← Selected Shorts
Loading summary
Transcript26 lines
- [00:08]
Meg Wolitzer
Meet cute opposites, attract happily ever after. But on this selected short stories that are not about love and its tropes, yet they are even more interesting for being about the things we mistake for love, convention and obsession. I'm Meg Wolitzer. Stay with us. You're listening to selected shorts where our greatest actors transport us through the magic of fiction, one short story at a time. Ah, love, how we love it. Being in love, watching lovers reading about love, and on and on. These are themes and tropes that dominate our fiction and our popular media because the trysts and travails of celebrities are as gripping as those of Kathy and Heathcliff or Marianne and Connell from Sally Rooney's Normal People. Well, sorry, this program has nothing to do with love. One story is about obsession masked as love, and the other is a farce during which a marriage of convenience becomes a lot less convenient. Evelyn Waugh, who lived from 1903 to 1966, was the prolific English writer probably best known these days for the saga Brideshead Revisited. Brideshead is sweeping and sad and was made into that great 1981 TV series with a young Jeremy Irons and an old Laurence Olivier. But in fact, Waugh is also the author of wickedly satirical works that deconstruct English upper class snobbery, including Decline and Fall and A Handful of Dust. He was himself a snob, and also, according to the writer John Self, someone with a particularly complex relationship to the upper classes, which he longed to join but couldn't. It was that fascination and frustration that continues to give Waugh's work its sharp bit as well as its hilarity. Our story Love in the Slump is in Waugh's satirical mode. Its hero and heroine are privileged and clueless, and he sends them on a comic odyssey that reveals a lot about class and money, or the lack of it. Our reader is up to the task. Jane Kacmarek is best known as the shrill suburban mother in Malcolm in the Middle, but this actor knows funny no matter what the milieu. Here she is with Evelyn Waugh's Love in the Slump.
- [02:32]
Narrator/Interviewer
Love in the Slump the marriage of Tom Walsh and Angela Trench Trowbridge was perhaps as unimportant an event as has occurred within living memory. No feature was lacking in the histories of the two young people in their engagement or their wedding, making them completely typical of all that was most unremarkable in modern social conditions. The evening paper recorded this has been a busy week at St Margaret's the third fashionable wedding of the week took place there this afternoon between Mr. Tom Watch and Ms. Angela Trench Trowbridge. Mr. Watch, who, like so many young men nowadays, works in the city, is the second son of the late Honourable Wilfrid Watch of Holliburne House, Shaftesbury. The bride's father, Colonel Trench Trowbridge, is well known as a sportsman and has stood several times for Parliament. In the Conservative interest, Captain Peter Watts of the Colt's Dream Guards acted as his brother's best man. The bride wore a veil of old Brussels lace lent by her grandmother in accordance with the new fashion of taking holidays in Britain. The bride and bridegroom are spending a patriotic honeymoon in the west of England and when that was said, there was really very little that need be added. Angela was 25. She's pretty, good natured, lively, intelligent and popular. Just the sort of girl, in fact, who, for some mysterious cause deep rooted in Anglo Saxon psychology, finds it most diffic difficult to get satisfactorily married. During the last seven years she had done everything which is customary for girls of her sort to do in London. She had danced on the average of four evenings a week for the first three years at private houses, for the last four at restaurants and nightclubs in the country. She had been slightly patronizing to the neighbors and had taken parties to the huntball which she hoped would shock them. She had worked in a slum and in a hat shop, had published a novel, been bridesmaid 11 times and godmother once, been in love unsuitably twice, had sold her photograph for 50 guineas to the advertising department of a firm of beauty specialists, had got into trouble when her name was mentioned in gossip columns, had acted in five or six charity matinees, two pageants, had canvassed for the Conservative candidate at two general elections, and, like every girl in the British Isles, was unhappy at home. In the crisis years, things became unendurable for some time. Her father had shown an increasing reluctance to open the London house. Now he began to talk in a sinister way about economies, by which he meant retiring permanently to the country, reducing the number of indoor servants, stopping cozy fires in the bedroom, cutting down Angela's allowance and purchasing a mile and a half of fishing in the neighborhood on which he had had his eye for years. Faced with the grim prospect of an indefinitely prolonged residence in the home of her ancestors, Angela, like many sensible English girls before her, decided that after her two unhappy affairs she was unlikely to fall in love again. There was for her no romantic parting. Of the ways between love and fortune. Elder sons were scarcer than ever that year, and there was hot competition from America and the Dominions, the choice was between discomfort with her parents in a stately home or discomfort with a husband in the London mews. Poor Tom Watch had been mildly attentive to Angela since her first season. He was her male counterpart in about every particular normally educated, he had, after taking a third in history at the university, gone into the office of a reliable firm of chartered accountants with whom he had worked ever since. And throughout those sunless city afternoons he looked back wistfully to his undergraduate days, when he had happily followed the normal routine of university success by riding second on a borrowed hunter in the Christ Church grind, breaking furniture with a Bullingdon, returning at dawn through the window after dances in London and sharing