.

SPEAKER_03 29:28

Must have done it.

SPEAKER_01 29:29

Surely I hope so. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_03 29:32

A bar in New Bedford.

SPEAKER_01 29:34

That's an exact replica. I hope so. If there's not uh hit the Patreon, we'll we'll start raising money for that's what we're gonna do.

SPEAKER_03 29:41

For sure. That's what our beloved Patreon subscribers are gonna be paying for.

SPEAKER_01 29:47

So so we move from the painting and then we move uh to looking at this vast array of uh uh of these weapons, some of which are like harpoons or whale lances, some of them seem to be um from like different indigenous peoples of the world, uh and it like having like human hair or like teeth of some kind in them. And here's where we get um, if I if I'm accurate, I believe this is the case, is where our first mention of the word cannibal comes up. But cannibal is going to be such an important category for Melville and like a way of talking about people and a way of like kind of categorizing and thinking about the world, world. Uh, I think I've got it right here. Uh yeah, you shuddered as you gazed and wondered what monstrous cannibal and savage could ever have gone to death harvesting with such a hacking, horrifying implement. So, because this is uh we talked a bit in uh episode zero about uh survival maritime survival cannibalism. But I think it'd be worthwhile to like kind of dig into like the concept of cannibalism a bit more because it is going to be such an important uh category for Melville and it's going to be extremely relevant with our part two episode. Um, so uh uh what are y'all's thoughts on cannibalism? We'll start with you, uh Meg, our resident uh cannibalization.

SPEAKER_00 31:08

I mean, I'm pro generally. You just want to avoid eating the brains because then that's how you get a prayon disease from which there is no cure and you will die. Um, I think it's for our purposes. Let's assume you haven't gone, like stopped your reading and gone and done like a bunch of like library research, and you're just thinking about what is the point of this word to communicate something between right, author, and reader. This is a what like what are your immediate reactions? This is a scary person. This is someone with whom has um our cultures cannot possibly cross. This is like a taboo. I am being forced to share a space with this person I wouldn't have otherwise because they engage in something that I cannot possibly conceive of. This is it's a very othering word. We are being set up to expect this person to be maybe even kind of literally monstrous. So, for right now, this is a word that says, I could not be more different from this person just on our most basic level of like humanity. Therefore, Melville now has to do something with that. In part two, are expectations going to be met or are they going to be subverted? The one thing our author cannot do is ignore them. So he's using an incredibly powerful, powerful word, which has a lot of built-in horrible prejudices for his contemporary reader, which his job as author is then to do something interesting with that. So, if for no other like historical, like I've done a lot of like anthropological research, pretending I know nothing else, which isn't like totally difficult to pretend, um, I am incredibly excited to meet this person because right now they sound like a dragon. It's like there's like a monster in this room. And he's like, Well, you're sharing a bed with it. And he's like, it's cold, I guess, if he's nice. And so now we're just like, is this per so what is a cannibal? I've never met one. I just have the idea of one. So kind of like in a way, I can link this to the painting, I guess. We're sort of like we're met with an idea and it's foggy, and I can't see it, but I'm about to confront the thing.

SPEAKER_01 33:30

Yeah, what about you, Johnny? Uh initial reactions, first use of cannibal.

SPEAKER_03 33:35

Yeah, I mean, uh, it's a word that uh will crop up a lot as we move through this chapter, and indeed as we move through the text. I think in this instance, and it echoes very much what Meg has said, it is here really to introduce Ishmael in this moment as a deeply prejudiced individual. We actually get prejudice compounded with prejudice, don't we? A monstrous cannibal and savage. And those two phrases are immediately associated with the most violent description that we've had at this point in the novel. One uh you shuddered as you gazed and wondered what monstrous cannibal and savage could ever have gone a death harvesting with such a hacking, horrifying implement. Our expectations, mediated through Ishmael's anxiety, are being really, really prime tier for a really horrifying encounter. Like Meg says, though, we've got no sense at this point whether those expectations will actually be met or whether they won't. We won't spoil. We're not we're probably not going to get to the encounter this week. So maybe we'll we better leave. We better keep those who haven't read the chapter before waiting.

