← The History of Literature
The History of Literature
669 Obsessed with Melville (with Jennifer Habel and Chris Bachelor) | My Last Book with Alexander Poots
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- [00:02]
Jack Wilson
The History of Literature Podcast is a member of the podglomerate Network and Lit Hub Radio. Hey there, Ryan Reynolds here. It's a new year and you know what that means. No, not the diet resolutions. A way for us all to try.
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Chris Bachelder
And do a little bit better than.
- [00:17]
Jack Wilson
We did last year. And my resolution, unlike big Wireless, is to not be a raging and raise.
- [00:23]
Chris Bachelder
The price of wireless on you every chance I get.
- [00:26]
Jack Wilson
Give it a try@mintmobile.com switch $45 upfront.
- [00:30]
Jennifer Habel
Payment required equivalent to dollar per month new customers on first three month plan only. Taxes and fees, extra Speed slower above 40 GB on unlimited. See mintmobile.com for details.
- [00:40]
Jack Wilson
Hello. We begin our show today with a pair of quotes. Quote A curious, heady cocktail of a quarantine novel that feels like a buoyant literary memoir. A surprising and exhilarating inquiry into the pleasures and pitfalls of literature, obsession, collaboration and love, all relayed with piquant wit and thrilling insight. End quote. That's Donna Seaman writing in book list. The next quote is from Alexander Chee, who says simply, a love letter to literature. A love letter to literature. Well, naturally, we're looking forward to hearing more about that. So how about this? A woman, a poet, dives into the ocean that is Herman Melville, his life and his works. And as she's submerged, she undergoes a midlife reckoning into her own marriage and ambition. Then she turns that experience into a novel memoir that she co writes with her novelist husband. And as if that's not enough, the two of them join a podcast to talk about it. This podcast, the Humble Little Podcast. Jennifer Hable and Chris Batchelder discuss Herman Melville, the people he inspired, and their book day's work today on the history of literature. Okay, here we go. Welcome to the podcast. I'm Jack Wilson. Thank you for joining me. If you write a novel about Herman Melville and it comes time for that book to be reviewed, well, you could do worse than have Donna Seaman S E a M A N as your reviewer. A nice harmony of the spheres there. Sailor McShipman apparently had the day off. Okay, we're rolling through January, aren't we rolling and rolling today? Maybe I should say rowing, sailing through January. But enough about us. Let's get to Jennifer and Chris. They will tell us all about their book. They'll read some passages from it, and then we'll do a my last book with how. Let's see. How about Alexander Poots? First, we dive into the world of Herman Melville. Jennifer Habel and Chris Bachelder, author, co authors of the novel Day's Work, which we will start as soon as our theme song ends. Okay. Joining me now are authors Jennifer Hable and Chris Bachelder. Chris Bachelder is the author of four novels, including the Throwback Special, a National Book Award finalist. Jennifer Habel is the author of the poetry collections Good Reason and the Book of Jane, which won the Iowa Poetry Prize. They're here today to discuss their new novel called Day's Work. Jennifer Habel and Chris Bachelder, welcome to the History of Literature.
- [04:10]
Ryan Reynolds
Hi. Thanks for having us.
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Chris Bachelder
Yeah, hi. Thanks so much.
- [04:13]
Jack Wilson
So, before we turn to Day's Work, let's talk about Melville. When did you first read Melville? Was it Moby Dick or one of his other books? And what were your impressions? Jennifer, why don't we start with you?
- [04:27]
Ryan Reynolds
I think the first thing I read by Melville was Bartleby.
- [04:30]
Jack Wilson
Yeah, that's a good gateway drug.
- [04:34]
Ryan Reynolds
Yeah, absolutely. I love Bartleby, and I liked it immediately. I was really moved, impressed by it. And now I just think it's a miraculous text. I read Moby Dick years after that, and then, you know, honestly did not read a ton of Melville before this project. I feel like I became sort of infected by Melville in the last few years.
- [04:58]
Jack Wilson
What do you think? Was it that the first time Wyatt didn't catch. What were your impressions then?
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Ryan Reynolds
When I read Moby Dick the first time, maybe I was too young. I was in my 20s. I think I felt like it was something I was supposed to read, and I read it in a sort of beautiful fashion. And now when I've read it with more information about Melville and having learned more about the book, I read it with a sense of awe. So it's just. Yeah, it's just transformed it for me.
- [05:29]
Jack Wilson
Right. Would you say that's because of his biography or because of just your appreciation for the novel itself?
- [05:41]
Ryan Reynolds
Well, I think learning so much about his biography and then also reading things about Moby Dick that various scholars had written made the book seem even bigger to me than it seemed when I encountered it on my own. It made me appreciate it more. I mean, I'm innately somebody that is drawn to more minimalist writing. So in certain ways, Moby Dick is not the kind of book that I, you know, would. Would be drawn to, given my own proclivities. But as I said, now, it just seems utterly extraordinary to me.
- [06:13]
Jack Wilson
Yeah. And I kind of had a similar impression. And I think as I got older, it. I started to appreciate how strange of a book it is and how formally, inventive it is. And kind of. It feels more daring than it seemed when I was first encountering it. And I thought, well, this is something everybody is supposed to read and it's so such a staple of the canon.