dingy but expensive lodgings in the High with young men richer than himself. Angela, as one of the popular girls of her year, used to be a frequent visitor to Oxford and to the houses where Tom stayed. And as the bleak succession of years in his accountant's office sobered and depressed him, Tom began to look upon her as one of the few bright fragments remaining from his glamorous past. He still went out a little. For an unattached young man, it's never quite valueless in London, but the late dinner parties to which he sulkily went, tired by his day's work and out of touch with the topics in which the debutantes attempted to interest him, served only to show him the gulf that was widening between himself and and his former friends. Angela, as cannot be made too clear, was a thoroughly nice girl and was always charming to him, and he returned her interest gratefully. She was, however, part of his past, not his future. His regard was sentimental, but quite unaspiring. She was a piece of his irrecapturable youth. Nothing could have been more remote from his attitude than to think of her as a possible companion for old age. Accordingly, her proposal of marriage came to him as a surprise that was by no means welcome. They had left a particularly crowded and dull dance and were eating kippers at a nightclub. They were in the intimate and slightly tender mood which always developed between them. When Angela had said in a gentle voice, you're always so much nicer to me than anyone, Tom. I wonder why. And before he could deflect her, he had an unusually exacting day's business, and the dance had been stupefying, she had popped the question. Well, of course, he had stammered. I mean to say, there's nothing I'd like more, old girl. I mean, you know, of course, I was being crazy about you. But the difficulty is simply I can't afford to marry. That's it. Absolutely out of the question for years, you know. But I don't think I would mind being poor with you, Tom. We know each other so well. Everything would be so easy. And before Tom knew whether he was pleased or not, the engagement had been announced. He was making 800 a year. Angela had 200. There was more coming to both of them. Things were not too bad. If they were sensible about not having children, he would have to give up his occasional days hunting. She had to give up her maid, and on the basis of mutual sacrifice they arranged for their future. It rained heavily on the day of the wedding and only the last ditchers among the St. Margaret's crowd turned out to watch the melancholy succession of guests popping out of their dripping cars and plunging up the covered way into the church. There was a party afterwards at Angela's home in Egerton Gardens. At half past four the young couple caught a train at Paddington for the west of England. The blue carpet and the striped awning were rolled away and locked among candle ends and hassocks in the church storeroom. The lights in the aisles were turned out, the doors locked, bolted. The flowers and shrubs were stacked up to await distribution in the wards of a hospital for incurables in which Mrs. Watch had an interest. Mrs. Trent, Trowbridge's secretary, set to work dispatching silver and white cardboard packets of wedding cake to servants and tenants in the country. One of the ushers hurried to Covent Garden to return his morning coat to a firm of gentlemen's outfitters, from which it was hired. A doctor was summoned to attend the bridegroom's small nephew, who, after attracting considerable attention as page at the ceremony by his outspoken comments, developed a high temperature and numerous disquieting symptoms of food poisoning. Sarah Trumpery's maid discreetly returned the traveling clock which the old lady had inadvertently pouched from among the wedding presents. This foible of hers was well known, and the detectives had standing orders to avoid a scene at the reception. It was not often that that she was asked to weddings nowadays, and when she was, the stolen presents were invariably returned that evening or on the following day. The bridesmaids got together over dinner and fell into eager conjecture about the intimacies of the honeymoon, the odds in this case being three to two, that the ceremony had not been anticipated. The Great Western Express rattled through the sodden English counties. Tom and Angela sat glumly in first class smoking carriage, discussing the Day it was so wonderful. Neither of us being late. Mother fussed so. I didn't see John. Did you? He was there. He said goodbye to us in the hall. Oh, yes. I hope they packed everything. What books did you bring? A thoroughly normal, uneventful wedding presently, Tom said. I suppose in a way it's rather unenterprising of us just going off to Aunt Martha's house in Devon. Remember how the Lockwoods went to Morocco and got captured by the brigands? And the Randalls got snowed up for 10 days in Norway? We shan't have much adventure in Devon, I'm afraid. Well, Tom, we haven't really married for adventure, have we? And as things happened, it was from that moment onwards that the honeymoon took an odd turn. Do you know if we change? I rather think we do. I forgot to ask. Peter got the tickets. I'll get out at Exeter and find out. The train drew into the station. Shan't be a minute, said Tom, shutting the door behind him to keep out the cold. He walked up the platform, purchased a West country evening paper, learned that they need not change, and was returning to his carriage when his arm was seized and a voice said, hello. Watch, old man. Remember me? And with a little difficulty, he recognized the smiling face of an old school acquaintance. And Steve just got married. Congratulations. Meant to write. Good luck running into you like this. Come and have a drink. Wish I could. Got to get back to the train. Oh, heaps of time, old man. Waits 12 minutes here. Must have a drink. Still searching his memory for the name of his old friend, Tom went with him to the station buffet. I live 15 miles out, you know. Just come in to meet the train. Expecting some cow cake down from London. No sign of it. Well, all the