SPEAKER_01 34:48

Yeah. One of the things I think is interesting about this particular section is the way in which like these uh these like uh cannibal implements or these like uh these uh otherized sorts of weapons are like interspersed with the harpoons and whale lances that are used by uh like white men in going whaling.

SPEAKER_00 35:08

Which are not scary for our narrator to see. He's like, oh yeah, those are harpoons. And I'm like, well, those are scary too, but it's not scary unless it's in a very certain um familiar category of violence. That one he can stand. And in fact, he's excited to go and do.

SPEAKER_01 35:25

Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think uh the the the playing with uh like who's a savage, who's a cannibal, like in the way that those uh those terms can like map onto things beyond like uh what we we normally would map them on to, uh, will be uh a running theme in this book. Now, uh one of the things I think is important from like a biographical standpoint when thinking about um like a cannibal in Moby Dick is that by far uh during his lifetime, the thing that Herman Melville was most famous for being was the man who lived among the cannibals, uh specifically in Nukuhiva, which is an island in what's now French Polynesia, um, where he had jumped ship with uh uh a companion that uh they're abandoning a whale ship. And so he wrote the book Type, um, which is about this, and it uh has a lot to do with um like it really like subverting the expectations of living among cannibals is like a huge part of the book of Typee. But that was what he was most famous for, and I think like that's an important thing to keep in mind with like the the recurring use of and um kind of fixation on the idea of uh cannibalism that we'll get in Moby there.

SPEAKER_00 36:37

Yeah, yeah. I think it's I think the upshot is that he's not using this word lightly, or just because any hypothetical, you know, wasp protagonist would use this word. Melville is thinking ahead to do whatever he's gonna do, whether he does it well or whatever, that's coming. So right now it's just that we know he is using on purpose an incredibly loaded word that is meant to upset his narrator and put us in the frame of mind where we're scared to go upstairs. But we're also curious about him because it seems like he's he's out and doing something.

SPEAKER_02 37:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:18

Right? Like he's out on the sidewalks um trying to accomplish a task that is so cutely uh put in phrases of like no nonsense capitalism that I think is incredibly charming and just sort of like irks Ishmael just to make him have a personality. I really like sort of all of those exchanges. But yeah, we're made to think that basically this guy is incredibly strange. Well, is he a cannibal or is he a capitalist? It seems like he's doing both. And Ishmael is like, I am desperately trying to connect my sense of self with this guy who I'm gonna share a bed with. What does he say that's so great? Don't leave me yet. I'm gonna say it. Uh, the man whom you designed for my bed foot, my bedfellow, a sort of connection landlord, which is an intimate and confidential one in the highest degree. He just wants to know what this guy is like. He's so sleepy, he missed his boat.

SPEAKER_01 38:16

No, that's uh I I love it. Um a couple other points about cannibalism before we move on from the topic. Um, one, I think it's important to note that there's a couple of different kinds of cannibalism. Uh and and two, uh, so uh cannibalism is like a wet very well documented, um, like actually existing thing uh that has uh occurred across many, many, many cultures in different kinds of uh situations. Um the there's uh three main types uh of cannibalism, one being institutionalized cannibalism, where it is like uh a recognized part of the culture. Another is survival cannibalism, which we talked about on episode zero, where under starvation conditions uh it's more or less accepted that that like may need to happen. Um and then there is like uh the custom of the city.

SPEAKER_00 39:06

Oh, and I have to just on the record issue Pequod Pod's first apology, which is last week I said Tom Hollander. Of course, I meant Tom Holland. Tom Hollander was not on the boat, although I would love to see him as Spider-Man and Tom Holland as Mr. Collins. I swap them around. Hollander with the suffix makes me think that that's the younger one, like he's the one who came second. It's the other way around. So sorry, Tom Holland. Would love to meet you one day.

SPEAKER_01 39:31

That's a that's okay. Uh I'm sure he's uh an active.

SPEAKER_00 39:35

He seems very, yes, very sweet and and and uh bumps up against this problem all the time. But yes, survival maritime cannibalism was like more or less understood to the extent that like legal law legally um you could do it, and people were like, that's just what happens on the sea.

