Backlisted - Moby-Dick; or the Whale by Herman Melville

Episode Date: December 25, 2024

Join the Backlisted crew as we navigate the swells and surges of Moby-Dick; or the Whale by Herman Melville. That's right, Moby Dick is a Christmas book! Andy, John and Nicky welcome aboard novelist Jarred McGinnis and writer and editor Erica Wagner to discuss and celebrate this legendary literary leviathan, one that has sunk many a podcast before us. We enjoy a challenge on Backlisted, however; and there are few novels as challenging or rewarding as Moby Dick. So set sail with us in pursuit of Melville's white whale, with readings, songs and truly dreadful puns, on the Backlisted Christmas Special 2024: the Pequodcast that gives new life to an old - and magical - book. Bonus audio! We Wish You a Moby-Dickmas and Ahabby New Year! Andy compiled this playlist to tie in with the Backlisted Christmas Special 2024. It is sequenced to follow (loosely) the plot of Moby-Dick. WARNING! The final track is definitely NSFW i.e. Naughtily Subverting Free Willy. Do not play if there are small children around. * To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops. * For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm *If you'd like to support the show and join in with the book chat, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted *You can sign up to our free newsletter here  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, and welcome to the Christmas edition of Backlisted, the podcast which gives new life to old books. Today, you find us hanging up our stockings in the upstairs room of the Spouter Inn in New Bedford, Massachusetts, sometime in the mid-1840s. The room is dominated by a large bed, the only furniture apart from a small table. On the wall there's a print of a man lancing a whale, on the shelf above the fireplace a parcel of fierce-looking bone fish hooks. A large metal harpoon leans menacingly against the headboard of the bed. In front of the dying fire, a tall, heavily tattooed man lifts what looks like a large tomahawk to his lips and begins to puff clouds of smoke into the semi-darkness.

I'm John Mitchinson, the publisher of Unbound, where people pledge to support the books they really want to read. And I'm Andy Miller, the author of the year of reading dangerously. from Noelle's heart I stab at thee. Merry Christmas everybody. Merry Christmas everybody. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas. Let's raise a tot of rum to everyone listening at home.

There we go. Cheers everyone. Cheers. Cheers. A little clinking. Jared, there you are. Thank you. C.G. I'm here Jared, there you are. Cheers, Jared. Thank you.

CGI, I mean, like a little raccoon. Who have we got with us today? Captain. That's not bad. It's nice, isn't it? And for today's festive journey, we are joined by two jolly shipmates, one an old hand, the other on his maiden voyage. Please welcome to Batlisted the writer and editor Erika Wagner and the novelist

Jared McGinnis. A vast and seasonal greetings to both of ye, Erika and Jared. A vast away, Andy. Thank ye. Thank ye. Thank ye. One and all. Erika Wagner is editor-at-large for Boundless, a new magazine being launched by Unbound. She is the author of Chief Engineer, a biography of Washington Roebling, the man who built the Brooklyn Bridge, and a few other volumes besides. She has seen bowhead whales spout in the Arctic Ocean and stood at the graves of Lord Franklin's men. Now, those two biographical details are intriguing, Erica. Please expand

upon them. Where else could I include them but on this podcast? Yes, in 2008, I was lucky enough to travel up the coast of Baffin Island on a Russian icebreaker. And at one point we were surrounded by bowhead whales, which are quite rare now, spouting all around us. And then we landed at a place called Beachy Island. And on Beachy Island are the graves of John Torrington, William Brain, and one other, three of Franklin's men who died. And they were still burying them at that point. They weren't eating them before they... They dug them up, hadn't they? They defrosted them all. They found them all in the ice.

Yes, they did. Yes, they found them all in the ice. And they were all kind of miraculously, mostly miraculously preserved. So this was Franklin's expedition to find the Northwest Passage in 1845. And anyway, that was... And they all went mad. And they were lead poisoning. They did. Lead poisoning and ate each other and it was a dark story. You know Erica, I can tell you've been on this show before because in the old days people just used to go, I've read the book, but now in fact we ought to say everybody that Erica in a bid to bring a bit more verisimilitude to this recording has currently walking around on a peg leg because

she did her ankle in, didn't you? Absolutely. That's right. We should also say I have complete commitment to Backlisted. This is officially your sixth appearance on Backlisted. Is it? Yeah, we'll go through them but we don't have a dozen. Okay. All right. Jared McGinnis was chosen by The Guardian as one of the UK's 10 best emerging writers. His debut novel The Coward was selected for BBC2's Between the Covers and listed for the Barbellian prize. He was the creative director for Moby Dick, Unabridged, a four day immersive multimedia reading of Herman Melville's masterpiece at the South Bank center in London, involving hundreds of participants. Jared, when did that take place? Uh, that would, gosh, that's now, um, my wife was pregnant with her

first child, so eight years ago. Yeah. Eight years ago. Yeah. Eight years ago. Yeah. And that didn't clearly diminish your love of Moby Dick. No, no. No, the first time I read it, I fell in love with it.

And it was just one of those ideas that, you know, the idea kind of packed at the shell until it came out. So yeah. Why do you think it's true, isn't it, in the 21st century that these public events around Moby Dick, be they dramatizations or readings of the whole text, what is it that's caught people's imaginations in the here and now? Yeah, I mean, so I think the one in New Bedford's been going on since the 20th century. I think it's been going on for decades. Yeah, it was just, it was around that time. I think it's been going on for decades. Yeah, it was just it was around that time. I think there was a brief

flourishing of c punk too, at the same time. And I don't know what it was. But I wasn't the one to think of it. I saw the new Bedford one, I participated in a kind of live reading in, in New York. And it just, it just kind of like, I won't, I think it's a book that's expansive enough. I think we are far more kind of social. And, you know, reading is a kind of solitary moment. And this is a kind of book that really is kind of creates that kind of, you know, need to kind of congregate and celebrate. It

is it is a holy tone. And yeah, certainly that was my motivation to do it kind of as big as possible. To make a festival out of one book was my idea. Well, listen, importantly, I'm going to take this stupid hassle. There we go. Also, there you go, Jared. We've done our due diligence now.

Not too yet, not yet, sweetie. No. All right, yes. So the thing you just said there, Jared, about coming together and celebrating, for those of you who are wondering why we would choose to do Moby Dick for our Christmas episode, that's probably one of the reasons why. That it seems to me there is some kind of communal spirit around this novel in a way that there might be around other books we've done, perhaps around the railway children. Clearly they've rarely been compared. I think it also has a sense, again, a rare comparison perhaps, but like A Christmas Carol, it is a story being told. I think you have a sense of

listening to a story being told. That's what we like to do at Christmas. We gather around and listen to stories and it suits that sensibility. One of the major influences of Moby Dick was Shakespearean tragedies. And so when you hear it performed, when you hear it read, that's when you really start to feel the kind of blank verse of Shakespeare. I mean, I have seen chunks of the novel reproduced as blank verse and it works perfectly, particularly the spoken bits.

