SPEAKER_02 0:04

The bar room was now full of the boarders who had been dropping in the night previous, and whom I had not as yet had a good look at. They were nearly all whalemen, chief mates and second mates and third mates, and sea carpenters and sea coopers and sea blacksmiths and harpooniers and shipkeepers, a brown and brawny company with bosky beards, an unshorn, shaggy set, all wearing monkey jackets for morning gowns. You could pretty plainly tell how long each one had been ashore. This young fellow's healthy cheek is like a sun-toasted pear in hue, and would seem to smell almost as musky. He cannot have been three days landed from his Indian voyage. That man next to him looks a few shades lighter, you might say a touch of satin wood is in him. In the complexion of a third still lingers a tropic torn, but slightly bleached withal. He doubtless has tarried whole weeks ashore. But who could show a cheek like Queakwake, which, barred with various tints, seemed like the Andes' western slope to show forth in one array, contrasting climates zone by zone? Grab high! Now cried the landlord, flinging open a door, and in we went to breakfast.

SPEAKER_03 1:33

Should come out in three days' time, but today is Herman Melville's birthday. Happy birthday, Herman Melville. Leo King. So that's exciting. What else is going on in people's lives? You're touring, Johnny. How's touring going?

SPEAKER_02 1:52

I am on tour, yes. On Herman Melville's birthday, we have just got to the end of our second week of the tour of Twelfth Night. It's going really well. We're really, really happy with it. We're it's a long tour. We started two weeks ago, uh, and we run until the beginning of October. So it's a real kind of marathon tour, and the play itself is a bit of a marathon as well. It's a cast of four actors, and it's 12th night, so as you know, much more than four characters in that particular play. I'm playing five and a bit characters, and so the whole thing is it's quite a dance in the sense that you'll be there in a scene, and on some level, though you're trying to be present within a particular scene, you're also thinking, I know that in 30 seconds I've got to be back on stage as a completely different character. And there are the kind of practical exigencies of that which involve often taking off a piece of costume and putting on another one, uh, uh taking off a waistcoat, putting on a policeman's hat, as I do, uh at a certain point in the play. Uh for anybody who needed any persuasion to come to one of the many hat. Oh yeah, me in a policeman's hat. Are you kidding? I'm so there.

SPEAKER_04 3:06

Is this is Twelfth Night one of the ones with twins? Or is that when she is dressed like a boy? Although many of the comedies have that.

SPEAKER_02 3:13

That's yeah, it's it's it's both. It's uh it's a tw it's a twin comedy and it is also a cross-dressing comedy.

SPEAKER_04 3:19

Oh my god, all the all the heavy hitters in all of them.

SPEAKER_02 3:21

I know that it's it's a wonderful, it's the best version of playing the hits. You know, he combines just about everything that's worked in previous plays um and just spun it all together into pure gold. It's such a brilliant. This is the fifth time I've been in this play, and it will never ever be enough.

SPEAKER_04 3:39

That's so cool. Are you learning anything about the text, doing it so concentratedly over and over and over again, and then also doubling up roles that were already doubled up? Have you like learned about the genius in a in a deeper way?

SPEAKER_02 3:53

Well, hearing the resonances between individual characters' voices is really, really fascinating. Um, it's a play that is also wonderfully queer, and like the language of adoration, like that the word adore comes up in really wonderful places, like in the mouth of one of the characters who is widely acknowledged to be a queer character, Antonio, uh, who rescues uh the male twin Sebastian, and it seems as if they've had some kind of relationship while they've known each other for over a period of three months. Um, and he goes to to follow Sebastian into this new sort of chapter of his life, uh, and he speaks these wonderful lines Come what may I do, adore thee so that danger shall seem sport, and I will go. And then it comes back, that word adore comes back later in the false letter that is written for Malvolio. Uh, the uh the one of the characters, Mariah, writes a letter, as I'm sure many listeners will know. She she forges a letter from her boss to one of her colleagues, Malvolio, who's a real stick in the mud, this character that I'm playing, fooling him into thinking that Olivia is in love with him. And she writes this little poem, uh, I may command where I adore, but silence like a glucose knife with bloodless stroke, my heart doth gore. And so that the kind of those lovely little semantic threads that run through the play and between characters that you wouldn't normally expect. That's a really, really exciting part of this particular production.

SPEAKER_04 5:15

Yeah, I like when you can trace vocabulary like that throughout a work. That's interesting.

SPEAKER_02 5:19

Yeah, it's really, really wonderful.

SPEAKER_03 5:21

I've got an embarrassing confession. So the only version of Twelfth Night that I've seen is the Amanda Bynes, She's the Man.

SPEAKER_02 5:28

Why on earth would that be embarrassing?

SPEAKER_03 5:31

That's incredible.

SPEAKER_02 5:32

It's a fine and noble adaptation of the Shakespearean original. I won't hear a word for the case. A friend of the bot Amanda Bynes. Yeah, it's a it's a it is a it's a peculiarly or perhaps surprisingly faithful adaptation of Twelfth Night the College is called Illyria. Uh, and that's the name of the island that they get shipwrecked on. Uh, I think that the Orsino character, the love interest, is just called Duke. I don't think if memory serves, they go as far as calling him Orsino. Uh it's been a long time since I've seen it.

SPEAKER_00 6:04

I'm not aware of that Carolina Blue. Yeah. Yeah, baby.

SPEAKER_03 6:10

Welcome to Pequad Pod, the podcast on the Wonder World of Herman Melville. My name is Tristan. I'm Meg. And call me Johnny. And today we're talking about the breakfast. Um, I am curious. Uh, what kind of breakfast do you what's your go-to breakfast? Let's start with Johnny.

SPEAKER_02 6:28

Upon rereading this chapter, I think I need to throw out all of my existing breakfast plans in favour of coffee and hot rolls. Reading this chapter made me so hungry. It's nearly dinner time where when we're recording in the UK at the minute, and just even looking at the phrase coffee and hot rolls now is is just filling me with that early morning hunger.

SPEAKER_03 6:51

You know what I mean? Like, fresh off of hot. I don't know. I I might have shoe though. So I could go for some beefsteaks done rare.

SPEAKER_02 6:57

Well, I sh and eaten most gently with a harpoon, I should think, Tristan.

SPEAKER_03 7:02

Yeah, yeah, yeah. What about you, Meg? Are you a breakfast person?

SPEAKER_04 7:06

Um, unfortunately, my fantasy of breakfast and the reality of it, uh, usually uh they're uh uh never the twain shall meet. Um my breakfasts are usually pretty lame. But my dream breakfast, which is usually eaten for dinner, I'm a big waffle person. I'm a big slap of fried egg on that. I like an eggs benedict, but on waffles, I have to um break with one of my heroes, Anthony Bourdain. He was not a fan of Hollandaise sauce. But I was thinking about what's the best breakfast I've ever had, and I want to give a shout out to the best one that I can recall, which was an andouille sausage po-boy at the Screen Door East Side in Portland.

