Read to Me, Ricky

Host Rick Whitaker reads the finale of Gordon Lish's 1986 novel Peru, a reading of the entire third part of the novel, "The Roof." Peru begins with its narrator announcing, “There is nothing which I will not tell you if I can think of it.” Gradually, the story of a dark childhood secret—real or imagined—unfolds: in 1940, six-year-old Gordon murdered his harelipped rival, Steven Adinoff, in a Long Island sandbox . . . (unless he didn’t). Peru’s narrator weaves together strands of disconnected, mesmerizing material, resurrecting memories of the mundane suburban childhood that spawned the killing: the sense of tedium on an endless summer day; the squishy sounds of a hoe digging into flesh. Ambiguous, complex, inventive, and subversively comic, Peru is a compendium of unnerving observations about memory, violence, obsession, and the potential horror behind the facade of an ordinary life.After Peru, a new novel by Gordon Lish (who is 89), will be published this December. Support the showRead to Me, Ricky is hosted by Rick Whitaker and produced in New York City. Contact: rickawhitaker@gmail.comhttps://readtomericky.comPlease support the show if you can: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2042894/support

Read to Me, Ricky, hosted by Rick Whitaker, presents Going Home to Mother: stories from Gordon Lish's literary magazine The Quarterly. Support the showRead to Me, Ricky is hosted by Rick Whitaker and produced in New York City. Contact: rickawhitaker@gmail.comhttps://readtomericky.comPlease support the show if you can: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2042894/support

HOST RICK WHITAKER READS A 1998 ESSAY BY JOY WILLIAMS, "WHY I WRITE" MUSIC: BEETHOVEN SYMPHONY 6 ARRANGED BY FRANZ LISZTSupport the showRead to Me, Ricky is hosted by Rick Whitaker and produced in New York City. Contact: rickawhitaker@gmail.comhttps://readtomericky.comPlease support the show if you can: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2042894/support

"On the Sublime" is an essay from Aesthetical and Philosophical EssaysINTRODUCING THE DISSERTATION ON THE “CONNECTION BETWEEN THE ANIMAL AND SPIRITUAL MAN.”BY FRIEDRICK (sp) SCHILLERLibrary EditionNEW YORK:The Publishers Plate Renting Co.Schiller is perhaps best known worldwide as the author of the "Ode to Joy" Beethoven set in the finale of his 9th Symphony. Many thanks to Richard Kerswill for his support! Support the showRead to Me, Ricky is hosted by Rick Whitaker and produced in New York City. Contact: rickawhitaker@gmail.comhttps://readtomericky.comPlease support the show if you can: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2042894/support

The Quarterly was a literary magazine edited by Gordon Lish from 1987 to 1995. (I was Mr. Lish's editorial assistant in the early '90s.) I'll read just one story from the Spring 1988 issue of the journal: "Darling" by Willam Tester. Gordon Lish is an acclaimed author and editor. A former editor at Esquire and Alfred A. Knopf, he is celebrated for his notable work with authors including Raymond Carver, Denis Donoghue, Barry Hannah, Amy Hempel, Gary Lutz, Ben Marcus, and Christine Schutt, among many others. His books include Dear Mr. Capote, What I Know So Far, Mourner at the Door, Extravaganza, White Plains, Peru, Zimzum, The Selected Stories of Gordon Lish, and more. He is married and lives in New York. He is 89 years old. Support the showRead to Me, Ricky is hosted by Rick Whitaker and produced in New York City. Contact: rickawhitaker@gmail.comhttps://readtomericky.comPlease support the show if you can: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2042894/support

For the fifth episode of Season Three, host Rick Whitaker reads a strange and disturbing story by Barry Hannah. First published in Esquire Magazine in the summer of 1976, reprinted in the collection All Our Secrets Are the Same: New Fiction from Esquire,  again in Hannah’s 1978 book Airships, and a fourth time in Barry Hannah’s 2010 Long, Last, Happy: New and Selected Stories. Here's Barry Hannah's “Behold the Husband in His Perfect Agony,” edited by Gordon Lish. Support the showRead to Me, Ricky is hosted by Rick Whitaker and produced in New York City. Contact: rickawhitaker@gmail.comhttps://readtomericky.comPlease support the show if you can: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2042894/support

The Quarterly was a literary magazine edited by Gordon Lish from 1987 to 1995. (I was Mr. Lish's editorial assistant in the early '90s.) I'll read three stories from the Spring 1987 first issue of the journal: "The Harvest" by Amy Hempel, "Sea Animals" by Tom Spanbauer, and "The Slit" by Yannick Murphy. Gordon Lish is an acclaimed author and editor. A former editor at Esquire and Alfred A. Knopf, he is celebrated for his notable work with authors including Raymond Carver, Denis Donoghue, Barry Hannah, Amy Hempel, Gary Lutz, Ben Marcus, and Christine Schutt, among many others. His previous books include Dear Mr. Capote, What I Know So Far, Mourner at the Door, Extravaganza, White Plains, Peru, Zimzum, The Selected Stories of Gordon Lish, and more. He is married and lives in New York. He is 89 years old. Support the showRead to Me, Ricky is hosted by Rick Whitaker and produced in New York City. Contact: rickawhitaker@gmail.comhttps://readtomericky.comPlease support the show if you can: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2042894/support