- [06:35]
Ryan Reynolds
Yeah, absolutely. And I think when I first read it, I was not really a writer myself. And now, as someone who's thought a lot about writing and craft, I'm also just amazed at the things he gets away with in the book and the things he does as a writer. It is a very strange book.
- [06:56]
Jack Wilson
And, Chris, how about you? What's your relationship with Melville been like over the years?
- [07:01]
Chris Bachelder
He had similar experience. I. I read him early Bartleby, also a huge Bartleby fan, and. And Moby Dick early on, 20s, and I really agree with what you're saying about, like, not. Not appreciating how spectacularly strange it is if you read it. Like you're, you know, taking your vitamins or something. You know, I had a similar experience. Experience with Chekhov, actually. Like, just thinking Chekhov was the master of a really kind of conventional story and then understanding, as I got older how weird Chekhov is and how strange those stories are. And so then he was threaded through my reading life and teaching life, really, for a number of years. And then I returned to him later and understood much more about the context of the novel and the context of 19th century literature. And that context helped me understand how strange the book is, how wonderful the book is, how spectacular and kind of miraculous the book is.
- [07:56]
Jack Wilson
Yeah. And Chekhov is a really interesting comparison. It strikes me that one of the things about both of those writers is although they are inventive, it never feels like they're trying to be inventive for its own sake, that they're kind of setting out to try to shock people or make people be impressed with their ability to distort the form or something. It just seems like they've got a story they're trying to tell and they're trying to find the best way to tell it. And the story seems to come first, and the humanity seems to come first and everything else. You know, if the form has to bend to adapt itself to their vision, then so be it.
- [08:36]
Chris Bachelder
Yeah, absolutely. I agree. I don't have the sense of, like, ostentatious weirdness or zaniness. Sometimes in Melville you think, well, anything goes, but the truth is not anything goes. You know, he's created a system. He's created a narrative system and a context in which many things go. But you can't just do whatever you want, you know. And he's not drawing attention. Yeah, I talk to students about this all the time. Just, are you drawing attention to yourself and your own, like, remarkable imaginative powers? Are you, you know, are you invested in the narrative and then, you know, your vision? So, yeah, I agree with that.
- [09:11]
Jack Wilson
And what. What is the answer you get from the students? Is it silence?
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Chris Bachelder
Yeah, I mean, I. Everybody. I think probably teachers try to tell me that, too. And, you know, it's. Students have to find their own way with their own voice.
- [09:27]
Jack Wilson
Yep. The embarrassed silence of being felt seen.
- [09:33]
Chris Bachelder
That's right.
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Jack Wilson
Okay, so tell us about Day's work. I'll let whoever wants to jump in here jump in. But how did this book come about? Does it make sense to start with the title and explain that, or what was the inspiration for the book?
- [09:53]
Ryan Reynolds
Well, I guess the inspiration for it was my obsession with reading about Melville's life after coming across an article years and years ago about Melville's life at Arrowhead, the farm that he owned in western Massachusetts, and the years that he lived there when he wrote Moby Dick. And I just became obsessed, I guess, with learning about this and learning about the people that he lived with while he was writing Moby Dick. So, like, the narrator of the novel, I went on kind of a journey across. In a way, the novel simulates what happened to me, where I tried to kind of find my way across this morass of Noville scholarships. There's so many biographers and so many books about him that it just feels overwhelming. And it documents this narrator's sort of journey across that scholarship as she tries to assess Melville and his life. I think she's thinking in particular about the cost of making art versus the worth of making it. And Melville seemed like an ideal case study for that, since the art he made seems so supremely worthwhile, but also the cost upon him as an individual and as the people around him was, was very steep.
- [11:15]
Chris Bachelder
So, yeah, so Jennifer fell into what's called the Melville vortex. And we were home during the pandemic, so I was home as well. And she started coming down every morning. We just talk, and she'd bring a lot of information, and we just, you know, had this time together. And I fell in as well eventually, and we sort of stumbled into writing this thing together. And then I started getting involved in the research as well.
- [11:40]
Jack Wilson
The work takes an unusual form. I don't know if you have a quick way to describe it.
- [11:49]
Chris Bachelder
Yeah, I think we've come to think of it as like a pandemic research. Log? Yeah, you know, from. From this woman, you know, who's based on Jen. But, you know, we think of her as a fictional character in a novel, and she's compiling this information, but. And so it. It's fractured. It's been called fractured, but it's not shards. It's not like a broken vase, you know, with these shards. We really thought of these pieces. We set the challenge of one piece really leading to another piece. We think that the narrator lives in this form. We think she's revealed by it. She's careful with her information, she's cautious. She's interested in arriving at the truth and finding it. And she's interested in a very difficult time of the pandemic, for reasons that have to do with Melville, but really reasons that have to do with a kind of reckoning or an audit of her own life. At 50, she's interested in just making her way very carefully through a lot of information. So I tend to think that she. Like, even when she's not. There's not a lot about her or her family, but I think she. Even when she's talking about Melville, I think she's on the page. I think her character's on the page about what kind of person she is and what kind of project that she set out upon. Again, I don't think it's the kind of radical fragmentation or a kind of really contemporary fragmentation that's disassociative. I really think there's a kind of cautious, careful movement.
