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- [02:37]
Aaron Tracy
we've come a very long way together this season. Roald Dahl has gone through a lot. And when you look back at all of our episodes, all the different stages of Dahl's life, a pattern does begin to emerge. I think Dahl's entire life, like for so many of us, was about a search for who he really was and where he belonged. And when you really think about it, that may also be the key to understanding his work. Matilda is entirely about her search for identity. The same could be said about Charlie and about James and Sophie and so many of the others. And what they all seem to figure out by story's end is that their true selves come to fruition not from conforming to other people's expectations, but from embracing the thing that makes them unique. Which, as we've heard, is also exactly what Dahl discovered in his own life. But it took him trying on all these different masks, all these different Personas in order to get there. He was the ambitious young businessman with Shell oil, the courageous fighter pilot in the war, a playboy spy in D.C. in New York, a disgruntled screenwriter in LA, an urbane, sophisticated author publishing in the New Yorker, and finally, the world famous children's author who championed the underdog and weaponized mischief while espousing views that could have made him an antagonist in one of his own stories. For My Heart podcast, Imagine Entertainment, and Parallax. Hi, I'm Aaron Tracy, and this is the Secret World of roald Dahl, episode 10. So were each of these stages necessary in Dahl's evolution? Certainly they all contributed to him living one of the biggest, noisiest lives of his century. But I guess what I'm trying to figure out is if that's necessary or even advantageous for a writer. I want to bring in Jesse Stern on this question. Jesse is maybe the best TV writer I've ever worked with, and he has a knack for writing these massive global hits like the CBS show NCIS or the video game Call of Modern Warfare. He's also spent the last year studying Hemingway and Salinger, authors of Dahl's generation, for a project that he's writing. I asked Jesse about the importance to these writers of going out, experiencing the world and having big adventures. By the way, it's a theme Jusse very much incorporates into his own life. While I'm sitting in my bathrobe at home in Brooklyn right now, I caught up with Jesse where he's living these days in Santa Eulalia in the north of Ibiza.
- [04:58]
Jesse Stern
It's not so much to me the adventure as it is. You know, you have to get some discomfort. You have to get into the unknown. It becomes really easy to convince yourself that you have enough exposure to the universe already. And I think it's crucial to find the balance between those two things. Exploring outer space and exploring inner space. I got so fascinated between the relationship between Hemingway and J.D. salinger, two guys who definitely saw the world, and one decided I had enough of it and I'm going to spend the rest of my life in a bunker in my yard, exploring the inner reaches of my own mind. And another who basically spent every day fishing, boating, fighting, hunting, barking if he could. You know, when you get into a new environment, you get into a place you've never been before. It exposes all these different sides about the experiences that you've had. It shows you all these things that you've been taking for granted. It shows you things that you thought were load bearing and essential, that, oh, there's other ways of doing that, there's other ways of being. And also it pushes you to expand your own consciousness of what you're capable of and in that, what anybody is capable of. And I think that that broadens not just the imagination, but your sense of empathy. Because when you read these stories of great heroes or great leaders or great adventurers throughout time, there's a certain aspect to it that feels impossible, that feels like, how did they do that? And when you have just a little bit of exposure to process, the process of climbing a mountain, even if it's not the biggest mountain, you start to learn a little bit about what it takes to go up, what it takes to keep going up, what it feels like to get to the top, and the experience of coming down. And you get to find a way that you can relate a little bit more to kind of impossible or historical figures. And it helps you, I think, to get into the mindset of what human beings are capable of and how and how they do it one step at a time. Even in the most incredible achievements. I think in Dahl's situation, there's an aspect of necessity. He's not just Pursuing adventures, these are things that were essential. Becoming a pilot, joining raf, fighting in the war, it was essential. There was really not much in the way of choice given to, you know, a 24 year old man in England in 1940. You had to. It was a matter of survival. Which makes it even more infuriating that he can't find some form of empathy with the Israelis. I guess he just doesn't acknowledge that that place also fights for its survival. You know, and then talking about the, the invention for his son, again, that was out of necessity, wasn't that he just, you know, decided one day to become a medical inventor. Thomas Jefferson was the same way. You know, he would just find solutions, creative solutions to challenges that surrounded him, whether it was building his own violin or designing pocket doors in Monticello, or writing pretty decent documents.
