Chapter 1: What are the different reactions to save-the-date invitations?
Save the date, rent a gown, buy a tasteful gift. When that big night rolls around, some people find all that activity to be a lot of fun. But what about the rest of us who'd rather eat popcorn and play Wordle on the couch in our pajamas? I'm Meg Wolitzer, and on this Selected Shorts, something for social butterflies and introverts alike. Don't go anywhere.
You're listening to Selected Shorts, where our greatest actors transport us through the magic of fiction, one short story at a time. Save the date. Three little words arriving most often in your email inbox or physical mailbox on a 4x6 piece of semi-gloss cardstock. That's it. Save the date.
Chapter 2: Who are the founders of the Belletrist Book Club?
Plan ahead, make some space, because someone you know and love is getting married, celebrating an anniversary, or hosting another sort of unmissable happening. Invitation to follow. Simple. Of course, that postcard and those three little words can inspire very different reactions, depending on the recipient. Many of us receive them with joy and delight.
We send our tuxes to the cleaners and begin plotting how we might coerce the DJ to play Purple Rain for the final song of the night. Others, well, not so much. More on this in a minute. Now, we at Selected Shorts recently hosted an event, a save-the-date kind of occasion, that left us with the afterglow that comes after a successful soiree.
Each year, we bring our show from New York to the beautiful Getty Center in Los Angeles. Already amazing. Our most recent visit, however, was even more exciting as we worked with a new partner, the Bellatrist Book Club. For those who don't know it, well, first, Bellatrist is a French word for a writer whose work is beautiful or artistic rather than, say, academic.
The Bellatrist Book Club is the vibrant online community built by two longtime friends, actor Emma Roberts and producer Cara Price. As bookworms, they regularly shared recommendations and wanted to expand their circle as they passed their favorite new reads back and forth.
As big admirers of the Bellatrist community and their incredible author picks, we asked Roberts and Price to help us curate and host two shows at the Getty, and they said yes. Today's show, the stories, and the actors you'll hear are a direct result of our collaboration with Bellatrist. Here are Bellatrist co-founders Emma Roberts and Cara Price introducing themselves at the Getty Center.
Good evening, everyone, and welcome to Selected Torts. Thank you for schlepping up to the Getty.
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Chapter 3: What is the significance of Samantha Irby's story 'Please Invite Me to Your Party'?
That's Kara Price, my BFF, and I'm Emma Roberts, and we are your hosts for tonight. You guys know me primarily as an actor, and... You might not know me at all, but you will now.
We started the online literary community Bellatrist in 2017, in part because we lived on different coasts. I live in New York. And we were constantly recommending books to one another. And we kind of had this de facto book club. And we had an idea to open our friendship book club to a larger, entirely online community of readers on Instagram and beyond.
And since then, we've recommended over 75 books. books. We've led countless conversations with authors.
We are here tonight because the good folks at Selected Shorts, who saw a Venn diagram between Shorts and Bellatrist, asked us to come co-host this with them, and we're so grateful. They've chosen authors that we've chosen for our book club, Carmen Maria Machado, Britt Bennett, Jennifer Egan, Tiare Jones, the list goes on.
And given our backgrounds, the theatrical nature of Shorts, collaborating made perfect sense.
Thank you.
That was Emma Roberts and Cara Price, co-founders of the Bellatrist Book Club, from the stage at the Getty Center in Los Angeles. So, back to those save-the-date cards. While extroverts among us probably enjoy getting these announcements, others surely feel something akin to dread.
For these folks, standing around with strangers, hors d'oeuvres in hand, for five minutes of small talk about what they do for a living probably feels like five years. If you've ever read an essay by the funny, acerbic writer Samantha Irby, you might think you know how she feels about parties.
She is the author of collections including Quietly Hostile, Wow, No Thank You, and We Are Never Meeting in Real Life. But the tone of Irby's playful piece, Please Invite Me to Your Party, may surprise you. It was read by the actor Richa Morjani. She's best known for her roles in Mindy Kaling's Netflix series Never Have I Ever, as well as the fifth season of FX's Fargo.
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Chapter 4: How does the story 'The Anniversary Trip' explore family dynamics?
I will see your anthropology shower curtain and think, damn, she's fancy enough to get her shower curtains at anthropology? Your Aesop hand soap won't be lost on me either. And I know you really want me to peek at your unpronounceable shampoo brand, so rest assured, I will do that. I'm so fun. I'll talk to everybody.