So if you haven't already guessed, here in your ears on Christmas Day, we're here to celebrate the great Moby Dick by Herman Melville. Apart from being set in December, which it is, it begins in December, an evolving, a perilous journey, the book has at its heart a tale of redemption and rebirth, a modern fable to read alongside the Bible, Homer, Shakespeare and Milton. It's one of the most profound and original works of the human imagination. From its memorable opening sentence through to its devastating conclusion, the book is a modern epic, telling how Captain Ahab and his crew on the whaling ship the Pequod pursue Moby Dick, a huge white whale which has already taken Ahab's leg.

But that's just the plot. What really sets Moby Dick apart is that it's a sui-generous feat of literary imagination, a veritable literary plum pudding stuffed full of stories and strange and memorable characters overloaded with lore and learning about the natural history of whales themselves, the industry dedicated to turning them to all in food, the literature of the sea and sailing and much else besides. Moby Dick was originally published as The Whale in London by Richard Bentley in October 1851 and shortly after that by Harper and Brothers in New York as Moby Dick or The Whale. It was a botched publication.

They accidentally left out the epilogue which meant that reviewers said, but this book makes no sense because who can be narrating it? And in those reviews in turn were the ones that appeared in the States and promptly hold it in the water. You can see James Caan in his 19th century office saying, it doesn't matter. Nobody cares. They've left the epilogue off. Elf.

So it received mixed reviews. Didn't only receive bad reviews, it did genuinely receive mixed reviews. Good reviews in the UK, weirdly. Yeah, but it didn't sell well. The US first edition of 2,951 copies, half of those were sold before the reviews came out. And the reviews were so bad that over the space of the next few weeks and months,

that sales slowed to a trickle. In fact, it took 20 years to sell through the first edition and that's taking into account a warehouse fire that destroyed half the remaining stock. That's true. And at the time of Melville's death in 1891, the great novel Moby Dick had sold a total of, and this is in 40 years, 3,215 copies. With the result that after Melville then published several more, even more eccentric and unsuccessful novels, it brought his career as a novelist to an end. And to all intents and purposes, his career as a published novelist lasts a mere 10 years.

And he was writing Moby Dick in his early thirties. Yeah. And he spends the last 20 years of his life working as a customs inspector. Moby Dick, accounted by some of the greatest of all American novels, was out of print when he died. But all is not lost, Herman. 133 years later, your book is being celebrated on Christmas Day as a classic and we have put together an hour of Salt flake seasonally themed madness to talk about why it deserves such an honor but Before we plunge our hands into the brand tub on the foxel or scamper up the rigging to the crow's nest Here is a message from the ship's owners

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Keep chasing it. Drive your ambition. Mitsubishi Motors. And we're back. Hello everybody. Before I ask the traditional ballistic question, I think it would be really helpful if you haven't read Moby Dick, you think you know about it. We have a special guest joining us to give us a synopsis of Moby Dick. It's a little bit of

an eccentric synopsis, but it covers most points. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Greenwich Villages and Minnesota's own Bob Dylan. surface of things. We can interpret what lies below any way we see fit. Crewmen walk around on deck listening for mermaids, and sharks and vultures follow the ship, reading skulls and faces like you read a book. Here's a face, I put it in front of you, read it if you can. Tostigo says that he died and was reborn. His extra days are a gift. He wasn't saved by Christ though, he says he was saved by a fellow man and a non-Christian at that. He parodies the resurrection. When Starbuck tells Ahab that he should let bygones be bygones, the angry captain snaps back.

Speak not to me, blasphemy man. I'd strike the sun if it insulted me. Ahab, too, is a poet of eloquence. He says the path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, wherein my soul is grooved to run. For these lines, all visible objects, are but pasteboard masks, quotable poetic phrases that can't be beat. Finally Ahab spots Moby, and the harpoons come out. Boats are lowered. Ahab's harpoon has been baptized in blood. Moby attacks Ahab's boat and destroys it. Next day he sights Moby again.

Boats are lowered again. Moby attacks Ahab's boat again. On the third day, another boat goes in. More religious allegory. He has risen. Moby attacks one more time, ramming the Pequod and sinking it. Ahab gets tangled up in the harpoon lines and is thrown out of his boat into a watery grave. Ishmael survives. He's in the sea floating on a coffin. And that's about it. That's the whole story. And it was all a dream. That has to be the most eccentric, brilliant Nobel acceptance speech of all time.

That was Bob Dylan. That was an excerpt from Bob Dylan's acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize for Literature, which he won in 2017, I believe I'm right in saying. I think so. And Erica, you have done some research into Dylan's sources. Dylanology, a great professorial topic. Absolutely, very important. I'd also like to add, I think, how much that kind of weird, cool jazz piano music adds to that little excerpt. I want to have some piano underneath what I'm saying. Dylan took that to the Nobel ceremony and said, just tinkle in the background. But yes, apparently, it was worked out after he delivered this speech that a lot of that summary pretty definitely comes from spark notes. Because there are phrases that he uses to describe

the plot. But hey, you know, like we're all human. Love and theft man, love and theft. And also that's in the folk tradition. We will come onto the folk tradition later, but the folk tradition, which is to rearrange traditional thoughts in a new way. We always look to Dylan for that. Jared, so let me ask you then, the first of these. Inevit inevitable question. Where were you when you first read

Moby Dick or you first became aware of Herman Melville? As an American, you always know him. He's part of the canon. But I grew up in the south. So I grew up thinking that that Yankee had nothing to say to me. And then it was gosh, I was in I was working as a as a techie. I was working as a techie. I was an academic in AI and I was at a conference in Crete. Academia is not good for money, but it's good for travel. And my computer broke the very first day. So I had nothing but to read. I had nothing to work on. And I had my Kindle and I was like, well, I guess I'm going to read Moby Dick.