SPEAKER_01 39:53

Yeah, and then specifically, so like with cultures that had that accept cannibalism as a thing, there are two main kinds of cannibalism. Um, there are ones uh where you cannibalize people outside of the group, um, which is typically associated with war, uh, or like uh, you know, or like kind of like raiding parties. Um and then there's also uh cannibalism within the group, which is usually more of a like a uh a funerary practice where like the the the dead person is like reincorporated into the community in the ceremonial way, um, which to me like really uh to you know uh this will happen continuously throughout the show. Like I'm always gonna put my Jesus hat on, which is that that's what we that's what Christians do, right? We we eat the body and drink the blood of Jesus in remembrance of him in this uh which what was at the time, like especially uh uh in early Christianity, like sort of scandalous. People thought early Christians were cannibals, cannibals based on the Eucharist.

SPEAKER_00 40:54

Well, it's it's magic.

SPEAKER_01 40:56

It's it happens in your mind. The magic, yes, the magic it's it's supposed to make it more like actually literally cannibalism because it literally because becomes his flesh and literally becomes his blood. So it's extra cannibalism. Yeah, for sure. Um, but specifically, so uh Mel was gonna have this encounter uh in real life with uh um people who like it's been proven were uh uh like based on archaeological uh evidence, did in fact uh do cannibalism. And this would have been um cannibalism of people who were outside the group, so like through like raiding and that sort of thing. Um I think that's a good bit on cannibalism. Do we does anybody have any other thoughts on cannibalism? Oh, one last thought about cannibalism, which is um, I think that cannibalism at like extending it uh to relate to society, I think is an interesting thing to do here. And we do know people at the time were making uh were doing this. Um there's a very weird book called uh Cannibals All, which was written by uh one of the more idiosyncratic um like slavery apologists named George Fitzhugh, who basically argued that like for slavery and against capital not normal the normal ones, but one of the weird ones. No, he was one of the weird ones. Uh and specifically he was uh uh like very pro-slavery, but because uh like where basically his justification is that under like uh like free market capitalism where like people aren't slaves, we all become cannibals. It's like kind of the gist of it. Um and so like this is a contemporary of Melville. Uh that book comes out like a little bit after uh Moby Dick does. And so like thinking about how like uh like living under capitalism like kind of forces us all to like have this uh sort of uh unsettling relationship with one another. Do y'all see anything with that with that as like cannibalism metaphor of like living in society?

SPEAKER_03 42:50

I think it's certainly borne out in those wider and some mythological representations of cannibalism. I mean, I think, for example, of of that image of Kronos devouring his own children. We get a really recurrent idea about the earth being something that eventually devours us, a couple comes up a couple of times in Shakespeare. Um when he's about to feed, uh when Titus Andronicus is about to feed Tamora's daughters to her. He says that he's going to make her like to the earth swallow her own increase. We actually had a Shakespearean illusion that we didn't mention earlier relating to the picture, the blasted heath, which comes from Rugbeth. Um, but I think these there are potentially some kind of subterranean or perhaps more for our purposes submarine allusions, particularly given the just the mythological abundance that we've got going on in all the chapters that we've been looking at so far. So, in addition to all the all the wonderful stuff that you've been mentioning, that's a thread that I think we are potentially subtly, and maybe it is very subtly being invited to consider here as well. You know, what does it mean in that slightly more cosmic sense?

SPEAKER_01 44:00

Yeah, moving on. Question for both of y'all. Is hell a dive bar?

SPEAKER_00 44:04

Is heaven a dive bar?

SPEAKER_01 44:06

I don't think so. I don't think that's a very good one.

SPEAKER_00 44:07

I've been to some root some ones that I've I've really I've really enjoyed. It's interesting when we think about the language that Ishmael uses to describe, especially like the bar under that whale arch is very hostile. But then we move into sort of like it's so cold, but then they eat those great dumplings. Uh it's like there's this nucleus of hell in the bar, and it's the bartender and those great meridian shot glasses that tell you how much the drink costs. I think that sounds like a great place. Put a jukebox, maybe like a stripper pole. I would go. Spouter in Friday night.

SPEAKER_03 44:48

Well, it's also true that hell is a matter of perspective, right? Mephistopheles in Dr. Faustus, why this is hell, nor am I out of it. But it is also true that in hell there is all manner of delights. And so I think there are all manner of delights to be found here. I mean, certainly as soon as the uh as soon as the boisterous um eruption of bears let's right, we've got a lot of fretboys coming and you're like, God, they found my bar.