best. They drank two glasses of whiskey. Very comforting after the cold train journey. And then Tom said, well, it's been jolly seeing you. I must get back to the train now. Come. Come in with me and meet my wife. But when they reached the platform, the train was gone. Oh, I say, old man, that's darn funny, you know. What are you going to do? There's not another train tonight. I tell you what. You'd better come home, spend the night with me. And you go in the morning. We can wire your wife and tell her where you are. Well, I suppose Angelo will be all right. Oh, heavens, yes. Nothing can happen in England. Besides, there's nothing you can do. Give me her address and I'll send a wire now telling her where you are. Jump into the car and wait next Morning, Tom woke up with a slight feeling of apprehension. He turned over in the bed, examining with his sleepy eyes the unaccustomed furniture of the room. And then he remembered. Oh, of course, he was married. And Angela had gone off in the train and he had driven for miles in the dark to the house of an old friend whose name he could not remember. It had been dinner time when they arrived, and they had drunk burgundy and. And port and brandy. Frankly, they had drunk rather a lot. And they had recalled numerous house scandals, all kinds of jolly insults to the chemistry master, escapades after dark when they had gone up to London to the 43. What was this fellow's name? Well, it was clearly too late to ask him now. And anyway, he would have to get on to Angela. He supposed that she had reached Aunt Martha's house safely and had got his telegram and awkward beginning to a honeymoon. But then, he and Angela knew each other so well, it was not as though they were some sudden romance. Presently he was called. Hounds. A Meeting you here this morning, sir. Captain wondered if he'd care for go hunting. No, no, no, no, no. I have to leave immediately after breakfast. Captain said he would mount you, sir, and lend your clothes. No, no good. Quite impossible. But when he came down to breakfast, he found his host filling a saddle flask with cherry brandy. Secret threads began to pull at Tom's heart. Of course, we're a comic sort of pack. Everyone turns out parson, farmers, all kinds of animals. But we generally get a decent run along the edge of the moor. Pity you can't come. I'd like you to try my new mare. She's a lovely ride. A bit fine for this type of country, perhaps. Well, why not? After all, he and Angela knew each other so well. It was not as though. And two hours later, Tom found himself in a high wind, galloping madly across the worst hunting country in the British Isles. Alternations of heather and bog broken by potholes, boulders, mountain streams and disused gravel pits. Hounds streaming up the valley opposite the mare, going perfectly. Farmers, boys on shaggy little ponies, solicitors, wives on cobs, retired old sea captains bouncing about eight hands high, pets and vicars plunging on all sides of him and not a care in his heart. Two hours later, still he was in less happy circumstances. He was seated alone in the heather, surrounded on all sides by the unbroken horizon of an empty moor. He had dismounted to tighten a girth and galloping across the hillside to catch up with the field. His mount had put her foot in a rabbit hole, tumbled over, rolled perilously near him and then, regaining her feet, had made off at a brisk canter towards the stable, leaving him on his back panting for breath. He was now quite alone in a totally strange country. He did not know the name of his host or of his host's house. He pictured himself tramping from village to village, saying, can you tell me the address of a young man who was hunting this morning? He was at butcher's house at Eton. Tom suddenly remembered then that he was married. Of course, he and Angela knew each other so well, but there were limits. At 8 o' clock that evening, a weary figure trudged into the gaslit parlor of the Royal George Hotel Shagfoot. He wore sodden riding boots, torn and muddy clothes. He had wandered for five hours over the moor and was hungry. They provided him with Canadian cheese, margarine, cat canned salmon and bottled stout, and sent him to sleep in a large brass bedstead that creaked as he moved. But he slept until half past ten. Next morning, the third day of the honeymoon started more propitiously. A bleak sun was shining, a little stiff and sore in every muscle. Tom dressed in the still damp riding clothes of his unknown host and made inquiries about reaching the remote village where his aunt Martha's house stood. He wired to her, Angela must be there, waiting anxiously for him, arriving this evening. We'll explain all, love. And then inquired about trains. He found out there was one train a day which left early in the afternoon and after three changes brought him to the neighboring station late that evening, where he suffered another check. There was no car to be hired in the village. His aunt's house was eight miles away and the telephone did not function after seven o'. Clock. The day's journey and damp clothes had set him shivering and sneezing. He was clearly in for a bad cold. The prospect of 8 miles walk in the dark was unthinkable. He spent the night at the inn. The fourth day dawned to find Tom speechless and nearly deaf in this condition. The car came to conduct him to the house so kindly lent for his week's honeymoon. Here he was greeted with the news that Angela had left. Early that morning, Mrs. Walsh received a telegram, sir, saying you had met with an accident hunting. She was very put out as she had asked several friends to luncheon. But where has she gone? The address was on the telegram, sir. It was the same address as the first telegram. No, sir. Telegram has not been preserved. So Angela had gone to his host near Exeter. Well, she could jolly well look after herself. Tom felt far too ill to worry he went straight to bed. The fifth day passed in a stupor of misery. Tom lay in bed listlessly turning the pages of such books as his aunt had collected in her 50 years of vigorous out of door life. On the sixth day, his conscience