Conversations with two men for whom conversation is rarely a simple proposition. One’s a well-known nature writer. The other is a young man from rural Pennsylvania. Both have struggled to overcome or make peace with a stutter. Also, Rick Moody’s short story, “Boys,” adapted for radio in collaboration with composer and performer Meredith Monk.
On the Menu
Try the Gaggy Assa Burger. That's GaGeAsSeBrKr to Mr. Periodic Table of Elements, Alex Lewin.
Speech Acts
Chris Schell has had a stutter since he was a kid. He came to New York City to lose it. Writer and medical student Rachel Sobel follows Chris through a three-week program at the American Institute for Stuttering, and then goes back to his rural Pennsylvania home with him, where ...
A Writer’s Voice
Nature writers rely heavily on words, as well as on sight. At different periods in his adult life, essayist Edward Hoagland has had limited access to one or the other. He joins Dean in a conversation about writing, stuttering, and blindness.
Chinatown Blues
When Ken Hom was growing up in New York City’s Chinatown, his mother used to drag him to Chinese Opera films at the Sun Sing Theater. He hated them. Years later he revisits his neighborhood and his mother’s attachment to those Sunday movie-going excursions.
"Boys"
Part poetry, part fiction, and part ethnography about the inscrutable behavior of young males. Rick Moody adapted his story for The Next Big Thing in collaboration with Meredith Monk [www.meredithmonk.org], who composed and performed the score. The story is read by writer Julia Slavin. "Boys" appears in Moody's anthology, "Demonology."
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