- [08:05]
Aaron Tracy
We're going to come back to Jesse, but first I want to talk a little bit about where and how Dahl wrote his own pretty decent documents, because they're the only reason we care at all about the adventures Dahl had. Right. Dahl's writing process is completely fascinating to me. How did a guy who was used to flying aerial battles in the war and playing spy games in dc, how did that same guy find the ability to sit quietly in a room for years on end and produce mountains of writing? Here's Dahl in a Random House video. The author's eye from 1988, two years before his death. He gives maybe the best analogy for the writing process that I've ever heard.
- [08:40]
Roald Dahl (archival recordings)
When you're writing, it's rather like going on a very long walk across valleys and mountains and things, and you get the first view of what you see and you write it down. Then you walk a bit further, maybe up onto the top of a hill, and you look down, you see something else and you write that and you go on like that, day after day, getting different views of the same landscape, really. And the highest mountain on the walk is obviously the end of the book because it's got to be the best view of all when everything comes together and you can look back and see everything you've done and it all ties up. But it's a very, very long, slow process.
- [09:32]
Aaron Tracy
How great is that? It really gives Anne Lamotte's Bird by Bird a run for its money in terms of finding the poetry and the act of writing. The writing life is clearly a subject Dahl thinks about a lot. Many of his most celebrated books are sort of extended metaphors for what it means to be a writer. Like my favorite of Dahl's Adult works. The wonderful story of Henry Sugar, which we talked about last episode. That story is maybe the most revealing mirror Dahl ever held up to his life as a writer. On the surface, it's about a wealthy narcissist who discovers a way to literally see through the backs of playing cards using meditation techniques, but strip away the magical realism. And it's about a man who locks himself away, day after day, year after year, pursuing a single skill with monastic devotion, just like Dahl did with his writing. Learning to see through playing cards is just a more dramatically interesting version of learning to write well. And the practice completely changes Henry Sugar. It makes him a more generous, more enlightened, better man, which I think is probably what Dahl hoped the writing life would do for him. Once Dahl decided to devote his life to his craft in his late 40s, his routine, like Henry Sugar's, became one of almost religious ritual. Here's Dahl in his first memoir, Boy, discussing the challenges of choosing life as a writer, recreating his voice as we did in previous episodes.
- [10:51]
Roald Dahl (archival recordings)
The life of a writer is absolute hell compared with the life of a businessman. The writer has to force himself to work. He has to make his own hours, and if he doesn't go to his desk at all, there is nobody to scold him. If he is a writer of fiction, he lives in a world of fear. Each new day demands new ideas, and he can never be sure whether he's going to come up with them or not. Two hours of writing fiction leaves this particular writer absolutely drained. For those two hours, he has been miles away. He has been somewhere else, in a different place with totally different people, and the effort of swimming back into the normal surroundings is very great. It is almost a shock. The writer walks out of his workroom in a daze. He wants a drink he needs. Happens to be a fact that nearly every writer of fiction in the world drinks more whiskey than is good for him. He does it to give himself faith, hope, and encourage a person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul. And that, I'm sure, is why he does it.
- [11:59]
Aaron Tracy
I love that Doll manages to make the act of writing alone in a room just as brutal, terrifying and filled with adventure as his life in Africa with Shell Oil, or as a fighter pilot or as a spy. But it's all worth it because of the freedom it offers. So let's talk more about Dahl's particular act of writing. If you ask 50 different authors about their process, you'll get 50 different answers. I really can't get enough of this stuff. Tony Gilroy, who wrote Michael Clayton and more recently created the Star wars series andor talks about initially setting up his writing office so his chair faced outside. But it soon felt like his ideas were flying out the window and he had to rearrange the furniture. Here's Dahl in Thrillmaker, interviewed by Peter Wallace, speaking about his own office.
- [12:43]
Roald Dahl (archival recordings)
Then at 10:30 I fill a thermos with hot coffee and take a mug in my hand and walk up to my work hut, which is away from the house, up in the apple orchard, about 150 meters from the house.