And, um, I just sat on the Cretan beach and the spell was cast and I just fell in love with it immediately. And it was just one of those, those moments when you're like, now I understand, I understand what it is. And, and like I said, it's, it's, it's one of my sacred texts. It is there. Like I see it I see it, my own writing, or just kind of vain attempts to reach what he was doing. Okay, so two questions, two further questions, brief answers, and then I'm going to turn to my colleagues and we'll do the same thing

for each of them. Did you read it straight through first time? No, it's bloody huge. Okay, good. Because I don't want people to think, if they haven't read it and they're intimidated by it, straight through first time. No, it's bloody huge. Okay, good. Because I don't want people to sit at home if they haven't read it and they're intimidated by it, that they have to just pick it up and rip through it. It doesn't work like that. Yeah, it's unfortunate. Yeah. I really think we, yeah, it's really unfortunate that we, the kind of education of literature, we should teach kids to read real, just forcing to read

garbage and then they'll sneak and they'll sneak off and rebel and read things of literature, we should teach kids to read real, just force them to read garbage. And then they'll sneak and they'll sneak off and rebel and read things like Moby Dick and find how beautiful and wonderful it is. But yeah, no, it's and it's it's a book you can read just as just pick up a random chapter and it'll give you something. When we had our conversation the other day, we agreed between us that Moby Dick is a book about everything. That's one of the magical, dark magic, perhaps one of the magical things about it. Nevertheless, Jared, if it had to be about one thing and one thing only, what is Moby Dick about? That's easy. Go on.

It's about death. There you go. Merry Christmas, everyone. Yeah. There we go. There we go. OK, great. Great.

OK. Thank you so much. Erica, to you. Well, like Jared, I am an American. I am a Yankee. I am a Northerner. So I was certainly, again, always aware of Melville. I probably tried to read it

sometime in the 11th grade, which is like the first year of A-levels around then or last year at GCSEs. When we were doing at my school American Studies, and if this is encouraging for any of our listeners, I really, really hated it. But as I used to say to my students in the days when I was teaching,

if you really hate something, it's acting upon you. I didn't know that then, but this is a good sign. Thinking, oh my goodness, this is terrible, is much better than, eh, I don't care. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, Moby Dick, is much better than, eh, I don't care. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, Moby Dick, not for me. And I then came to Britain and was thinking a lot about English literature.

And I think I really re-engaged with it around the time. I was working as literary editor of the Times and we published a piece about the Naxos audio recording. Read by? Read by William Hoodkins, which now is like 25 years ago now. And you know, in those days, you got a box of CDs. That's what you got. And it was that recording which returned me to reading the book. And at that point, I was blown away.

And I think that's another thing that's important to say. If something's not right for you at one moment, it might be right for you at another. And I also completely agree with Jared. I think Moby Dick is a book. No. What about? No, I'm going to come. You, you, I'm coming to you, I'm coming to you.

We've got to have that, okay? Also, tell us who William Hootkins is. So William Hootkins is an American actor, late American actor. He's one of the first star pilots to be killed in Star Wars. That's the original Star Wars. Imagine those two things on your CV. Best ever recording of Moby Dick and doing pilot songs.

But this recording of Moby Dick navigates the stormy waters of being a reading of the novel and being dramatic. Okay, so same question to you that I asked Jared. Did you read it in one go first time? No, not at all. Okay. I think we covered that. We've covered that. We hated it.

We hated it, yeah, absolutely not. It's about everything, but if it were about one thing, what would Moby Dick be about? It is about the self, Andy. I like this, the self and death. Merry Christmas, everyone. I'm looking forward to it.

John's hopefully gonna bring some jollity when he comes here. So John, so John, John, John. Moby Dick, when did you first read Moby Dick or something by Herman Melville? Okay, so I read Moby Dick, but not personally when I was 18, when I was at school. What I did was I bought it secondhand and I dipped into it and I pretended I'd read

it for years. If you asked me, when did you read it from cover to cover all the way through? I would say I finished doing that about three nights ago. There you go. Never too late. What a voyage you've been on. But what a voyage. But which I have to say was absolutely up there with my,

I like to feel my now kind of on the record rereading of great expectations. Listeners, when we recorded this show five years ago, the Christmas show that was about a la recherche to Tom Pairdue, John was speed reading Proust right up to the last minute. I was, I was, I was literally. And he did it though, he did it.

I got there, I got there. But listen, the thing about when I was 18, it gave me, I was reading at Ulysses, I sort of, and I did read Ulysses, but this was what I wanted fiction to be. I picked up Moby Dick and I read a chapter about Wales, or I read a chapter about storytelling that was nothing to do with the actual plot.

This is a brilliant, it's not called Townhose. The Townhose story. And I just thought this is, you know, my idea of what fiction could potentially be, which isn't some sort of sequential, here's the plot, here are the characters, here are the relatable characters that you want. You know, I've got great admiration for David Nicholls, but maybe Dick is about as far away from a David Nicholls novel as it's possible to get. And yet, it is, I'm sorry, I found it a page turner this

time. Yeah, it's a yarn. Okay, all right. So, but you want to ask me what it's about? No, I want to say, okay, so you didn't read it in one go or rather you did read it in one go that took 40 years. Yes. But if it, we know it's about everything, but if it were about one thing that isn't death or the self, what is it about? I'm, I think it is the greatest book about our relationship to the natural world that has ever been written. Our complicated, difficult relationship with nature.

Okay. If you wanted, if this could be published today is environmental fiction. Yeah. I mean, I hope to fuck nobody tries to do that. I was gonna say. Sorry, on Christmas day, but no, please don't do that. Putting the mental into environmental, yes, absolutely.

Um, I must say. Very good. Andy, come on. All right. So I tried reading this for the first time when I was in my early 20s because I worked in a bookshop with two guys who were really obsessed with Moby Dick. One of whom is a friend of mine called Mike Payne. Mike, if for any reason you're listening to this, I hope you are. Mike was the singer in a band called The Beckett's named after Samuel Beckett.

And they had a track on their second album, Myth, which was called The Whett's named after Samuel Beckett and they had a track on their second album Myth which was called The Whiteness of the Whale, the chorus of which went ship to shore what Ahab saw before it drowned him. Which is pretty good as a tiny capsule, almost a haiku version of one of the themes of Moby Dick. But I couldn't get on with it. I didn't read it in one go, kind of gave up. And then I read it properly and concertedly about 15 years ago, because I wanted to include it in the year of reading Dangerously. And if anyone who's read my book will know, I did write about it in a comparative reading with Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, which is a stunt that should be attempted only once and never again. Let me assure you of that. But nevertheless, I finished it and I did read it in one go at the second

attempt. And this is backlisted and it's Christmas. What's it about John? Quite sincerely and with no irony, in addition to being about death, nature, death, nature, self and the self. It's the greatest book about books ever written. Yes, that's true. Not only does it contain examples of all other types of literature, but Ishmael is in front of you as a metaphorical creator of the text that you're reading. And by the time the book ends, he is the survivor, the narrator is the survivor, and he's watched someone been driven to madness. The book itself has become insane and he's the last one left to literally tell the tale. So that's my take about books. Hence the disaster of the English edition.

