On August 1, BCHS will celebrate the launch of new audiobook of Billy Budd Sailor, read by Paul Giamatti. Paul’s association with Arrowhead, and our own Jana Laiz, is a story worth telling in itself. Below is an interview Jana conducted with Paul that helps tell that tale.
In Conversation With Paul Giamatti
About Billy Budd, Moby-Dick and All Things Melville with Jana Laiz
Little known fact: Herman Melville wrote Moby-Dick in the landlocked Berkshire Hills of Western Massachusetts. In my many years working at Arrowhead in various capacities, first as Writer-In-Residence, currently as Education Coordinator, I’ve come to find that a vast number of people are very surprised by this. Many think—for obvious reasons— that he must have written it sitting at a seaside window or on a ship; but in actual fact, he sat writing his masterpiece in his study at Arrowhead, in Pittsfield, looking out his “fairy” window at the whalelike form of Mount Greylock.
To set the record straight, in 2016, we decided to hold a Moby-Dick Read-A-Thon here at Arrowhead. We came up with a plan to start the reading on or around August 1st (Herman’s birthday), from 10 AM until 5 PM, for as many days as it took to complete. One after another, participants would get 15 minutes to read a segment, after which we’d ring a cowbell and move to the next reader. That first year, we were nervous that no one would sign up and that we four Arrowhead staff members would have to read the entire book ourselves. Luckily, we were wrong. In fact, we hardly got a chance to read at all! Melville lovers came out of the woodwork to participate over the course of the four day event. That was nine years ago. And we are still going strong!
During the pandemic we went online, but our participants stuck with us, with readers joining from around the globe. As we returned to normalcy, we ran it hybrid for another few years. We set up a screen in the barn and had slots for readers both online and in person.
On the first day of our 2021 event, I saw that someone had signed up for an online slot under the name ‘Ahab.’ When this anonymous person’s timeslot came, I saw a very familiar name enter the chat room. I remember thinking to myself, “there must be another person with the name Paul Giamatti.” But I was wrong. It was THE Paul Giamatti, and I believe I may have shrieked when he came on the screen. Recovering myself, I said, “Ahab, you’re up!” and he began to read. He was, in short, amazing. Loath as I was to follow protocol, after fifteen minutes I rang the cowbell to signal his time was up. Unsurprisingly, no one who was scheduled to go next wanted to follow him. Would you?
He read several times that day, and finished the novel to applause and many tears. It was an incredible experience. We invited him back, of course, and in subsequent years he attended virtually, even making time to join us in the midst of a busy filming schedule.
Over the years, Paul and I have been emailing about Melville, and he’s come to Arrowhead to take a private tour with me. In 2023, I boldly asked him if he would consider narrating an audiobook version of Melville‘s Billy Budd for the hundredth anniversary of that novella. To our delight and surprise, he said yes.
Billy Budd is the novella that brought Herman Melville out of obscurity and into the limelight in 1924, and some years later, Moby-Dick was republished to the critical acclaim it has today. On August 1 at 5:30 PM we will celebrate the release of the audiobook. Paul won’t be able to show up in person but we may get a surprise visit from him in some form or the other.
I asked Paul if he would chat with me about all of it and here is our conversation:
JL: Thank you so much, Paul, for taking time out of your crazy busy schedule to chat with me. I’m not sure you know what a surprise it was for us to see you pop up on our Zoom screen for the Moby-Dick Read-a-thon. We’ve always been curious…how did you find out about it?
PG: I think I was interested in visiting Arrowhead and was online looking at the website and saw the reading was coming up. I don’t exactly recall.
JL: Did you enjoy reading/listening on Zoom? I know that can be hard.
PG: I certainly did enjoy listening to it and reading it out loud. I think his stuff really lends itself to reading aloud, it’s both conversational and dramatic. Sometimes literally so: there are “scenes” in Moby-Dick and long passages in iambic pentameter.
JL: How many times have you read Moby-Dick?
PG: I don’t know how many times I’ve read it, 4 or 5 cover to cover? I dip into it and pick it up and put it down all the time.
JL: How did your love/fascination/obsession with Melville begin?
PG: I was fascinated by big sea creatures as a very little kid (and beyond) sharks and whales and stuff like that. And I was into monsters, monster movies. My maternal grandfather and I were in a bookstore when I was about 4, 5 years old and I couldn’t stop looking at a picture book version of Moby-Dick for kids. I cannot imagine such a thing now, especially one as dark and violent as this one. But it was about whales and it was a monster story: it appealed to my gruesome little boy mind. I think even then I saw what was scary about Ahab. Though now I’m more sympathetic to him! And then also I am from New England, we would visit folks on Martha’s Vineyard, go through New Bedford, the museum there…it became a life-long interest in the book and over time in Herman Melville.
