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Classics with a Twist
00:58:15
Host Meg Wolitzer presents three imaginative and funny reworkings of classic stories. In Ginny Hogan’s “Phantoms and Prejudice,” Jane Austen’s Bennet sisters learn about ghosting. The reader is Sara Bareilles. Anthony Marra invents a plausible reason for murder in his reworking of Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart,” read by Mike Doyle. And Michael Cunningham turns Jack into an entrepreneur in “Jacked,” read by Jim Parsons.
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- [00:00]
Meg Wolitzer
Adobe Acrobat Studio so brand new. Show me all the things PDFs can do.
- [00:04]
Sara Bareilles
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Meg Wolitzer
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Sara Bareilles
Do hours of research in an instant.
- [00:10]
Meg Wolitzer
With key insights from an AI assistant.
- [00:12]
Sara Bareilles
Take a template with a click now your prezo looks super slick.
- [00:15]
Meg Wolitzer
Close that deal.
- [00:16]
Jim Parsons
Yeah, you won. Do that doing that, did that done. Now you can do that. Do that with Acrobat now you can do that.
- [00:24]
Meg Wolitzer
Do that with the all new Acrobat.
- [00:26]
Sara Bareilles
It's time to do your best work with the all new Adobe Acrobat Stud.
- [00:32]
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- [01:08]
Meg Wolitzer
On this Selected Shorts Classics get a makeover, Jane Austen gets ghosted, Edgar Allan Poe meets the iPhone, and Jack leaves the Beanstalk to become an entrepreneur. Timeless tales reimagined with the help of actors Jim Parsons and Sara Bareilles. I'm Meg Wolitzer. Don't go anywhere. We were sure that our program concept Classics with a Twist no, it's Not a Cocktail would capture the imagination of both our live and broadcast podcast audiences. Those who encountered classics in middle school may turn up their nose, but classics are beloved by you short fiction lovers, and you enjoy hearing from deft practitioners capable of transforming these classics into something new, pulling them into the present day with all its complexities. The stories on this show retain enough of their original identities for us to recognize how the material is being questioned and reshaped, but wonderful new versions of the original characters emerge, and they are ones in which we are more likely to recognize ourselves or at least the world we live in now. One story views a Jane Austen favorite through the lens of third wave feminism, with a little social media thrown in. In another, a Poe classic is reframed as a critique of the iPhone, and a third turns Jack and the Beanstalk into a story about social as well as beanstalk climbing. We love adding new talent to our already fantastic lineup of shorts readers, and on this particular evening we were happy to welcome my friend, the multi talented Sara Bareilles. She's a Grammy Award winning singer, songwriter and a librettist known for shows such as Waitress and a lead role on the Netflix musical comedy series Girls 5 EVA and most exciting to me at least, she's currently at work on the music and lyrics of a stage musical adaptation of my novel the Interestings, with a book by playwright Sarah Rule. With all this going for her, the only missing credit was a night with selected shorts, and we think we found the perfect story for her, Ginny Hogan's Phantoms and Prejudice Ginny Hogan is a stand up comedian as well as the author of such titles as I'm More Dateable Than a Plate of Refried Beans and Other Romantic Observations, which will give you a hint about the mood she sets in Phantoms and Prejudice, now read by Sara Bareilles.
- [04:01]
Sara Bareilles
I'm going to try to use a British accent. Not yet, though Phantoms and Prejudice it is a truth universally acknowledged that playing the dating game involves abandoning any and all sense of dignity. As the second eldest Bennet daughter, Lizzie Bennet bore the family responsibility to marry well, Lizzie herself did not feel the need of a husband, and if she did, certainly not one who behaved like this. And yet it was Mr. Darcy who had won her affection. It was he whom she had initially rebuffed so firmly, who had ultimately persisted. And now she could not help but confess that she was expecting him to send her a letter. She had been expecting it since Sunday. At length it occurred to her that perhaps this letter from Mr. Darcy was unacceptably late. She raised her brow at me from across the drawing room. Pray tell me the reason for your joyous visit, she said joylessly. Indeed, I was an odd addition to the Bennett household. I'd been sent from the year 2022 to explain one simple, frustrating phenomenon to the charming Bennet girls. Lizzie had believed that she would hear from her suitor, Mr. Darcy, by now, but no message had arrived. Confusion had rippled through the household, and it was I who was to reveal what had transpired. You see, this was the 1800s. The Bennett women did not yet know about it. I took a deep breath. So, okay, Lizzie, you know how you wrote Darcy a letter and you usually get one back within a fortnight? Yes, give or take several days should a steed fall ill and die. Right, right, right. Well, sometimes people you're dating will get your letter and then they just don't send one back. Like they don't want to keep dating, but they don't know how to say so, so they just ignore you. It's called ghosting, because it's like he just disappeared like a Ghost. Ghosts. Like all my closest friends, kitty, the second youngest Bennett said, clapping her hands. I should surely allow the kind Mr. Darcy to play. Leave the ghosts be, said Mrs. Bennet. They are as welcome in Longbourn House as you. I would have preferred Lizzie's mom not be there when I broke it to Lizzie that she was being de facto dumped in the most cowardly way possible. But alas, it wasn't my choice. When there's nothing to do but sit in a drawing room all day, rejection becomes a family affair. No, kitty, I said. Mr. Darcy's not a ghost. He's just doing what we now call ghosting. Not responding. Aghast, Lizzie stared into my eyes. He is not going to write. He did not want to