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(pinksherbet/flickr)
Three hearts—haunting, foolish, and in love, in tales ranging from a horror classic to a contemporary miniature.
“Very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses—not destroyed—not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth…How then, am I mad?—Edgar Allan Poe, “The Tell-Tale Heart.”
Three hearts—haunting, foolish, and in love, in tales ranging from a horror classic to a contemporary miniature.
Listen closely and you’ll hear heartbeats throughout this program of SELECTED SHORTS. The phrase “a tell-tale heart” is a metaphoric image of a heart that cannot conceal its owner’s feelings. But in Edgar Allen Poe’s classic horror-tale of that title, the tell-tale heart is a relentless rhythmic beating that gives away guilt and unmasks evil-doing. The story is read by Terrence Mann, a star of “Jerome Robbins Broadway”, and originator of such roles as Rum Tum Tigger in “Cats” and Inspector Javert in “Les Miserables”; science fictions fans will also remember him as the urbane talking skull, Bob, in the television series “The Dresden Files.”
The Nobel Prize-winner Isaac Bashevis Singer is one of the very few practitioners of Yiddish literature to manage to break through and acquire a broad public among non-Yiddish-speaking readers around the world. This break-through might never have happened if another great writer, who would one day win a Nobel Prize himself, Saul Bellow, had not recognized the greatness of Singer’s “Gimpel the Fool,” and translated it into English for publication in The Partisan Review. Gimpel is a character in the literary tradition of the saintly fool, like Isaac Loeb Peretz’s Bontche The Silent. But this is subtle Singer, and Gimpel is hardly very saintly, and only choses foolishness as a way of coping with a wicked world. SELECTED SHORTS host Isaiah Sheffer is the reader.
The third story on this program about getting to the heart of the matter is a short-short, Michael Oppenheimer’s “The Paring Knife”, which in very compact form presents a portrait of a modern relationship. The reader was the late television star Steven Gilborn.
The musical interlude in this program is “Desert Life”, by Andrew Bryne, on the album “White Bone Country.” The SELECTED SHORTS theme is Roger Kellaway’s “Come to the Meadow.”
“The Tell Tale Heart,” by Edgar Allan Poe, read by Terrence Mann
“Gimpel The Fool,” by Isaac Bashevis Singer, read by Isaiah Sheffer
“The Paring Knife,” by Michael Oppenheimer, read by Steven Gilborn
For additional works featured on SELECTED SHORTS, please visit Symphony Space
We’re interested in your response to these programs. Please comment on this site or visit www.selectedshorts.org
The Stella Kupferberg Memorial Short Story Contest Have you always wanted to try your hand at a story story? Here’s your chance: our annual writing contest. Go to https://www.symphonyspace.org/writing_contest/ for details of the 2009 contest.
Listener’s choice! On June 9th, 2010, SELECTED SHORTS at Symphony Space in New York will feature stories selected by our nationwide audience. Go to http://www.symphonyspace.org/shorts/audience_picks to submit your suggestions for a published story you think we should read. Then in the spring, you’ll vote for your favorite from among the final contenders.
Three hearts—haunting, foolish, and in love, in tales ranging from a horror classic to a contemporary miniature.
Listen closely and you’ll hear heartbeats throughout this program of SELECTED SHORTS. The phrase “a tell-tale heart” is a metaphoric image of a heart that cannot conceal its owner’s feelings. But in Edgar Allen Poe’s classic horror-tale of that title, the tell-tale heart is a relentless rhythmic beating that gives away guilt and unmasks evil-doing. The story is read by Terrence Mann, a star of “Jerome Robbins Broadway”, and originator of such roles as Rum Tum Tigger in “Cats” and Inspector Javert in “Les Miserables”; science fictions fans will also remember him as the urbane talking skull, Bob, in the television series “The Dresden Files.”
The Nobel Prize-winner Isaac Bashevis Singer is one of the very few practitioners of Yiddish literature to manage to break through and acquire a broad public among non-Yiddish-speaking readers around the world. This break-through might never have happened if another great writer, who would one day win a Nobel Prize himself, Saul Bellow, had not recognized the greatness of Singer’s “Gimpel the Fool,” and translated it into English for publication in The Partisan Review. Gimpel is a character in the literary tradition of the saintly fool, like Isaac Loeb Peretz’s Bontche The Silent. But this is subtle Singer, and Gimpel is hardly very saintly, and only choses foolishness as a way of coping with a wicked world. SELECTED SHORTS host Isaiah Sheffer is the reader.
The third story on this program about getting to the heart of the matter is a short-short, Michael Oppenheimer’s “The Paring Knife”, which in very compact form presents a portrait of a modern relationship. The reader was the late television star Steven Gilborn.
The musical interlude in this program is “Desert Life”, by Andrew Bryne, on the album “White Bone Country.” The SELECTED SHORTS theme is Roger Kellaway’s “Come to the Meadow.”
“The Tell Tale Heart,” by Edgar Allan Poe, read by Terrence Mann
“Gimpel The Fool,” by Isaac Bashevis Singer, read by Isaiah Sheffer
“The Paring Knife,” by Michael Oppenheimer, read by Steven Gilborn
For additional works featured on SELECTED SHORTS, please visit Symphony Space
We’re interested in your response to these programs. Please comment on this site or visit www.selectedshorts.org
The Stella Kupferberg Memorial Short Story Contest Have you always wanted to try your hand at a story story? Here’s your chance: our annual writing contest. Go to https://www.symphonyspace.org/writing_contest/ for details of the 2009 contest.
Listener’s choice! On June 9th, 2010, SELECTED SHORTS at Symphony Space in New York will feature stories selected by our nationwide audience. Go to http://www.symphonyspace.org/shorts/audience_picks to submit your suggestions for a published story you think we should read. Then in the spring, you’ll vote for your favorite from among the final contenders.
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.
To listen to this program, and other recent programs, subscribe to the Selected Shorts podcast
Hosted by Isaiah Sheffer
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