- [13:02]
Aaron Tracy
Could that sound any more idyllic? A writing hut in an apple orchard? A separate studio is actually pretty common among well to do writers. Dahl's hut was modeled on one built for the poet Dylan Thomas. Playwright Arthur Miller wrote a lot in Brooklyn Heights, but also escaped to a sparse little 7 by 10 foot hut on his property in Connecticut. No decoration, no distractions. The novelist Philip Roth also built himself a hut and constructed it with a standing lectern like desk so he could confront his characters on his feet, eye to eye. Virginia Woolf built a small garden lodge in Sussex. Her famous room of one's own. Toni Morrison transformed a boathouse on the Hudson river in which to do her writing. As I record this, I'm in my house in Brooklyn, two doors down from the brownstone where Norman Mailer wrote his most famous books. Mehler didn't exactly have a hut, but he renovated the top floor of his house, his office, to look and feel exactly like a ship with a long hull and slanted windowed ceilings, which is as crazy looking as you're imagining. Apparently, Mailer was afraid of water and working all day in what felt like a boat forced him to confront his fears, which I guess he found helpful in his writing. John Cheever, the tortured Chekoff of the suburbs, created maybe the most surreal office and morning commute of any writer I can think of. Every day, Cheever would put on a suit and tie as if heading to Wall Street. He'd exit his apartment, take the elevator down with the other commuters heading to work. But he'd continue past the lobby to the basement of his building. He'd unlock a small storage room, strip down to his underpants and write all day, surrounded by pipes and electrical boxes. When he was done, he'd get dressed and go back upstairs. Like I said, every writer does something unique. Here's Dahl again from Thrillmaker on his setup inside his writing studio.
- [14:52]
Roald Dahl (archival recordings)
And I go into this splendid room, which I really enjoy because it's so comfortable as an armchair. I don't sit up at a desk. I lie back in an armchair and I put my feet up on a trunk which I filled with wood to make it hard. And the trunk is tied to the legs of the chair with bits of wire so that I can put my feet on the trunk like that and push and it won't go away.
- [15:17]
Aaron Tracy
Writing can be so scary. Laying back with your feet up helps you relax. Stephen Sondheim, the greatest writer of musical theater, wrote while fully laying down on his couch with a drink in his hand. David Milch, the brilliant creator of Deadwood and other TV shows, would lay with his back flat on the floor in his trailer and dictate all of his scripts to an assistant. Here's more of Dahl with Peter Wallace on Thrillmaker.
- [15:41]
Roald Dahl (archival recordings)
And so I get up there and I get really comfortable and I take a writing board which I've made my. And I put it on the arms of the armchair and underneath it I put a roll of thick paper so the writing board slopes exactly where I want it. And I have six pencils and I sharpen them and I pour myself a coffee and I feel very comfortable.
- [16:07]
Aaron Tracy
Whenever possible, Dahl wouldn't go back into the main house during his writing sessions. If someone in the house needed him, they would flash a lamp from a switch in the nursery. One flash meant someone was asking for him and two flashes meant an emergency. The only time the lights had ever flashed twice was the day Olivia died, according to writer Barry Farrell. All of this elaborate setup, of course, is in service of trying to get lost in his writing, which is the goal of pretty much every writer. To lose time to get into a flow state. Dahl also used music to try to get there. Here he is on the long running British radio show Desert island discs from 1979.
- [16:43]
Roald Dahl (archival recordings)
I never used to start writing in the morning before putting on some very great music, like a Beethoven quartet and sit and listen to it in the hopes that some of this greatness would rub off on me and that I would write better. As a matter of fact, it helped quite a lot because it is impossible after listening to great music to write absolute rubbish.
- [17:09]
Aaron Tracy
The other most important decision for a writer is how long a stretch to write for according to Barry Farrell. Again, Dahl rarely ever worked in the evening. Dahl's ideal schedule was a session from 10am to noon in the morning and another from 3 to 6 in the afternoon. Two good stints with a solid break in between. Here's Dahl again on the author's eye.
- [17:30]
Roald Dahl (archival recordings)
The great thing, of course is never to work for too long at a stretch because after about two hours you are not at your highest peak of concentration, so you have to stop.