write, and so he did not. That is preposterous and thoroughly unbefitting of both ghost and man. Yeah, he's not responding. You'd know by now if he were. We should be generous in our spirits and give him several days, Jane, the eldest Bennet sister offered. Unhelpfully in the habit of doing it more than she ought, Jane found it fitting to weigh in. Let us be optimistic and pray that it was mere death in the household. These types of things are a bit more common in our time than yours. I rolled my eyes. She was trying to guilt me with the whole you don't get it because you're from the future, where people don't just die all the time shtick, and I wasn't having it. Jane, you're naive, I said. Hot girls shouldn't be giving dating advice. I simply do not believe a gentleman would treat a gentlewoman like this. It does not seem right. It is one thing not to let a lady own land or inherit her husband's wealth, but to stop responding to messages, Lizzy asked, I will not give credence to it. How could I get through to Lizzy? She had to move on with her life. Surely there must be some other neighbor she could fall for. Someone else must have a farm or a parsonage or something. Guys just do that. Women do, too. We've put a name on it in the 21st century, but it's been happening forever. It's a coward's way out. They say they want to hang, and then they'll stop responding. Mr. Darcy is not like other gentlemen, lizzie said. He is fictional. I got her point. But at this stage in my dating life, I'd stopped trusting any any of them, fictional or not. The Bennett sisters seemed horrified by what I'd told them of 2022, and I felt that it was my duty to calm them in whatever way I could. Don't worry. In the future you can have jobs and vote and own property, I said. Plus processed food. I would like to stay in 1813, I should think, jane asserted. It is nicer here. Wait till you try sun chips, I said. He would simply not respond, said Mrs. Bennet, who remained perplexed. Indeed, Darcy's behavior stood out even in a world in which women could only advance their social standing through marriage to a wealthy man. And look, as a lady who mostly dates aspiring comedians who don't floss, I kind of got it. Women will put up with a lot. Look, Lizzie, I said. This is a Jane Austen novel. Everyone is just sitting around all day. If he wanted to write you, he would have written you. He had no other plans. I didn't want to be harsh, but I needed to get through to her. What was your last interaction with the darkster like? Lizzie furrowed her brow. He seemed distant, but then again, he oft does. The entire room nodded. I know, right? I said. He really needs to go to therapy for the whole dead parent thing. Like get a hobby and take responsibility for your actions. Darcy, how long are you really gonna be his Prozac? Liz, what is Prozac? The ladies asked in unison. Ah, yet another wonderful thing about 2022. I'd happily share mine, but it takes a few weeks to kick in anyway. Lizzy, was he more distant than usual? Are we quite sure he did not just have the decency to die? Jane said. She was uniquely unable to wrap her mind around his behavior. Yet another hot girl problem. Thinking all guys are good. Mary the Middle Boring Bennett arose from her chair and took a seat at the piano. She began to play Mozart's Requiem in D minor, a beautiful, haunting song. Haunting. Almost like a ghost. Lizzie exclaimed. I'd reached her. Mr. Darcy wasn't going to write back. I am sorry to say it, but our odd and somewhat unwelcome visitor is right. Darcy is acting like a ghost. He has shown no regard for the moral standards of this society. He is no better than Lydia. The sisters now turned to Lydia, their youngest. She shrugged. They made a good point. His arrogance, his conceit, his selfish disdain stain. Lizzie was worked up. Dating sucks, I said. I went on two incredible dates with this Argentinian painter, and then I asked if she wanted to meet my mom and she just stopped responding. Mrs. Bennet was horrified. You did not invite her to meet your mother on the first date? No. Perhaps that is why she ghosted the lady of the house said resolutely. Lizzie had stopped paying attention. Every day confirms my belief in the inconsistency of all human characters, even fictional ones. To think I ever considered staking my entire family's livelihood on him. Or worse, considered kissing him. He is dead to me. And then, just as Lizzie had given up on Mr. Darcy entirely, he. He appeared in the doorway. His countenance was sober, he was taciturn at the best of times, and as he entered the room whose inhabitants had very obviously just been speaking ill of him, he was silent. He really did need Prozac. Were you just uttering my name? He asked. You did not write, lizzie said plainly. I feared my carriage driver had consumption. Once I hired a new one, I decided it would be expedient to appear in person. What did you fear? I thought it was possible, but no, of course not, Lizzie said. She flashed a look at me, an angry one, that said, you stupid future idiot. She pointed at me and declared. She said that you did not want to tell me you were not coming and that you were just disappear and not write. Stop responding. You thought I would do what? Darcy said. A lady's imagination moves at such a rapid pace that I would just say nothing, and that is how I would end our romantic engagement. It is not my fault. Our visitor. She said that 200 years hence people sometimes just ghost and you never know why. But I should never have believed her. I was foolish. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I think this ghostly habit is Despicable, Darcy said. Is the Carriage driver dead? Mrs. Bennet asked, but the conversation had drifted. Ah, Mr. Darcy. How silly I was to dismiss you. Of course you love me. How could you not? I am so spunky and opinionated. That is my thing, and moody men love that we shall happily be miserable by each other's sides forever. Darcy and Lizzie embraced, and as her sisters gazed jovially at the back of her neck, it seemed that things were settled. But I wasn't satisfied. You should have texted Darc, I said. The Bennet sisters may have forgiven him, but I certainly had not.