SPEAKER_03 7:47

Very nice, very nice. I do uh also love uh Hollandaise sauce. Um eggs Benedict is probably my favorite breakfast. Uh, there's so I'm gonna if we're throwing out uh you know a place, breakfasts we love. So every Sunday, uh me and my family go to the Silver Spoon uh in Durham, which is like uh this uh wonderful diner. It it clearly used to be a pizza hut based on the building shape. Incredible it's been bought and converted into the Silver Spoon. It's run by this uh very, very lovely uh Palestinian family. And they've got uh they do a really good eggs benedict. They also do something called a country scramble, which is very similar to an eggs benedict, but like a little bit more. Like my the one thing about an eggs benedict is I feel like I could probably eat two of like the the normal proportions, proportion sizes of eggs benedict.

SPEAKER_04 8:39

Jesus. Oh, cool.

SPEAKER_03 8:40

But the country scramble, like it's got the holiday sauce and it's like a little bit more substantial. So if I'm very hungry, I get the country scramble from the silver spoon. If I'm a little less hungry, I'll get the eggs benedict. But wonderful spot, very nice people. If you're in Durham, North Carolina, definitely give it a shot. What about you, Johnny? You're uh uh from Jolly Old England, which is famous for its breakfast. Do you do a full English?

SPEAKER_02 9:03

Well, ordinarily at home, I'm a bit like you, Meg. I've I entertain the fantasy every weekend of okay, well, I'm gonna get up nice and early, I'm gonna put the coffee on, I'm gonna do the tomatoes, the beans, the mushrooms, and the this and that and the other. Generally, that doesn't happen, and it's normally just a piece of toast or some, you know, some porridge or whatever it is. Although I've been very, very lucky because while I've been on tour, uh I've mostly been staying in hotels and particularly of a particular English brand of hotel called the Premier Inn. And the Premier Inn has a cooked breakfast every single morning, and for a modest sum of money, you can have unlimited full English breakfast items.

SPEAKER_04 9:45

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 9:46

Now, that I always view as a challenge, not an offer. So I've been going downstairs every single morning. Yeah, absolutely. Oh it's like tunnel vision, guys, it really is. And I lock in, I mean, I didn't know quite how many hash browns I could fit within myself. Uh now I do. Uh, and it would be indecent of me to say on the pod exactly what that number is. Uh, but it's more than you think. Indeed, indeed. It was absolutely wonderful, especially uh finding funny, particularly, we were in the north of England uh uh this week, and we've been discovering that northern hoteliers in England are extremely generous with their portions. So you'll order what you it's absolutely amazing. So um I'm I'm vegetarian, so I have sort of veg uh like sausage and bacon equivalents, like you know, the sort of meat replacement things. And um we were in uh we were in Prescott where we opened uh in at a lovely theatre called the Shakespeare North Playhouse uh on the north in the northwest of England, and um I ordered my my my fairly what I knew was going to be a fair bit of food, and the the wonderful woman who served me came out with my um veggie sausages and veggie bacon and she sort of said it looked like not very much bacon, so I got the chef to double this bacon for you. It was a huge pile of bacon, like half of that would have been a huge amount. Honestly, and then so obviously I then I I felt I was space I was still full that evening stepping on stage to do to do Shakespeare. It was marvelous. As Shakespeare would have wanted with good cape online. That's definitely how I felt that on every single one of those performance nights.

SPEAKER_03 11:28

Yeah, uh the the full English has always been kind of like fascinating to me. Like uh the hot tomato and the beans. The mushroom makes perfect sense to me, but the hot tomato and the beans have all were always kind of a seemed like an odd aspect of it. But i i I understand it's basically uh it's a crucial aspect of a full English.

SPEAKER_02 11:45

Yes. Well, if if if only because it's the only actual um source of vitamins in the breakfast. There you go. Because the rest of it is just the brownest group of foods you can possibly imagine. I'm I'm bit I'm gonna get lynched by my fellow Brits for suggesting that actually. You are, and lots of veggie breakfasts actually will they'll have a little bit of spinach in, but even that is considered sacrilege by some. I I I love it. But otherwise you are.

SPEAKER_04 12:12

Well, you're supposed to eat it and then go like build a bridge. Yeah, whereas and so you need the the starch and the you know, that's the limit of what I know about food. But like it's supposed to be like, you know, you go off and with your arms do something, not like sit in a bank like an industry. But yeah, time is absolutely digital. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:32

Yeah, it's just 400 hash browns. Oh whoops, I've revealed the number. Um and then and and then you and then you go down the mines, yeah, or something like that. But uh, yeah, now it's we're we're not as a society, we've we've retained the full English breakfast, but we've kind of we've lost track of exactly what it was kind of for.

SPEAKER_03 12:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 12:52

I think we've brought it back to Melville in a really interesting way. Breakfast like as a ghost of the industrialized past, even though we aren't industrialized in that same way, but like the food retains the shadow of what we used to use it for.

SPEAKER_03 13:06

No, I think that's totally right.

SPEAKER_02 13:08

The beautiful reliability with which you can draw us back to the to the text at hand, Meg. It never ceases to amaze me. Well done.

SPEAKER_03 13:18

Okay, yeah. So like getting to our chapter, uh, Meg, you do these really wonderful recaps of our chapters. Um, do you want to give this one a go?

SPEAKER_04 13:26

Yeah, so the breakfast is um we're coming, um, we're coming on um or off hot off the tails of Kuiqueg left the room at the end of um counterpain, and breakfast picks right off there, where Ishmael basically follows, puts, gets dressed and follows him into the bar room, where the rest of the tenants in the house have gathered, like old school um landlords don't do this anymore, but like you used to like stay in like you know the big house and they would make you breakfast in the morning as we you and I might do now in like a uh a BB. They're waiting for the landlord to serve breakfast. Um Ishmael reflects on the fact that he harbors no bitterness towards Peter Coffin, despite what he calls Peter Coffin's skylarking, regards to sort of like the goofiness of um getting him into bed with Queequeg. Um, and then there's this very sweet paragraph where Ishmael observes basically that it's kind of better for all of humanity to be able to take a joke, that that's kind of a skill that you should cultivate. Um he also observes amongst the whalemen, again, this thing that we talked about weeks ago, which is that he equates um or he reports an equivalence between browner skin with having been on a whale ship longer, which he equates with competency. So he sort of that that pops up again, and then he says, No one shows a que uh a cheek like a Kuiqueg. Then breakfast is finally served, which is great. Um, and then something strange happens, which is that Ishmael is like, I'm so ready to hear all their crazy wailing stories, I'm getting into whaling mode, whale mode activated. But then no one uh talks to each other. And he says, actually, the silence seems embarrassed, and this seems strange to him. So he kind of sits there, Kuiqueg is like reaching across the table with his spear to like get a steak, and Ishmael is like, Well, I'll leave him to a smoke, and then he walks outside.

SPEAKER_03 15:24

Love it. No, that's wonderful. Okay, Johnny, what what are your first impressions of this chapter?

SPEAKER_02 15:29

I love, first of all, the contrast that we get between this group of sailors here compared to how they were described when they first arrived at the Spouter Inn. I love that they are formerly described as an eruption of bears, and here they have been tamed back into a group of bashful bears, and the incredible contrast that is implied as part of that between the land and the sea. This is something that we have spoken about a a great deal before, and the kind of the land boundedness of these chapters and the way that that's articulated. But these are people who have been so shaped by their existence at sea that it becomes completely inseparable from who they are, and that they seem to become these slightly more subdued personalities when they are not in that place, which has more or less become their home. One of the ways I think in that's that that's articulated is this incredible section where we get the list of professions. Um let me see if I can quickly lay hands on it. Yeah, here we are. Uh, they were nearly all whalemen, chief mates and second mates, and third mates, and sea carpenters, and sea coopers, and sea blacksmiths, and harpooniers, and shipkeepers, a brown and brawny company with bossy beards. On the one hand, I think it's really funny that you can effectively just choose any profession from the land and just put sea in front of it, and you just become that version of that sea.