began to disturb him. Perhaps he ought to do something about Angela. It was then that the butler suggested that the name of the inside pocket of a hunting coat would probably be that of Tom's late Angela's present host. Some work with the local directory settled the matter and he sent a telegram. Are you all right? Awaiting here, Tom? And received the answer. Oh, quite all right. Your friend divine. Why not join us here? Angela in bed. Severe cold. Tom. Oh, so sorry, darling. We'll see you in London. Or shall I join you? Hardly worth it, is it, Angela? We'll see you in London, Tom. Of course, he and Angela knew each other so well. Two days later they met in the little flat which Mrs. Watch had been decorating for them. I hope you've brought all the luggage. Yes, darling. Ah, what fun to be home office tomorrow. Yes, I've got hundreds of people to ring up. I haven't thanked them for the last batch of presents yet. Have a good time? Not bad. How's your cold? Better. What are we doing tonight? Well, I promised to go see Mama. Then I said I would dine with your Devon friend. He came up with me to see about some cow cake. It seems only decent to take him out after staying with him. Quite right. But I think I won't come. No, I shouldn't. I shall have heaps to tell Mama that would bore you that evening, Angela's mother said to her husband, I thought Angela was looking sweet tonight. The honeymoon's done her good. So sensible of Tom not to take her on some exhausting trip to the continent. You can see she's come back quite rested. And the honeymoon is so often such a difficult time, particularly after the rush of the wedding. What's this about their taking a cottage in Devon? Asked her husband. Oh, not taking, dear. It's been given them near the house of a bachelor friend of Tom's. Apparently Angela said it would be such a good place for her to go sometimes when she wanted a change. Seems they can never get a proper holiday because of Tom's work. Very sensible, very sensible indeed, said Mr. Trench Trubridge, lapsing into a light doze, as was usual with him at 9 o' clock in the evening. That's it.
- [24:40]
Meg Wolitzer
That was Jane Kacmarek's delicious performance of Evelyn Waugh's Love in the Slump.
- [24:45]
Narrator/Interviewer
Meg.
- [24:46]
Meg Wolitzer
I'm Meg Wolitzer. This story is like a cross between a comedy and a caper film, and it shows off Waugh's keen sense of the absurd and his ability to evoke complacency. Waugh also gives us a memorable period piece, a snow globe of a world that no longer exists, not to mention a sly, droll awareness of the true nature of people. And yet, for those of us living in this age of hinge and Tinder, and who eagerly read the wedding announcements in the newspaper, it's clear from Evelyn Waugh's long ago story that some things never change. After a brief break. Boy Bands I'm Meg Wolitzer. You're listening to Selected Shorts recorded live in performance at Symphony Space in New York City and at other venues nationwide. Welcome back. This is Selected Shorts, where our greatest actors transport us through the magic of fiction, one short story at a time. I'm Meg Wolitzer. You'll remember that we've given this episode a provocative title, Nothing to Do with Love. But that doesn't mean the stories don't dive into some of the things we mistake for love. Like obsession. In Esther Yee's Moon, we are drawn into a dizzy pattern of feeling for someone unattainable. The story was eventually expanded into a section of Yi's debut novel, YN Reader Hae Tian park has put her stamp on awkward love stories for us in the past and is also known for work on shows such as the Outsider and Hannibal. Here she is, lost in a Persona known as Moon.
- [26:46]
Hae Tian Park
Moon. The Pack of Boys had released their first album in Seoul two years ago, and now they were selling out corporate arenas and Olympic stadiums all over the world. I was familiar with the staggering dimensions of their popularity, how the premiere of their latest music video had triggered a power outage across an entire Pacific island. I knew the boys were performers of supernatural charisma, whose concerts could leave a fan permanently destabilized, unable to return to the spiritual attenuation of her daily life. I also knew about the boys exceptional profundity in matters of the heart, how they offered that same fan her only chance of survival in a world they'd exposed for the risible fraud that it was. At least this was what I derived from hours of listening to Vavra as her flatmate. I was subject to her constant efforts at proselytization. But the more she wanted me to love the boys, the more they repulsed me. The healthy communalism of feeling they inspired, almost certainly a strategy to expand the fandom desecrated my basic notion of love. I could love only that which made me secretive, combative, severe, a moral disappointment to myself, and an obstruction to others. So when Vavra knocked on my door to announce that her friend had fallen ill, freeing up a ticket to the boys first ever concert in Berlin, I declined. But this concert will change your life, she said. I just know it. I don't want my life to change, I said. I want my life to stay in one place and be one thing as intensely as possible. Vavra widened her eyes and affected compassion. In the years since she'd let me, an online stranger, move into her apartment, her tireless overtures of care and my circumventions of them had come to form a texture of cohabitation that could almost be called a friendship. What I feared most wasn't death or global cataclysm, but the everyday capitulations that chipped away at the monument of seriousness that was a soul. My spiritual sphincter stayed clenched to keep out the cheap and stupid. Still, Vavra was inadvertently training me in the art of self delimitation, and for that I couldn't help but feel a bit grateful. I returned my gaze to the book open on the desk before me. You look like a scholar, varvara said. But you aren't one. Thank you, I said, gratified. What I mean is, you don't do anything with what you read. What about teaching? You could be shaping young minds.