"The Life You Gave Me," Bette Howland's 1983 story from her collection Things to Come and Go published by Knopf and edited by Gordon Lish. Support the showRead to Me, Ricky is hosted by Rick Whitaker and produced in New York City. Contact: rickawhitaker@gmail.comhttps://readtomericky.comPlease support the show if you can: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2042894/support

Host Rick Whitaker's selection of aphorisms. Support the showRead to Me, Ricky is hosted by Rick Whitaker and produced in New York City. Contact: rickawhitaker@gmail.comhttps://readtomericky.comPlease support the show if you can: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2042894/support

Read Me to Sleep, Ricky's host, Rick Whitaker, reads Raymond Carver's 1964 story "Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?" With music by Brad Garton. Support the showRead to Me, Ricky is hosted by Rick Whitaker and produced in New York City. Contact: rickawhitaker@gmail.comhttps://readtomericky.comPlease support the show if you can: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2042894/support

Season Three of Read Me To Sleep, Ricky features the short story, beginning with two by Katherine Mansfield (1880-1923) read by your host, Rick Whitaker. Both are from her 1922 collection The Garden Party: "Life of Ma Parker" and "The Singing Lesson" with music from The Fairy Queen (1692) by Henry Purcell. Support the showRead to Me, Ricky is hosted by Rick Whitaker and produced in New York City. Contact: rickawhitaker@gmail.comhttps://readtomericky.comPlease support the show if you can: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2042894/support

"School Days" is from Richard Howard's 2008 collection of poetry Without Saying. A distinguished poet, critic and translator, Richard Howard held a unique place in contemporary American letters. Howard was credited with introducing modern French fiction—particularly examples of the Nouveau Roman—to the American public; his translation of Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal (1984) won a National Book Award in 1984. A selection of Howard’s critical prose was collected in the volume Paper Trail: Selected Prose 1965-2003, and his collection of essays Alone with America: Essays on the Art of Poetry in the United States since 1950 (1969) was praised as one of the first comprehensive overviews of American poetry from the latter half of the 20th century. First and foremost a poet, Howard’s many volumes of verse also received widespread acclaim; he won the 1970 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for his collection Untitled Subjects. His other honors included the American Book Award, the Harriet Monroe Memorial Prize, the PEN Translation Medal, the Levinson Prize, and the Ordre National du Mérite from the French government. For many years, Howard was the poetry editor of the Paris Review.Known for his erudition and interest in the nature of artistic expression, Howard’s poems are often dramatic monologues in which figures from history and literature speak directly to the reader. From Howard’s first book, Quantities (1962), his approach to the dramatic monologue set him apart as a unique practitioner of contemporary poetry. Using voices from characters as disparate as Oscar Wilde, Walt Whitman, Henry James, and Orpheus among others, Howard’s narrative monologues are darkly comic, laced with irony and sadness, and distinctly learned. Early books such as The Damages (1967) and Untitled Subjects (1969) saw Howard honing his skill with a wide range of subjects and voices. Frequently addressing the incommensurability of word and world, Barbara Fischer asserted in her review of Talking Cures (2003) that “in [Howard’s] work’s insistent writtenness and its collages of polyvocal quotation he reminds us that the immediacy of contact—vocal, erotic, somatic, sensory contact—is out of reach as soon as we write about it.”Howard’s work in the 1970s and ’80s continued to explore the use of monologue, dialogue, and other forms of the speaking voice in his poetry. In Two-Part Inventions (1974) and Fellow Feelings (1976), he creates imaginary conversations between historical persons, uncovering shared assumptions and emotions between himself and such writers as Walt Whitman and Charles Baudelaire. The poems of Misgivings (1979) are all addressed to the subjects of 19th-century photographic portraits, while those of Lining Up (1984) are the voices of artists and musicians. Speaking to Allen Wiggins of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Howard explained that in his poems he tries to get “out of the way of voices, letting the voices speak through me and for me, and I have discovered that my own experience can be represented much better than it can be presented.” With his 10th book of poetry, Like Most RevelatSupport the showRead to Me, Ricky is hosted by Rick Whitaker and produced in New York City. Contact: rickawhitaker@gmail.comhttps://readtomericky.comPlease support the show if you can: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2042894/support

Read Me to Sleep, Ricky's host Rick Whitaker reads his own selection of aphorisms by Americans: Emerson, Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Jane Jacobs, Mencken, Santayana, and Aaron Haspel.Music: Frederic Rzewski's "The People United Will Never Be Defeated" VariationsSupport the showRead to Me, Ricky is hosted by Rick Whitaker and produced in New York City. Contact: rickawhitaker@gmail.comhttps://readtomericky.comPlease support the show if you can: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2042894/support