- [15:42]
Meg Wolitzer
Sara Bareilles performed Ginny Hogan's Phantoms and Prejudice. I'm Meg Wolitzer, Hogan's conceit, a nice 19th century term, is just delicious. There are Jane Austen riffs everywhere in popular culture, including, famously, ones with zombies, but many of the riffs simply want to extend her legacy infinitely. Or if any kind of time travel transference is involved, it's with the assumption that every woman on earth would rather live in a period with empire waistlines and men in breaches than whatever period we're actually in. But there's a deeper truth here, which is that we look to the past to figure out how to live. Because maybe when you strip away all the complicated devices and stuff of our current lives, what really matters gets set into relief. But even if it isn't, whenever there's an ad for a new TV series that involves English country dances, venison and houses with names, count me in. We were also interested in what Bareilles thought about the story, and we caught up with her backstage at Symphony Space.
- [16:45]
Sara Bareilles
I think what was so delightful is bringing the future to the past. I think where that interfaces and why it interfaces is part of what is so charming. You know, what people love about those novels is that they feel contemporary in their own way. They're about, you know, love and romance. And I do think that by bringing the future lens of the more sort of cynical, critical, modern woman to it, it's just really charming.
- [17:13]
Meg Wolitzer
That was Sara Bareilles backstage at Symphony Space. Our second twisted classic by Anthony Mara derives from something pretty twisted to begin with, Edgar Allan Poe's the Telltale Heart. Mara is the best selling author of books including A Constellation of Vital Phenomena and Mercury Pictures Presents. Our reader is Mike Doyle. You'll know him from his work on shows such as New Amsterdam. He's also a busy writer director whose films include Almost Love and Passing Through. Here's Mike Doyle with Anthony Mara's version of the Telltale Heart.
- [17:55]
Mike Doyle
The Telltale Heart. Your honor, I stand accused not only of first degree murder by the prosecution, but of mental unfitness by my own defense lawyer, the charlatan in the polyester suit over there. And in light of this treachery, I have no choice but to confess to the former charge to defend myself from the latter. Please listen, your honor, to how reasonably, how rationally I describe the gruesome business and then try to tell me that I am not mentally fit to begin with. I had nothing against Richard, no, just the opposite. He was my roommate and friend, the cultural and civic leader of our two bedroom apartment at 2359 Green Pine Avenue, number 3A. He was a kind, soft spoken young man. He liked to think of himself as a rebel and had several piercings which his mother made him remove when they went to brunch. I knew it was Sunday by the studs and hoops soaking in a teacup of his grandmother's polydent denture cleaner. His only shortcoming, if you can call it that was his iPhone. Every experience he dutifully engraved via tweet, post, or status in the marble memory of the cloud. Reality was only visible to Richard at 326ppi. He had thousands of friends on Facebook, most of whom he'd never met. And when I saw the whole of his sturdy frame hunched over that glossy four inch screen, tapping furiously, there seemed something pitiable about such a tall man submitting to something so small. It was clear he yearned for connection. He was no different than you or I, your Honor. The night he signed up for Tinder, I spied him through a crack in the bathroom door. I pressed my eye to the gap and watched as shirtless, stern, mouthed Richard nearly herniated himself trying to dredge a weak wedge of muscle from his path padded abdomen. Again and again Richard pointed his phone at the mirror, snapped a picture, and studied it. I studied him. I expected pride, self satisfaction. But no. His face reddened in a flush of self loathing. Not even he would sleep with himself. I should have backed away and slipped into my bedroom. I know that would have been the end of it. And I would have. But just when I made up my mind to leave Richard to his private discomfort, his eyes flashed to the mirror and I saw, or I imagine, that his found mine in the reflection. His eyes were the deep blue of a vulture, and you can call me unfit, but if you stood at that cracked door with those pale blue points pounding into your soul, your spine too would have wilted. But he hadn't even seen me, your Honor. It was only a trick of the light. When Richard went back to the bathroom the second night, I tried to concentrate on the book I was reading, told myself to focus, but was drawn, propelled even back to the gap in the door. This isn't me, I told myself. I'm no voyeur. But the previous evening I had witnessed Richard's unvarnished self. Doubt had trespassed into an intimate space, and you may call me strange, mad even, but I felt a greater connection to Richard in those moments than I'd ever felt to another person. And so that second night, I stood in the narrow slab of light that sloped through the cracked door and I again watched Richard watch himself. Floss launched. Saliva asterisked the mirror. Richard stared into it with carefree composure that lasted as briefly as the camera flash. I pushed the door gently, oh so gently, until the 2 inch crack widened to 3. Still, still, he didn't see me. He pressed the red delete button and the phone emitted A crumpled crush as the image disappeared. He sighed, drained of everything but relief. Over the next hour, he took dozens of self portraits. And every time he deleted them, he sighed. Destroying the Richard of two seconds earlier seemed to fortify him. He wasn't taking pictures for his Tinder profile anymore. He was taking pictures to delete them. And my lawyer says I'm mad. It was terrible seeing him there at the sink, taking and destroying picture after picture, as if each one brought him closer to erasing his own face. His shoulders loosened as mine hunched. His tendons relaxed as mine stiffened. That was the moment when the idea came to me. Your Honor. My only madness was mercy. I was no more than a forefinger on the red delete button, finishing what he had himself begun. Each night, for eight nights, I stood at the bathroom threshold. And each night, for eight nights, I cracked the door a few careful inches wider. Each night, I watched