- [17:46]
Aaron Tracy
When I was trying to break in as a writer, I would write all day bankers hours. But over time you realize so many of those hours are just wasted. My favorite thinker on this subject is Oliver Berkman. In his essay on the three or four hours rule for getting creative work done, he writes, you almost certainly can't consistently do the kind of work that demands serious mental focus for more than about three or four hours a day. He continues, it's positively spooky how frequently this three to four hour range crops up at. Accounts of the habits of the famously creative Charles Darwin at work on the theory of evolution toiled for two 90 minute periods and one 1 hour period per day. Thomas Jefferson, Charles Dickens, Virginia Woolf, Ingmar Bergman and many more all basically followed suit. The lesson here is to ring fence three or four hours of undisturbed focus. Ideally when your energy levels are highest, just focus on protecting four hours and don't worry if the rest of the day is characterized by the usual scattered chaos. Berkman explains. And you will be shocked at how much you get done if you just consistently put in three to four hours a day. Which is precisely what Dahl always did. Let's turn now to what Dahl's elaborately thought out writing process actually led to. I want to speak to someone who can talk a little more specifically about the books, because that's Dahl's legacy, right? As fascinating as Dahl's life was, as successful as the film and TV adaptations have been, and as much ink has been spilled on the charges of anti Semitism, if people are still thinking about Roald Dahl a hundred years from now, he will be because of the books.
- [19:23]
Mark West
Well, my name is Mark West. I'm an English professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and my specialty is children's literature, young adult literature and the history of childhood.
- [19:35]
Aaron Tracy
Mark is one of the world's experts on this subject. I asked him to start off by talking a little bit about how exactly Dahl changed the landscape of children's literature.
- [19:44]
Mark West
But when he came on the scene as a children's author in 1961, children's books during that 1950s time period and before tended to be books that authors tried to make sure were good for children. They had a, if not a moral message. They were upstanding in a way. One of the things that Roald Dahl brought to the whole children's literature scene was he was trying to write children's books that appealed to to children's sense of humor and the way they look at things, which is somewhat different from the way in which adults look at things. He was not interested in being preachy. There's nothing moralistic or didactic about his books. But his sense of humor that runs through so many of his children's books is the kind of humor that children have, but the kind of humor that some adults find off putting. They find it a little crude in a way. Sometimes he's accused of breaking taboos and in some ways playing into the things the kids find funny, such as things that are kind of gross in a way. There's a real odd discrepancy in the world of children's literature. A lot of the award winning children's books are books that adults like, but kids sometimes don't like as much. Conversely, a lot of the books that are really best selling books that kids love are not sometimes the books that adults love. Adults like kids books for a somewhat different reason than kids do. Adults that like to read children's books, and there are lots, including me, look for books that kind of bring them back to that sense of nostalgia, the childhood innocence, the sense of the good old days. But kids don't look at the world that way. Kids are never nostalgic about childhood. They're always ready to kind of pushed the envelope a little bit. One of the things that Roald Dahl did in his books is he kind of played up this slightly adversarial relationship between kids and adults.
- [21:50]
Aaron Tracy
Creating adversarial relationships is of course, a major theme in Dahl's personal life too. Mark actually got to spend some time with Dahl not long before Dahl's death. He asked Dahl about paving the way for the explosion of children's lit that came in his wake.
- [22:04]
Mark West
One of the things that he said to me when we were talking about writing for kids is he said, well, the kids sometimes see adults as the enemy. And by that he meant that he thought that in some ways kids think of adults as these big people, powerful people who are trying to civilize them. But in some ways, kids don't want to be civilized. In some ways, that famous line from Sigmund Freud, civilization and its discontents. Well, in some ways kids are part of that discontent business. In some ways, kids are reluctant to be civilized. And you see that play out in children's sense of humor. So when Dahl became successful first with James and the Giant Peach, and then Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and then the other books that came after that. He kind of opened up the door for other children's authors to write children's books that really appealed to children's tastes rather than the tastes of adults.
- [23:01]
Aaron Tracy
But of course, very few other children's authors ever achieved anything close to Dahl's commercial or critical success. When the Guardian came out with his list of the 100 best novels ever, not children's novels, just novels, Dahl's, the BFG came in at number 88, only a little bit behind classics by Saul Bello and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I asked Mark how Dahl's work evolved over time and especially how his characters changed.