- [29:44]
Narrator/Interviewer
How?
- [29:45]
Hae Tian Park
I said. I can't even shape my own. Well, if the boys were to think that way, they wouldn't be where they are now, varver said. They're unafraid to leave a mark on other lives, possessing, as they do an unshakable faith in their own genius. She shut her eyes and disappeared into worship. When she opened them again, she smiled with condescension, as though she'd just been to a place beyond my understanding. But her return to normalcy, to our shared world of stultified passion, struck me as a failure of commitment. I realized then that if I'd yet to follow her to this other place, it was only because I knew I might never come back. It wasn't revulsion I felt, but fear that I would befoul myself beyond recognition. Irked by my cowardice and seized, too by perverse curiosity, I wondered for the first time what it would be like to love the boys. Two hours later I found myself following Vavra into a crowded arena. Our seats, located toward the rear, offered a meager view of the stage, forcing my attention onto a giant screen that served as the backdrop. This screen reproduced the happenings on stage with astonishing clarity, so that when the five boys drifted as if by accident, heads bowed and hands clasped over their stomachs, I couldn't fathom how their real bodies, as small as grains of rice from where I stood, would survive an evening at the feet of their gigantic images. Thousands of women erupted into shrieks. I remembered Vavra telling me that incidents of shattered eardrums at the boys concerts were rising, prompting the entertainment company that managed them to recommend earplugs, but I saw none being worn by the fans around me. They were finally breathing the same air as the boys. Now is not the time to be less of a body. The boys stood in a line, their heads still bowed. They appeared freshly reprimanded. Their outfits began with black derby shoes and black trousers blooming into tops that bespoke their individual personalities. Each boy was named after a celestial body. It went without saying that none of them was named Earth. I didn't know which boy was called what Vavra was shouting for all five again and again, taking care on principle not to say one name more than another. But I was now egalitarian. I'd already decided that the boy on the far left bothered me most. He wore a pink silk button down with oversized cuffs that obscured his hands, save his fingertips, which gripped the hem with desperation, as if he might fly out of the shirt. His hair was a shade of blonde that matched his complexion exactly. Skin seemed to be growing out of his head. When he looked up, he revealed an unremarkable face, somehow flat, eyes narrow like the space between two slats of a window blind. The pose he held should have been impossible. His trunk was perfectly vertical, but his neck jutted forward at an angle so wide that his head held erect, seemed to belong to another torso entirely. It was the neck that disturbed me. Long and smooth, it implied the snug containment of a fundamental muscle that ran down the body all the way to the groin, where I imagined it boldly flipped out as the penis. The stage lights turned red and shuddered into a new constellation, casting long shadows down the boys faces. Music began and the boys erupted into dance. They sang. What does it mean to die on this planet? Aloneness. Despair. Confusion. A human being is a particle of dust in a galaxy. And what does it mean to live on this planet? Creation. Desire. Collision. A human being is a galaxy and a particle of dust. My eyes kept returning to the boy with the disturbing neck. The others conveyed depth of Feeling by exaggerating their movements or facial expressions. I had no trouble understanding the terms of their engagement with the world. But the boy with the disturbing neck followed an inscrutable logic. I could never predict his next move, yet once it came along, I experienced it as an absolute necessity. He seemed to control even the speed at which he fell from the air, his feet landing with aching tenderness, as if he didn't want to wake up the stage. His movements fluid, tragic, ancient. Every flick of a joint happened at the last possible moment. He never geared up. He was already there. Each boy stood at the head of a triangular formation in turn and sang a bar, prompting the screams in the arena to peak five times. When the boy with the disturbing neck surged forward to take the helm, my eyes filled with tears, confronted by the titanic twitching of his individuality under the smooth skin of teamwork. I saw all the more clearly what was different about him. And I knew I loved him because I liked him better than the others. His voice was a pink ribbon whipping in the wind. I used to stand still in one place to observe the world with care. Now I'm running as fast as possible, seeing as fast as possible. Yet even this isn't enough. For all I can see at any moment is the street ahead of me. Before it disappears over the horizon, will you please flatten out the earth so that I can see ahead of me forever? I'd never been able to keep Varvara's exhaustive profile of each boy tethered to a name or a face. But the body on stage extracted details from the depths of my memory. And they spun like a thread around the spine of a particular name. Moon. I remembered that Moon, at 20, was the youngest in the group. He'd been the child prodigy of a ballet company in Seoul, performing every lead role until the age of 14, when he was recruited by the entertainment company. Four years later, he'd almost failed to earn a place among the pack of boys because the company president had been skeptical of Moon's ability to subordinate the idiosyncrasy of his dance to the needs of the group. Details that had been vivid without meaning applicable to any one of