with a kitchen knife hidden behind my back. Not that I was planning anything. No, of course not. Only because the presence of the knife pressurized each moment with thrilling possibility. Then finally, the eighth night, I cracked the door inch by inch until my own face was visible in the corner of the mirror. And still, still he refused to see me. He stood shirtless at the mirror, and as one photo became 10, became 20, each of which he erased. Your Honor, I swear. I nearly turned away. But in that moment, I noticed that Richard was holding his iPhone at too wide an angle to capture his own reflection in the mirror. The dark pupiled camera lens stared directly at me. He took my photo, examined it, and went to press the red delete button. But before he could, a roiling terror uncorked inside my chest. Turning pegs taunted my nerves. What happened next was no more premeditated than your next heartbeat. I stepped forward and raised the knife. When I brought it down, his eyes finally met mine. We needn't go into the gory details. You've all seen the crime scene photographs. I stoppered the puncture wounds with cotton balls. I checked his pulse, but anyone could see he was gone. I slid his favorite oxfords onto his feet, washed the blood from his face and clothed him. What does one do with a corpse? I had it worked out so plainly, so perfectly. I pried open the living room floorboards and entombed him within the dusty cavity. For the rest of the night, I scrubbed the bathroom, washing blood from the walls, Cloroxing the tiles. When I finished erasing the evidence of Richard's death, I began erasing the evidence of his life. I trashed his toothbrush and wiped the mirror. I zipped the contents of his closet into two suitcases and cleared them into the dumpster out back. I worked all night and fell asleep in the purple dawn light. Three sharp knocks flung me into the somber afternoon. I sat up, my face and chest damp, and tiptoed to the door, half believing I'd dissolve into a puddle of perspiration before reaching it. Could the authorities have been summoned had I been too loud? Had Richard shrieked as he died? Or had I as I dreamed? But the woman behind the door wore an expression of cautious optimism. She fidgeted with her hair. I stood back from the peephole, having already spent too much of my life watching the inner dramas of others.
- [26:16]
Jim Parsons
Yes?
- [26:17]
Mike Doyle
I asked, opening the door. Her smile was a cheerful breath intruding into the apartment's gloom. I'm here to see Richard. How do you know him? The corners of her lips tightened as she tried to parse an answer. We've met. Well, we haven't met yet, but we're supposed to hang out. I'm sorry. We have a date, she said. I couldn't believe it. He'd actually met someone on Tinder. He isn't here yet. She checked her watch. I guess I'm a couple minutes early. You mind if I wait inside? She must have been from some idyllic Midwestern province where people leave their doors unlocked and instruct their children to say thank you when accepting candy from strangers. But I had nothing to fear. I'd been too careful, too crafty. Your Honor, you should have seen how sanely I smiled as I invited her in. A faint buzzing came from somewhere, but I ignored it. I was too busy being convincingly stable, the kind of roommate Richard always wanted me to be. She tapped on her phone while we talked. There again, a murmur beneath the floorboards. Dear God, was he still alive? No, he couldn't be impossible. I had held him in my arms and felt the soul sigh from him. And yet. I crossed the room to stand on the floorboards, but my weight wasn't enough to silence the throbbing beneath. She frowned. Had she heard it, too? She must have. Is something wrong? I asked. He isn't responding, she said, sending another message on Tinder. I'll try again. No, no, no, I said. One no too many. But I barely heard her because the hum beneath the floorboards had grown to an audible shudder. The vibration pulsed from the wood grain through my shoe soles so that I was not standing on a floor but on the very frequency of Richard's heart. His heart preserved in that cursed phone, shaking with each message she'd sent. I'd recognize it anywhere, the two part clamor so imprinted in my consciousness while I'd lived with Richard that I heard it in foot shuffle, in cricket legs, in my own beating chest. I must have slipped the phone into his pocket as I dressed him. The carelessness. I wanted to shout, to pull my hair, but the woman now looked at me curiously. Oh God. She pretended not to hear, just as Richard had pretended not to see. I had no choice but to maintain the charade. Maybe you could call him? She asked again, checking her watch. Or maybe not. He seemed like an alright guy when we were messaging, but man, standing someone up from a hookup app? That's just demoralizing. No, it's not that. My voice slipped, my hands trembled, the gears of my dark imagining spun by the pedal power of my pacing. And he'd never do that. There must be an emergency holding him up. Really, now I'm worried, she said, setting her hand on my forearm. Please call him. I reached for the landline and dialed his number. My breaths quickened to gasps. Richard's heart had stopped on the floor in the bathroom. It had. I had felt the pulse silence beneath my fingertips. Now the short shimmying pulses grew louder, louder, louder still. Beneath the floorboards, the clamor resounded and God, oh God, I was resurrecting him. I was putting the drumbeat back into his muted heart. He would rise from beneath the floor, I was sure of it. And then I was sobbing, ranting, weeping. He spoke to me from across the chasm of death. I've reached Richard. Not here, obviously. Leave your name and number and I'll call you. The floorboards beneath me had silenced, but I still heard Richard. In the static laced stillness of his afterlife. The woman now tormented me with an expression of grave concern. She asked if I was okay, if I was sick, if I needed a doctor. Could she not hear the vibrations of the phone? The beat still thundered in my ears, booming, banging, blaring. How could she stand there asking if I needed help? Mad she must be. She knew she heard. She had. Yet there she stood, torturing me with kindness. It was too much. I couldn't bear it. Anything was better than this anguish. I dropped to my knees, pried up the floorboard, and reached into the dusty cavity to extract Richard's bone. There. I howled. There he is.