- [23:28]
Mark West
You'll see a progression. And one of the things that I think is interesting about that progression is you'll see child characters, the central characters, getting more and more agency. So in the very first children's books, like James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, you have really imaginative situations, very clever writing. But the central characters, they're kind of passive. Things happen to them, things happen to James, things happen to Charlie. And they're good kids, but they're not really taking a lot of action in the context of their plots. But as you work your way up ending up with Matilda, Matilda has so much agency. In some ways, Matilda actually has more power in terms of her interactions with adult characters than the adults do. She outwits the adults. She outwits the teacher who runs the school. She is much more clever than her parents. Even though her parents think of themselves as being very smart and whatnot. Matilda is much smarter than they are. So that was something that I think Roald Dahl showed that children's books can have characters where the kids really make a difference, where they have agency, where they can make decisions that matter, where they can outwit adults in that way. I think he's sort of similar to Mark Twain. There's a lot of connections between Mark Twain and Roald Dahl, in my opinion. But I think that for Roald Dahl, he showed us child characters that you can root for and then make a difference. And you see dad actually play itself out in another really popular series that I think has connections to Roald Dahl, and that is the Harry Potter series, where Harry and Hermione and the other kids in the Harry Potter book have in some ways, more agency or able to do things that the adults are not able to do. In some ways, the kids are able to solve problems that the powerful, gifted adults around them are not able to solve. So in some ways, the agency that you see with the character, like Harry Potter, I think goes back to some of the characters that you would see in some of Roald Dahl's children's books.
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- [28:46]
Aaron Tracy
also talked about the charges of bigotry against Dahl and what some have described as Dahl's volatile personality. Markson's doll was equally volatile in his work.
- [28:55]
Mark West
If he didn't like what he wrote, he oftentimes would just burn it. I mean, literally burn it. He had this little spot outside his garden shed which is made out of stone where he would ritualistically burn it so that he couldn't be tempted to go back and try to fix it up. He's like, no, this doesn't pass my test. I'm gonna burn it. He was a very theatrical, over the top sort of person. And I think in some ways when people look at Roald Dahl, at some of the things that he said, they don't really understand that he was in some ways a very over the top sort of person. A person who would say things that might be considered certainly offensive, but he didn't always believe what he said. He loved to get a rise out of you. He was that kind of curmudgeon that really we don't have room in our society so much today for that kind of colorful curmudgeon. But in terms of what he was trying to provide for children, I think he was very sincere about that. I think he wanted to provide kids with books that they would like to read, books that would appeal to their tastes and books that would in some ways provide them with examples of kids who cope with difficult situations but come out on top on some level. And you see that in almost all of his children's books. I think in some ways people don't really understand that side of Roald Dahl. Somebody who's kind of a curmudgeon sometimes say things to know they will get a rise out of you. He kind of enjoyed doing that. Some people say, oh, Roald Dahl was an sob Some people say, oh, Roald Dahl was the most gracious person you could ever imagine. Well, in fact, he was both of those things. But you can pick out a quotation here or a quotation there to prove whatever case you want to. But in some ways, he was just a very complex person and an interesting person. So I'm very grateful that he took the time out to talk to me and introduce me to his family and buy me many drinks.
