American Icons: ‘Moby-Dick’
Studio 360 with Kurt Andersen
PRX
4.6 • 675 Ratings
🗓️ 1 August 2019
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
August 1 marks the 200th anniversary of Herman Melville’s birth. To celebrate, we’re revisiting our Peabody Award-winning American Icons hour on his masterpiece, “Moby-Dick.”
Melville's white whale survived his battle with Captain Ahab only to surface in the works of contemporary filmmakers, painters, playwrights and musicians. Kurt Andersen explores the influence of this American Icon with the help of Ray Bradbury, Tony Kushner, Laurie Anderson and Frank Stella. Actor Edward Herrmann is our voice of Ishmael and Mark Price narrates David Ives' short play “Moby-Dude.”
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is Kurt Anderson. |
| 0:08.1 | Today in Studio 360, we're heading out on a chase after Moby Dick. |
| 0:13.0 | Through movies, music, painting, and other books in which he's left his traces. |
| 0:18.1 | Ever since Herman Melville released him back in 1851. |
| 0:21.6 | It is the strangest book I've ever read. It's so weird. We'll hear from some of the most |
| 0:28.3 | creative and interesting people in America who have been inspired by this American icon, |
| 0:34.1 | like performance artist Lori Anderson. I fell in love with it. The artist Frank |
| 0:38.2 | Stella thought he'd make a few pieces about Moby Dick, but then spent more than 10 years obsessed |
| 0:43.9 | with the book. It was against everything that I'd ever thought about what paintings should be. |
| 0:48.9 | And Tony Kushner, who was an impressionable young playwright who hadn't yet written Angels in |
| 0:53.8 | America when he read Moby Dick. |
| 0:55.9 | Of any work of literature, it had the single greatest impact on my writing. |
| 1:00.7 | It's American icons Moby Dick, from PRI in association with Slate, right after this. |
| 1:06.9 | Studio 360. |
| 1:12.6 | Herman Melville was a fascinating writer who published one absolute masterpiece when he was |
| 1:18.9 | 32. |
| 1:19.9 | A big, slightly insane book so far ahead of its time, it keeps showing up in the work of all |
| 1:26.2 | sorts of storytellers and artists. |
| 1:28.7 | This week is Melville's 200th birthday, which seem like the perfect pretext for re-broadcasting |
| 1:34.7 | our Peabody Award-winning hour, okay, if I call it a deep dive, all about the making and meaning |
| 1:41.0 | and enduring influence of a truly great and deeply American novel. |
| 1:46.4 | Please enjoy American icons Moby Dick. |
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