SPEAKER_04 16:57

Yes, a sea barista.

SPEAKER_02 16:59

A sea barista.

SPEAKER_04 17:00

Yeah, it's whatever.

SPEAKER_02 17:01

Sea plumber, um, yeah, sea ballerina, we have to assume.

SPEAKER_04 17:05

Don't forget them, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:06

No, absolutely very essential to a whaling voyage. Um and and that and that on the one hand, yeah, I of course I find that very funny and and quite silly as an idea. But on the other hand, um I think it casts a really interesting light on the necessity of these earthbound professions while human beings are at sea. Uh a ship, after all, being a kind of an artificial land that requires maintenance in order for it to be a habitable place. And that's something that I think comes, yeah, it comes across really, really beautifully in as part of the figuration of these of these seamen on land.

SPEAKER_03 17:47

No, I love that. Um I yeah, no, it is a very interesting contrast. Uh one of my like alternative readings, uh, I'd say like this is uh a second reading from like what I think like uh the the the reading you have, which I I think makes a lot of sense, like uh the the subduedness of being online, like uh on uh of tarrying on shore and like how that seems to like suck something out of the sailor. Uh my other thought is are these guys really hung over? Because they were like having quite the bender before.

SPEAKER_02 18:19

The the New England measures were flowing, weren't they?

SPEAKER_04 18:22

They drank, they sent the Cape Horns on the Cape Horns, yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_02 18:26

I think that that's I I don't think those two interpretations are mutually exclusive at all. No.

SPEAKER_04 18:33

They needed an ex-benedict apocryphal created as a hangover, as a hangover cure. Yeah, yeah, that's good.

SPEAKER_03 18:41

Yeah, um, so in at the very beginning of this uh chapter, uh, we get what uh Meg you were talking about before, which is this uh uh re-encounter with uh Peter Coffin, um, in which he's uh you know he's still got his grin on from before. Um what do we think about like uh Ishmael's I would say very mature reaction to Peter Coffin's uh skylarking? What do you think, Meg?

SPEAKER_04 19:07

I think this is interesting. The breakfast um and the street, which we'll get to, are both in uh what we would call summary, not scene. There's one thing when the landlord speaks when he's like breakfast is ready, that's in scene, but everything else is like sort of is summarized, some sort of god's eye, and we get kind of a lot of um places where you can tell it's present-day Ishmael or storytelling Ishmael. And I think this is an interesting paragraph um in that um is this what young Ishmael was thinking at the time, or is this sort of the um narrativizing present-day Ishmael saying, like, looking back, I was glad that I didn't make a fuss about it the next day because it would have been unsporting. But I do think this is sweet as a um a place where we can see some of the values of our narrator. The idea that um, you know, again, we're we are believe it or not, still in the early pages of this book. We still are learning about what Ishmael, what are his values, what kind of what kind of personality does he have? Um, and it's it's sweet, I think, coming off of um the previous couple of pair of chapters where he was so full of anxiety that now amongst people, he seems to he would use the word civilized, but it seems like he does sort of have a sense of like good sportingness and like it's okay to kind of be laughed at, like shrug it off for the good of the group. Turns out my roommate's a nice guy. I hope to hear these people's stories. Like he seems like, as we perhaps predicted, perfectly capable of getting along in kind of a group of quasi strangers. Um and um I I think the lesson of this paragraph, which is you know, uh, if you can if you can laugh about something, you're you've, you know, you're you're set up well for the rest of your for the rest of your life, shows us something kind about our about uh our narrator that he didn't necessarily have to have.

SPEAKER_03 21:04

Yeah, yeah. And I I I think also like even if Peter Coffin like uh uh intends this uh forcing together, like this forced proximity between Ishmael and Quequeg as like a joke that he's like constantly laughing to himself about, uh Ishmael's uh best night of like his best night of sleep of his life is a product of this, right? Even if like uh Peter Coffin's intentions may be a little bit more selfish in a sense, or like you know, like uh to get a laugh out of this, it's it's such an impactful meeting for Ishmael that I feel like it makes sense that like he cherishes just no uh uh ill will towards Peter Coffin. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 21:45

If you sleep well, you're untouchable. And he's clearly got the advantage over, or it seems like he has an advantage over all of these um very hungover.

SPEAKER_02 21:56

Bashful bears.

SPEAKER_04 21:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:58

The bashful bears. You two have really Persuaded me on that because I had come kind of keyed up with a slightly different approach to that.

SPEAKER_03 22:05

I want to hear it still. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:06

And I was I I almost got the sense that Ishmael was protesting a little bit too much, a little bit like in that previous conversation with Peter Coffin when he says, I'm not, I'm not I'm not green, you know, don't think me green. You know, I've I've done this before, I've got experience and all that kind of thing. There, that's definitely what's happening. He's kind of he's he's trying desperately to kind of keep face. But I th but I now, based on what you two have been saying, I think that's a that's too cynical a way of reading that paragraph. Um it could be the case that you can find that train of thought in the Ishmael to whom the events of the narrative have just been happening. But I certainly I re I really, really like that reading of a more reflective Ishmael, and that yeah, actually this is a this is a better way to be. And that actually it's a more it's actually a much more positive thing than I had perhaps thought it was before.

SPEAKER_04 22:59

It could be, yeah. I mean uh yeah, I think your I think your reading is interesting. It uh the the thrust of it all is that we're seeing Ishmael in a social situation really for the first one of the first times, and learning about what does he had protested so much about being in one, now he's in one, and so now we have to learn things. This could have been a chapter where he you know backhands coffin and is like, why'd you do it? You know, like this could be an Ishmael who doesn't. There are so many other options, but instead Melville was like, he's gonna be cool and um hopes to get along and and make new friends. So for whatever whatever interpretation we want to put on it, that's the evidence given.

SPEAKER_03 23:36

Definitely. Yeah, uh, and also sometimes like the thing that is maybe more enlightened and morally good, especially if it like conforms with self-interest as well. Like the the two things, like those two motivations can like coexist at the same time, or it can be easier to it can be easier to have the uh like more enlightened position, especially if it like is like rewarding in a sense. Like let's say he didn't have a good night's sleep and it was horrible, but he still wanted to not seem like a green like uh whaler or whatever, he could still have had that same reaction to Peter Coffin, but uh like be you know in in order to like kind of protect his ego or whatever. Um, but like the kind of the confluence of the two, uh like kind of the confluence of those readings, like and the confluence of uh those motivations, I think uh results in this behavior.

SPEAKER_02 24:29

Yeah, certainly. And I think that what you've just hit on there, Tristan, speaks to something that we we are already discovering and that we'll continue to discover with our reading of Moby Dick, that seemingly polarized readings can actually both be true. Like multiple readings of given things can be active at once, and that's something that I think we've already seen Melville start to include as an element, but actually also to thematize as well with those like we we come back to the boggy soggy squidchy picture, which kind of is able to be all of those things that he suggests that it is in a certain way.