the boys were now indispensable to the evocation of Moon. It made perfect sense what Varvara had once told me. How he ate heavy foods right before bed because he liked waking up to find his body slim and taut, proof of the metabolic intensity of his dream life. I was being sent to the other side. I was having what Vavra had once described as my first time. My first time experienced at the age of 29 made me wonder about all the other first times out there to be had. The world suddenly proliferated with secret avenues of devotion. Several songs later, the boys returned to standing in a line to son. The oldest member at 24, spoke in Korean about how the boys were halfway through their first world tour, which had begun two months ago in Seoul. Their journey had now taken them to Europe, he said, and they decided to surprise their families by flying them out to a continent that they, the boys included, had never visited before. Each boy faced the camera that fed into the screen to deliver a statement of gratitude to his family. Only Moon, last to speak, walked to the edge of the stage, shielded his eyes from the lights, and peered directly into the crowd. Mom, dad, older sister, he said. I can't see you. I love you. Therefore, where are you? His use of therefore stunned me. The sound of string instruments, melancholic and slow, filled the arena. Moon approached center stage and stood there alone. He was wearing a black blindfold. Everyone in the crowd raised their phones, situating thousands of moons before me. He sang that there had been a time when he couldn't bear to cross a room in the presence of others. He didn't want anyone to know the shape of his body, so he wore shirts that hung down to his knees. The fact that he had a face distressed him, if only it could remain hidden, like the secret of his groin. But then he met me. Finally, he could bear to be seen. I looked at him so much more than anyone ever had that it left him no room to look at himself. That had been the problem, the looking at himself. Cock the gun of your eyes, he sang. I will make myself easy to shoot. In unison, everyone raised a hand and stretched their thumbs and index fingers apart into pistols aimed at Moon. I couldn't follow along as my arms were crossed in order to thwart thwart any flare ups of agency that might disturb my state of perfect passivity, which I needed to maintain so that Moon could act upon me as much as possible. In the instrumentals, a pistol fired. Thousands of wrists spasmed. Moon, struck in the chest, began pivoting on one foot, submitting to the long stream of the crowd's bullets. He came to a stop and tore off the blindfold. My eyes moved between the screen, where I could see the contours of a bead of sweet dangling from the tip of his nose, and the stage, where his whole body was a tiny blur. I didn't know which I wanted more of the precise reproduction or the imprecise actuality. He began to walk down a Runway that extended from the main stage all the way to the center of the arena floor. Moon tucked in his chin and gazed up at a sharp angle, as if seducing the same person he was threatening to face. And this person was me. He was walking right in my direction. I began pushing through the crowd. Angry strangers tried to block my way. I couldn't blame them. I was being a very bad fan. But I felt no solidarity. I excised them from my perception of space. All went quiet in my mind. Moon and I were alone in the arena, headed for each other. I would jump onto the stage and force him to look into my eyes for a single moment. In time, I would be all that he saw. I knew I'd be condemned for imposing on him my individual humanity divorced from the crowd. But I didn't care. I was a person. I knew this, if nothing else, that I was a person, however hapless, however void. Moon grew from tiny to small, from small to less small. I begged him to become as large as I was to myself. But the closer he came to reaching the size of a normal person, the more I sensed he'd never get there. We stopped moving at the same time. He reached to the end of the Runway while I couldn't penetrate the crowd any further. He threw back his head in dreamy surrender, exposing a limestone column of neck almost as long as his face. The cartilage supporting his larynx protruded like a spine. Blue veins ran up the neck and branched off across his mandible. Life swarmed just under his skin. The neck's language was of suppression, unlike that of his flesh, where the jungle inside his body oozed free through his eyes, nose and mouth. Varvre's mistake had been to draw rational strokes of narrative, compelling me to understand everything about Moon at once. But all I'd needed was to begin with the singularity of his neck. A steel cord descended from the ceiling. Moon lowered his head, casting his neck back into shadow, and attached the the cord to a buckle on his waist. Every light in the arena was pointed at him. He stood still and endured it. He was a gift forever in the moment of being handed over. But he couldn't be had. Hunger pierced me. I wanted something. And I wanted all of it. But I didn't dare want Moon. Because if it was that simple, it was also that impossible. I will be you when I grow up, he sang. You will be me when you are born again. When the cord lifted him away into the dark firmament of the arena. I didn't say goodbye. I knew I would see him again, that I was doomed to see him always. He had his eyes shut and his arms hanging at his sides, as if surrendering to the controls of a divine force. His hands were curled into loose balls. It made me sick to imagine just how moist his palms must be. I worked from home as an English copywriter for an Australian expat's business in canned artichoke hearts. My job required me to credibly infuse the vegetable with the ability to feel romantic love for its