- [13:15]
Jack Wilson
I am probably not the first person to note this, and I'm sure the two of you. It occurred to you as well, but in the way that it's presented and in her obsession, the narrator's obsession with Melville, it feels a lot like Melville's obsession with whales. And the way that Moby Dick opens with all of the things that he's gathered and all of the different passages of research and quotations and descriptions and so on, but I have to say, no shade on. On Herman, but Melville is a lot more interesting to me than Wales, so I kind of appreciated that.
- [14:03]
Ryan Reynolds
Thank you.
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Chris Bachelder
Yeah. There's obsessions of Melville, obsessions of Ahab, obsessions of our narrator. That was certainly one of the things we were obsessed about, is obsession.
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Jack Wilson
Right. So I think incantatory was the word that I read that really stuck with me as a way of describing kind of the effect that this ends up producing. But why don't we hear a little bit of it so that listeners can get a sense of what it is we're talking About. And I've asked you to kind of select passages throughout the book so we can kind of hear the development of the narrator as well. But is there a passage from early in the book that one or both of you would like to read for us?
- [14:47]
Ryan Reynolds
Yeah, we picked a passage from, I think, either the first or second chapter that addresses the writing of Moby Dick and its influence. At the age of 25, Melville wrote his first book in seven years. He wrote seven. The sixth of seven was Moby Dick.
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Chris Bachelder
Moby Dick was written under unfavorable circumstances.
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Ryan Reynolds
According to Melville's wife, who recalled that he worked in his study all day without eating. What Elizabeth Melville actually recorded about Moby Dick is that it was written under.
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Chris Bachelder
Under unfavorable circumstances. He wrote white whale or Moby Dick under here. She turned her notebook page. Under unfavorable circumstances.
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Ryan Reynolds
Thus was it written. And thus written. Now, under the circumstances I'm under. Through our walls I hear the students on Zoom mumbling their spring haiku. Sweet sense of something carried somewhere by something. Ah, something in spring.
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Chris Bachelder
I am so pulled hither and thither by circumstances.
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Ryan Reynolds
Melville wrote to Hawthorne in the spring of 1851 while trying to complete both Moby Dick and his chores.
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Chris Bachelder
The calm, the coolness, the silent grass growing mood in which a man ought always to compose, that, I fear, can seldom be mine.
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Ryan Reynolds
He feared, he wrote, that he would become as worn out as an old.
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Chris Bachelder
Nutmeg grater, and went on to complain.
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Ryan Reynolds
To Hawthorne about the publishing industry.
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Chris Bachelder
Though I wrote the Gospels in this century, I should die in the gutter.
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Ryan Reynolds
Concerning the Gospels, he was correct, more or less.
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Chris Bachelder
Moby Dick is the one book that deserves to be called our American Bible, according to Nathaniel Philbrick.
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Ryan Reynolds
A Bible written in scrimshaw, according to David Gilbert, who, when in doubt or simply in need of something, opens the book at random and reads aloud, his voice hauling forth the words like a net full of squirmy fish.
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Chris Bachelder
An unnatural immaculate conception, according to Philip Hoare, who once carried around his tiny Oxford World Classics edition anonymously, bound in blue cloth to be studied chapter by chapter, like the Bible or the Quran.
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Ryan Reynolds
I'd totally take Moby Dick over the Bible, said Connor Oberst, who estimates that he's listened to the audiobook of Moby Dick 50 times.
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Chris Bachelder
Lewis Lapham's mother read Moby Dick to him when he was 6.
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Ryan Reynolds
Faulkner read it to his daughter when she was 7.
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Chris Bachelder
David Foster Wallace's father read it to him when he was 8.
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Ryan Reynolds
Marilyn Robinson read it to herself when she was 9.
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Chris Bachelder
E.L. doctorow read half of it when he was 10. Fair sailing until the psychology stove me in.
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Ryan Reynolds
When Stanley Kunitz was 100, he would ask visitors to read him a chapter of the novel.
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Chris Bachelder
He looked like a little walnut sunk in a chair, said Nick Flynn. But when you'd read, he'd sort of come alive from the language.
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Ryan Reynolds
Last night, adrift, I asked my husband to read me a chapter of Moby Dick. And so he read me chapter 59, squid.
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Chris Bachelder
The seamen rushed to the yard, Arms as in swarming time, the bees rushed to the boughs.
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Ryan Reynolds
He turned off his light and told me that his father, a retired trumpet player, once told him that virtuosic playing makes musicians laugh.
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Chris Bachelder
What else can you do?
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Ryan Reynolds
He said. His father said.
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Chris Bachelder
Then he said, bon voyage.
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Ryan Reynolds
By which he meant, good luck and.
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Chris Bachelder
I'm sorry and I love you, and please leave me alone.
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Jack Wilson
Okay. What a great excerpt. It gets so much of this book onto the table for us. I almost don't know where to begin. But let me just list out a lot of the themes I've heard. It's Melville and his. His personal life, his marriage, Elizabeth, which we don't always hear a whole lot about her. His relationship with Hawthorne, which we do hear a lot of. And just the way that you are able to weave together all of the research you've done, it does not feel like a book of anecdotes that are kind of presented in a jumbled fashion or just a sequential kind of fashion. For example, when you talk about the writers and their age, when they first encountered the book, it's clear that there's a synthesizing process here. And there's a. It's. It's coming to us with kind of a filter that I appreciate. And then the passage that you just read, it does put on the table the. The narrator and what's going on in her personal life. And kind of the way this book is, is blending with her. So that it was a great choice. And let me break it down into some questions so we can go through kind of these topics one by one. Let's start with Melville on this farm that you had mentioned. Where was he in life when he wrote Moby Dick? It was his sixth book, as you say, in seven years. But what was happening in his personal life, and what kind of mental state was he in?