SPEAKER_03 25:08

Yeah, no, I like that, like kind of like a superpositionality, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:12

Oh god, oh my goodness, yeah, what a word. Yeah, fantastic.

SPEAKER_03 25:18

Moving on a bit to like the the next part of that paragraph. What do we think about uh Ishmael's philosophy of uh you know uh being the butt of a joke?

SPEAKER_02 25:29

I think I think it's important to know what is bountifully laughable about oneself.

SPEAKER_03 25:34

Yeah, I'm kind of pompous. Uh self-aware king.

SPEAKER_04 25:38

It's a social grace for sure. I think it's a skill that you can that you can get better at. Uh what I really like about this paragraph, and I'm just sort of just seeing it now, is um, Tristan, it reads like Christ would talk. Think of this in Christ voice.

SPEAKER_03 25:53

Okay, let's see.

SPEAKER_04 25:54

Um so if any one man in his own proper person affords stuff for a good joke to anybody, let him not be backward, but let him cheerfully allow himself to spend and be spent in that way. And the man that has anything bountifully laughable about him, etc. Yeah, that sounds like something that like Father Mike would say at the thing, you know, on like a Sunday, you know, church. Yeah, I think that's the way the rhetoric of that makes it sound like English translated the King James Bible. I think that's funny.

SPEAKER_03 26:23

Yeah, it's it's kind of like a Sermon on the Mount sort of feel to it. Yeah. Okay, so yeah, we've got our barroom full of borders, they're all hung over. Um and uh uh I I think one of the most like uh interesting for like a lot of different reasons, like from like a uh an ideology of race perspective, from an ideology of like what it means to be a sailor perspective. Uh this paragraph uh about uh the the young fellow's healthy cheek is like a sun-toasted pear in June, and like all these uh very vivid descriptions of basically complexion and how complexion relates to uh like basically lack of complexion is an indication of lack of nautical skill.

SPEAKER_02 27:07

I think it's flawed logic, and I think it's a logic that reveals itself to be flawed in the uh wonderfully kind of diverse community that we get on the Pequod uh and the deliberately diverse profile of people that we see aboard the ship, um, which extend to children as we find out, but also child I'm thinking specifically of a young boy called Pip, who is very distinctive in the way that he is marked racially. He is a non-white character, but he nonetheless is a character who is in the tech's own terms, makes him a kind of a green character. He's very, very new to the world of whaling.

SPEAKER_05 27:48

True.

SPEAKER_02 27:49

And yet we've got characters who are very, very clearly more coded as white who are who are very, very experienced. So I think it's um it's an interesting working theory that Ishmael comes up with prior to his first whaling voyage. Again, I think this very much comes from the pre-voyage Ishmael rather than from the narrating Ishmael.

SPEAKER_05 28:11

Interesting.

SPEAKER_02 28:11

And and my sense here is that it's probably a theory that is set up to be revealed as largely untrue as the text progresses. Though I'm aware that there may be differing opinions on that.

unknown 28:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 28:24

Yeah, I think. Yeah. What do you got, Meg?

SPEAKER_04 28:26

Well, I'm thinking, yeah, it's so there's there's so much here. Look at this this full plate. Um for sure. I think yeah, a couple of things are happening, which is that one, I think he's telling us something that just is maybe physically true to light-skinned people, which is that on a boat you're gonna tan. And then when you come on shore and you can go inside more, if you are naturally paler, you will lose the tan. Sure. Um, but I think something that's sort of, as I think about, especially with the end of is it the end of the chapter? No, it's the end of the street when we start to talk about ladies. We're in a society that I think is still that's gonna sound stupid. It's obviously um uh prioritizing paleness, but like even like white women are trying to use paleness as what a class indicator. I don't have to work, I can stay inside. I've got my huge nails on. I have been thinking about class so much for like two weeks with these huge nails, which I can't do anything in them. But I look beautiful. I'm like, wow, I can't open a can. And then I snap my fingers, and you know, what's his name from the Fresh Prince comes in and does it for me because I have a butler. But in any case, like this is also this is showing um maybe kind of as we were talking about last chapters, like Ishmael is starting to learn what the whaling ship culture is like, as opposed to whatever he was doing before. And he's saying, So for my reader, um, you actually want to prioritize getting tan and getting browner because that means that you are working, and this is a book about working. So it's it might be Ishmael starting to kind of reroute. It's interesting because the paragraph doesn't show him realizing this, what rather, rather, he's giving it to us like gospel. This is something that um that does happen, not something that's dawning on him in real time. Um, but it is necessary, it is still something that he specifies. So we take the time to show all these really lovely um sort of like simile and like the pear, and you're like, ooh, say more about the the pear-hued man who smells musky, like let's go. And no one shows a cheek like Queequeg. Um, so maybe the whole thing is really just about Quequeg, and he just like has wants to find a new way to talk about him.

SPEAKER_02 30:42

I think that's as a as a as a counterpoint that's just come to mind when we're thinking about the kind of the premium or the kind of prestige that's attached to the to the altering of one's complexion. This kind of conversation cannot but make me think of um Persuasion by Jane Austen, where we get the which is a very, very naval novel. Lots of the cast in that novel are uh are are sailors, the you know, um captains and admirals and all that kind of thing. And then within that society you've got this gloriously and terribly foppish and arrogant and vain man, Sir Walter Elliott, who is the the kind of the patriarch of the um of of of an aristocratic family, and he's the father of the of the protagonist, and he is so anti-sailors, and that's partly because uh, in his own words, it it uh the the navy brings people of uh of obscure birth into undue distinction, but also because, in his view, it makes them look a certain way, it makes them look uncivilized.

SPEAKER_04 31:41

Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:41

So that yeah, he says that yeah, he says that being a sailor cuts up a man's youth and vigour most horribly. A sailor grows old sooner than any other man. And then we get a description of a sailor, somebody called Admiral Baldwin. Um, and it sounds remarkably like some of the characters that Ishmael sees here. Uh so I just pulled up the passage. Uh, what did he say? The most deplorable looking personage you can imagine. His face the colour of mahogany, rough and rugged to the last degree, all lines and wrinkles, nine grey hairs of a side, and nothing but a dab of powder at top. And that's uh and that's the most horrendous thing that Sir Walter can possibly imagine.

SPEAKER_04 32:24

Oh, what a guy. Yeah, so the C becomes this place where the sort of uncomfortable, you know, translation is possible between like some a potentially, you know, white person could kind of become de-racialized or quasi-racialized from that Walter Elliott perspective, or um, maybe even something that earlier Ishmael would have would have worried about, um, where you can you can start to be like, well, is that person white? And the anxiety there is too much for these land people.

SPEAKER_02 33:00

Yeah, but but both both texts though speak to the life at sea as something of a social leveler. Because the other part of of Walter's anxiety is hang on, well, why why are all of these nobodies getting titles like captain and admirable? Like that they're not they're not aristocracy, they're not baronets as he is, you know, and he and he's incredibly anxious about that. Um, whereas actually that's something that's that's that's that becomes a very, very positive thing in Moby Dick, right? The the sea and the profession of whaling as an incredible um kind of leveling thing in terms of class, but also as we're as we're discovering more and more in terms of race as well.