consumer. I'd always felt a kind of aristocratic apathy about the task, but in the days following the concert, I avoided my boss's calls altogether, nauseated by the prospect of speaking seriously about such unserious work. One afternoon my phone bleeded from my bed for the only reason it was now allowed to bleed. Moon was about to begin a livestream. I entered to find him lying across the crisp white sheets of a hotel bed in Dubai, holding the phone over his face. I lay on my stomach and gazed down at him, phone flat on the mattress. Hello, liver, he murmured. The pack of boys called their fans livers because we weren't just expensive handbags they carried around. We kept them alive like critical organs. I suspected they used the English word liver because it sounded like lover. They could be coy like that, but I would much rather be Moon's liver than lover. I just returned from the buffet downstairs, he said there were a hundred different kinds of food to choose from, yet I managed to fill my plate with only the wrong choices. Have you at least eaten well today? Please, I typed in English. Save your insipid affection for the others. Meals shatter my focus. I can't believe I have to eat three times a day. Where's the ritual that matters? Moon's eyes skittered wildly as he tried to read the comments flooding the chat window. Almost as soon as a comment from one fan appeared, it flew out of view, overtake taken by another, usually in a different language. I tried to pretend that none of the others were there, that Moon and I were floating alone in virtual space. This exercise fatigued me, especially when I found myself wondering whether I should keep my lips open or shut. The fact of the matter was that he couldn't see me. Even the possibility of looking dumb in front of him was a privilege beyond my reach. Moon began to laugh deep in his throat. He plushly shut a single eye. He was the only person I knew who could wink Sincerely, he said, you're up all night worrying about whether I'm getting enough to eat. He wasn't wrong. When my belly is gone, you miss it. But when my belly returns, you miss how my ribs used to protrude. So what is it you really want? He was completely justified in asking. I tapped at my phone with vigor. I do hope you skip the occasional meal. When you're on the thinner side, your soul becomes more visible, almost hypodermic. You become a pure streak of energy, like the blue flame of a blowtorch. But the entertainment company better not put you on a diet. That would be disgustingly presumptuous. You. You know best how to flagellate yourself. No company can be as perverse as you. I'd reached the maximum character count. I pressed enter and watched my block of text disappear into a stream of far pithier messages. So much English, moon said. Let me run some of this through a translator. He fiddled with his phone and squinted. Based on what I'm seeing, you're either poets or idiots. And here it's not even a translation. It's just the Korean pronunciation of the English words. The English words must have no correspondence in Korean. My God, what's this inconceivable thing you want to say to me? He released a soft groan, sensing he would log off soon. I begged him to lower the phone so that I would know what it was like to have his face close to mine. He froze, seeming to lock eyes with me. Then the whole video blurred. His left eye filled the frame. It was wide open, tense. I gathered he was no longer smiling. I had the strange feeling that I wasn't witnessing the transmission of a reality as it unfolded thousands of kilometers away in Dubai, but awakening to that which had always been in my bed. This I had always been, lurking among the tired folds of my sheets, rigid with attention to my small life, even to the dark wall of my back at night. I drew closer to the screen. Beyond its quadrilateral parameters lay the rest of Moon's face, his neck, his whole body. We regarded each other without moving or speaking. I knew better than to think that he'd read, much less chosen to obey my request. But this was of no importance. I didn't need the help of wild fortune to be alone with him. I wrapped my arms around his neck and held him tight, turning us away from the world and toward each other. The radiator was pumping heat into my room, and the lights were low. The screen resolution was so poor that I couldn't tell where the brown of his iris ended and the black of his pupil began. I was transfixed by this circle of inchoate darkness, but the more I searched it for a flicker of anima, the more it flattened out into sheer color, and abruptly the eye dislocated from Moon, becoming hideous hieroglyphic. Forgive me, he said, but my arm is so very tired. His eyes shut. The screen darkened. The sheets underneath me suddenly went cold. All of me is tired, moon said. In my stomach there is camel meat, but in my head there is nothing. Then he logged off. His voice had cracked while saying, there is nothing. I made an hour long loop of that phrase alone so that I could study this moment of unbelievable cuteness. There is nothing. He blared on repeat, making my speaker shake. Vavra pounded angrily at my door. I clenched my fist and bit down on my tongue, but given all that, I felt I needed to do more. I looked around my room and picked up a book from my desk. There is nothing, moon said. There is nothing. I flung the book to the floor. My heart softened at the sight of its forbearance, how it lay butted up against the wall in quiet recovery. So I got on my knees and turned to the first page, promising to read with care. But the words streamed by without making an impact. All I wanted was a single sentence that radiated truth. Yet I found myself turning page after page faster and faster, accruing small cuts all over my hand as if I were grappling with the mouth of a rabid dog.
