Billy Budd
Book by Herman MelvilleWikipedia
24
MENTIONS
6
EPISODES
6
PODCASTS
Search complete. 24 mentions across 6 episodes found for "Billy Budd".
Sep 12, 2026
Dana RodriguezHOST
many versions of Moby Dick can you think of?
Laurie FisherPANELIST
There's Billy Budd.
Laurie FisherPANELIST
There's type.
Laurie FisherPANELIST
You know, I'm thinking, I didn't, you know, I can't think of that many versions of Twain.
Laurie FisherPANELIST
One
Dana RodriguezHOST
Billy Budd, one type.
Cameron ShawPANELIST
Oh, how about F Scott Fitzgerald?
Dana RodriguezHOST
That's that's good.
speaker_0HOST
And what does he do? He returns to his writing desk.
speaker_1HOST
In the final years of his life, he writes Billy Budd, a manuscript found in his desk after his death, which is now universally regarded as one of the greatest novellas ever written.
speaker_0HOST
And pasted to the side of that writing desk, right where he could see it every day, was a slip of paper with a simple handwritten slogan.
speaker_0HOST
Keep true to the dreams of thy youth.
Chris BaggHOST
You know, this it really does feel like one of those kind of 18th century, you know, like the like the pamphlet.
Chris BaggHOST
That kind of sets up my desired contrast with Billy Budd.
Chris BaggHOST
You know, we read that recently.
Chris BaggHOST
Oh, that's
Chris BaggHOST
My question here is that, you know, in both of these books, we have we have this tightening vice that that that slowly obliterates our protagonists.
Chris BaggHOST
And, you know, I mean, this doesn't have to be a super long answer because I think we're kind of gesturing towards this already.
Chris BaggHOST
But what what separates that sort of what what lifts Billy Budd from a place of just things happening in their order into something grander than this?
Jesse DukesHOST
You know, it's interesting because the... um, captain talking with his officers who he has, has convened as a, you know, like mass Ted court or whatever their term is, has a kind of jungle like feel to it.
Lee JonesHOST
Yeah,
Peter MitchellHOST
there's a bit of a foreshadowing of Billy Budd here,
Lee JonesHOST
but we can get into that later.
Lee JonesHOST
Okay, so in a nutshell, they fall out, they have a fight.
7 MINS LATER
Peter MitchellHOST
At all events, steel-killed.
Peter MitchellHOST
He was a tall and noble animal with a head like a Roman and a flowing golden beard like the tasseled housings of your last viceroy's snorting charger.
Peter MitchellHOST
and a brain and a heart and a soul in him gentlemen which had made steel kilt charlemagne had he been born son to charlemagne's father but radney the mate was ugly as a mule yet as hardy as stubborn as malicious he did not love steel kilt and steel kilt knew it Now, so in Melville's great kind of last novella, Billy Budd, you know, Billy Budd is this kind of, just this vision of sailor-like beauty, and he's described in the same kind of, he's got these magnificent shoulders and beautiful earrings and flashing smile, and everyone loves him, and like, he's just, oh, he's so fuckable.
Peter MitchellHOST
And, you know, he kind of comes across a master that's set in the British Navy.
Rob TallyGUEST
Yeah.
Rob TallyGUEST
In fact, in his 1857 novel, which really turns out to be the last novel he wrote, unless you count Billy Budd, which was left behind 30 years later at his death – But the last novel he published was called The Confidence Man, His Masquerade.
Rob TallyGUEST
And it's a very bizarre and kind of fun novel set on the Mississippi River on a riverboat.
Rob TallyGUEST
very anecdotal and very episodic novel.
1 HR 40 MINS LATER
Sam LiebermanHOST
So they're done away with.
Rob TallyGUEST
Yeah, well, there are a couple of things I would want to say.
Rob TallyGUEST
One is completely kind of outside the text, but there's a little bit of a parallel in this plot with the book that Melville would write, again, 38 years later, Billy Budd, which is about the handsome sailor that everybody loved getting abused by the vile officer John Claggart.
Rob TallyGUEST
And lashing out at him only to kill him.
CaseyHOST
I think it's a novella, actually.
CaseyHOST
It's called Billy Budd.
AaronHOST
And it
CaseyHOST
is by Herman Melville.
KayHOST
It was summer reading.
KayHOST
I have PTSD.
KayHOST
And Billy Budd was on...
KayHOST
It was Old Man and the Sea, Billy Budd, and then something else.