SPEAKER_00 45:14

This used to be a quiet place I could come now. The kids are here. That's the perspective from a 35-year-old. Sometimes you want a quiet one.

SPEAKER_01 45:23

No, I feel that. So, okay, so uh we're in this bar. We've got um our old man, the bartender Jonah, pouring uh very deceptive amounts of alcohol. Um, he's in he's in the whale. Uh, we've got our bears, and then we've got Bulkington. What do we think of Bulkington?

SPEAKER_03 45:41

I don't know what we feel, but Ishmael's totally into him.

unknown 45:47

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 45:48

Well, uh, he's uh six foot tall in his socks, he's got lovely broad shoulders, a chest like a coffer dam, which I'm told by my notes is a watertight box fixed to the side of a ship for making repairs below the waterline. So he's built like a boat.

SPEAKER_00 46:05

Tell me more.

SPEAKER_03 46:06

Ishmael goes on to say, I've seldom seen such brawn in a man. His face was deeply brown and burnt, making his teeth, his white teeth dazzle by the contrast, while in the deep shadows of his eyes floated some reminiscences that did not seem to give him much joy. So he's brooding, he's enigmatic, he's got so much depth in his eyes.

SPEAKER_00 46:28

It's Jacob Alordi playing in my mind. That's who's that's whose cast. One of the tall mountaineers from the Alleghenian range and ridge in Virginia, found his way up there from deep from the woods. And I like how it's um just rhetorically wise how this is introduced to us. This man interests me at once, since the sea gods had ordained that he should become my shipmate, though but a sleeping partner one, so far as this narrative is concerned. I will here venture upon a little description of him. Two sentences we didn't need. You know, we could have just, and here's the guy, but still he's like, I'm gonna tell you about him for just a second. Okay, bear with me. His name is Bulkington.

SPEAKER_03 47:06

Unless, unless we do need those two sentences to resonate with a chapter that we'll have coming up in a few weeks' time where Bulkington actually makes a return.

SPEAKER_00 47:14

Mm-hmm. Well, yeah, he's gotta create this sort of like, this is um, I'm going off on a tangent here, but let me tell you about this guy who's going to be important later. It's like he could have just been, you know what I mean? Like, um, like, why did we need to start with the paint? I look crazy, I've got two books here. Um, why did we need to start with a painting? Why did we need to tell me this guy's gonna be important later? He's creating like the mythology of the boat we're about to get on. This guy's gonna be important. It's like um, you know, those like uh back in back in his heyday when like Guy Richie, those like um bankheist movies, like the character would come in and then the it would pause, and like the character's name would be on the screen, and they'd be like, Two-bit Tommy. And you're like, oh yes, played by Jason Satham, who's very funny and needs better roles. He's a funny guy, he could be doing better movies. But like that's sort of the thing of like pause, here's this guy. I think just interest that's interesting. Stylistically, I think that's fun that Ishmael is like, I'm gonna tell you about something. You're like, you could just tell me, but instead you're telling me you're gonna tell me. And that um, I think lastly, I think it's interesting that um we're setting up the thing that the really experienced um whalers um get browner and browner, and the least experienced ones are very pale. Um, and so we're sort of setting up something interesting going on there that we're gonna see this guy later. I think they also do something cute where all the drunk guys are like, where's Bulkington? Bulkington? You know, and you're just like, Where's Steve? And it's like, you're drunk. Uh you're drunk.

SPEAKER_03 48:44

Yeah. Question for you two. Do we think Bulkington is actually his name? Or is this some kind of pet name that the rambunctious eruption of bears have given to him? Because it seems to me like it just feels too much like normative determinism for me. I know we've got I know we've talked about or or maybe it is just more. Maybe he was born destined to be to have a chest like a coffer dam.

SPEAKER_01 49:07

Yeah, or it could it could be uh Ishmael's name for him, you know, for this 10 out of 10 smoke show he sees.

SPEAKER_03 49:12

Ah, do you think he's uh I see.

SPEAKER_00 49:15

Maybe it's that he's got a just like a really strong English-y name. Sounds like a man of the a man of the cabin.