Yeah. Kind of spoils it. And there are so many texts interleaved through it as well, scientific texts and literary texts and it contains so many other books and plays. And playscripts and encyclopedia and whaling lore and poetry and on and on we go. Now you mentioned Erika, the wonderful audiobook reading. It's about time we heard some of the original text of Moby Dick. And this is from an alternative audiobook rendition.

Listeners, we have another special guest joining us today. In addition to Bob Dylan, ladies and gentlemen, please, please to read the famous opening lines of Moby Dick. On Christmas Day. On Christmas Day. Please welcome Burt Reynolds. Yay! Christmas Day. Christmas Day. Please welcome Burt Reynolds. Call me Ishmael. Some years ago, never mind how long precisely, having a little

or no money in my purse and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. Whenever it's damp, drizzly November in my soul, whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet, well then, I account it high time to get to see as soon as I can. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degrees, some time or other, cherished very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me."

Well do you know John that Burr only agreed to record that because he thought they were going to change the title of the novel to Moby and the Bandit. That's not true. Big win there. So Jared, you've heard a lot of people read Moby Dick. Where does Burt Reynolds rank? I want justice for Dick Van Dyke for so long. He has been just pilloried for his cockney accent. But that, my friends. It's a jolly holiday with you, man.

Yes. That wasn't good, was it? I like after about 90 seconds, you can feel him kind of losing the will to do it. It just falls away. Yeah, he's not even, yeah. Yeah, I think he's like, I'm going to have to do this accent for 25 hours.

Yeah. I've made a mistake. Terrible, terrible mistake. So we've dealt with the famous opening lines. We've dealt with what the book might be about. We're doing we're doing great work, but it's Christmas Day. And we would be we need a little we need to sprinkle some jollity on the on the events of this. So I've been working hard in my, while you people have been studying and reading and thinking and I've been writing Moby Dick

themed Christmas cracker jokes or as I call them Christmas cracker joke. Ooh. Okay. I see what you did there. Okay. Pretty good there, right? Yeah. So I'm going to ask you each of these and then we'll see what happens then. John, what is the Pequod Cruise favorite Christmas carol?

There's not even a multi-choice option on this. No. Okay. I'm going to say, Oh, Come All Ye Faithful. No, it's While Shepherds watch their flukes. While shepherds watch their flukes by diet. Yeah. Okay, thank you.

Erica, what vegetable do the Pequod crew have with their Christmas dinner? I don't know, Andy. What vegetable do the Pequod crew have with their Christmas dinner? They have Brussels spouts. Oh. Jared. They have Brussels spouts. Jared, what is the Pequod crew's favorite Christmas tipple? I would say a flip, but I think that's the real answer.

Oh, that's pretty good. No, it's Kwee Kwegnog. Or I will accept Peg Legnog. OK, Jon again. Yeah, go on. What is Captain Ahab's favorite seasonal prose poem? Come on. Okay. I'll tell you. What's the night before Christmas? No, it's a child's Christmas in Wales. Oh, I should have got that. Yes. Erica, what is the Pequod Cruise favorite classic Christmas movie? I'm gonna go again.

What is the Pequod Cruise favorite classic Christmas movie? It's the shop around Cape Horn. That's a stretch. Yeah, it is. And it's terrible, isn't it? That's a stretch. Ernst Newbitch is turning in his grave. Jared, Jared, Jared.

What is the Pequod Cruise favorite action film? I don't know what is the Pequod's favourite action film. It's Dive Hard. Dive Hard! Because Dive Hard is a Christmas movie. Yeah, of course. And then anyone can answer these. There's only two left, don't worry. What is the favorite church service at this time of year of Tash Tago, Dagoo and Fadala, the Pequod's Harpooners? Which of the church services will they attend? Midnight Mass, but something funnier than that. Well yeah. I'm worried about this one. Midnight Mass? Oh, Midnight Mass, that's very good. No, I'm afraid not. It's nine lesions and coracles. I think mine is better. Yeah, all right. Okay. And finally, everybody, what do whales like to listen to on Christmas morning? Something to do with nine festivals and carols. we've already had that I don't know. I'd like to listen to the backlisted podcast of course and a very Merry Christmas to our Cetacean listeners this year.

So when we come back we're going to actually talk about Moby Dick rather than any more of this silliness but let's have a quick word from our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by RBC Student Banking. Here is an RBC student offer that turns a feel-good moment into a feel-great moment. Students, get $100 when you open a no monthly fee RBC Advantage Banking account and we'll give another $100 to a charity of your choice. This great perk and more, only at RBC. Visit rbc.com slash get 100, give 100. Conditions apply. Ends January 31st, 2025.

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Shop the Level Up sales event today at canon.ca. So, one of the weird things about Moby Dick is the way it's inserted itself. As you already know, what a strange thing for Bob Dylan in his own Nobel Prize acceptance speech to talk so much about Moby Dick. Apparently, at a recent concert in the UK, you were saying, Erica, that the only thing he said to the audience all evening was,

and Moby Dick was dedicated to Nathaniel Hawthorne. Thank you very much. And then played a song. So it's big. But there's another big American star. In fact, the star that Grail Marcus in his Presley ad, described as the Moby Dick of American popular music. And so why don't we hear another guest joining us in addition to Bob Dylan.

These are all for the teenagers, aren't they? Bob Dylan, Burt Reynolds and ladies and gentlemen Yeah, that is Elvis in his 1968 comeback concert. Do you know why he does it? Because he holds up the mic like a harpoon. Oh is that it? That's right yeah that's right. Oh my god. Moby Dick. I would like to talk a bit about the various adaptations of Moby Dick. Jarrod do you have a favourite film or TV or musical or staging of Moby Dick? Yeah I mean no. Just sitting and reading the book, you can't, it's okay. You can. Yeah. And film is such a bad medium for what Moby Dick actually is. I think that's, I think that is sort of true. Um, much as we love and I hope we will get to hear a little bit of, of Gregory Peck.

I'm sure we will, but it's so weird, isn't it? It's, it's, it's, you know, your thing about plot Andy, when you watch the 1956 John Huston movie on all kinds of levels is a really good film. It's a, you know, they've, they've tried, you know, it's beautifully done. So they've, they've done the blues and the gray. So they look like a wailing Prince. There's a kind of European sensibility in the way that they do the artful shots of the, the old women leaving. You've got Orson Welles doing one of his absolute standout sermons as Father Maple. There's so much that's good in it,

and yet strangely, it's weird when you come out of the book and into that. It's like a tiny little peephole into a tiny little bit of what the book is about. If you watch that movie, it would be quite easy. I mean, my personal story with this, I watched that film when I was quite a small kid and I became quite obsessed with it. Well, what I became obsessed with was the whale.