- [30:57]
Jim Parsons
Take it.
- [30:59]
Mike Doyle
I thrust it into the woman's hand and she stared at me, first dumbfounded, then horrified. And before she accepted the phone before she snatched it and charged outside to call the police. She looked from Richard to me, from Richard's empty eyes to my own, and the three of us shared a moment of genuine connection.
- [31:35]
Meg Wolitzer
Mike Doyle performed Anthony Mara's the Telltale Heart. I'm Meg Wolitzer. Like Ginny Hogan, Anthony Mara uses social media to reshape a classic, Poe's famous study in inexplicable obsession. You might remember that in the original we know little of the relationship between the two men, and there is nothing other than incipient mania to account for the brutal murder. But I like how in Mara's funny reworking of the tale, the obsession seems a little less inexplicable than in Poe's version. We hear about it and we're like, okay, I buy that. I mean, our phones have just become unbearable, even as we need them more and more. In addition to a Find My Phone app, there ought to be a Lose My Phone app. But it would clearly also be a Lose My Mind app, for we all know the horrible stress of being separated from that wretched thing, that object of love and hate that keeps telling us its storage is full. The denouement of Mara's extremely relevant and weirdly convincing retelling is triggered by that moment. We all recognize a lost phone revealing itself. By the end, murder has become the ultimate app. When we return, Michael Cunningham replants a beanstalk. You're listening to selected shorts recorded live in performance at Symphony Space in New York City and at other venues nationwide.
- [32:56]
Jim Parsons
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- [33:26]
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- [34:12]
Meg Wolitzer
Welcome back. This is Selected Shorts, where our greatest actors transport us through the magic of fiction one short story at a time. Meg I'm Meg Wolitzer. On this program we're offering unexpected, thought provoking takes on classic literature, stuff we grew up with that might sound different now that we are grown up. Basically, that's one of fiction's superpowers to let us hear the familiar family dramas, cultural tropes, historical events in new ways. And on our website, selectedshorts.org and our podcast, you'll find many examples. Our final story, Jacked, is by Michael Cunningham, author of the Pulitzer Prize winning novel the Hours. It's from his collection A Wild Swan and Other Tales, which reworks classic fairy tales with often ruefully comic modern twists. Reading it is Jim Parsons, a theater mainstay with credits including Our Town and Paula Vogel's Mother play. But you probably know him best from the Big Bang Theory. Here he is with Michael Cunningham's Jacked.
- [35:29]
Jim Parsons
Jacked. This is not a smart boy we're talking about. This is not a kid who can be trusted to remember to take his mother to her chemo appointment or to close the windows when it rains, never mind asking him to sell the cow when he and his mother are out of cash and the cow is their last asset. We're talking about a boy who doesn't get halfway to town with his mother's sole remaining possession before he sold the cow to some stranger for a handful of beans. The guy claims they're magic beans and that, it seems, is enough for Jack. He doesn't even ask what variety of magic the beans supposedly deliver. Maybe they'll transform themselves into seven beautiful wives for him. Maybe they'll turn into the seven deadly sins and buzz around him like flies the rest of his life. Jack isn't doubtful. Jack isn't big on questions. Jack is the boy who says, wow, dude, magic beans? Really? There are any number of boys like Jack. Boys who prefer the crazy promise the long shot, who insist that they're natural born winners. They have a great idea for a screenplay. They just need, you know, someone to write it for them. They DJ at friends parties believing a club owner will show up sooner or later and hire them to spin for the multitudes. They drop out of vocational school because they can see after a semester or two that it's a direct path to loserdom. Better to live in their childhood bedrooms, temporarily unemployed until fame and prosperity arrive. Is Jack's mother upset when he strides back into the house, holds out his hand and shows her what he's gotten for the cow she is. What have I done? How exactly have all the sacrifices I've made, all the dinners I put together out of nothing and ate hardly any of myself? How exactly did I raise you to be this cavalier and unreliable? Could you please explain? Explain that to me, please. Is Jack disappointed by his mother's poverty of imagination? Her lack of nerve in the face of life's gambles, her continued belief in the budget conscious off brand caution that's gotten her exactly nowhere he is. I mean, mom, look at this house. Don't you think thrift is some kind of death? You ask yourself since dad died, why hasn't anyone come around? Not even Hungry Hank, not even Half Wit Willie. Jack doesn't want or need to hear her answer, though it runs silently through her mind. I have my beautiful boy. I see strong young shoulders bent over the wash basin every morning. What would I want with Hungry Hank's yellow teeth or Half Wit Willie's bent up body? Nevertheless, her son has sold the cow for a handful of beans. Jack's mother tosses the beans out the window and sends him to bed without supper. Fairy tales are generally moral tales. In the bleaker version of this one, mother and son both starve to death. That lesson would be, mothers, try to be realistic about your imbecile sons. No matter how charming their sly little grins, no matter how heartbreaking the dark gold tousel of their hair can, if you romanticize them, if you insist on virtues they clearly lack. If you persist in your blind desire to have raised a wise child, one who'll be helpful in your old age, don't be surprised if you find that you've fallen on the bathroom floor and end up spending the night there because he's out drinking with his friends till dawn. That is not, however, the story of Jack and the Beanstalk. The implication of this particular tale is trust. Strangers