JL: Did your interest in Melville and the cinematic nature of Melville’s work have anything to do with why you chose to be a performer? (that’s a bit of a stretch but worth the ask)
PG: I don’t think that’s a stretch at all, actually. Like I say, it’s dramatic stuff, and as I kid I liked to dress up and be characters from movies, mostly monsters and such. I saw the John Huston version of Moby-Dick when I was maybe 8? On tv. It’s not a great movie, great moments in it, but it’s not great. I didn’t know or care about that as a kid. I was super fascinated by Ahab. And believe it or not I made an ivory leg and tall Quaker hat out of heavy construction paper and stumped around the attic being Ahab. He’s a kind of monster! I was a weird kid. Anyway, yes it totally fed a performing instinct in me.
JL: I was going to ask if there is any character in Melville’s canon you can relate to, but I think you just answered that! What else (besides Moby-Dick and Billy Budd) have you read? And of course I’m going to ask, what is your favorite?
PG: I have read most of his books and stories. I still have to get to Omoo and White Jacket and a few shorter works. But I’ve even read Clarel, which is an amazing poem. Hard to say what’s my favorite. I love Pierre and The Confidence Man. In recent years I’ve come to really love Israel Potter, no one reads it, it should be more widely known, it’s very accessible, some of his best writing I think. That may be my favorite. But I change my mind all the time. I’m uncritical of Melville. I love it all.
JL: You performed Bartleby at the 92nd street Y. Can you tell me about that experience?
PG: I audio recorded Bartleby for the 92nd Y website. On my phone! During Covid lockdown of 2020. I tried to video myself doing it. I actually learned it well enough to have the pages in front of me and still address the camera. I’d get pretty far and flub a line. I couldn’t get thru it without flubbing, and I kept having to start from the beginning. On stage I could cover a flub, not on film. So I just audio recorded it. I loved it! It’s a long monologue, totally made to perform. It’s funny too, believe it or not. A lot of Melville is funnier than at first may appear. At least I think so.
JL: When I asked you to read Billy Budd for the 100th anniversary of its publication, you said yes pretty much immediately. I know you said it was a very difficult experience. Can you elaborate? Any regrets?
PG: I foolishly thought Billy Budd would be relatively easy to read, as Bartleby was. Or even Moby-Dick. Wow, was I wrong. I was very eager to read it, and do not regret it but it was extremely difficult. For me, at any rate. When you read aloud you can feel very close to the writing and the writer. This was very hard to get close to. It’s very forbidding language, really detached and strange and complicated. Every clause in chains of clauses is endlessly qualified. It’s very strange and deadpan, opaque, by design I think it’s like a demented legal document. I don’t think he finished it in any sense of making ready for the world to see. I really don’t know if anyone was supposed to see it. Or maybe only people in the future who might understand it. It was somewhat torturous to read! But it’s an agonized story, you know? It’s about all kinds of deeply hidden deeply private agony. But no regrets! In the end I’m happy I did it.
JL: In your opinion, what is the theme of that small but impactful novella?
PG:I don’t know what it’s all about, Billy Budd. He calls it an “Inside Narrative” which I think is key to it, but I can’t say why. Inside who or what? Maybe it’s about the ultimate enigma we present to each other and ourselves. It seems to pose a lot of challenges to the elaborate constructions of human culture and their ultimate meaning or lack of meaning. I don’t know. Like most of Melville it’s scary, I can say that much.
JL: Do you find relevance in Melville’s work today?
PG: I think he’s extremely relevant. Maybe more than a lot of older American writers. He touches on race, gender, democracy, authority, capitalism, nature, culture. Individual identity and the mass identity of societies and nations. He’s thoroughly contemporary, it’s wild how much he is. He digs very, very deep, he was fearless for his time and ours! He was a very courageous human being. People like him are always needed.
JL: What’s next for you?
PG: I’m actually recording an audio book Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes soon. It can’t be harder than Billy Budd.
JL: Paul, we’re very excited to share this audiobook with the world. Our audio engineer, Will Schillinger from Pilot Recording Studios did an amazing job producing this gem. We at Arrowhead are so grateful to you for sharing your talent and love of Melville to make this audiobook a reality!
Jana Laiz is Writer-In-Residence Emeritus and Education Coordinator at Berkshire County Historical Society at Herman Melville’s Arrowhead. She is the award-winning author of numerous books, including Billy Budd in the Breadbox, The Story of Herman Melville and Eleanor.