This is a reading of the classic American novel Moby-Dick, as interpreted by Jack Pendarvis. To embark at the beginning, please click here.
“Whales! Whales!” went up the cry.
There, before anyone…
The boats were lowered!
So… we could go out chasin’ whales.
[Coffee sipping. Coffee cup clinks on coaster.]
But… before that could happen… what’s this?
There he is.
And beside him…
Frankly racist caricatures of people. These…
You know, you can tell I’m not acquainted with… terms regarding… the subject at hand… whaling. Anyway, they’re gonna row Captain Ahab’s boat for him. They were smuggled onboard in the misty morning. The fleeting phantoms.
They’re from Manilla, and described… a—you know, in racist terms, compared either to animals, leaping like goats, uhhh, looking like tigers, uhhhhh… and then to machines! When they’re in the boat, rowing, they’re like just mechanical. They’re like pistons, they’re so… robotic. So not given much, you know, th-th-th—it’s the most racist thing yet in Moby-Dick, arguably.
Later in the chapter, little Danny DeVito climbs up on Daggoo, who offers himself like, “You’re so damn short, why don’t you climb up on me, and, uh, look for that whale?” You know, and the narrator goes out of his way to say that Daggoo the African is much more noble, or is nobler, that’s the correct word. Is nobler than… Danny DeVito, as we call the character Flask. He’s always trying to… show… the narrator is, I mean, that he’s a believer in the, uh… equality of races, but, uh, he really lets the racist… and look, there’s some weird racist stuff goin’ on anyway, when you got one little white guy climbin’ up a tall black guy! There’s… a lot of… even if you’re saying, uh, nice things about the black guy, the imagery is… is… [coffee gulping] well, you know, there it is! What can you say? It’s racist! So.
There he is! There’s Ahab.
Oh, wait. And gosh, I haven’t mentioned Fedallah, who is Ahab’s harpooner. Hey, you didn’t know Ahab was gonna have a harpooner!
“That’s right, everybody. I’ve got my own harpooner! What do you think of that? I smuggled him onboard for… some reason.”
“He’s tall… and old!”
Once again, old. Oldness is… he’s kind of… so far, and we don’t really—we just get a glimpse of Fedallah, but… he seems t—obviously, from the start, to be a shadow figure to… Ahab himself. He’s another old man!
“Hey, I’m an old man. I want an old man harpooner. Let’s get me a tall… guy… with long white hair that he wraps around his head, because that’s freaky.”
“I want a freaky tall old man.”
“That’s the only thing that will do for this job. Come on!”
Everybody’s surprised. Well, everybody except that one guy, who, wuh, thought he heard somebody below decks, farting in their sleep.
And he’s braggin’. “See? I told you there were other people onboard!”
Anyway, you don’t have time to think about all this, guys! There’s whales to be slaughtered. Let’s all have… let’s all get goin’. Let’s get those boats lowered. Everyone lowers into their boats—I mean, the boats… they get int—you know what happens.
[Coffee slurping. Sniff.]
Stubb exhorts his, his… crew. “You lily-livered weaklings! I want to hear your spines snapping! I want a—blood to pop out of your—I want your eyeballs to pop out and blood to spurt forth from your empty eye sockets like… a fountain. I want you to row till your… arms… come off, and, uh…”
[A crow caws outside. Coffee swallowing.]
“Put your backs into it, you… crybabies! Uh, bite these knives! I got knives for everybody. Just a little something I picked up… at the gift shop. And… I want you to put these knives in your mouths to bite ‘em. Bite ‘em until your teeth crack in two and your—you know, your head explodes! And your back… snaps, and your legs… uh… wither.”
“And your… kidneys boil inside your… body.”
And, uh, and, uh, so they go out there and… uh… where the whales are.
Wait! Where are the whales? Ooh, it’s hard to—those whales are… are bein’ sneaky! Let’s all be quiet. Okay.
And there’s a haunting… a page or two where the boats rest. Once again, this mood of quiet that I never associated with Moby-Dick, but stillness and quiet are very important.
The boats just… quietly… bobbing…
Oh, wait a minute. I see some—uh, uh, a little commotion. Let’s go over there and stab—stab some whales. In the face!
[Laughter.] God! That’s horrible!
I can’t help it. It’s horrible, okay?
Uh… and then, uhhh… Everybody goes after the whales. “Oh, my friends… seldom have you… no, it’s worse… it’s more interesting than dying! Dying and seeing a… you know, ghost coming to greet you.”
I don’t know. He says somethin’ like that. I’m not—this is not good. Sorry.
“To be in the charmed circle of the churning water where the sperm whale… you know, does his dirty business.”
Anchors aweigh! and into the next chapter!
Jack Pendarvis is a writer who lives in Oxford, Mississippi. In this weekly transcription, we join him as he reads Moby-Dick.
Please follow the original text of Moby-Dick here, if you like (highly recommended).