In tonight's episode of Read Me to Sleep, Ricky, host Rick Whitaker reads a classic love story by the Russian master Anton Chekhov. Published in 1899, translated by Constance Garnett. Music: Tchaikovsky's "Souvenir de Florence," second movement Support the showRead to Me, Ricky is hosted by Rick Whitaker and produced in New York City. Contact: rickawhitaker@gmail.comhttps://readtomericky.comPlease support the show if you can: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2042894/support

Poet and translator par excellence Richard Howard, who was a dear friend, died March 31, 2022 at 92. His 1982 translation of Baudelaire's masterpiece, Les Fleurs du Mal, won the National Book Award.Read here by Rick WhitakerWith affectionate thanks to David AlexanderSupport the showRead to Me, Ricky is hosted by Rick Whitaker and produced in New York City. Contact: rickawhitaker@gmail.comhttps://readtomericky.comPlease support the show if you can: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2042894/support

Read Me to Sleep, Ricky's host, Rick Whitaker, reads his selection of Blaise Pascal's Pensees interposed with J.S. Bach's Little Preludes and Italian Concerto. Pianist: Glenn GouldSupport the showRead to Me, Ricky is hosted by Rick Whitaker and produced in New York City. Contact: rickawhitaker@gmail.comhttps://readtomericky.comPlease support the show if you can: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2042894/support

Lojong (Tib. བློ་སྦྱོང་,Wylie: blo sbyong) is a mind training practice in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition based on a set of aphorisms formulated in Tibet in the 12th century by Chekawa Yeshe Dorje. The practice involves refining and purifying one's motivations and attitudes.The fifty-nine or so slogans that form the root text of the mind training practice are designed as a set of antidotes to undesired mental habits that cause suffering. They contain both methods to expand one's viewpoint towards absolute bodhicitta, such as "Find the consciousness you had before you were born" and "Treat everything you perceive as a dream", and methods for relating to the world in a more constructive way with relative bodhicitta, such as "Be grateful to everyone" and "When everything goes wrong, treat disaster as a way to wake up."Chanting: The Gyuto Monks of Tibet (Yamantaka)Support the showRead to Me, Ricky is hosted by Rick Whitaker and produced in New York City. Contact: rickawhitaker@gmail.comhttps://readtomericky.comPlease support the show if you can: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2042894/support

Read Me to Sleep, Ricky's host Rick Whitaker reads John Gardner's 1971 monster novel GRENDEL (in lower-than-usual monster voice). Music by Brad Garton. Support the showRead to Me, Ricky is hosted by Rick Whitaker and produced in New York City. Contact: rickawhitaker@gmail.comhttps://readtomericky.comPlease support the show if you can: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2042894/support

Edmund White’s A Boy’s Own Story: The Graphic Novel: Alessandro, Brian, Carroll, Michael, White, Edmund, Karash, Igor: 9781603095082: Amazon.com: BooksEdmund Valentine White III (born 1940) is an American novelist, memoirist, playwright, biographer and an essayist on literary and social topics. Since 1999 he has been a professor at Princeton University. France made him Chevalier (and later Officier) de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1993. White's books include The Joy of Gay Sex, written with Charles Silverstein (1977); his trilogy of semi-autobiographic novels, A Boy's Own Story (1982), The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988) and The Farewell Symphony (1997); and his biography of Jean Genet. Much of his writing is on the theme of same-sex love. White has also written biographies of three French writers: Jean Genet, Marcel Proust and Arthur Rimbaud. He is the namesake of the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction, awarded annually by Publishing Triangle. Pianist: Vadim ChaimovichSupport the showRead to Me, Ricky is hosted by Rick Whitaker and produced in New York City. Contact: rickawhitaker@gmail.comhttps://readtomericky.comPlease support the show if you can: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2042894/support

 Read Me to Sleep, Ricky host Rick Whitaker is joined by actress Carmela Marner for a reading of James Joyce's classic story "The Dead." In her 1987 review of John Huston's film based on the James Joyce story, Pauline Kael wrote, 'The announcement that John Huston was making a movie of James Joyce’s “The Dead” raised the question “Why?” What could images do that Joyce’s words hadn’t? And wasn’t Huston pitting himself against a master who, though he was only twenty-five when he wrote the story, had given it full form? (Or nearly full—Joyce’s language gains from being read aloud.)' "The Dead" is the final story in the 1914 collection Dubliners by James Joyce.  It was well-received by critics and academics and described by T. S. Eliot as "one of the greatest stories ever written".Carmela Marner is best known for her stage performances and her direction of the Franklin Stage Company in upstate New York. She is the reader of several books for Audible and appears in the films Puss In Boots, Beauty and the Beast, Call Red, Mission: Impossible, Casualty, Staying Alive, Quid Pro Quo, and Eyes Wide Shut. She is a professor in the Theater Department at SUNY Oneonta.  Support the showRead to Me, Ricky is hosted by Rick Whitaker and produced in New York City. Contact: rickawhitaker@gmail.comhttps://readtomericky.comPlease support the show if you can: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2042894/support