Two tales of misadventure and things lost and found.
”The only thing that matters. He had lost the only thing that matters. All the world could die, and he wouldn’t care.”
--Peter Blauner, “Going, Going, Gone.” Two tales of misadventure and things lost and found.
From a program of mystery stories at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, two serio-comic misadventures. In Peter Blauner’s “Going, Going, Gone,” everything seems to go wrong for our hero, an ordinary guy and divorced dad who is just trying to have some quality time with his son during their precious hours together. The story was featured in The Best American Mystery Stories 2007. Peter Blauner lives in Brooklyn, New York, where the story takes place. The reader in Los Angeles was the transplanted New York actor, Keith Szarabajka, perhaps best known for his work on the series The Equalizer, who told us in an interview some years ago that the quality of his voice means that he is often cast in dark roles. In this case, as his overwhelmed character admits, he loses, “The only thing that matters.” In our next story, on this program, “The Purple is Everything,” by Dorothy Salisbury Davis, in which a passionate Monet fan winds up with one of the master’s small paintings, the heroine of the story didn’t mean to commit a crime! Far from it. What she did was more an act of loving and caring, but no one will believe her. The tale is a playful mystery of sorts, but also has fun at the expense of the art world’s obsessions and pretensions. In a career spanning over 50 years, Davis has written dozens of novels and short stories, including the Mrs. Norris and Julie Hayes series, and the collection Tales for a Stormy Night, published in 1984, the same year she was named Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America. We were delighted that she was available to speak to us briefly from her home in upstate New York, about this, a favorite story. The reader is five-time Emmy winner ("St. Elsewhere") Christina Pickles. “Going, Going, Gone” by Peter Blauner read by Keith Szarabajka
“The Purple Is Everything” by Dorothy Salisbury Davis, read by Christina Pickles. For additional works featured on SELECTED SHORTS, please visit Symphony Space
--Peter Blauner, “Going, Going, Gone.” Two tales of misadventure and things lost and found.
From a program of mystery stories at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, two serio-comic misadventures. In Peter Blauner’s “Going, Going, Gone,” everything seems to go wrong for our hero, an ordinary guy and divorced dad who is just trying to have some quality time with his son during their precious hours together. The story was featured in The Best American Mystery Stories 2007. Peter Blauner lives in Brooklyn, New York, where the story takes place. The reader in Los Angeles was the transplanted New York actor, Keith Szarabajka, perhaps best known for his work on the series The Equalizer, who told us in an interview some years ago that the quality of his voice means that he is often cast in dark roles. In this case, as his overwhelmed character admits, he loses, “The only thing that matters.” In our next story, on this program, “The Purple is Everything,” by Dorothy Salisbury Davis, in which a passionate Monet fan winds up with one of the master’s small paintings, the heroine of the story didn’t mean to commit a crime! Far from it. What she did was more an act of loving and caring, but no one will believe her. The tale is a playful mystery of sorts, but also has fun at the expense of the art world’s obsessions and pretensions. In a career spanning over 50 years, Davis has written dozens of novels and short stories, including the Mrs. Norris and Julie Hayes series, and the collection Tales for a Stormy Night, published in 1984, the same year she was named Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America. We were delighted that she was available to speak to us briefly from her home in upstate New York, about this, a favorite story. The reader is five-time Emmy winner ("St. Elsewhere") Christina Pickles. “Going, Going, Gone” by Peter Blauner read by Keith Szarabajka
“The Purple Is Everything” by Dorothy Salisbury Davis, read by Christina Pickles. For additional works featured on SELECTED SHORTS, please visit Symphony Space
About Selected Shorts
Selected Shorts features some of the finest artists of the American theater reading contemporary and classic short fiction-the most distinguished works of the early masters such as Chekhov, Maupassant, Malamud and dozens of others.
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