This American Icon continues to resonate in our culture more
than 150 years after it was written. Kurt Andersen explores the
contemporary influence of Herman Melville's brilliant novel.
Call Me Ishmael
The composer and performer Laurie Anderson was inspired by the novel to write a strange, cool, modern opera. Her Songs and Stories from Moby-Dick premiered in 1999. Thanks to KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic.
The Original Improvisor
Music historian Stanley Crouch includes Moby-Dick in his lectures about jazz history at Juilliard, even though the novel was written over five decades before jazz developed. According to Crouch, Melville was an expert at improvisation. Produced by Ave Carrillo.
Moby-Dude
Studio 360 presents the world premiere of Moby-Dude from David Ives, the master of the short play. Mark Price plays a contemporary teenager who summarizes the great American novel for his English teacher...in two minutes flat. Produced by Jonathan Mitchell.
Elizabeth Schultz
University of Kansas Professor Elizabeth Schultz is passionate about Moby-Dick. According to Schultz, Melville would have appreciated David Ives's short play Moby-Dude -- Melville was something of a prankster himself.
Political Resonance
In the dark fall of 2001, images from Moby-Dick surfaced in the press, as a strange literary footnote to the most shocking event of the last half century. Producer Trey Kay speaks with Professors Andrew Delbanco and Samuel Otter about a metaphor that is undeniably powerful and impossible to capture.
The Pequod vs. The Enterprise
In her modern opera, Songs and Stories from Moby-Dick, Laurie Anderson compares two great sagas about America – Moby-Dick and Star Trek.
SPECIAL GUEST
Edward Herrmann
Tony and Emmy Award-winning actor Edward Herrmann is our voice of Ishmael. Herrmann boasts an impressive career that spans more than 30 years in theater, film and television.
Frank Stella
In 1986, legendary sculptor and painter Frank Stella defied Melville's instruction not to paint the White Whale, and then spent the next twelve years chasing an artistic obsession that Stella says nearly destroyed him. Produced by Leital Molad and Edward Lifson.
He Rises
The great fantasy and science fiction master Ray Bradbury was still relatively unknown when the director John Huston tapped him to adapt Moby-Dick for the big screen. Bradbury tells Kurt Andersen how he channeled Herman Melville while writing the screenplay for the film, which starred Gregory Peck as Captain Ahab. Produced by Jonathan Mitchell.
The Grand Armada
Professor Elizabeth Schultz discusses her favorite passage from Moby-Dick, from the chapter titled The Grand Armada, where Ishmael and his companions are dragged into the center of a huge pod of whales, and find peace in the midst of the bloody terror of whale-hunting.
Bonus Feature: Rinde Eckert
Composer Rinde Eckert's opera And God Created Great Whales is a meditation on creativity, memory, madness, and Moby-Dick. Produced by Jeff Lunden.
SPECIAL THANKS
to the National Endowment for the Humanities for their support of Studio 360's American Icons. Special thanks also to Mary Beth Kirchner, Sarah Lilley, Barbara Taylor, Andrew Delbanco Tom Lewis, Elizabeth Schultz, and Calvin Skaggs.
Studio 360's American Icons is made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities: great ideas brought to life.
Studio 360 is a co-production of Public
Radio International and WNYC
New York, and is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Corporation for
Public Broadcasting, and the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation.
Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this program do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
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Call Me Ishmael