SPEAKER_03 33:38

I I find this uh last sentence of this uh paragraph very interesting. Uh so like who could show a cheek like Kuiqueg, which barred with various tints, seems like the Andes western slope, to show forth in one array contrasting climates zone by zone. And to me, like here we have another like uh uh Ishmael, like understanding the world through Kuiqueg's body, and very specifically, like Kuiqueg's body becomes like the world, like like you know, like uh this section of this continent.

SPEAKER_02 34:06

It's another really interesting precursor to Kuiqueg's tattooed body, is containing a complete theory of the heavens and the earth. Here we are still very much kind of land-based. Uh, we've got the Andes here. There's a reference to the Cretan Labyrinth in a previous chapter, isn't there, as well? Um interesting that that's mythological rather than topographical or or geographical in any sort of objective sense. Um, but yeah, it's it's another really, really fascinating continuation of this kind of topographical exploration of Kuiqueg, as well as the affective relationship that takes shape between between Kuiqueg and Ishmael here, and also in earlier chapters and and and as the novel moves, as the text moves forward.

SPEAKER_04 34:56

I think it's also just uh sort of an interesting um another way where uh this podcast is so spread out, but again, we we really have just met this guy. Um it's worth sort of saying that Ishmael is still like, oh, no one has outranked him for tattoos. He's still like the craziest looking guy here. And for Ishmael, that being you know, physical appearance now starting to be kind of what the book is gonna be about for like for what can I plumb the depths from the outside? Um, Kuiqueg is still the most interesting exterior. Um, he sits at the head of the table, so it chanced, cool as an icicle, which I think is awesome. Uh so it's still like he, you know, Ishmael has so much to say about the room, um, but still no one can hold a candle to his roommate. I think maybe he's thinking a little bit of pride of like, yeah, that's my friend. We slept together, and it was awesome. If someone had spoken to him, that's what he would say.

SPEAKER_03 35:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:54

None of these men with their bosky beards can compete. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um interestingly, on the word bosky, um, I went down a little rabbit hole on this, and the earliest attestation of the word bosky according to the Oxford English Dictionary is in Shakespeare. And it comes from the Tempest.

SPEAKER_04 36:10

Let's go. Let's go. Does it mean like foresty kind of it absolutely does?

SPEAKER_02 36:15

Yeah, that's good. Yes.

SPEAKER_04 36:16

That's good. Did Shakespeare make up that word? Is that one of is that a Shakespeare word? Or the first earliest recording is Shakespeare then?

SPEAKER_02 36:23

Earliest recorded use of the word boski, whether he invented it or not, is uh what a guy.

SPEAKER_04 36:29

What a guy.

SPEAKER_02 36:30

What a guy. Didn't invent the word bosque, but but the adjective. Yes.

SPEAKER_04 36:34

Well, he did a lot of that. Like he would make, he would add an un to a word, and then that cut on like wildfire. Yeah, that's great.

SPEAKER_02 36:39

Yeah. Including the word sky ye, which comes up somewhere, like meaning sky-like, which I think is just wonderful.

SPEAKER_04 36:46

Sky. Yeah, that's good. That's good.

unknown 36:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 36:50

Okay, so Grub Ho now cried the landlord, flame flinging open a door, and then we went to breakfast. So we've got breakfast now. We've got our hot rolls, and we've got our the the best of pea coffee. Um, what what do we think uh so like we talked about a little bit? Uh we have this interesting chapter here which is full of some interesting references. Did y'all do any digging on these Leadyard and Mungo Parks?

SPEAKER_02 37:12

Uh they are late 18th century explorers.

SPEAKER_03 37:15

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 37:17

That's all I've got.

SPEAKER_04 37:18

Yes. Uh yes, yes. I will I go to Power Moby Dick, basically, for all of my references. So Leadyard was with James Cook, who um went to Hawaii. Not the first person there. I think uh he was duly killed somewhere, which is probably good. And then uh Mungo Park is a Scottish guy in Africa, obviously. So what so our question is like, what's up with using these real life explorers as sort of an analogy to anything in this space?

SPEAKER_03 37:50

Yeah, so uh Ledyard, I'm not exactly sure how to pronounce this. I'm gonna go with Ledyard. So he uh I've found that he wrote the first travelogue about Hawaii, which I think would be uh is is relevant to uh Melville because like his earliest works are sort of travelogish. Travelogues, yeah. Um and we do know that like uh Melville like read a lot of like other people's kind of travelogues, especially like as it relates to like Polynesia, to like inform uh parts of his early books. Um he doesn't seem to like uh hold him in terribly high esteem, um at least as it relates to uh high social polish. Um we do get an interesting uh like very racialized uh uh indication of uh Mungo Park's achievements, uh namely uh taking a long solitary walk on an empty stomach in the Negro heart of Africa, which was the sum of poor Mungo's performances.

SPEAKER_02 38:47

I mean it seems that what this is doing, at least in part, is furthering that sense of okay, here are these objective historical things that happened, and here is a way in which my world that I'm creating is in some way going to surpass that. We spoke about this a great deal when we spoke about the extracts, but also in in earlier chapters when we get fictional people and places set alongside real people and places as as figures of authority and that kind of thing. And so I think it's uh interesting in as much as it introduces and underlines the research that Melville has done and the kind of quote unquote authority that comes with that. Yes, but also that exactly, yeah, the the ethos, the ethos of the entire text, but also the sense in which uh Melville is quite consciously going beyond these previous uh accounts of of what's of what's come before. And and Owen Chase is another great example of that, right? Here's here's this thing that happened, here's this historical account that I'm anchoring my narrative in, and you as my reader need to have these things in your mind, if only to be aware of how I'm actually in some way surpassing these these narratives with my fiction, but that is also very strongly undergirded by reality.

SPEAKER_03 40:12

Yeah. Here's a question. Do you think Ishmael, I guess I think probably here the Ishmael who's uh recounting the tale would view himself as being like these two, or would he do you think he views himself as having like somewhat of a high social polish?

SPEAKER_04 40:29

It's interesting because he's setting these guys up as even though they did all these things, they're socially awkward. Which um Ishmael has not really proved himself to be. We've seen him do the, you know, he was freaking out about Kuiquai, but that was kind of a weird situation. He seems to, as we were saying on just the previous page, place a high premium on ease and sociability and kind of go with the flowness. And he's saying, despite these guys, this is a funny paragraph. They say that men who have seen the world thereby become quite at ease in manner quite self-possessed in company. Like you would imagine, you know, some sort of Victorian gentleman becomes great in the parlor, has all these stories, very articulate, very urbane, charming by having been so cosmopolitan. But then he gives us these two examples as counter-arguments and says, Well, these guys did these crazy things, but that being alone in the sled dog doesn't actually make you better a dinner companion. But then at the end of the paragraph is like, but mostly it does. But then the next paragraph is, but these guys weren't talking. So it's this weird like argument counter-argument, argument, counter-argument to sh to set up the ultimate point, which is it was weird to me that these whalemen had nothing to say at breakfast. And to come to that point by way of these two real examples of men who did these crazy things but weren't transformed into like better um social creatures is interesting in that Ishmael is maybe like, is this going to happen to me? Are these good examples interesting questions? When we're thinking about civilization living alongside the the uncivilized whalers in this town and this whaling town um thrust together.