SPEAKER_03 49:23

But his voice at once announced that he was a southerner. Or maybe that's the south of England. Maybe it's from the Cotswolds.

SPEAKER_01 49:29

No, because he I don't think so. I think because he uh he specified to Virginia, though. I think it's gotta be uh a Southerner like uh myself, I suppose. One thing I do want to kind of contrast, so uh before this we've got uh Ishmael being worried about his dark complexioned chap that he's supposed to share a bed with. And specifically, you know, besides the fact that uh he sounds like a a southerner, uh there's and his name, um, in terms of our description of Bulkington, he was deeply brown and burnt. And one of the things I do think that uh is very interesting as we get into more of these sailors, and specifically thinking about like race in relation to these sailors, is that based on like the complexions that we're told, it's kind of difficult sometimes to categorize them in uh in a very clear-cut way from like uh thinking about the we've got like plantation slavery going on when this book is being written. It it's difficult, it can be difficult to like uh categorize people. We're we're concerned about the uh harpooner and the briefest of tangents. I I didn't realize till this reading, and it's specifically until uh the interview with uh Naima that it's written with two E's throughout. So is it Harpoonier? Harpuneer. Is it Harpoonier or is it harpooner?

SPEAKER_03 50:43

I've always read it aloud as Harpoonia. Okay, and it's the hill I've decided I will die on.

SPEAKER_01 50:48

I think that's right. Um, but I can't believe in like uh this is my fourth reading through of Moby Dick, and it's only now that I realize that there's two E's at the end of the side. Well, we've recursive.

SPEAKER_03 50:58

In the paragraph we've just been talking about, we get mountaineer. So I guess it's you know, they're they they they read in my mind as as kind of analogous in terms of their pronunciation.

SPEAKER_01 51:08

No, I think I agree with you. Uh I think that should be the hill that we die on.

SPEAKER_03 51:13

We're a united front here at Pequod Pod.

SPEAKER_01 51:15

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 51:16

Um I wanted to say please, please. I wanted to say one more thing to what you were just saying, Tristan, because I think it's absolutely fascinating. Um, and it might help us to kind of think a little bit about what we're going to discover later on in the chapter in terms of how one judges from appearances and indeed whether one should judge from appearances. And I hadn't noticed uh that uh earlier on uh from the bit that we were just talking about, we are given a little bit of a foretaste of how that's going to work in the description of the drinks.

SPEAKER_01 51:47

Go, John. Okay. Yes, I love it.

SPEAKER_03 51:49

Go if I if I may. Abominable are the tumblers into which he pours his poison, that being Jonah. Though true cylinders without, within the villainous green goggling glasses deceitfully tapered downwards to a cheating bottom, parallel meridians rudely pecked into the glass surrounded these two, surround these foot pads goblets. They're cylindrical cups, but they've got conical vessels inside. So you're always getting less booze than you think. In other words, it's impossible to judge from the exterior of something what you're going to get.

SPEAKER_01 52:27

Absolutely. No, I think that's beautiful. Yeah, I do like that. I I uh I love to uh like basically like how classist uh these particular cups are. Because like the the the the cheaper of a pour you get, the even less you get, right? You know, a penny is nothing versus what the the cape horn measure is. Yes, you may gulp it down for a shilling, Tristan.

SPEAKER_03 52:47

If you're so inclined.

SPEAKER_01 52:49

I I would love to. In a couple weeks' time, once baby number two is born, I'm gonna be having my fair share of Cape Horn measures. Okay, let's move on to Peter Coffin, though, uh, to wrap things up. We got we gotta talk about Peter Coffin. We gotta talk about this build-up towards Queekweg, which is coming. What do we think of Peter Coffin? What do you think? Uh what do you think, Meg?