- [19:37]
Ryan Reynolds
Well, he was 31 at the time. He'd been married for several years. He had a young son, and he had been writing furiously, trying to make money, but struggling to force himself to write the kind of books that would sell and make him money. He began Moby Dick, as he described it, as a romance of adventure to his publisher, trying to make it seem. And, you know, I think probably intended to set off that way. He spent summer in western Massachusetts. He lived in New York at the time, but he summered in western Massachusetts at a family property. And while he was there, he met Nathaniel Hawthorne, who had an extraordinary impact on him. Melville impulsively decided not to leave the region and bought a farmhouse nearby. Hawthorne and biographers suggest there was some sense in which he wanted to be near him, to finish this book, and that he almost wrote it at him or to him. And it was dedicated to Hawthorne in admiration of his genius. And I think Melville then set about remaking the book and setting his sights on, you know, posterity, basically, and as a result, wrote a book that was not very sellable in his time. Yeah, his work, you know, said in that excerpt that it was written under unfavorable circumstances. And I think she probably meant that he was working on it so maniacally that he, you know, stayed in his study all day, skipped meals. It would get later and later he would be rushing to the post office in the dark because he'd stayed in his office all day long. At the same time, he had chores he was supposed to be doing on the farm. She was probably ignoring. I suppose he felt utterly elated and also exhausted, probably during this time period.
- [21:31]
Jack Wilson
Yeah. What kind of relationship did they have.
- [21:34]
Ryan Reynolds
Melville and his wife?
- [21:36]
Jack Wilson
Yeah. Yeah.
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Ryan Reynolds
Well, it seems like there were some different stages in the marriage. As Elizabeth Hardwick put it, the marriage was more prudent for Melville than for his wife. He came from a wealthy Boston family, and Melville borrowed money from her father, and they lived on some of her inheritance. She was a good nature, sort of steady kind of person, whereas he was mercurial, probably bipolar. But they seemed very happy early on, based on her letters that she sent to family members, and she was very supportive of his writing. He would read it to her in the evening. She helped copy his writing for him and seemed delighted to be married to an author is how it seemed from reading her letters. Then the marriage had a definite rough patch. And after some years went by, some letters appeared that showed that her family tried to basically get her out of the marriage and felt that Melville was insane and possibly abusive. And this is a big question, Melville's scholarship, but to what extent Melville may have been abusive emotionally or physically. But then it seems that in the late years, they reached a kind of quietness and peace in their marriage and came out on the other side of that terrible period that they seem to have lived through together. And after she outlived him by about 15 years. And during that time she worked very hard to generate interest in his books, to take care of all the just sort of like literary executor kind of duties. And when he died, someone in the family suggested to her that maybe her life would be easier now. She silenced that person immediately and basically took a lot of pride in having been married to Melville. So, you know, I think it was a complicated marriage with a lot of different stages. Biographers haven't been very generous to Elizabeth Melville, I don't think, but in recent years, I think people are starting to pay more attention to the ways in which she's contributed to Melville's reputation.
- [23:51]
Jack Wilson
And did the two of them think that Moby Dick was the classic? Did they feel like that was the one where he had scaled the highest mountain?
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Chris Bachelder
Melville's sister was the first reader of Moby Dick because she copied it, his sister Augusta. And she writes in a letter and says, it's very fine, it's a very fine book, you know, it'll do. Well, I don't know that we have much from Elizabeth during that period in Melville. It's just hard to know. We don't have the letter. Hawthorne wrote to Melville right after Hawthorne read Moby Dickson, we think two days and wrote him a letter. We don't have that. We have Melville's reply. And in that reply you get the sense of Melville's immense pride and immense satisfaction that Hawthorne had read the book and understood it. And Melville, in sort of a self sabotaging way, just told Hawthorne, look, don't write about it, don't write a review. You saying you liked it was enough. So I think there was a sense with Melville of what he had accomplished. But his next book, he says, I've just written about the Leviathan, but I think Krakens exist. You know, like, I'm gonna go for the Kraken. And it was his, it was his really bonkers book called Pierre that kind of, you know, kind of ruined his career and maybe his life. So I think, I don't think Melville thought at age 31 or 32 that this was just, he had hit the peak of his career. I think he was heading for something even grander at the time.
- [25:18]
Jack Wilson
Right. Okay, before we take our break, let's talk about Hawthorne. It feels like the two of them were so close, but I can't help feeling that Melville just kind of came on too strong and Hawthorne ended up suffocating a little bit and having to distance himself, which just kind of makes me sad. Is that how have I got that right? Is that how you see it as well? Or was there more reciprocation there? And is it something that we should be celebrating rather than cringing a little bit?
- [25:53]
Ryan Reynolds
It does feel like Melville came on pretty strong. But I will say that I think part of that impression is created by the fact that as Chris mentioned, Hawthorne's letters to Melville have not survived. So these letters that Melville wrote that evidence so much emotion. But we don't know what Hawthorne wrote back to him. And if we had those, it might seem like a more balanced relationship. We do know that Hawthorne liked Melville immediately when he met him. And he invited Melville to visit him in his house for a few days after they met. And that was a really remarkable invitation from someone like Hawthorne who was very shy and reclusive.