- [51:32]
Meg Wolitzer
Hettien park performed Moon by Esther Yee One of the things that makes this story magical is the way the narrator has a unique voice that positions her outside millennial angst in pop culture. Consider a phrase like freshly reprimanded to describe the band, or his use of therefore stunned me. In a text as carefully crafted as Yi's, it's easy to make the connection to Juliet's plaintive wherefore art thou, Romeo? Another pair of star crossed lovers, as Yi's character would see them ye gives us a great mashup of the ordinary and the ornate. The narrator is 29 years old and not, say, 12 as I was when I was obsessed with Donny Osmond, which I will save for another episode of the show, perhaps one with stories about people with unnaturally large white teeth. And because of the narrator's adulthood as well as her unusual way of seeing the world, the diction is heightened, nearly surreal. Esther Yee has found the language to describe that overwhelmed and overwhelming experience of being in love from afar. Love when you are among 50,000 people doing the loving love, when all around you come the sound of screams. It's language like this that made guest editor Min Jin Lee choose Moon for the Best American Short Stories 2023. Here's Lee on stage at Symphony Space.
- [52:58]
Hae Tian Park
Yi's language is funny and visceral and at times disturbing. She infuses this story with humor and moments of curiosity found in global K pop fandom and their passion for their performers who they call idols. The story highlights the modern day phenomena of parasocial relationships between celebrities and their followers, the interaction of fans through social media, and the all consuming nature of intense fixation. The author asks the important question, is a fan's encounter with her idol a blessing or a curse?
- [53:45]
Meg Wolitzer
That was Best American Short Stories Guest editor Min Jin Lee and we spoke backstage with park about her take on the story.
- [53:53]
Narrator/Interviewer
The narrator starts off resenting the ban for the way it provokes love and community. And she feels that she can only love something that's private. Does this feel rational, irrational? On the money you just said to find it.
- [54:06]
Hae Tian Park
Obviously it very much speaks to her personality. I take her to be sort of quirky, very honest, maybe a little bit acerbic. She's definitely got a very unique perspective.
- [54:19]
Narrator/Interviewer
She says she doesn't want her life to change. She just wants to be the one thing forever. Has there ever been a time when you felt that resisting change?
- [54:28]
Hae Tian Park
Hmm. I'm sure there has been. I think that it's our human nature to maybe resist change. It's kind of scary to go into something that you don't know about. But I'd like to believe that I lean into change, you know, Otherwise things can get kind of boring.
- [54:43]
Narrator/Interviewer
Do you have this kind of response to music? Because this is a very common phenomenon.
- [54:48]
Hae Tian Park
I love music. I grew up playing several instruments, really focused on piano and flute the most. My husband is a musician. We love music in our household.
- [54:59]
Narrator/Interviewer
What does he play?
- [55:00]
Hae Tian Park
He plays the drums. Most of his music has been sort of soul, funk, hip hop, blues.
- [55:06]
Narrator/Interviewer
When you were thinking about how. How to imagine your way into this, was there a song you had in mind?
- [55:12]
Hae Tian Park
Well, obviously, since it's very much centered around K pop, I had that sort of playing in the background in my head, I suppose, but not a specific song. That's a really interesting question.
- [55:22]
Narrator/Interviewer
How do you tend to prepare for a story?
- [55:25]
Hae Tian Park
Well, I read it several times and really pay attention to the way that the main characters describing things and really try to get into her perspective. I thought a lot about that. I definitely had to look up a few words. It's important to know what you're saying.
- [55:44]
Narrator/Interviewer
I tend to give you stories about women who don't know quite where they are going yet, and by the end of the story they've got there. But the whole thing is a journey. Does that feel like a sort of place you like to be as an actor?
- [55:57]
Hae Tian Park
Absolutely. I think the more unexpected things are, the more discoveries you can make about yourself. That's thrilling.
- [56:07]
Meg Wolitzer
That was actor Hae Tian park speaking backstage at Symphony Space. The reason Yi's story has nothing to do with love is that love requires the fully aware presence of two individuals. But we can feel the narrator's identity dissolving into that of Moon, and love for him seems to mean an amorphous dissolution into his fan base. If these two very different stories have any lessons about love that we can take away, they might be that true love requires not only a healthy interest in the beloved, but a strong sense of self that can never be diminished. So if you're barely distinguishable from others in your insulated world, or if you have abandoned yourself, then I'm sorry. In the words of the immortal Tina Turner, what's love got to do with it? I'm still Meg Wolitzer. Thank you for joining me for Selected Shorts. Selected Shorts is produced by Jennifer Brennan and Sarah Montague. Our team includes Matthew Love, Drew Richardson, Mary Shimkin, Vivienne Woodward, and Magdalene Rplesky. The readings are recorded by Myles B. Smith. Our programs, presented at the Getty center in Los Angeles, are recorded by Phil Richards. Our mix engineer for this episode was Joe Plourd. Our theme music is David Peterson's that's the Deal, performed by the Deardorf Peterson Group. Selected Shorts is supported by the Dungannon Foundation. This program is also made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts or with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature. Selected Shorts is produced and distributed by Symphony Space.