SPEAKER_00 53:09

I think he's um uh I like that this this guy who's sort of given to us is like, here's a regular person. And um he is the he's the um uh the mechanism by which we're first um interacting with the harpoonier. Ishmael keeps throwing these questions at him, calling him landlord, his full name, or his uh occupation rather. And um he has this great quality that because I have not spent much time in that part, I interact with mostly through like stereotype, but he's this great, like um the the way that he's like straightforward relating to all of his um renters by well, are they paying or not? And if they are, then I like him. Uh I this great, great, great moment where you're like, maybe Melville's like a really fucking good writer. We get almost right up to where um we're splitting this chapter where he's he's about to take him up the stairs. And Ishmael is starting to get really, really nervous about this guy. The landlord tells about Ishmael gives him the speech. The landlord is like, well, that was a long thing that you just told me. Maybe we can take a breath. Starts to take him up the stairs. Um, and then Ishmael says, Well, depend upon it, landlord, that harpoonier is a dangerous man. He pays regular, was the rejoinder. Then he goes, Let's go upstairs. I'm gonna give you uh the bed where me and my wife had our honeymoon and uh everything's gonna be fine. So I like that he's kind of like refusing to romanticize that you're just gonna have to share a bed because it's the only bed I've got and it's big and you'll be fine. So I kind of like this guy who is not really playing ball with Ishmael's trying to put this like ridiculous kind of pre-narrative, this like prologue together about this guy. And he's like, he's a character, and he's like, he's a renter. He's doing the same thing you're doing. He likes steak rare, which I think is a great. He's like, he doesn't eat the dumplings. I have to go out and like get some meat from like my guy down the street. I think that's great. He's doing the the very simple way that he speaks is saying more through that really simple language, and I think that is doing great work, contrasting with Ishmael's these sermons that he's saying to use um Peter Coffin's words. He's straight to the point that feels like, in my mind, a New England landlord. I love him, team Coffin.

SPEAKER_03 55:39

Love him.

SPEAKER_01 55:39

Okay, what about you, Jamie?

SPEAKER_03 55:41

I love him. He's just got so many terms of terms of phrase that I'm just gonna add straight into my idiolect. Not least just calling anybody Scrim Shander. But wait a bit, Scrim Shander. I've got a carpenter's plane there in that bar. Wait, I'll stay, I'll stay, and I'll make you snug enough. Oh, yes, of course. So he's also prepared to just plane down the furniture. It's like I got this.

SPEAKER_00 56:07

And Ishmael's like you're literally whittling the bench away, like you're making it worse.

SPEAKER_03 56:12

And then that gorgeously filmic moment where they're having this conversation, and all the while he's just whittling a toothpick.

SPEAKER_00 56:18

That's so funny. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 56:20

To the point Israel eventually just says, Landlord, stop whittling. This is gorgeous. You could say Israel just getting so beyond done with Coffin. And and the thing is, Coffin knows it as well.

SPEAKER_00 56:36

That's key. This is not his first scrimm shander.

SPEAKER_03 56:40

Absolutely absolutely not his his his first scrimmsander. Absolutely. Now, can either of you parse this sentence of Coffins for me, actually? Um, I'm also I I can't do the accent, and and it's all written very fine.

SPEAKER_00 56:53

I wouldn't try. No, it's alright.

SPEAKER_03 56:55

I'm not going to, but I'm I'll so I'll read the we we should all budget. I'll read it as it's written.

SPEAKER_00 56:59

All our New England listeners immediately.

SPEAKER_03 57:02

It's actually it's at the end of the bit that I was just quoting where he tells him to start whittling, and then he has this long kind of um invection, and then uh Peter Coffin, not missing a beat, comes back with this. Well, said the landlord, fetching a long breath, that's a perfectly long sermon for a chap that rips a little now and then. Herschel Parker offers no notes on this in the Norton Critical Edition.

SPEAKER_01 57:35

Yeah, uh a chap that rips a little now and then.

SPEAKER_00 57:38

I mean, I think he's just sort of saying like um rips a little to me is sort of like Ishmael, you're talking a a lot and putting up a lot of rules, and you were the one who came here for a room, and I'm telling you everything that you're asking me, and now you're like, well, X, Y, and Z. And he's like, you know, you are um, you've got a lot of notes here, uh Johnny, like you just said. You've got a lot of notes for someone who needs a room and I'm offering it to you.

SPEAKER_03 58:08

So I'm shunned the event that I lovingly played down for you.

SPEAKER_00 58:13

Yes, because immediately he's like, be easy. This guy that I'm telling you about is chill and he's just trying to sell his heads, which he does all the time, and this is not unusual, and calm down. Again, he's like an out-of-towner. He's, you know, this guy who comes in, you know, talking big was not on the grampus coming off a job. He's, you know, still trying to get one. So I think I think Peter has has the measure of him, basically, and is kind of like, let's let's take a moment and not get in too deep here.