- [26:32]
Jack Wilson
Yeah.
- [26:32]
Ryan Reynolds
And there is places in Hawthorne's journals where he references the wonderful, far reaching conversations that he and Melville had. And he also came and stayed at Melville's house with his daughter for a couple nights at one point. So I do think Hawthorne was very drawn to Melville as well and that perhaps if we had more documentation of what he expressed him in writing, we might, as I said, see this as a less imbalanced situation.
- [27:01]
Chris Bachelder
Yes, we both came around to the idea that Hawthorne thought quite highly of Melville, but Melville could just be a big golden retriever and Hawthorne was like a cat. Hawthorne would come over and they drink and talk all night and get what you're saying completely. And it's funny and there's these weird times. Melville was writing to Hawthorne saying, I have a book idea, but I think you, you'd do it better. And then he just kept trying to get Hawthorne to write a book. It's just so weird. Like I don't want coming on pretty strong. And you know, I think people think Hawthorne took off from Western Massachusetts because they only live together. Together they're like 18 months or something. I don't know. But I think people think he scared him off. But I mean, Hawthorne moved 20 times in a 22 year marriage or something. A 22 year span of their marriage. They moved 20 times. So Hawthorne was just a really restless creature.
- [27:50]
Jack Wilson
Right. Okay, let's take a quick break and then come back with more from the co authors of Day's work. My dad works in B2B marketing. He came by my school for Career Day and said he was a big roas man. Then he told everyone how much he loved calculating his return on ad spend. My friends still laugh at me to this day. Not everyone gets B2B, but with LinkedIn you'll be able to reach people who do get $100 credit on your next ad campaign. Go to LinkedIn.com results to claim your credit. That's LinkedIn.com results. Terms and conditions apply. LinkedIn the place to be to be.
- [28:43]
Jennifer Habel
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- [29:49]
Jack Wilson
Okay, we're back. So, Chris and Jennifer, how about a passage from the middle of the book?
- [29:57]
Ryan Reynolds
Okay, this passage actually speaks to Melville and Hawthorne's relationship. Hawthorne appears to have liked Melville Immediately after their meeting on a hike on Monument Mountain, he invited Melville to visit him for a few days before Melville returned to New York. Given Hawthorne's shyness, his invitation was remarkable. Melville stayed with the Hawthornes for four nights in early September, Sophia Hawthorne reported that Melville, who professed to be so naturally quiet as to elicit complaint, found.
- [30:26]
Chris Bachelder
Himself talking to Mr. Hawthorne to a great extent.
- [30:29]
Ryan Reynolds
According to Elizabeth Hardwicke, Melville had found.
- [30:32]
Chris Bachelder
In Hawthorne the lone intellectual and creative friendship of his life.
- [30:36]
Ryan Reynolds
Within days after leaving the Hawthorne, Melville had borrowed the money to buy a house and farm near Hawthorns.
- [30:42]
Chris Bachelder
Rationality was not just now the dominant force in Melville's life. Conceived a biographer.
- [30:49]
Ryan Reynolds
In less than a year, he would, unbeknownst to his wife, borrow even more money. $2,050 for five years at 9% interest.
- [30:57]
Chris Bachelder
Don't do it, Herman, the biographer once exclaimed during an interview. Don't borrow that money, Herman.
- [31:03]
Ryan Reynolds
But if you stopped him, he wouldn't be Melville, the interviewer said.
- [31:06]
Chris Bachelder
No, he wouldn't, the biographer said. But you can't love somebody and not want to warn him away from disaster.
- [31:12]
Ryan Reynolds
You love Melville, the interviewer said.
- [31:14]
Chris Bachelder
Of course, the biographer, holding his hand to his chest.
- [31:17]
Ryan Reynolds
One falls in love with him, said Tony Kushner. And I certainly have completely, as most of the other Melville freaks have.
- [31:24]
Chris Bachelder
Eg. Hart Crane, who, after reading Moby Dick for the third time, wrote, how much that man makes you love him.
- [31:31]
Ryan Reynolds
E. G. Charles Olson, who, after reading Moby Dick, wrote, now I burn to know, to possess the man completely.
- [31:37]
Chris Bachelder
Eg. J. Perini, who has sort of chased him around the world, visiting spots that he visited, wanting to somehow inhabit his soul.
- [31:45]
Ryan Reynolds
E. G. Morty Sendak, for whom Herman Melville is a God, who named his.
- [31:49]
Chris Bachelder
German shepherd Herman, and even, E. G. Nabokov, who disparaged Faulkner, Hemingway, Joyce, Pound, Elliot, Conrad, James Dostoevsky, Lawrence Camus, Brett Auden, Lowell Ross, among others. I still love Melville, he said at age 67.
- [32:06]
Ryan Reynolds
In response to an interviewer's question about historical scenes he wishes had been filmed, Nabokov provided a brief list that included.
- [32:13]
Chris Bachelder
Herman Melville at breakfast, feeding a sardine to his cat. Nice little morning, he added.
- [32:24]
Jack Wilson
It's wonderful that you got Nabokov in there with his cranky opinions of all of those other authors, but his love for Melville. You mention in there Elizabeth Hardwick, whose name has come up before in our conversation, and I wondered if you could talk a little more about Elizabeth Hardwick and Robert Lowell and kind of how their lives resonated with Melville's and the role that they play in your novel.