- [30:48]
Aaron Tracy
Dahl's complexity is mirrored in the complex characters he created, especially in his adult fiction. Jesse Stern is a big old fan of Dahl's books for adults, especially Dahl's 1979 novel, My Uncle Oswald. I asked Jesse to tell us why
- [31:02]
Jesse Stern
there was such a sense of discovery when you realize that the guy, the same guy who's been writing all these children books that you love, also wrote adult books. Especially when you're teenager or pre teenager, whatever. I was, I think I was at summer camp when I found my Uncle Oswald. Right, so you're just starting to read books that have sex and it feels like, you know, you're getting away with something, like you're doing something that's forbidden. It kind of blew my mind that the same person could do both of these things. There was definitely a time in the development of my own brain where that was incomprehensible. How does, you know, one guy produce these completely different worlds? Why would the guy who's trying to make me laugh and smile and feel all these warm feelings, you know, also want to scare the crap out of me? Or why does this guy want to tell these dirty stories? It definitely entered my mind, my Uncle Oswald, I just loved the story. I loved how it was presented. You know, there's this whole introduction to My Uncle Oswald where Oswald has died and he's left behind this massive trove of his journals, which are so scandalous that it would bring down multiple governments if they were ever released to the public. And his surviving nephew, who's been bequeathed these stories, is sifting through them and this is the only one he's found that is actually readable. And it's still so salacious and so scandalous and you won't even believe that it's true. I love that presentation. I mean, still. I still love that presentation. I love the fantasy of amassing an encyclopedia's worth of journals by the end of a lifetime, particularly well told stories. And then you get into the story of Michael Oswald and it's just delightfully dirty. It's kind of all these aspects that I love to. It you know, this guy traipsing through real history is in Vienna. They realized that at a certain time in Vienna you can knock off multiple prominent people in history. How to figure out how to get Sigmund Freud to have sex with his partner. And how are they going to get Proust to have sex with her, you know, which can require dressing her up as a boy. They've got the scarab beetle that makes men, you know, insatiable. And they just have to have sex right away. They've basically invented a condom. Drawing on their experiences and animal husbandry, I think they visit, you know, the mating of a cow and a bull. It's just filthy and hilarious and it's a good story. You know, it's a sperm feist historical sperm feist story. I mean, the idea that this guy could do both of those things, it presents an opportunity for everyone, for the reader to, hey, you can do whatever you want. You can tell whichever stories you want. And it's really a challenge if you're, you know, a creative person to tell any story well, to make any story successful. And once you do, pretty much the response you're going to get from the world around you is, hey, do that same thing again. Once you've found a way into this marketplace, let's give them exactly the same thing, maybe a little bit different, but close enough. Every writer out there that you know that is successful, the things that you know of them in terms of their work is just a small sample of what they're capable of. Any great writer could write anything. They only have the time, opportunity, inclination, reason to write what they have written.
- [34:30]
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- [36:32]
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- [37:33]
Aaron Tracy
of Dahl's adult stories that I love is the Great Automatic Grammatizator from 1953 in the London Review of Books. Colin Burrow summarizes the A Couple of jaded men design a computerized writing machine with the aim of cornering the market. In magazine short stories, all the author has to do is press a button. Historical, satirical, philosophical, political, romantic, erotic, humorous, or straight. And choose a style classical, whimsical, racy, Hemingway, Faulkner, Joyce, feminine, etc. And the machine will do the rest. Sound familiar? It's exactly what's happening today with AI Every writer today is grappling with what to do about the fact that the act of writing can now be outsourced to artificial intelligence. My writer friends and I are genuinely terrified that the skill we've spent our lives working on will be completely useless in a few years. And that's exactly what Dahl was envisioning in his story written over 70 years ago. Luckily, we're not quite there yet, but in a few years, it's pretty easy to imagine that you'll be able to just open the newest AI bot and say, write me a thriller with the structure of Gillian Flynn, the outrageous characters of a Phoebe Waller Bridge show, the witty dialogue of Billy Wilder, all in the tone of a dark Roald Dahl story. And in a few seconds, it'll pop out a story that would have taken me a year or more to wrestle out. Dahl's story is a cautionary tale. It's the antithesis of what makes his work so memorable, namely his incredibly compelling, unique voice that was mined from years of adventures. So as we finish up, this feels like the moment that I'm supposed to opine on Dahl's legacy. Honestly, the fact that he's still everywhere over 35 years after his death is a legacy in itself. I started keeping a list of every time Dahl or one of his creations popped up in something random I was watching or reading during the months that I made this show. The list got too long to keep up with. Once you start looking for him, you'll find him everywhere. Whether it's a song lyric or a politician's