So I was always asking my grandfather, how big was the whale? And I remember going over Sundon Bridge and he showed me, he said, those three arches over there on the railway bridge, he said, that's a lot. That's what the whale would be. And as a kid, I was thinking, my God, I mean, how could anything that big? And I mean, imagine if that was attacking. So that sort of cult, the cult of the Leviathan, the cult of this huge, untamed creature, who, you know, Melville sort of brilliantly

always makes you on the side of. And yet, and yet, we're talking as though everyone recognized the merits and significance of this literary Leviathan. As we've established, they really didn't. Erica, could you perhaps say a little about how the book found a new audience many years after publication? Yes, it found a new audience.

But people continue to struggle with it, which I'll also address. But this is a little paragraph from one of the first reviews when it appeared. Thrice unlucky Herman Melville. This is an odd book professing to be a novel, wantonly eccentric, outrageously bombastic, in places charmingly and vividly descriptive, the author has read up laboriously to make a show of setological learning. Herman Melville is wise in this sort of wisdom. He uses it as stuffing to fill out his skeleton story, bad stuffing it makes, serving only to try the patience of his readers and to tempt them to wish both him and his whales at the bottom

of an unfathomable sea. And I would say that that reader in 1851 had something in common with Luffy Sempai, who has written 755 reviews on Goodreads. Are you gonna share us a good one? And gives Moby Dick one star. Good one star, yeah. Is there a polite version of saying, I hope you're roasting in hell since you died Herman Melville? If there's not, there should be.

Screw you, Melville. I mean, that's how to write a one star review. Yeah, but also, right, so this is what I find so interesting. I have no sympathy with the latter review because that person has got 150 years of research to draw on to try and understand a book they don't care about, right? They can't be bothered to do it. Whereas the early reviews, I have some sympathy with. I do too. What the hell is this?

So they've, they're used to reading books by Herman Melville, which are pretty straightforward adventure yarns, Taipei and Omu. And then the third one, which is called Mardi, isn't it? It's a bit odd. It's middling reviews because he kind of changes what he's writing about halfway through. He writes a couple more just for the, for the cash. But he's written five books in five years.

Here's this successful, best-selling, well-known... Who's completely gone off the rails. ...adventure novelist who's just presented you with this thing that's like nothing you've read before. And what's weird about it is he knows it's not commercial. He kind of says this book is not gonna, it's almost like he's tempted by this idea of doing a book that isn't going to, isn't going to be what we would now call fan service for the Herman Melvin fans. He's gonna write something for himself.

Didn't it come from his conversations with Nathaniel Hawthorne? Hawthorne was the one who pushed him towards write the book you want to and don't do these adventure yarns. That's maybe why Bob picked that up. It's dedicated to Nathaniel Hawthorne. You're saying it's because Herman went electric. Herman went electric.

If you will, yeah. So Erica, please, what is the thing that happens in the 20th century with Moby Dick? Why does it begin to? Well, the modernists discovered. Oh, modernism. century with Moby Dick. Why does it begin to? Well, the modernists discovered Moby Dick. So D.H. Lawrence discovered or rediscovered Moby Dick. And Nathaniel Filbrick, a great man for Wales, writes about this in his book, which is called Why Read Moby Dick. He calls Lawrence's essay about American literature idiosyncratic, if not faintly crazy, but Lawrence really took up the baton for Moby Dick and also T.E. Lawrence,

otherwise known as Lawrence of Arabia, was a great champion of the book. He called, he kept it on his shelf of what he called Titanic books. Well this is so interesting, right, because on the one hand D.H. Lawrence representing the modernists likes the experimentalism of it, whereas T. E. Lawrence, representing the kind of heroic figure, likes the heroic nature or the subversion of the heroic nature of it. So it starts to mean all these different things to people. And John, after the second world war as well, it picks up another round of attention and popularity. To the point where in the 1980 Jared,

I don't know if you remember this, do you all remember Woody Allen's film, Zellig? Yes. Yeah. Zellig who changes appearance depending on who he's with. And when he's put under psychoanalysis, it's revealed during hypnosis that the reason he does that is because at school he was being teased for about reading Moby Dick and he lied about having read it and said, yes, I've read it. And it was as a result of that insecurity that he had it all his problems.

I didn't remember that. But Jared, that's what you were talking about. How, as an American, this is like the need for a great American novel. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It is the obsession, isn't it? Yeah. Which writers, 20th century writers, do you think set themselves in competition with Melville? Yeah, that's a very difficult question because it's, Melville has achieved something that, yeah, like you said, it's a modernist work. If somebody said this was a 1920s author who tried to write a whaling story, I would have completely believed it. It was a hundred years

and that's with all great works. And there was, there was modernist works before Tristan Shandy is a great example, but like it's just to find it that cohesive. And we talk about, when you guys were talking, it just great literature is like a tesseract, like there is the three dimensions of the book, but you know, it is expansive enough to contain multiple dimensions. And it's just one of those that, you know, it is expansive enough to contain multiple dimensions. And it's just one of those that, you know, cause we haven't talked about how funny it is actually.

He's, you know, he's, he's from slapstick, uh, to, to very kind of subtle, dry humor that you're just like, it, it goes all over the place. And meanwhile, it is this very heavy book and some very dark things happen in the book. Like, you know, the storyline of Pip is a relatively minor character, but that breaks me every time I read what happens to Pip and the scene where Ahab identifies with Pip is just, it's just a heartbreaking book. And yeah, I, I don't know if anything's that big, but it's

hard. It's, it's, I don't know if anything's that big, but it's hard. It's I think it's too close. Ask me in 100 years. And then that's that's when you'll know what the 20th century contributed. Well, let's just look around and find a book that's been really badly reviewed. And 50 years from now, it'll be a it'll be the classic of its era. Well, and Jared, then let me ask you, do you and Erica as well, do you interpret Well, and Jared, then let me ask you, do you and Erika as well, do you interpret that range that and randomness and seeming randomness as a product of spontaneity or a product of

planning? Both can be true at the same time is what I would say. And for me, it reminds me of the possibilities of the novel, that the novel can be everything and that you can keep rereading books and never get to the bottom of them. And also that you were asking, you know, what it's about. What do you think Moby Dick is about? Another thing I think it's about is capitalism in a way that even from when I read it, re-engaged with it 20 years ago, I think most of us, or at least I certainly was not thinking about

the rapacious nature of capitalism in the way that is much more in the air now. And the whale, which was a massive, massive industry, not just in North America, but across the globe. I agree, and I think we misunderstand, because to us, whaling seems like a very old- It seems antique. Antique, but this was technologically, this was the cutting, literally the cutting edge of capitalism.

