22–The Center Cannot Hold
This week is hard for me on so many levels. I think you’ll see a decided darkness to the stories. However, “dark” doesn’t mean “bad.” And this week, our readers are good! Whoo hoo!
This week, “Second Coming,” read by me!
Here’s Yeats
Ambrose Bierce’s “The Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge.”
Here’s Ambrose (ain’t he dashing? Note the rapscallian twinkle in the eye…)
And Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado.”
Here’s Poe (you can tell he had a hard life, no?)
If you’ve never read it before, after listening you should get a copy of Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles and read “Usher II”; trust me, you’ll feel so smart. And once agian, if you have teenagers, THEY will feel so smart! Always nice to be part of the inside joke.
The Poe is done as a low-rent radio play, complete with sound effects. It’s really rather fun…even if their Italian is lousy.
De Grave…ah hah hah hah…
A good Poe is good to find.
And for any of you who are interested in Lady Macbeth and her hand-washing. A New York Times article for you (I hope you can load the page!).
Today, “Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge” was read by Matthew Fulton, and “The Cask of Amontillado” was read by Messers Zack Weismuller and Ryan Huser. As always, the theme music was “Chasing Hiro” by Joshua Christian, podsafe music from Garageband.com.
Book talk begins at 4:45. Listen to 22 audio.
Just heard that episode Four, Five, Fifteen, and Sixteen were AWOL. You should be able to get them from the links here. Sorry about that!
Thanks for clearing up that Poe was NOT a drunk, it just didn’t mesh with the impression I had of him. And it does sound like maybe others were lightweights or developed medical conditions where they couldn’t always drink so well. I have preliminary diabetes, and when I judged it wrong and have too much sugar and then had one weakish beer I was so ill and it came across like I was VERY drunk. So it’s easy to think you’re not gonna have probs cos you haven’t before, and if I hadn’t known what was up there I might have easily repeated that mistake
WOW!
That is fascinating and so good to hear from a modern person.
I know what you mean. I felt bad about Poe getting slandered like that, too.
I really enjoyed these stories. It’s been a long time since I read any of them, and they were great fun to listen to. Thanks!
I just found your site. I’ve downloaded every episode I could find, but there are four of them missing–4,5,15 and 16.
I look forward to listening to them. I work all day in front of the computer, so I’m not happy with the idea of knitting and listening at the computer.
Marianne in Finland
http://www.ekebo.fi
I look forward to your podcast every week. It’s like being back in English class, which I used to love, even though I ended up becoming a computer programmer (which I also love). Thanks for filling that gap in my life!