“It came upon me that I had misspent my life. All those years laboring over words, words, words. And for what? What difference did it make to anyone? Wh cared what I had to say? I had lost the appetite for telling.”
– Mary Gordon, “Storytelling”

A jaded writer, and an aging gourmand, revive their appetites for living.
The novelist Mary Gordon, author of the critically acclaimed Final Payments, teaches at Barnard College. Gordon’s other novels include The Company of Women, Men and Angels and Pearl. She published the memoir The Shadow Man: A Daughter's Search For Her Father in in 1996, and this year completed a companion volume, Circling My Mother: A Memoir. Gordon’s reflective tale “Storytelling” was read at The Getty Center in Los Angeles as part of a program entitled SIDE TRIPS AND REVELATIONS. It is indeed revealing about the craft of writing, and Gordon also took the time to discuss her work with us in a brief interview featured after the story. The reader of “Storytelling” is the stage and screen actress Lindsay Crouse, whose film credits include “House of Games” and “Places in the Heart,” which earned her an Oscar nomination.

Our second story is from an earlier season at The Getty--a program devoted to food fictions. In English novelist V.S. Pritchett’s “Just a Little More , an aging man reclaims his dignity in his robust accounts of meals he remembers. The reader is Rene Auberjonois, most recently seen on the television series Boston Legal..

“Storytelling,” by Mary Gordon, read by Lindsay Crouse
“Just a Little More,” by V.S. Pritchett, read by Rene Auberjonois.

For additional works featured on SELECTED SHORTS, please visit Symphony Space