public radio international selected shorts

We lived then in Cleveland, in the middle of everything. Also striking is the story’s almost Dickensian opening and the elements of fairy tale, such as the soft white blanket of snow that covers the ground in much of “White Angel.” Try the beginning below, or hit play and let Naughton take you through the story: What stands out this time, listening to Naughton’s halting, raw reading of this tale of two brothers? The way that childhood stories from the ’60s for children who grew up in the ’80s can feel almost as tangible as our own childhood for all the Baby Boomer nostalgia and cautionary retellings our parents’ generation placed in front of us-think Winnie Cooper on The Wonder Years and the oldies radio station playing in the kitchen. On Tuesday, Selected Shorts was kind enough to share audio of the event with readers at Electric Literature in celebration of the 25th anniversary of Naughton’s live reading, alongside Kyle McCarthy’s recent interview with Naughton and Cunningham on their memory of the experience as well as their different modes of storytelling. Shortly after its publication, the actor James Naughton stood and read the story aloud in front of an audience at Symphony Space in New York City for Public Radio International’s Selected Shorts program. First published in the New Yorker in 1988, the story later grew into Cunningham’s 1990 novel and the 2004 movie, A Home at the End of the World. Michael Cunningham’s “White Angel” is a story like one of those people. Think of the way it feels to return to those people again and again, each time finding some new facet of truth, beauty, insight, originality.

Think of the most complicated and intriguing people you have ever met.

Public radio international selected shorts