- [32:51]
Chris Bachelder
Yeah, sure. So Elizabeth Hardwick wrote a very short biography of Melville, so of course we were dealing with that. And Lowell wrote a play based on Benito Sereno, so they were both involved with Melville on their own. In a letter once to her husband, they had a very complicated relationship and marriage. In her letter to him, begging him to come home from Europe, she said, she's come home. You're our Melville. And she said, you've shown us who we are. So there's those connections that were fun. Elizabeth went by Lizzie, so did Melville's wife. These are just little coincidences, but in general, we were really just interested in relationships in the book. We. There's a lot of different marriages and relationships in the book, and this is one of them. It's a relationship among artists. Elizabeth Melville or Augusta Melville. They lived at a time when they probably couldn't explore their. If they had artistic interests, they were unexplored. So a century later, Elizabeth Hardwick, of course, is brilliant writer, but she's still following Lowell around and picking up his socks and paying his bills. And their marriage was just a pretty extraordinary affair. And you could see the ways in which they helped and hindered each other as artists, tremendously attached to one another, but also just had such difficulties. Also, Lowell's mental illness and Melville's mental illness is another connection. So there's just. There were a lot of. A lot of connections floating around, and then they were another pair that we were interested in.
- [34:17]
Ryan Reynolds
I also thought Hardwick's influential book Sleepless Nights, and in it she says that her story certainly hasn't the drama of I saw the old white bearded frigate master on the dock and signed up for the journey. But after all, I am a woman. And that's a very adventurous and unique book, too. But it's a small book and I found myself thinking about it next to Moby Dick, I guess, because she sort of explicitly seems to allude to Melville's kind of book in that sentence I just read. So I think just women's opportunities in terms of what they might write about in comparison to the life experience they had at this time was on our minds too. And, you know, the narrator of this book is on a journey of sorts, but she can't go anywhere, and you know that. So I thought about Sleepless Nights in that way too. This sort of journey that's not a physical journey. It's a. It's an intellectual and emotional journey.
- [35:15]
Chris Bachelder
And we do a lot with haiku, which was a surprise to us as we went, and we do something with Dickinson and so. And then the Sleepless Nights, which is a masterpiece. And it. But it's small. It's like. So we're interested in ambition and scale too, I think, like the forms that. And brand ambition, the forms that it can take. It can look like Moby Dick, but it can also look like Sleepless Nights. Yeah.
- [35:38]
Jack Wilson
Is there something about the period of midlife that brings relationships and ambition into focus in a way that maybe isn't true for someone who's closer to the beginning of life?
- [35:55]
Ryan Reynolds
Yeah, I think so. As we've alluded to before, parts of this book talks about the age of 31 and when you have these grand ambitions where everything seems out ahead of you. And then the narrator of this book turns 50 in the middle of it. And I think that's a time of life when, for her at least, she's sort of taking reckoning of her life. And I see her as indirectly reckoning with her life as she thinks about Melville's life and conducting a kind of audit of her ambition, maybe circumspection, and also of her relationships, most especially her marriage. So, yeah, I Do see that age period as being connected.
- [36:38]
Jack Wilson
Right. Okay, well, before we get too far along here, let's make sure we have time for the third passage. I wasn't trying to suggest you give away the ending or anything, but were you able to find something kind of from the final third of the book to read?
- [36:54]
Chris Bachelder
Yeah, we were. This is. This comes from late in Melville's life. He worked for 19 years as a customs inspector, had quit writing fiction, wrote poetry, but published these little books in editions of 25. And nobody knew him anymore, nobody knew he was alive, that they even recognized his name. And so he retired and lived for another three or four years, I think, after retiring. But this is from late Melville's life. Look at Melville's 80 long years of writhing, wrote D.H. lawrence. Though Melville did not writhe for 80.
- [37:30]
Ryan Reynolds
Years, he died in 1891 at the age of 72 in the first hour of September 28 on Monday.
- [37:38]
Chris Bachelder
The poor man is out of his suffering, his niece wrote, and we cannot but rejoice for him.
- [37:43]
Ryan Reynolds
The cause of death, his wife Lizzie, later recorded in her pocket diary, was enlargement of the heart. Melville, in his late years, seems to have found relief from the writings.
- [37:53]
Chris Bachelder
He grew calmer and quieter, according to a granddaughter, grew mellower, according to a biographer.
- [37:59]
Ryan Reynolds
He grew roses, sent dried petals and letters.
- [38:02]
Chris Bachelder
I shall always try and have a rose leaf reserved for you. Be the season what it may, he wrote to Lizzie's cousin in 1885.
- [38:09]
Ryan Reynolds
At the end of that year, he retired from the custom house after 19 years of service. Melville's primary occupations in retirement were reading, writing, walking the city and browsing bookstores. With his $25 monthly book allowance from Lizzie, a bookstore employee remembered that he.
- [38:26]
Chris Bachelder
Walked with a rapid stride and almost a sprightly gait.
- [38:30]
Ryan Reynolds
He wore a black felt hat and almost invariably a blue suit.
- [38:35]
Chris Bachelder
He was preceded by a beard that was impressive even for those hirsute days.
