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Fantasy and the fantastical dominate this special SELECTED SHORTS program. Each story was chosen by our “guest hosts”, the graphic novelist Art Spiegelman and his wife Francoise Mouly, art editor of The New Yorker. Spiegelman won a special 1992 Pulitzer for his devastating Holocaust work, Maus, while Mouly is the eye behind some of The New Yorker’s most celebrated covers. Together, they published the graphic journal Raw for some years, and their story selections included works, like the first piece on this program, that were reprinted and illustrated in their magazine.

“An Aborigine Among the Skyscrapers” says it all in this entertaining memoir of a Borneo native brought to New York in connection with an animal act. Through his marveling recollections we catch a glimpse of 1940s New York. The reader is the actor, composer, and screenwriter Michael Keck, a SHORTS regular.

Mouly’s and Spiegelman’s next two selections are fantasies that remind us of science fiction’s ability to cast our own foibles into sharp relief against strange backdrops. “Beyond Lies the Wub” is by Philip K. Dick, whose many short stories have inspired several films, including, most notably, “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” which was the basis for the cult classic Blade Runner. His novel A Scanner Darkly was the source of the 2006 film. In an introduction from the stage of Symphony Space, Spiegelman reminds us of Dick’s underlying quest: to understand what it is to be human. Reader Denis O’Hare, who confessed to being a great fan of the novelist, won a Tony Award for his performance in Take Me Out, and garnered a Tony nomination for his role in Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins.

This SHORTS program concludes with a vivid tale by a contemporary master, George Saunders, the author of two story collections, Pastoralia and CivilWarland, both New York Times notable books. His work has appeared frequently in The New Yorker, among other journals, and his story “My Flamboyant Grandson” carries us into a world in which consumer marketing has become an Orwellian nightmare. Reader Harris Yulin’s Broadway credits include Hedda Gabler and The Diary of Anne Frank. On film he has appeared in Ghostbusters II, Training Day, Looking for Richard, and Clear and Present Danger. He also starred in David Ossman’s radio adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s “Goldenfish.”

“An Aborigine Among the Skyscrapers” by Saudin bin Labutau, read by Michael Keck
“Beyond Lies the Wub” by Philip K. Dick, read by Denis O’Hare
“My Flamboyant Grandson” by George Saunders, read by Harris Yulin