SPEAKER_03 42:21

Yeah, to pursue that a little bit further, um, and this time to like you know take a step outside the book and thinking about uh Melville himself, he's kind of a case where like having gone on a weird, crazy trip is what like like had this effect on him, right? Like it so but before he started writing down his stories, he would recount them to people like at like kind of parties or get-togethers and stuff. And like it was through that experience of like retelling his uh own experiences out in Polynesia that he was like uh like basically decided to like start writing these uh sorts of things down. Um and being like this like famous as the uh the man who lived among the cannibals, um, did have like a a notably like uh big effect on like his social standing. He's coming from like a very socially like like downwardly mobile mobile family. Um and and he ends up uh marrying uh what the the the daughter of the chief justice of uh Massachusetts, if I'm remembering correctly. Um like he does have this like uh big jump up in social status through this process. And so like uh it's interesting in my mind for his his Ishmael to like point out that that's one not always the case, um, especially when it's something that like would have been like very personally like uh relevant to Melville.

SPEAKER_02 43:38

Yeah, it's an interesting one, uh particularly because there is evidence that Melville further on in his life sort of overplayed the extent to which he was involved on the whaling voyages that he was on. I believe I'm writing saying there is at least one letter in which he claims to have been a harpooner where and we know that he never was. So, you know, I I I I absolutely see what you mean, Tristan, but uh there there is also a sense in the same way, actually, that Ishmael really, you know, as as we already started seeing, he started kind of co-opting the identity of whalemen. Uh, there is absolutely a sense that that Melville does a little bit of that. And a lot of that is completely justified in Melville's case, and it becomes very, very uh justified in Ishmael's case. But at the same time, I think there is still a slight biographical um there's there's a similarity there biographically between us uh with a slight tendency on the parts of both of them to potentially kind of overstate their cases when it comes to the prestige of of of of being on a whaling voyage.

SPEAKER_04 44:45

Makes sense though, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 44:46

Yeah, uh, and then like a fascinating way to like wrap up this like uh digression, like or this paragraph is still for the most part, uh, that sort of thing is to be had anywhere in relation to high social polish. Um, which I think is like an interesting way to like wrap that up and like sort of uh cast it aside in a sense. And I I think like in a sense he's right, you know, you don't have to do it all these uh crazy things to be good in a parlor.

SPEAKER_04 45:10

Yeah, and to be crazy things doesn't necessarily guarantee you being good in a parlor. But then it's is being good in a parlor important because we're not in a it's not a book about the parlor, it's a book about the whale ship. Or you could say the parlor changes to the whale shift.

SPEAKER_03 45:32

Yeah, uh, so they're all seated at the table. Uh there's no good stories, everybody's in a profound silence. In my mind, they're very hungover. Um, but even if they're not hung, or you know, in addition to that, they look embarrassed. Um it's interesting to me that they like seem they have this embarrassed sort of silence. Um and you could in my mind you could imagine Ishmael like having that, like especially like thinking about his encounter, thinking about like the uh uh like homo eroticism related to his encounter of the like the previous night. Like you you could I think it's like uh you know, especially like uh maybe somebody that wasn't Ishmael in kind of a similar sort of situation might be in have like this uh sense of embarrassedness the next morning. Ishmael doesn't seem to have this, he seems to be eager to like now that like he has had like this uh um instance of like contact or instance of like being a social being again, right? Um as it relates to Kuiqueg, it seems like he's like uh you know his cocoon has hatched and he's ready to be like this social butterfly now, to be like a whaleman amongst the whalemen, but like he's not getting that reciprocal now that he's ready to like seek out that sort of uh social interaction, it's not being reciprocated, or it's like uh it's just this embarrassed silence.

SPEAKER_02 46:50

But it's interesting and it probably speaks a little bit to Ishmael's greenness at this stage in the narrative that he's expecting every conversation that these whalemen have to be about whaling. Why would they be? Surely they would want to talk about absolutely anything else. It reminds me inescapably of this great story that Miriam Marguese tells about when she was in a play with Maggie Smith and Judy Dench, and they were all sat in the green room uh in a for a really early performance, and Marguese was there and she just didn't really know what to say to these kind of two theatrical greats. Um Marguerite, of course, is a gr a great sort of uh an acting great, but she probably wasn't at the time, you know, when at the same time that Maggie Smith and Judy Dench were. And apparently she just sat there and at one point she Maggie Smith was doing a crossword, and I think Judy Dench was knitting, and uh she just said, Um, shall we talk about acting? Maggie Smith just sort of looked up from her crossword at Miriam Margalies and just says, Oh no, let's not.

SPEAKER_04 47:52

Oh my god, dream blunt rotation, absolutely. Of course. That's funny. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 47:58

And so that's that's what I imagine. It's the wailing equivalent of that.

SPEAKER_04 48:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 48:03

And so what I'm saying is that uh Ishmael is being played by Miriam Margules in this chapter.

SPEAKER_04 48:08

Absolutely. She could do it.

SPEAKER_02 48:10

Oh, she could, and I think she should. We'll uh we'll our people will talk to her people.

SPEAKER_04 48:14

Good, that's great. Well, let's get this cooking.

SPEAKER_03 48:16

So, yeah, uh one of the uh I'm gonna mind you two for what the correct literary uh motif is, because I don't always remember the correct literary motif names. But he talks about the green mountains all the time. I think he loves the the green mountains as like a as a symbol of greenness, right? You know, uh uh like that's where you come from if you're like an idiot as it relates to uh all things nautical, who hasn't ever done anything. You're from the green mountains of Vermont. And we we've got this sentence here. Um so they're looking uh around as sheepishly at each other as though they had never been out of sight of some sheepfold among the green mountains. A curious sight, these bashful bears, these timid warrior whalemen. I I I personally love like uh being able to like in the geography of America, like identify, like have this like a uh location that like has this uh that's evocative for Melville in this way, as like a uh typifying this kind of person. And it's also like uh inland too, right? You know, Vermont's uh not coastal.

SPEAKER_02 49:16

I suppose it's a connotation, isn't it, between yeah, greenness and newness and sort of allowing that to spill out into yeah, into in into the inland world. I think that would probably be my my clo my best stab at sort of putting a pin in exactly what it is that's going on there from a literary technique perspective. Meg may have some advances on that.

SPEAKER_04 49:39

Well, I was just thinking, sort of from like a creative writing standpoint, always the more specific you can go, the funnier it is. Um it's the opposite to say that, oh, just go universal, go broad. That's the thing that everyone can relate to. The more, the smaller your pin can be, actually, the more universal that feels. And you were talking earlier, Johnny, about um the um the ethos of the text for him to be able to name real explorers from the point from Ishmael as storytelling tool, for him to be able to say, Oh, if you're from the Green Mountains, you're a fool. That may or not be true, and probably the men from the Green Mountains wouldn't appreciate that. But for us to be able to say, Oh, in this world, Ishmael thinks of this region as being backwoods hicks gives us a sense of his world. The sort of regional competition and the way that you know, two high schools that are close together would hate each other, and what all the different smaller and smaller and smaller regionalisms of New England would think about each other. Like, you know, maybe he's from New Hampshire and he just hates all Vermonters, or he's from like Maine and thinks everyone south is what like whatever. So I think um maybe I don't know what it means to be of the Green Mountains, but from reading the paragraph, it makes me sound like Ishmael knows of the region, that he has opinions, he seems like a realer person, the place seems like a realer place.

SPEAKER_03 51:03

Yeah, I I do think he like just loves that the the color name is there and like you know greenness being his yeah, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 51:13

It could be that simple. It just has green in the name.