- [38:40]
Ryan Reynolds
He was considered by many a misanthrope. Damn fools. With his frequent epithet, though some characterized him as shy, elusive, and self effacing. To friends and acquaintances, he would not speak of his novels.
- [38:54]
Chris Bachelder
I have forgotten them, he told one.
- [38:55]
Ryan Reynolds
Friend when another asked to borrow them. Melville claimed he did not own a single copy.
- [39:00]
Chris Bachelder
My books will speak for themselves, he once said.
- [39:06]
Jack Wilson
Was this process, and now that you're finished with the process, you have the book and it's between covers and it can sit on a shelf. Was it an exorcism of sorts, or do you feel as obsessed as ever?
- [39:23]
Ryan Reynolds
With Melville, it was an exorcism yeah. D.H. lawrence said, I think you shed your sicknesses in books. And. And Jeff Dyer said, I think you shed your interest. And I think I don't. I haven't shed my interest, but I have shed my sickness.
- [39:38]
Chris Bachelder
Yeah, for sure. Yeah.
- [39:40]
Ryan Reynolds
Yeah.
- [39:42]
Chris Bachelder
A weird thing about writers, but they're fiction writers. There's this kind of quality of dilettantism and opportunism, like you just. You lose yourself in a project and then there's another project, you know, ahead of you. And so Melville will always carry with us and that time we spent with him and it was so fun to work together. But you do. Just even getting ready for this interview, we had to go back and remind ourselves of like central facts of Melville's life because it does fade a little bit.
- [40:13]
Jack Wilson
Yeah. Could you imagine doing another book like this with a different writer?
- [40:20]
Ryan Reynolds
Yeah. We actually are working on sort of a companion book to this one, although it's very different and it is from the husband's perspective and it's influenced by Hawthorne, but it's not at all research based. It's more. I don't know, how would you describe it? It's like a tale, I guess.
- [40:37]
Chris Bachelder
It's kind of a tale. Hawthorne's quoted lightly in it, but it doesn't look like this. But. And I'm happy for that. But halfway through this book, I thought this could be a trilogy and they all look like this. We thought about like Dickinson and what we were talking about earlier with scale and her life, like the life of our mind versus the life of like being pretty reclusive. We talked about Longfellow only because he's somebody who, you know, we talk in this book about. It's a Robert half line about. It's brutal the way that some lives work and some don't. Melville's life didn't work and.
- [41:11]
Jack Wilson
Right.
- [41:12]
Chris Bachelder
They're on the Pequod and they meet these other ships. Some of those ships work and some of those ships do not work. My last time, that's what I really noticed is the meetings with other ships because some of the just vicissitudes, contingency, luck, like we're all heading out on the ocean when you're born and you just don't know. Some of them, some of them are partying, they've got all the whale oil they can hold and they're heading home and they're drinking rum and some are in worse shape than the Pequod and, you know, laid waste by Pestilence and so. But that's just to say Longfellow is a 19th century writer writing poetry, selling tens of thousands of copies and his life kind of works. We were kind of interested in him for a while, even though his work doesn't hold up as well as Melville.
- [41:52]
Jack Wilson
Yeah, it sounds like. I mean, I mentioned that in some ways this book found a style that seemed very suited to Melville, certainly the Melville that was writing Moby Dick. And is it fair to say that the one that's kind of based on Hawthorne maybe has a style that is well suited for that particular writer?
- [42:17]
Chris Bachelder
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Form seems more conventional, I think, in narrative terms, but the angle of vision and the aloofness and reserve and the thematizing of issues of absence and departure. It's based very, very, very on the story Wakefield by Hawthorne, which is about 12 page story about a man who leaves one day on a business trip and then gets. Stays gone for 20 years, you know, and it's a cruel thing to do, but he's not in control of himself. He's trying to just kind of get outside of his life. It resonates with artists, I think, because you can live or you can watch, but you can't do both.
- [43:00]
Jack Wilson
Yeah. And speaking of resonating with artists, it does seem like Melville. I mean, you've given us many examples, just as we've been talking here, of ways in which Melville and his life and his prose resonated with writers. What do you think it is about Melville that makes him such a kind of patron saint for so many different types of writers?
- [43:29]
Ryan Reynolds
That's a good question. And some of it is the capaciousness of his books that Moby Dick, he read in just this infinite number of ways. Really just. It just seems to hold everything and can be almost anything.
- [43:44]
Jack Wilson
Yeah.
- [43:45]
Ryan Reynolds
So really metaphorical. And people can respond to his writing in so many different ways. I think the story of his life is obviously very affecting and is an example to writers of somebody who just set their sights on posterity rather than the marketplace and stayed true to literature his whole life, even though he lived in obscurity. And that's inspirational, I think, both tragic and inspirational.
- [44:12]
Chris Bachelder
Yeah, he's funny, he's democratic. He had all kinds of blind spots on lots of things and he's of his time, but he's radically ahead of his time. What this democratic ideals and multiracial ideals aboard the Pequod. I think people respond. This is not everybody's cup of tea, but I think people really respond to his just gregariousness of style, like throwing open his arms to the world and wanting to tackle it all in Moby Dick, not. Not in the stories afterwards, he kind of got chastened a bit, I think, you know. And Bartleby is much more pared down, but Bartleby's still funny in its way. Heartbreaking. There's just a lot to love about him, but he's mysterious. As much as we know about Melville, there's a lot we don't know. And it kind of fuels the Melville industry a little bit and keeps people really interested in him. It's just kind of a sweet spot of how much we know and don't know.