SPEAKER_01 58:41

With Peter Coffin, uh, you you can't overlook the fast the fact that he's always grinning. He like there's like a the You get the sense that he just loves like toying with Ishmael though, right? I think you're right. Um but uh here let me see. Uh as he's uh you get the sense that he just loves messing with Ishmael and that he's having so much fun with it.

SPEAKER_00 59:09

Um Ry Dick says Rosni speaks angrily. Ishmael's getting hot under the collar. He's like, take it down a notch.

SPEAKER_01 59:22

Okay, so so saying, he procured the plane and with his old silk handkerchief first dusting the bench, vigorously said to planing away at my bed, the while grinning like an ape.

SPEAKER_03 59:33

It's so good. It's so good.

SPEAKER_01 59:36

It is so good.

SPEAKER_03 59:38

And he just he absolutely checkmates Ishmael as well when Ishmael tries to show him that he's not that he's not going to be played for a fool, and he absolutely overplays his hand and just says, I tell you what it is, landlord, said I quite calmly. You'd better stop spinning that yarn to me. I'm not green. He said he he starts going, no, no, no, no. I know you think I'm an idiot, but no, I'm I'm not. Actually, quite clever, actually. And and Coffin just comes back with, maybe not, takes out the stick that he's just been whittling and starts making the toothpick out of it. But I'd rather guess you'll be done brown if that here harpooners hears you a slander in his head. So he just goes completely outlogics him and just does it in the most stylish way I I could possibly imagine.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:24

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:25

Yeah, and all the while.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:27

No, that green-brown dichotomy.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:29

And all the while we've been talking about this about about Peter Coffin as this kind of down-to-earth grounded character who's who feels quite accessible and very funny. And yet, as we mentioned in the last episode, he also has this incredibly symbolic value. There is this whalebone arch, this whalebone gate in the Sparta Inn, and we have a Peter who is the custodian of it. So even when we've got this high comedy scene with the whittling and the planing and the and the grabbing of glims and all that kind of thing, we still the the the whole chapter, and the same will be true of next week as well, is literally overshadowed by this parody of the gates of heaven.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:19

Yeah, yeah. I like that. Um, and yeah, no, I I think like uh uh here we have uh one more of those little springs and motives uh which uh push push Ishmael along. You know, Peter Coffin's absolutely crucial. He's gonna be the matchmaker for our our our two our two boys. He's the priest, kind of as it were.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:38

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:40

I love the phrase that he says. Um he uh gets into the come and see the bed, but come, it's getting dreadful eight. You better be turning flukes. It's a nice bed. Sal and me slept in that ear bed the night we were spliced.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:53

Yeah, it's another coffinism. Just gonna go and turn the flukes. I'm just gonna when we finish recording, I'm just gonna go and turn the flukes up.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:01

Just got back from turning flukes.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:03

Yeah. But we just got back from turning flukes from sleeping.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:08

Mm-hmm. That's also setting up an expectation we didn't need to, but that it's uh it's a marriage bed that didn't need to be there, but Melville was like, I know what I'm doing.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:20

Bit of sizzle for the counterpain listeners.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:22

Ishmael's like, can I catch a break? I already, you know, he's had a long night.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:30

As we go ahead and wrap up and uh, you know, to to foreshadow this excellent part two of the spouter in that we'll be getting uh next week. Uh Johnny, do you want to read us this very last pass paragraph uh from uh our our first part here as uh Peter Coffin leads uh Ishmael up to the to his his his his marriage change?

SPEAKER_03 1:02:51

Find my Peter Coffin voice And I will There said the landlord, placing the candle on a crazy old sea chest that did double duty as a washstand and centre table. There make yourself comfortable now a good night, tea I turned round from eyeing the bed, but he had disappeared.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:16

Well, thank you all very much for listening to Pequad Pod. Uh and we'll join you next week with part two, the spouter in. Uh this has been Tristan Meg and Johnny Coffin.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:27

See you on the flip side, Scrimshanders.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:30

Catch some flukes.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:34

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