speech or a TikTok about Matilda that has tens of millions of views. Even if you just look for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory references, you'd be overwhelmed. A recent obituary I read in the New York Times for a pizza maker described him as the Willy Wonka of cheese. A profile and vulture of Jay Leno called the comedian's garage the Chocolate Factory, and he's Willy Wonka. Literally. Just this morning, I opened an email newsletter that I subscribed to on the Science of Happiness that referenced a golden ticket to well being. I defy you to find anywhere near the same number of references to any other writer, with the possible, possible exception of, of Shakespeare. Here's what I think Dahl's enduring presence in culture, really the stories we tell our kids are so powerful, so foundational to who we become, that we'll keep them alive no matter what we learn about their creator. Dahl's creations aren't everywhere, despite his flaws. They're everywhere because we've decided his flaws don't matter enough to let his stories die. This isn't nostalgia. It's an active, collective moral decision. We're saying some art transcends its creator so completely that it belongs more to us than to them. Dahl's stories have become part of the architecture of childhood itself. Claire Dederer, who we heard from earlier in the season, wrote an essay quoting the writer Martha Gellhorn's views on how some great mid century artists were horrible human beings. Gellhorn wrote from experience being married to Ernest Hemingway. She was also pals with Dahl and may have been thinking about both men when she said she didn't think an artist needed to be a monster, she thought a monster needed to make himself into an artist. Quote, a man must be a very great genius to make up for being such a loathsome human being. I think there's a lot of wisdom in that. But I do wonder if Gellhorn was maybe asking the wrong question here. Maybe the real question isn't whether or not Dahl's genius excuses his cruelty, but how his cruelty informed his genius. Who else could write so convincingly about the casual evil of adults except someone who understood that darkness intimately? Quoting a favorite European poet, Dahl once said, when I'm dead, I hope it said my skins were scarlet, but my books were red. He definitely achieved that Dahl was such a legendary, almost mythic figure by the end of his life that his death was pretty shocking to people. Dahl passed away at 74 from a blood disease, according to writer Nadia Cohen. His family gathered around him and played one of his favorite pieces of music while a nurse injected a lethal dose of morphine. As the needle pricked him, Dahl shouted in obscenity. It was the last word he ever spoke. One last thing before we say goodbye. And this feels like kind of a perfect metaphor for any biographical work. You should know Roald Dahl is not Roald Dahl. What I mean is I haven't said his name correctly a single time over 10 episodes. Even as celebrated as he was, Dahl remains in many ways a stranger to us. Here's Dahl's first wife, Patricia Neal, from an interview with Arlene Herson on the correct pronunciation of her husband's name, Raould Rual.
- [42:44]
Lily Steiner (child interviewee)
That's how you pronunciate. I was going to say how do you pronounce it? Because it's spelled R O A A R R O A L D Rual in the story that was television.
- [42:58]
Aaron Tracy
It's been a giant pleasure spending this season with you. I hope you've enjoyed it even a fraction as much as I have now. Let's finish the show by hearing from those Dahl most wanted to please with his writing this is from Roald Dahl cover to cover, a 1989 video where Lily Steiner captured Dahl's visit to Melbourne, Australia.
- [43:17]
Lily Steiner (child interviewee)
Well, I like Roald Dahl because his stories are funny and I like how long his books are and they're really interesting. I think he's very interesting and I like the way he presented his books. Over 70 years old and he comes from Norway. I don't know much about Ragdoll, but I know a lot about his books. Well, he's a terrific writer. I really like his writing. I was really surprised because some people say he's really cantankerous, but he was really nice. He's not mean at all. He makes lots of children happy. Oh, he's a nice man. He's a great storyteller. To come and see Roald Dahl was a good experience for me.
- [44:04]
Aaron Tracy
The Secret World of Roald Dahl is produced by Imagine Audio and Parallax Studios for iHeart Podcasts. Created and written by me, Aaron Tracy Produced by Matt Schrader Post production by Wind Hill Studios with editing, scoring and sound design by Mark Henry Phillips Editing by Ryan Seaton Music by APM Executive producers Nathan Kloke, Kara Welker, Brian Grazer, Ron Howard and Aaron Tracy. Additional voice performances and recreation by Mark Henry Phillips and 11 Labs. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to rate and review the Secret World of Roald Dahl on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Copyright 2026 Imagine Entertainment, iHeartMedia and Parallax.
- [44:59]
Ryan Seacrest
Hey, it's Ryan Seacrest for Albertsons N Safeway. Cold weather can wreak havoc on your skin. You don't want to miss out on this month's great savings on all your favorite skin care Essentials. Now through March 31st. Earn four times points when you purchase participating skincare items like Dove Soap, Dove Body Wash, Dove Beauty Bar Soft Soap Body Wash and Irish Spring Body Wash. Points can be redeemed later for discounts on groceries or gas. Offer ends March 31. Restrictions apply. Promotions may vary. Visit albertsons or safeway.com for more details.
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- [46:07]
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- [47:10]
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