GK: It's a pleasure to welcome to our show the novelist Herman Melville from Pittsfield. Thank you for coming down to Lenox, sir.
TR: My pleasure, indeed. And a warm welcome to the Berkshires. And a very good afternoon to your audience.
GK: So you lived for a time around here, I understand.
TR: Yes, near Pittsfield.
GK: And that's where you wrote ----
TR: Ohhhh don't say it...
GK: Moby Dick.
TR: Oh you said it. Yes. Biggest mistake of my life. I hated that book. What a bore.
GK: But it's a classic.
TR: A classic failure. My wife said, "Write a romance. Women are the ones who buy books and they are not going to read some endless saga about man and the sea." How right she was.
GK: But you had written about whaling before.
TR: Yes. A book called "Omoo." But it had cannibalism and nudity in it and so it sold fairly well. My wife
said, "Look at Nathaniel Hawthorne. His books sell. The House of Seven Gables The Scarlet Letter. Write a book with a title that begins with "The". Like "The Sea and The Ship". I did not. I hated "The Scarlet Letter."
GK: Oh really?
TR: For a book about adultery, he sure didn't go into much detail. For all he said about it, it could've been an immaculate conception. Hawthorne knew nothing about sex. He was opposed to premarital sex. I told him, "It's only premarital if you plan to get married." He didn't get it. He said he didn't believe in casual sex. I said, "So wear a jacket and tie." Hawthorne! He didn't drink. I said, "That's why God invented alcohol! So ugly people can have sex too." But he married his wife and then he discovered a food that lowers your sex drive.
GK: What is that?
TR: Wedding cake.
GK: Aha. So your wife wanted you to write a romance, huh?
TR: She was after me all the time. If it wasn't one thing, it was another. She wanted me to go on a diet. She figured that if I lost five pounds a month, in a few years she'd be rid of me completely.
GK: You know, Mr. Melville, you're a lot funnier than people would think from reading Moby Dick.
TR: Well, good thing no one's read it! And please, call me Herman. Or call me Ishmael. Just call me for dinner.
GK: So you weren't happy with Moby Dick, huh?
TR: It made no money. I gave Captain Ahab a first mate called Mr. Starbucks and they named a coffee shop after that and earned billions of dollars. And me? I didn't get beans.
GK: What do you wish you'd done instead?
TR: I wish I'd made it funnier.
GK: Really?
TR: So why did it take Ahab so long to catch Moby Dick?
GK: Why?
TR: Every time he saw Moby Dick, he marked the spot by painting an X on the deck of the ship. What did Moby Dick say when he swam into a concrete wall?
GK: What?
TR: Dam. How did they circumcise Moby Dick?
GK: How?
TR: They sent down four skin divers.
GK: Herman Melville, ladies and gentlemen.
(BAND PLAYOFF)