They were making millions and millions of pounds. The people who own these ships, and the owners of the ships are very interesting in Moby-Dick, you know, the two, and they're Quakers. It's a fascinating portrait of capitalism in the way that you kind of get in the Dickens of... I mean, this is published a year before, this is astonishing, isn't it? The year before Bleak House, the same year as Cranford.

It feels like such a different book to those. But it's both more and less explicit. Yes. Because it's so deeply engaged with the stuff of capitalism. It's also describing an industry that was replaced deeply engaged with the stuff of capitalism. It's also describing an industry that was replaced by the petroleum industry. Exactly. Oh my God, yeah, that's so true.

Yeah, so it's the exact same thing we're talking about now. The whole thing about the light, he uses this idea of light through the book, that the light that lights our homes. Light and dark, white and black. Is coming, yeah, and coming through the book, that the light that lights our home, light and dark, white and black, is coming and yeah and coming through yeah I feel if I'd made notes which I never did in my books but my wife Rachel does all the time and often you know that's kind of like light imagery and dark

imagery written in the margins of the books. Moby Dick is a godsend for Spark's notes kind of. Also Erika I just want to pick up what you were saying, really interesting, Maybe Dick is a godsend for Sparks notes. Also, Erica, I just want to pick up what you were saying. Really interesting. That thing about what you felt it was about when you've been reading it for this seems to have changed from what you felt it was about 20, 25 years ago. I picked up a book by a brief book written by CLR James in the 1950s, which is about where he says this is the most brilliant portrayal of totalitarianism. This is what Moby Dick is about. I've read a really

interesting essay this week, published about 20 odd years ago saying we read it now and clearly We read it now and clearly Moby Dick is about, in the wake of 9-11, is about religious obsession. Murderous religious obsession, fundamentalism. We read it now in 2024, as John just said earlier in the show, it's a book about the end of nature, the way capitalism drains the world of its resources and mechanistically. It is about all those things. When we were saying everybody at the start of the show, it's a book about everything. It sounds whimsical when people say that, but the more you read it, the more true that seems. There's no great theme that can't be folded into it, John. There's a wonderful book, which I think you're talking about the 20th century re-estimation of Moby Dick.

There's a wonderful book published in 1946 by the great American poet Charles Olsen, who lives in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and whose own work is kind of deeply influenced. The Maximus poem is deeply influenced, I think, by Melville. And he, two things that he does which are really interesting, one is that he pushes this idea that Melville, there's a moment in the writing of the book when Melville goes back and he rereads Shakespeare. And he says, Moby Dick was two books written between February 1850 and August 1951. The first book did not contain Ahab. So he started writing a book about whale fishery because in the 1840s he'd worked on the ship. It may not, except incidentally,

have contained Moby Dick. Wow. On the 7th of August 1950, the editor, Everett Doikink, reported to his brother, Melville has a new book book mostly done a romantic fanciful and mostly literal and most enjoyable presentment of the whale fishery, something quite new. So he reads King Lear in particular and he goes back and he takes and there's a wonderful thing where he writes to Richard Henry Danner he says the book was giving Melville trouble referring to it as the whaling voyage he writes, it will be a strange sort of a book. I fear blubber is

blubber, you know, though you may get oil out of it. The poetry runs as hard as sap from a frozen maple tree and to cook the thing up, one must need throw in a little fancy from which the nature of the thing must be ungainly as the gambles of the whales themselves. Yet I mean to give the truth of the thing in spite of this. So you feel he's getting it, he's got into this story and he can't do the potboiler, the best seller that he wanted to write. That kind of answers my question about what do you feel,

what I feel is a true definition of genius is the ability to reach at whatever you've got to hand and even as it's even as you're writing and pulling it in and making it work and incorporating it and squashing the dough and flattening it and changing it and Jared I wonder we were having a little joke the other day about your you were going to you were going to adopt a kind of jazz improv approach to your readings. Not, not, not in terms of style, but in Mark contrast to Burt Reynolds, you were going to just spontaneously choose a part of the novel to read for us. I wonder if while we're talking now, if there's a little bit that you feel would illustrate what we're, and illuminate what we're talking about. It's the dialogue, right? So I have to, um, so I particularly like when Ahab talks,

it's, um, a, here we go. So this is, uh, this is from chapter 29, uh, stub. Um, I'll skip about just to, so it reaches as dialogue. And again, it's also when, when I, I dreamed that I, when I get drunk, I sound like Ahab, because he has such incredible insoles. And I just dream of just clearing a bar with, I stab at thee. But anyways, all right. Am I a cannonball stub?

Said Ahab, that thou wouldst wad me that fashion, but go thy ways ways I had forgot. Below to thy nightly grave were such as ye sleep between shrouds, to use ye to the filling one at last, down dog and kennel. Stubb was speechless at a moment. Then he said excitedly, I am not used to being spoken that way, sir.

I do but less than half like it, sir. A vast gritted Ahab between his set teeth and violently moving away as if to avoid some passionate temptation. No, sir, not yet, said Stubb, emboldened. I am not tamely be called a dog, sir. Then be called 10 times a donkey and a mule and an ass, and be gone or I will clear the world of thee. Oh And be gone or I will clear the world of thee.

Oh, be gone or I will clear the world of thee. Get to a bar right now, Jared. And tell people what to do. We're just gonna hear a tiny bit of clip of a song now, and then I'll say a little bit about it. This is a singer who, funnily enough, influenced Bob Dylan greatly, called Paul Clayton. This was recorded in the late 1950s and it's a version of a traditional song called

the Greenland Whale Fisheries. It was in 1841 and of June the 13th day that our gallant ship per anchor await and the Greenland bore away, brave, And to Greenland bore a way, brave boys, To Greenland bore a way. Now the lookout in the cross-tree stood With his spyglass in his hand. There's a whale, there's a whale, there's a whale, Fishy cried, she blows on every strand, Brave boys, she blows on every strand. Now the captain stood on the quarter deck

And a fine little man was he Overhaul, overhaul, let your David tackles fall Till you land your boats in the sea, brave boys Till you land your boats in the sea Now the boats were launched, the men aboard And the whale was in full view Resolve it was each seaman bold. To steer where the whale fish blew, brave boys. To steer where the whale fish blew. Oh, we struck that whale and the line played out.