- [45:07]
Jack Wilson
Well, although there's a lot we don't know, for readers of your book, they will increase the knowledge of what they do know. The book is called Day's Work and its authors were my guests today. Jennifer Habel and Chris Bechelder. Thank you so much for joining me on the history of literature.
- [45:24]
Ryan Reynolds
Thank you for having us.
- [45:25]
Chris Bachelder
Thanks so much, Jack.
- [45:44]
Jack Wilson
And finally today, Alexander Poots was here a while ago to talk about the writers of Northern Ireland. After our discussion about that, I asked Alexander this special question. Okay. I'm here with Alexander Poots, author of the Stranger's House, a study and celebration of Northern Irish literature. Alex, this question comes from a listener who asks, what do you want your last book to be? This will be the last book you will ever read. You can either choose one that exists or describe one that has not yet been written.
- [46:27]
Alexander Poots
I'm slightly choosing here. My choice would be the Aubrey and Maturin series by Patrick O'Brien. Now, yes, this is a hill I'm going to die on. It's one enormous novel.
- [46:42]
Jack Wilson
Okay.
- [46:43]
Alexander Poots
It is the definition of a Romain Fleurve, in my opinion.
- [46:48]
Jack Wilson
Yeah.
- [46:48]
Alexander Poots
So you've got 20 volumes and you've got everything in there. You've got beautiful writing, you've got some of the deepest characterization you'll ever find in English language fiction. You've got action, you've got romance, you have melancholy, you have tragedy, and most importantly, you have humor. These books are so funny. I think a lot of people are put off because when you open Master and Commander, the very first volume, I think O'Brien perhaps was still figuring out the approach he wanted to take. And some of his critics have suggested, you know, he spends a bit too much time on Spinnakers and all the rest of it. That is, I suppose, potentially true for the first book. But the second book, Post Captain, and after that you're just away. It's absolutely wonderful. And once you've reached the end. You can start at the beginning again and go all the way around. It's wonderful.
- [47:49]
Jack Wilson
I've read the whole series, but I do know people who finished the final book and just went straight back to the beginning and just kept going.
- [47:58]
Alexander Poots
Yeah, it's extraordinary. It's also, it's a bit of a secret club about once every six months you'll read an op ed, the most recent one, a friend sentence it to me. It was written a few decades ago now, I think, but David Mamet, big fan. And you'll find occasionally there'll be a little piece by a writer who you know and admire who comes out of the Aubrey and Maturin closet and says, yes, I'm a fan. Give me more. And it's, it's just a wonderful reading experience and I highly recommend it to everyone, even if you think it's, it's not your thing. It's so much more than a melodrama about tall ships, but there's a lot of that in there as well.
- [48:40]
Jack Wilson
The characters are such good company as you get to know them over the course of the series. And there's these little things that will recur where one of the things that always would make me laugh is that Steven can, he's basically a landlubber and he can hardly get onto the ship. They're always carrying him on board. So he doesn't fall, fall off into the water.
- [49:02]
Alexander Poots
And, and yes, I mean, he, he, well, he, he falls off anyway, of course.
- [49:08]
Jack Wilson
Yeah. Right.
- [49:08]
Alexander Poots
I mean, I, I think like many people, my favorite character has to be preserved.
- [49:13]
Jack Wilson
Killing. Yeah.
- [49:15]
Alexander Poots
Captain Aubrey Stewart. Who, who becomes more and more ornery.
- [49:19]
Jack Wilson
Yeah.
- [49:20]
Alexander Poots
And is, is just an absolute, a joy to read. I mean, he must have been an enormous play. Pleasure to write. But no, I just love those books. I feel evangelical about them. And I mean, back when I worked as a bookseller, I would constantly be hurling them at people. And I hope, anyway, I managed to show at least one new reader the light. And when you asked me that question about what's your final book? I knew immediately it had to be Aubrey and Maturin.
- [49:53]
Jack Wilson
Okay. Alexander Poots, thank you so much for joining me on the history of literature.
- [49:58]
Alexander Poots
Such a pleasure. Thank you.
- [50:04]
Jack Wilson
Okay, there we go. Aubrey Maturin. Maybe that's a novel to put on your list this year or 20 novels, as the case may be. I'm reading some big books, as it turns out. Why not? January is a good month for it and a good month for podcasting, it seems. On Thursday we're going to have an unusual episode telling the story of stories as we look at the parable triggered by a mysterious manuscript that I received and lots more after that, including a 20th century giant, Edna Ferber, the Portuguese superstar Fernando Pessoa, a look at post Cold War Russian poetry, Gatsby turns 100 and more. I'm Jack Wilson. Thank you for listening and we'll see you next time.
- [51:35]
Jennifer Habel
What role do books play in shaping who we are? Find out on the Five Books, the brand new podcast hosted by me, Tali Rosenblatt Cohen. Each week I sit down with acclaimed Jewish authors to discuss the top five books that have shaped them. Hear from notable guests like Booker Prize finalist Yael van der Vowden and literary influencer Zibi Owens as we delve deep into what it means to live as a Jewish American today. Join me and listen to the Five Books wherever you get your podcasts.