Archive: Author: Hannah

Did you miss Alec Baldwin reading Colson Whitehead’s essay “Lost & Found”? Don’t worry–it will be repeated on this week’s Selected Shorts, along with three wonderful new stories. First off is “Good Intentions” by One Story author Etgar Keret (seen here pulling an Esther Williams). His story will be performed by the one and only Leonard Nimoy. You’ll also hear “My Mother” by Jamaica Kincaid, read by Laurine Towler and “A Soldier for the Crown,” by Charles Johnson, performed by Ruben Santiago-Hudson. Listen in on your local station, or go here for podcasts of the show.

This week Selected Shorts features one story: “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien, read by film and TV actor Dylan Baker. Chosen as one of the Best American Short Stories of the Century,  “The Things They Carried” begins with a list of physical objects carried by different members of a platoon in Vietnam, and eventually moves on to spiritual burdens of an even heavier weight:  

“They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing–these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight. They carried shameful memories. They carried the common secret of cowardice barely restrained, the instinct to run or freeze or hide, and in many respects this was the heaviest burden of all, for it could never be put down, it required perfect balance and perfect posture. They carried their reputations. They carried the soldier’s greatest fear, which was the fear of blushing. Men killed, and died because they were embarrassed not to.”

Go here to listen to the podcast, or find us on your local station.

Whenever someone asks me how long you have to live in New York before you can call yourself a New Yorker, I always quote Colson Whitehead’s “Lost & Found”:  “You are a New Yorker the first time you say, ‘That used to be Munsey’s’ or ‘That used to be the Tic Toc Lounge’…You are a New Yorker when what was there before is more real and solid than what is here now.”  Whitehead’s essay not only captures what it means to be a New Yorker, it also explains how the city stands as a witness to our lives. On this week’s edition of Selected Shorts,  Alec Baldwin reads “Lost & Found” from Whitehead’s The Colosus of New York. The second story is Haruki Murakami’s “U.F.O. in Kushiro,” performed by Ken Leung. Go here to listen to the podcast, or check your local station for times.

This week’s episode of Selected Shorts serves up two crime stories: “False Alarm” by Dave Barry, performed by Larry Keith and “Double Check” by Thomas Walsh, performed by James Naughton. “Double Check” originally appeared in the great pulp magazine, Black Mask. The inspiration behind Quentin Tarantino’s film Pulp Fiction, Black Mask published crime writers like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, whose stories featured the now classic American character of the Hard Boiled Detective.  So get your fedoras out, channel your inner Sam Spade and listen in. You can go here to download the podcast later this week, or tune in to your local public radio station.