SPEAKER_03 51:16

Yeah. Um moving forward, uh, we we get this description of Queekweg uh and his coolness. He's so cool. Oh my god. He is so cool.

SPEAKER_04 51:26

Uh and another parallel to being unruffelable as a social skill to do anything coolly is to do it gently. So again, it seems like this is of uh this is of high value to Ishmael, and that may be moving from sort of being able to um charm ladies in the parlor room, and it's moving to being able to work in a whale boat, but whatever genteel means is still very important to him. So he's Ishmael is using a harpoon, which he's like, that's rude, but you know what? He did it with style, and that's what's important to Ishmael. And we can still see that Quequeg is is still rising ever higher in his esteem for his ability to kind of just be like unruffled and like this is how I need breakfast. And Ishmael was like, Wow, he's so cool.

SPEAKER_02 52:13

No, I I think that's all absolutely true, and I think it's interesting that that description is prefaced with that in theory hypothetical clause. His greatest admirer could not have cordially justified his bringing his harpoon into breakfast with him. Well, who is his greatest admirer at this point? It's already Ishmael. And so it's we're we're we're it it's it's billed as something that's yeah, this kind of hypothetical. Oh, well, you know, even if even if you the person who sort of admired him the most in the world was would could couldn't attempt to do this. Well, it's it's so obvious at this point that yeah, it's even though Ishmael cannot necessarily justify it, he still can't help but notice, as his greatest admirer, that this is incredibly coolly done.

SPEAKER_04 53:01

Yeah, he the next sentence does that. And he does it in the next paragraph too. We won't speak of all the weird things about him, and then he lists some of the weird things about him. Okay, what do we have time for here, Ishmael? You're in charge.

SPEAKER_03 53:13

Yes, exactly. No, I I I love the yeah, I love that sentence. I love like the ambiguities there. Yeah, like kind of the the like a self-contradictory nature of the statement, like to say we will not speak of all of Quequeg's peculiarities here, how he eschewed coffee in hot rules and applied his undivided attention to beefsteaks done rare. It's such a weird sentence to me. Um because it it in saying what it like what he's not going to do, he says what like he does it. Yeah, he does it.

SPEAKER_02 53:41

For the for all the literary terminology junkies out there, this is called paralipsis. It's yeah, the the the the act of saying something by saying you're not gonna say it.

SPEAKER_05 53:51

Yeah, I like that.

SPEAKER_02 53:52

It happens, I mean, I mean, my goodness, now that I've now that I've put that out there, you'll start hearing it all the all the time in political rhetoric. Yeah, right. I will not say uh the uh that the honorable member is this, or you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_04 54:07

I can believe he did that.

SPEAKER_02 54:08

Yeah, it's it's exactly that. It's exactly that one. Use it all the time.

SPEAKER_03 54:12

Absolutely. Yeah. Uh so Kuiquag asschews the coffee and the hot rolls, uh, and applies his undivided attention uh to beef steaks done rare. I found this to be like an interesting detail, um, which is like we we get this like a couple of times. We also get uh mention of this in the spouter in where Peter Coffin's describing uh like Quequeg's like a culinary taste in a sense, and the idea of like the beefsteak done rare as being like indicative in some way of like uh cannibalness, or like, of course, a cannibal wants a beefsteak done rare. Now, beefsteak is uh not human meat, and I would imagine also that if you were to actually eat human meat, you would definitely not want to eat it rare, right? I feel like that that you you're opening yourself up to some parasites or something if you do that. Um but what what what do we make of uh like rareness and like the uh like meat specifically as like uh being like uh uh an indicator of like Queekwex identity?

SPEAKER_02 55:22

I think there's definitely something to be said for the fact that red meat done rare is going to have quite a lot of kind of juice and potentially blood still visible within it. I've not been I've been a herbivore for quite a few years now, so that that's a dim and distant memory, really. Um so into from a purely um visual point of view, as it were, I can kind of see why that comparison might be evocative of like a bleeding piece of flesh. I I don't know. I'll I'll I'll defer to the uh I'll I'll defer to you guys and and your potentially better judgments on that.

SPEAKER_03 55:57

Meg, do you eat meat? I think you said you did, right?

SPEAKER_04 55:59

I do, for sure. Yeah. I'm uh, you know, uh as as all civilized people now are, a medium-fair steak eater. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 56:06

No, why on earth I jumped in then as the as the podcast token vegetarian. I don't know why what's the idea.

SPEAKER_04 56:12

So we you know, like we're you know, eliminate illuminating things through its opposites.

SPEAKER_01 56:18

Yes, oh clearly a really useful tool.

SPEAKER_04 56:20

Yeah, it's really useful. Um but I mean I think it's um I mean just thinking about um perhaps this is a world where meat was cooked to death or it was like boiled and uh I mean, you know, from Kuiquek's point of view, this is the best way to eat it. I would agree with him. Maybe I couldn't be able to handle the harpoon to spirit and bring it to my plate, but like I would be with him in that corner eating the steaks. Um for breakfast, that's a that's strong. That might be a lot on on the tummy for the first thing you eat at like presumably like seven or eight in the morning. Um but yeah, the uh um my sort of stereotype of of the sort of Dickensian uh meat slop is not does not seem more delicious. But again, as we've been saying, what is this as a storytelling tool to tell us about Kuiqueg? I think we're supposed to think like the meat is really bloody, he doesn't cook it because he's bizarre and they they don't cook meat, which is obviously not true. Like, yeah, if you were eating a person, I mean the cooking montages on Hannibal were beautiful. He cooked that stuff to death, it was lovely. So it's not if you look at it too closely, you're like, cannibalism doesn't really have any analogy to rawness of meat or rareness, but I think very superficially, I think it's pretty easy that you can just be like, yes, the rareness of the meat is how um different is Kui Queg from his eating habits, because the other guys will be tossing it on the on the fire for longer.

SPEAKER_03 57:50

Yeah, two two things on this before we move on. One, just it just to put a pin in it, because we should talk about it uh more when we get to it later. But in Stubb's supper, um specifically, he like wants the cook, like he's mad at the cook for cooking his uh whale steak far too long. And he tells the cook, next time just hold up a live coal to the to meat for like a second and then give it to me. He wants it as rare as possible. And in in this in that chapter, Stubb really has this like uh there's like a real like uh animalistic uh sort of barbarism to Stubb.

unknown 58:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 58:25

So I think this is something we'll trace later. We'll we'll talk more about that.

SPEAKER_04 58:28

Stub is not right about much, but he was right about that. Get it warm, basically. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 58:34

Yeah. Um and then two, um, so to to put my uh Jesus hat back on. In Acts.

SPEAKER_04 58:41

So this is something a crown of thorns.

SPEAKER_03 58:45

Um what does the Jesus hat look like?

unknown 58:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 58:48

What does the Jesus hat look like? I'm gonna have to get a real Jesus hat. I'm gonna put it.

SPEAKER_02 58:53

We've already had listeners producing art for the pods. I mean, anybody who wants to make some fan art of the Jesus hat uh or the Shakespeare hat, uh right. Send it our way. Yeah, send it, send it to our DMs are open.