believe in magic. In Jack and the Beanstalk, the stranger has not lied. The next morning, Jack's bedroom window is obscured by rampant green. He looks out into leaves the size of skillets and a stalk as thick as an oak's trunk. When he cranes his neck upward, he sees that the beanstalk is so tall and it vanishes into the clouds. Right. Invest in desert real estate where an interstate highway is certain to be built soon. Get in on the ground floor of your uncle's revolutionary new age reversal system. Use half the grocery money to buy lottery tickets every week. Jack, being Jack, does not ask questions. Nor does he wonder if climbing the Beanstalk is the best possible idea. At the beanstalk's apex, on the upper side of the cloud bank, he finds himself standing before a giant's castle. Built on a particularly fleecy rise of cloud, the castle is dizzyingly white, prone to a hint of tremble, as if built from concentrated clouds, as if a proper rainstorm could reduce it to an enormous pearly puddle. Being Jack, he walks right up to the titanic snow colored door. Who, after all, wouldn't be glad to see him? Before he can knock, though, he hears his name called by a voice so soft it might merely be a gust of wind that's taught itself to say Jack. The wind coalesces into a cloud girl, a maiden of the mist. She tells Jack that the giant who lives in the castle killed Jack's father years ago. The giant would have killed the infant Jack as well, but Jack's mother so ardently pled her case, holding the baby to her bosom, that the giant spared Jack on the condition that Jack's mother never reveal the cause of his father's death. Maybe that's why Jack's mother has always treated him as if he were bounty and hope incarnate. The mist girl tells Jack that everything the giant owns belongs rightfully to him. And then she vanishes as quickly as the wisp of an exhaled cigarette. Jack, however, being Jack, had assumed already that everything the giant owns, everything everybody owns, rightfully belongs to him. And he never really believed that story about his father getting dysentery. On a business trip to Brazil, he raps on the door, which is opened by the giant's wife. The wife may have once been pretty, but no trace of loveliness remains. Her hair is thinning, her housecoat's stained. She's as offhandedly careworn as a 50 foot tall version of Jack's mother. Jack announces that he's hungry, that he comes from a place where the world fails to provide. The giant's wife, who rarely receives visitors of any kind, is happy to see a handsome miniature man child standing at her door. She invites him in, feeds him breakfast. Though she warns him that if her husband comes home, he'll eat Jack for breakfast. Does Jack stick around anyway? Of course he does. Does the giant arrive home unexpectedly? He does. He booms from the vastness of the hallway. Fee, fi, fo, fum. I smell the blood of an Englishman. Be he alive or be he dead, I'll grind his bones to make my bread. The giant's wife conceals Jack in, of all places, the very saucepan in which her husband would cook him. She's barely got the lid put down when the giant lumbers in. The giant is robustly corpulent, thundering, strident, dangerous in the way of barroom thugs. Any figure who is comical in theory. He wears a jerkin and tights. But truly threatening in fact. Simply because he is fool enough and drunk enough to do serious harm. Simply because he's a stranger to reason. Because killing a man with a pool cue seems like a justifiable response to a vaguely insulting remark, the giantess assures her husband that he merely smells the ox. She's cooked him for lunch. Really? Here we move briefly into farce. There's nowhere else for us to go. Giant. I know what ox smells like. I know what the blood of an Englishman smells like. Giantess. Well, this is a new kind box. It's flavored. Giant what? Giantess. It's brand new. You could also get Tears of a princess. Ox. You can get wicked queen envy. Ox. Surgeon. The ox. A whole ox. Giant. Hmm. Tastes like regular ox to me. Giantess. Well, maybe I won't get this kind anymore. Giant. There is nothing wrong with regular ox. Giantess. But a little variety every now and then. Giant. You get suckered in too easily. Giantess. I know. No one knows that better than I do. After the giant has eaten the ox, he commands his wife to bring him his bags of gold so he can perform the day's tally. This is a ritual, a comforting reminder. He's just as rich today as he was yesterday and the day before. Once he's content that he still has all the gold he's ever had, he lays his colossal head down on the tabletop and falls into the kind of deep, wheezing nap anybody would want to take after eating. Ox, which is Jack's cue to climb back out of the saucepan, grab the bags of gold and take off. And which would be the giantess's cue to resuscitate her marriage. It would be the time for her to holler thief. And pretend she's never met Jack before. By evening, she and her husband could have been sitting at the table, laughing, each holding aloft one of Jack's testicles on a toothpick before popping him into their mouths. They could have declared to each other, it's enough. It's enough to be rich and live on a cloud together. To age companionably, to want nothing more than they've got already. The giant's wife seems to agree, however, that robbing her husband is a good move. We all know couples like this Couples who have been waging the battle for decades who seem to believe that if finally someday one of them can prove the other wrong, deeply wrong, soul wrong, then they'll be exonerated and released. Amassing the evidence, working toward the proof can swallow an entire life. Jack and his mother wealthy now. Jack's mother's invested the gold in stocks in real estate. Don't move to a better neighborhood. They can't abandon the beanstalk, so they rebuild seven fireplaces, cathedral ceilings, indoor and outdoor pools. They continue living together as mother and son. Jack doesn't date. Who knows what succession of girls and boys sneak in through the sliding glass door at night after the mother sunk to the bottom of her own private lake with the help of Absolute and Klonopin. Jack and his mother are doing fine. Especially