But she gave a flourish with her tail. And the boat capsized and four men were drowned. We never caught that whale, brave boys. We never caught that whale. We never caught that whale, brave boys. We never caught that whale. We never caught that whale. So that's... Brilliant. Now look, I've got an actual copy of the LP

from which that comes. Pristine. Pristine. Never been opened. It's called, Paul Clayton sings whaling and sailing songs from the days of Moby Dick. And on the sleeve notes, which were written by Clayton himself,

he just, this is what he says about that song, the Greenland Whale Fisheries. Of the foxhole songs relating directly to whaling which have survived, this one is probably the most popular, dating back to the 18th century. The character of the captain varies in different versions. Sometimes he grieves more for his drowned sailors than for the lost whale, but in the version I sing he is more disturbed by the losing of the whale than over the loss of his men that seemed appropriate. Now if you are a listener to Locklisted, our Patreon only podcast, you will recall a few months ago that I found this LP in a cardboard box in a record

shop in Liverpool where I live and that it is still sealed. It was clearly recorded in the in the late 1950s because, as you can see from the cover, Erica, it's to cash in on the on the film, right, on the John Houston film. You see that there, Jared, right? There's there's there's Gregory Peck there. And we were speculating on Lock Listed how this sealed copy had washed up in Liverpool some 60 years after it was issued. But of course, I realized, John, that Herman Melville visited

Liverpool on several occasions. In fact, his novel Redburn is about his visit to Liverpool when he was 19 years old. And in fact, he visited his friend Hawthorne in Liverpool. They had a couple of days out to Chester and Southport, which is a great thought, isn't it? But so I wonder if this ended up in a cardboard box in Liverpool because this is Herman Melville's actual copy of Paul Clayton's LP. I wonder, do you know what I mean? I have no doubt. So the bidding is going to start at £10,000 for this, right? Look, it's still sealed. It's still sealed.

It's still sealed. And everybody, John said to me, and this is so sweet of John, well, are you going to play it? Of course I'm not going to play it. It's like, look at it. It's a beautiful artifact. But we should also just talk about how much, do you know how much an original first edition British copy in good condition of Moby Dick is worth?

You care to take a guess? I would say it would be over a thousand pounds then. Oh, I would think it would be much more than that. Yes, Erica was right. What do you think? Much, much more than that. Go on, have a guess. Oh, in the tens of thousands, if not more.

Jared, in dollar terms, what do you think? Yeah, 20,000? £175,000. Thank you. Herman Melville, were thou alive at this time? Were thou alive. Having heard The Greenland Whale Fishery, can I say a little something about whales? Yeah, why those guys?

Yeah, why not? Because another thing about this novel, whether or not we agree, and I don't know enough to say whether Melville's science is accurate, but in chapters like Cetology, he goes into the biology of the great whales. And I think it's worth mentioning that this is still, all these hundred and something years later, pretty amazingly mysterious. I mean, we know more, but we still don't know enough about these extraordinary mammals that we nearly wiped off the face of the earth. As documented so well by our friend, Philip Hoare, who's been a guest on this show before.

So I think another kind of prescience about the novel is that although these men are engaged in killing whales, he conveys the wonder and mystery of these creatures, which really was revived in the 70s when the great conservation movement came and saved the whales. Roger Payne's amazing bestselling LP. Yes, the song of the humpback whale. I love that in the book because there's an amazing scene where they kill a sperm whale, Stubbs kills a sperm whale, and the sperm whale's head, which has been removed.

And I know some people get squeamish about Moby Dick, and I understand that, and they worry that it's too brutal. But I think you kind of have to roll with that. It was a brutal industry. But there's a brilliant bit where Ahab is looking at the head, you know, and he says, of all divers thou hast dived the deepest, that head upon which the upper sun now gleams has moved amid the world's foundations, where unrecorded names and Navy's rust and

untold hopes and anchors rot, where in her murderous hold this frigate earth is ballasted with bones of millions of the drowned. There in that awful waterland there was thy most familiar home. Thou hast been where bell or diver never went, hast slept by many a sailor's side where sleepless mothers would give their lives to lay them down. Thou sourced the locked lovers when leaping from their flaming ship. Heart to heart they sank beneath the exulting wave, true to each other when heaven seemed false to them.

Thou sourced the murdered mate when tossed by pirates from the midnight deck. For hours he fell into the deeper midnight of the insatiable moor, and his murderers still sailed on unharmed, while swift lightning shivered the neighboring ship that would have borne a righteous husband to outstretched longing arms.

Oh, head, thou hast seen enough to split the planets and make an infidel of Abraham, and not one syllable is thine. I mean... Can I just say everybody everybody and he's doing that on rum. Yeah. But imagine what that was great. What would Melville have made if he'd known about whale song? Don't you think that's an amazing thought? Yeah. If he'd known that these incredible creatures that, you know, there's an amazing bit in the book where he said, what was it like to have eyes on either side of your head? This is a book of deep love and respect for whales.

Well, speaking of whale song, as is now traditional for Christmas episodes, if you go to Spotify, this will go live on Christmas day, everybody, you'll find a playlist which begins and ends with Extracts of Whalesong. The playlist is one I put together and it's called We Wish You a Moby Dickmas and A Happy New Year. A Happy New Year everybody. And the link will be in the show notes. Jared, when you curated the live experience, can you give us a sense of which parts of

the novel really captivated people in the room? We took a different approach. I took it by chapter by chapter and there were certain things that immediately kind of revealed themselves. And I mean, we had actors actually perform the bits when it did turn into a script. There's other sections that were kind of very meditative. And so we had dance troops that would kind of perform during these kind of sections. And then we had Queequeg's coffin.

And so we had it brought out. There was a prop maker who just kind of loved the idea and had his team make us these props. We had full-size whale bones, which funny enough, my wife, knowing who I am, told all the crew to not help me put it into our car because she knew. So she, in advance, told people. And so at the end of the show, I was like, Hey, can you guys help me? Because I'm in a wheelchair. was like, hey, can you guys help me? Cause I'm in a wheelchair. So I was like, can you guys help me? And I was like, sorry, she's already told us

we can't help you with the whale bones. Also what's interesting Jared about the events that you masterminded is presumably, one of the things I really like about the novel is the sense that just as the Pequod is at times in the doldrums, is becalmed and they're waiting for something to happen, you the reader are similarly becalmed at times as one chapter after another of frankly boring whale lore is...

But that's... Boring for you, Andy. Well, you know what, Andy? I know, I'm sorry. But it's part of the reading- Boring for you, Andy. Well, you know what, Andy, but it's part of the reading experience. It's the way in which reading the book is like going on the voyage. And I wonder how those sections,

how you dealt with those sections. That was another thing of why it was this book. So we were, a group of us called the Special Relationship, and it was really because motivation of taking what is in a private, quiet activity, reading, and putting it on stage. And I've been to so many author events where it's a journalist and two glasses of water

between them that I was like, how do you make it interesting? And so when I came across Moby Dick, I immediately was like, this is how you do it. This is a book in which I can do all these things. We had animations. We, you know, we had all these different artists commissions and it was because it, the book was so expansive that it could do it. And yeah.