SPEAKER_03 59:09

They're all but like I I can't from like a biblical point of view under like uh so basically like if you like take the New Testament seriously, I don't know why Christians eat steak that uh still has blood in it, or like rare steak. Because in Acts, basically in Acts they say, okay, forget pretty much all of the restrictions on like eating different things. You can eat shrimp or whatever, like you know, forget all the stuff that's from the Old Testament, except uh four of these things. There's four rules from the Old Testament you still have to stick with. And one of them is not eating meat that has blood in it. Um, and there's nothing else in the New Testament that I'm aware of that like contradicts that, but for whatever reasons, it's something that uh I don't know any Christians that like uh hold to that. But hey, this is definitely still in the New Testament. This isn't even Old Testament stuff, this is in the New Testament, we're not supposed to eat meat with blood in it. I don't know any Christians that stick to that.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:05

Interesting.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:06

Interesting.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:07

Interesting.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:09

If you're a Christian, listen to this the show and don't eat meat with blood in it because of this uh prescription. Hit the DMs.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:14

Please. Uh what's going on there?

SPEAKER_02 1:00:16

Fan art and uh and and biblical clarification is really that's we need a lot of help. That's what our DMs are for, really.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:24

Yeah. Um so wrapping up, is there anything else that y'all wanted to bring up about this chapter? I I do know that we wanted to uh you you you I heard your voice uh your uh inhalation. Do you have some?

SPEAKER_02 1:00:36

Excited intake of breath. Yeah, let's hear it. I I well we've been talking a lot about the the kind of the animalistic vocabulary that permeates the chapter. We've spoken about the bashful bears and uh and and various other kind of physical ways in which the uh the sailors are described. I can't let this chapter go by without mentioning that this is the only time in Moby Dick that the phrase sea dog is used. Now, I for one didn't know, I didn't know that sea dog was originally used as a as a name for a harbour seal. And so it's interesting whether or not Melville is tapping into that, but the fact that he's explicitly using this name which equates the sailors with a creature, with a mammal of the sea, though not uh though though of course not a whale. I'm also interested in whether or not it's because it's a phrase that's used here very conspicuously, but then never again, in that sense, while we're using literary terms, it's a hapax logomena in it's a hapax logomenon, I should say. No, wait, which is the which is the singular? Hapax logomenon is the singular and hapax logomena is the plural. Yeah, hapax logomenon, there we go. Um must get my uh must get my Greek correct. Um and so I'm interested in that because it is it a phrase that one one would typically use of a seaman on a whale ship, or is it something that is potentially already slightly outdated as a term when Ishmael is applying it as the Ishmael who is witnessing this scene? Is he actually using a phrase that is already slightly outdated to talk about this kind of person? And then as the narrative goes on, he learns that it's actually not a phrase that he can do. To not use it, yeah. It's a it's a what it's a theory that's occurred to me as we've been talking.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:22

I like that a lot.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:24

But uh yeah, I also just wanted us to to to to be able to use the the the phrase sea dog on the pod before we let the chance slip by because it won't come up again. Very interesting.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:34

I love it. Um yeah, so uh I think we'd be remiss. Uh so we we've uh there there's been a break in the recording uh we um that we talked about last time. Um we there has been like a uh you know a huge figure in the field of Melville studies, uh, unfortunately passed away recently. Meg, did you want to talk to us a bit about this?

SPEAKER_04 1:02:55

Yes, so this man's name was um Herschel Parker, and um any sort of like literary criticism moment of um of Melville must pause uh upon his doorstep to sort of talk about. This um the work that he did to kind of bring Melville to the fore in American literature, and then also bring kind of American literature to like Capital L literature in the 20th century. Um I I can't tell the full story of the Melville revival because I I don't quite know it, um, but I think that would be sort of interesting to do a deep dive later on. But we can certainly talk about um this guy. He um uh was an um basically an American scholar who was very pro-archives, which makes me very happy. I'm very pro-archives. Um, but there is a um field of literary criticism that kind of started to blossom mid-century or sort of in the 60s, um, in the stage called New Criticism, which put very, very simply eschewed um our author biography or like con historical context or any documentary evidence to um analyze or criticize um a work. So, sort of if we talk about um death of the author, is sort of anachronistic, but like that could be uh uh something that you could sort of easily um probably a phrase that you've heard before. And um Herschel Parker didn't like this. So the Titanic work that he would go on to produce um, this two-part um Herman Melville biography, he went deep into Melville's letters that we could read and like putting together the story of his life, um, both as something that can be used to read a lot of his works, like Moby Dick or Billy Bud or White Jacket, etc., or confidence man, sort of those weird sort of later works where you're like, what is going on? And sort of he was kind of pushing back against the idea that um you shouldn't uh that there is nothing to be gained from documentary evidence to do either a biography of the author or of their works. So whether or not you agree with that philosophy necessary, it was interesting that he was pushing back against this sort of one field, and this one field pushed back against him. And then in 2013, he published another book called Melville Biography and Inside Narrative, which is a book about writing the biography. So, sort of depending on um the kind of nonfiction that you're interested in reading, I think it's fun. You could either read the biography or you can read the journey he took to create that biography, which is both sort of interesting about Herschel Parker and Herman Melville, and what is it like? What is it to write a biography? What kind of different things maybe you and I would just be like, well, you Wikipedia, what happened in his life, and then you kind of put it in prose. But there are a lot of different philosophies. And sort of like rhetorical approaches to creating that kind of work. And this is the kind that he took. It could be interesting to sort of think. Johnny, I read this section from a biography that was it, Northwestern University Press, whom he published a lot through, was talking about how he came to Melville. He said he was in school reading a lot of Shakespeare, taking a lot of Shakespeare classes. He came to Moby Dick, he said, across 11 afternoons. And it says that he was astounded, quote, that a 19th-century American Melville had read Shakespeare so profoundly, since Shakespeare, in that time in America, was not quite the dude that he is to us now. So it could be interesting sort of later on to talk about, like if we talk about Melville Shakespeare at sort of the middle of that Venn diagram, what was it to be interested in Shakespeare in America in like the 1840s and 50s before the way that we think of him now in school, you know, 800 years later, that this one guy just kind of gone to his mind, and then he would go on to like, what was it? He co-edited the Norton Critical Edition of Moby Dick. So he would go on to become like a Titan of Melville, but he did it through being impressed that this author in this work gleaned so much from not another obscure author, but um you know, this body of work that wouldn't necessarily have been so obvious to us then. And then was um Herschel Parker was basically just like critical in the 60s and 70s of bringing um um other American authors to be thought of as like serious literature in a way that maybe even be silly to us to think now that, well, of course, like Fitzgerald is important, but someone had to say that, and he was one of those people.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:48

Yeah, such a loss. Uh, thanks for that, Meg. Um, and we'll see everybody next time when we talk about the street. See y'all then.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:00

You've been listening to the Pequab Pod with Tristan Bavel Marquise, Meg Fansher, and Johnny Wiles. Our music is by Lost in the Loop with sound engineering by Lauren Aiton. The show's artwork is by Delaney Garrett, and Tristan is on the synths. We want to say a big thank you to all of our supporters on Patreon. You can join them over at patreon.com forward slash pequag pod for bonus content and for opportunities to help us keep the show running in ship-shaped condition. Ratings and reviews also really help us out, so if you enjoy the show, please do express your thoughts and metaphysical yearnings in the review section wherever you're listening to the show. Tell your friends, tell your foes, tell the white whale on whom you're monomaniacally urged to be revenged. It all helps.