considering that recently they were down to their last cow. But as we all know, it's never enough, no matter how much it is. Jack and his mother still don't have a black American Express card. They don't have a private plane. They don't own an island. And so Jack goes up the beanstalk again. He knocks for a second time at the towering cloud door. The giantess answers again. She seems not to recognize Jack and it's true. He's no longer dressed in the cheap lounge lizard outfit, the tight pants and synthetic shirt he boosted from the mall. He's all Marc Jacobs now. He has a shockingly expensive haircut. But still, does the giantess really believe that a different, better dressed boy has appeared at the door? One with the same sly grin and the same dark gold hair, however improved the cut. There is, after all, the well known inclination to continue to sabotage our marriages without ever leaving them. And there's this too. There's the appeal of the young thief who robs you and climbs back down off your cloud. It is possible to love that boy in a wistful and hopeless way. It's possible to love his greed and narcissism, to grant him that which is beyond your own capacities. Heedlessness, cockiness, a self devotion so pure it borders on the divine. The scenario plays itself out again this time when the 50 foot tall, dim witted thug Fee fi fo fums early and unexpected from the hallway. The giantess hides Jack in the oven. We don't need advanced degrees to understand something about her habit of flirtation with eating Jack. The second exchange between giant and giantess, the one about how he smells the blood of an Englishman and she assures him it's just the bullock she's fixed him for lunch. It's too absurd even for farce. Let's imagine an unconscious collusion between husband and wife. He knows something's up. He knows she's hiding something or someone. Let's imagine he prefers a wife who's capable of deceit. A wife who can manage something more interesting than drudgery and peevish drowsy fidelity. This time, after polishing off the bullock, the giant demands to be shown the hen that lays golden eggs. And a moment later, there she is. A prize winning pullet, as regal and self important as it's possible for a chicken to be. She stands before the giant, claw tipped bluish feet firmly planted on the tabletop and with a low cackle of triumph lays another golden egg which the giant picks up and examines. It's the daily egg. They never vary. The giant, however, maintains his attachment to revisiting his own bounty as he does to his postprandial snooze, face down on the tabletop, wheezing out blasts of bullock reeking breath emitting a lake of drool. Again Jack emerges, this time from the oven and makes off with the hen. Again the giantess watches him steal her husband's joy and fortune. Again she adores the meanness of Jack, a small time crook dressed now in $200 jeans. She envies him his rapaciousness, his insatiability. She who has let herself go, who prepares meals and does the dishes and wanders with no particular purpose for from room to room. She who finds herself strangely glad to be in the presence of someone avaricious and heartless and uncaring. Are we surprised to learn that a year or so later, Jack goes up the beanstalk one more time? By now there's nothing left for him and his mother to buy. They've got the car and driver. They've got the private plane. They own that small otherwise uninhabited island and the Lesser Antilles where they built a house that staffed year round in anticipation of their single annual visit. We always want more, though some of us want more than others, it's true. But we always want more of something. More love, more youth, more. On his third visit, Jack decides not to press his luck with the giantess this time. He sneaks in through the back. He finds the giant and giantess unaltered, though it would seem they've had to cut back, having lost their gold in the magic hen. The castle has dissolved a bit and sky knifes in through the gaps in the clouds. The daily lunch of an entire animal runs more along the Lines of an antelope or an ibex, sinewy, dark tasting. No longer the fattened farm tender ox or bullock of their salad days. Still, habits resist change. The giant devours his creature, spits out its horns and hooves, and demands his last remaining treasure. A magic harp. The harp is a prize of a different order entirely. Who knows about its market value? There's nothing so simple as gold coins or golden eggs. It too is made of gold, but it's not prosaic in the actual way of currency. It's a harp, like any harp. Strings, knee, neck, tuning pins. But its head is the head of a woman, slightly smaller than an apple, more stern than beautiful, more Athena than Botticelli, Venus. And it can play itself. The giant commands the harp to play. The harp obliges. It plays a tune unknown on earth below, a melody that emanates from clouds and stars, A song of celestial movements, the music of the spheres, that which composers like Bach and Chopin came close to approximating, but which, being ethereal, cannot be reproduced by instruments made of brass or wood, cannot be summoned by human breath or fingering. The harp plays the giant into his nap. That gargantuan head makes it, studding daily contact with the tabletop. What must the giantess think when Jack creeps in and grabs the harp again? You're kidding. Would you actually want the very last of our treasures? Is she appalled or relieved or both? Does she experience some ecstasy of total loss? Or has she had enough? Is she going to put an end at last to Jack's veracity? We'll never know. Because it's the harp, not the giantess, who finally protests. As Jack makes for the door, the harp calls out, master, help me. I'm being stolen. The giant wakes, looks around uncertainly. He's been dreaming. But can this be my life? Like my kitchen, my haggard and grudging wife? By the time he's up and after Jack, Jack has already traversed the cloud field and reached the top of the beanstalk, holding firm to the harp as the harp cries out for rescue. It's a race down the beanstalk. Jack is hampered by his grip on the harp. He can only climb one handed. But the giant has far more trouble than Jack