So, and it was those, those meditative quiet moments. So we're going to hear something now. We're talking about performing parts of Moby Dick. And we were talking earlier about John Houston's movie adapted by Ray Bradbury. Here is a section from the film where I feel slightly sorry for Gregory Peck. I know many people feel he was miscast but listen to this. This is the stuff. This is really, really good in my opinion. Yeah.

Captain, now for the last time I ask thee, I implore thee, let us fly these deadly waters, let us home. Have they not such mild blue days eaten as this in Old New Bedford? What is it? What nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing Nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing... commands me against all human lovings and longings... to keep pushing and crowding and jamming myself on all the time... making me do what in my own natural heart I dare not dream of doing.

Is Ahab Ahab? Is it I, God, or who that lifts this arm? But if the great sun cannot move except by God's invisible power, how can my small heart beat, my brain think thoughts, unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I? By heavens, man, we are turned round and round in this world. You're turned round and round in this world. Like yonder windless and fate is the hand-sprank. And all the time that smiling sky and this unsounded sea.

Look ye into its deeps and see the everlasting slaughter that goes on. Who put it into its creatures to chase and fang one another? Where do murderers go, man? Who's to doom when the judge himself is dragged before the bar? But it is a mild, mild day in a mild looking sky. What hails you, Starbuck? I suppose the only sadness is we can only imagine what Burt Reynolds would have done without you. Reynolds would have done. Okay. Ahoy, a vast and every single nautical ejaculation you can think of because I'm afraid shipmates, crew members, our sails are being furled, our barnacle scrapers are ready and out and

there to scrub the ship's bottom with special thanks to our Christmas crew Jared and Erica and to those wonderful shipmates who sail with us all through the stormy seas and occasional doldrums of modern podcast life every fortnight. Nicky Burch, Tess Davidson, thank you. Yes, thanks everyone. If you want show notes with clips, links and suggestions for further reading for this show and the 225 that we've already recorded, please visit our website at backlisted.fm if you would like to buy the books discussed on this, you know it's Christmas help Herman Melville on his way. On this and any of our other shows is our shop at bookshop.org and choose backlisted as your bookshop and we're still keen to hear

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and recommending the books, films and music we've enjoyed in the previous Fortnite. For those of you who enjoyed our what have you been reading slot, that's where you'll now find it. It's an hour of tunes musing superior book chat. Plus, lock listeners get their names read out accompanied by lashings of midwinter festive praise

and gratitude. Gregory King, thank you. Patricia Girard, thank you. Geraldine Meehan, thank you. John Lever, thank you. Mercolet Brown, thank you and Merry Christmas. Ian Anthony Archibald, thank you so much. Unati Mooney, thank you. Paul Gremer, thank you. Malgazata Zeromet, I hope that was right. Thank you so much for supporting us. Finally, Jennifer. Sinzia, thanks. Thank you so much. So, Erica and Jared, this is what we now do at the end of the show. Jared, I will ask you first, please. Are there any last yuletide nuggets of wisdom about Melville or Ahab or Wales or Moby Dick that we haven't covered that you would like to leave us with.

We missed the bit where he was part of a mutiny. That's why he stopped being a whale. Oh really? He was part of a mutiny, joined a US Navy ship, and yeah, so he had an even more adventurous story than he told. And we haven't really talked about Melville. Melville's life is so sad, and it gets worse and worse and worse. I made a little note to myself that Herman Melville was a larger than life character. He's almost like Dickens initially. He goes on lecture tours and he's successful. He was a larger than life character and life, aggrieved at his presumption, determined to cut him down

to size. And slowly over 40 years, that's exactly what happens to him with, of course, as we know, the posthumous postscript of Billy Budd, the publication of Billy Budd. I would say that the greatest gift that an author can receive from time is to cease to matter. And Moby Dick is such an extraordinary book, it kind of disattaches itself from authorship. It becomes part of the tradition of great and ancient literature, stories that people have told since they started telling stories. And the other thing I would say is relax.

If you struggle, put it down, pick it up again. What Jared said, you can just dip into it. You can read a chapter. You don't have to go from end to end. It's always there for you. There's also one of the literature's greatest penis joke. Yeah, I think that is true. Yes. So those of you who were planning on watching the Gavin and Stacey Christmas special tonight, don't, you could always read this instead. John, is there anything you would like to add?

Well look, you say about Melville, okay, and the long post Moby Dick career that he had, and we've obviously tried to make this a Christmas show. But Melville, towards the end of his life, did write a couple of very, very simple Christmas poems. And he collected his very last book that was published. And here is the last two stanzas of a poem called, he lived obviously in a house, I think it was called Pitfield in Massachusetts. You're looking at me like I'd know, I don't remember. I'm the one who just said, it doesn't

matter anymore. It's called an arrowhead anyway. Dutch Christmas at the Hudson in the time of Patroons. And this is how this poem ends, not what you're expecting from... But I want you to think of Santa Claus in this poem, less as Santa Claus and more as I have. It starts to make a lot of sense. Sleigh bells a jingle, to Santa Claus hail. Village ward he goes through the spooning of the snows, yay, hurrying to round his many errands to close, a mince pie he's taking to the one man in jail. What? Drove right out between the gateposts here?

Well, well, little sharp eyes, blurred panes we must clear. Our Santa Claus a clever way has and a free, gifts from him some will take who would never take from me for poor herabouts There are none none so poor but that pudding for an arms They would spurn from the door all the same to all the world's wide ways Happy harvest of the conscience on many Christmas days Happy how it's of the country Exactly. Thank you. Merry Christmas. Well, I would like to leave you. Thank you, John. That was wonderful. I

would like to leave you with a Christmas, a famous Christmas song. But unfortunately, for copyright reasons, we're not allowed to do that. But you all know that you all know the the song White Christmas. you all know the tune White Christmas so I'm just going to read you these lyrics which I've written especially to send us thank you right here we go I'm dreaming of a white whale just like the ones we used to know ones we used to know, where the top masts glisten and sailors listen to hear the cry of the ashy blows. I'm dreaming of a Leviathan of infinite symbolic potential with every With every masterpiece I write, may your days be spermy and impolite, and may all your nemeses be white.

Brilliant. Bye bye everybody. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas. God bless us, everyone.

Oh, wrong book! Bye, bye, bye!