in negotiating the stalk itself, which for the giant is thin and unsteady, like the rope he was forced to climb in gym class when he was a weepy, lonely boy. As Jack nears the ground, he calls to his mother to bring him an axe. He's lucky she's semi sober today. She rushes out with an axe. Jack chops the beanstalk down while the giant is still as high as a hawk circling for rabbits. The beanstalk falls like a redwood. The giant hits the earth so hard his body crashes through the topsoil. He embeds itself 10ft deep and leaves a giant shaped chasm in the middle of a cornfield. It's a mercy of sorts. What, after all, did the giant have left with his gold and his hen and his harp all gone? Jack has had the hole filled in right over the giant's body. And in a rare act of piety, he's ordered a grove of lilac bushes planted over the giant's resting place. If you were to look down down at the lilac grove from above, you'd see that it's shaped like an enormous man, arms and legs akimbo. A man frozen in an attitude of oddly voluptuous surrender. Jack and his mother prosper. Jack, in his rare moments of self questioning, remembers what the mist girl told him years ago. The giant committed a crime. Jack has since infancy been entitled to everything the giant owned. This salves the stripling conscience that's been growing feebly within Jack as he'd gotten older. Jack's mother has started collecting handbags. She especially prizes her limited edition Murakami cherry Blossom by Louis Vuitton. And meeting her girlfriends for lunches that can go until 4 or 5pm Jack sometimes acquires girls and boys in neighboring towns, sometimes rents them, but always arranges for them to arrive late at night in secret. Jack is not, as we know, the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree. But he's canny enough to understand the that only his mother will uncritically adore him forever. That if one of the girls or boys were suffered to stay the fits of mysterious frustration the critiques would set in soon enough. The hen, who cares only for the eggs she produces, lays a gold one every day and lives contentedly in her concrete coop with her 24 hour guard. Jack's attempt at exterminating all the local foxes having proven futile. Only the heart is rested and sorrowful. Only the harp looks yearningly out through the window of the room in which it resides. A room that affords it a view of the lilac grove planted over the giant's embedded body. The harp, long mute, dreams of the time when it lived on a cloud and played music too beautiful for anyone but the giant. To.
- [55:38]
Meg Wolitzer
Jim Parsons Performed Jacked by Michael Cunningham. I'm Meg Wolitzer. Michael Cunningham is a master of irony, and in Jacked he has turned a classic fairy tale into a comedy of errors, a comedy of manners, and an interrogation of how exactly fairy tale heroes triumph or not. The result is that if you read this or had it read to you as a child, you are suddenly embarrassed for your clueless younger self. This reimagined classic seemed a great excuse to talk to Michael Cunningham about his work, which sometimes deftly repurposes the past and sometimes meets the present head on. Have you always been drawn to those stories?
- [56:20]
Michael Cunningham
Yes, I've always been drawn to those stories. I think they were the first stories I knew when I was a little kid. My mother would read a story to me every night, or sometimes the same story over and over and over again at my insistence. And I think you might say that this collection of my own versions of the fairy tales are kind of myself as an adult, trying to answer myself as a very small child and say, well, this is what happens happily ever after.
- [56:59]
Meg Wolitzer
I love that. And was there a particular connection to the Jack and the Beanstalk story?
- [57:05]
Michael Cunningham
I had some sense of which of the fairy tales had seemed to me as a child to end too abruptly. They're the ones I was most eager, you know, the 12 princes who've been turned into swans, except one of them still has a swan wing because his sister didn't have time to finish the Cloak of Nettle. What happens to that guy? And Jack and the Beanstalk? You know, Jack climbs up the beanstalk and the giant's wife lets him in. Whoa, whoa. Hot little dude. And he steals her husband's gold. And then after a while he comes back and she lets him in again. What's going on in that marriage, right?
- [57:56]
Meg Wolitzer
No, it's really ripe for your kind of sensibility.
- [57:59]
Michael Cunningham
It certainly is.
- [58:01]
Meg Wolitzer
That was a little of my talk with Michael Cunningham. You can hear the full interview this week. As a bonus on our podcast platform, when we at Selected Shorts set out to find twisted classics, we meant no disrespect. Instead, we felt sure that demonstrating the many ways they could be reinterpreted by talented contemporary writers and simply proves how resonant and durable they are. Ginny Hogan's treatment of Austen's Pride and Prejudice suggests that no matter what period in history, lovers have to tune out the social clutter and become more self aware. In his treatment of Poe's the Telltale Heart, Anthony Mara playfully tests the limits of today's dominant obsession, the iPhone. And Michael Cunningham plants a beanstalk that proves that capitalism can topple even a giant and silence his harp. I'm Meg Wolitzer on my way home to read War and Peace just in case I move to change it up a little. Thanks 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 Robleski. 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 Jennifer Nolsen. Our theme music is David Peterson's that's the Deal, performed by the Dierdorf Petersen 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 with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature. Selected Shorts is produced and distributed by Symphony Space. Limu Emu and Doug Here we have.
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Jim Parsons
It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug. Uh, Limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us? Cut the camera.
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Jim Parsons
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