I'll charm your mom, telling her that she looks hot and fuchsia, and joke with her that she should adopt me because you're such an asshole, and when your dad corners me aggressively into talking about sports, I will gently remind him that I'm not exactly that kind of lesbian.
But also, I've seen enough Skip Bayless to fake my way through a convincingly knowledgeable conversation about Ezekiel Elliott's rushing yards last season, and that will win him over. He will suggest that we go to a football game together, an invitation I will dodge until one of us dies.
I'm going to try all your weird party foods without spitting any of them out or hiding them in your plans, even the stuff that looks homemade, which goes against one of my primary guiding principles.
I'm going to sample that gritty breadstook-looking thing, and even though I know before I touch it, it's going to shatter into particles of sharp dust down the front of my nice party shirt the second my teeth make contact."
The aesthetic uniformity of carrot sticks is appealing to me, and I find them to be an excellent vehicle for delivering ranch dressing to my mouth, even though doing so will cause me to horrify anyone who attempts to talk to me. If you take even one bite of a raw carrot, you will have carrot flecks in your mouth for at least a week afterward.
I will eat them for you so it doesn't look like you don't know what people want to eat. The hot dip? I'm trying that. The guacamole that's gone gray? I'll have some of that too. I will take just enough of each proffered food item that you don't feel like you wasted $400 on people who just want to clean out all your booze. And I will bring good shit.
I have a serious lack of confidence and I'm always trying to prove that I have good taste and like nice things, especially at a celebration. I'm going to go to the boutique grocery and stuff my humiliation in my back pocket long enough to ask the person behind the counter to recommend something in the $30 range.
Then I'm going to slide over to the cheese counter and get one of those logs of goat cheese that has blueberry goo in it because that looks fancy to me.
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Chapter 5: What themes are presented in Jen Spyra's 'Bridal Body'?
You also don't have to worry about me posting all your business online. That's right. You're never going to log on to be confronted by the 10 worst pictures of you or your apartment you've ever seen in your whole fucking life posted by me, not even with the decency to put a flattering filter on your mismatched furniture and trash.
If my phone is out, it's because I'm trying to find a meme to show someone, so I won't be that person trying to explain a visual medium to a person who is already bored.
Not because I'm taking shadowy pictures of all your stuff that I plan to post at 3 in the morning when I know you're not going to see it for at least 12 hours, by which point everyone you know will have seen that you, one, had a party and didn't invite them, and two, should probably run a dustwag over your coffee table. That's rude! I can also keep your cat company if you need me to.
I mean, if Pickles is going to get stressed out in the darkened bedroom you stashed her in with only an empty tuna can for company, I would not at all mind creeping in there and petting her for many hours until the party is over and you forget I'm even in there, which sounds awkward in theory, but will come in very handy when you find out that I don't mind helping clean up.
I love party aftermath. I love seeing who congregated where and how many drinks they had and speculating about who kissed what and who went home with whom, even if it means collecting stacks of little plates covered in globs of unidentifiable cream-based goo and half-eaten celeries with their little unruly celery hairs sticking up. So, you'll invite me, right?
You're gonna text me the address and favorite brand of tequila, right? I need to be invited more than anything I've ever needed in my life, because trust me, I really am great at a party. Seriously, though, invite me. I'm the greatest party guest there is, especially since I won't come.
That was Please Invite Me to Your Party by Samantha Irby, performed by Richa Morjani. I'm Meg Wolitzer. Irby is so charming here, you'd be forgiven for thinking she meant everything she said right up to the end. I think what makes this piece work is the confident amiability of the narrator. What she observes is what we've observed, but she says it better than we can. Or better than I can, anyway.
And frankly, she's hinting at the secret truth about parties, which is that most of them aren't all that good. So you know those video feeds that allow you to see all the action going on, say, in a bird's nest? I guess they call it a nest cam. I want to invent a party cam. Every party would have one, so before you leave your house, you could see what the party looks like. Who's there?
Is the food good? Is the liquor flowing? Or is the whole thing a dud with people standing around in awkward silence?
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Chapter 6: How does the narrator's journey in 'Bridal Body' reflect societal pressures?
And you could decide whether to go or just stay blissfully home. Time for me to contact the patent office. Next, a story about another noteworthy occasion, a wedding anniversary. Despite the title, this story is not really about the married couple it features. It was written by Victoria Lancelotta. Her titles include the novel Far and the collections Ways to Disappear and Here in the World.
Performing the story is Judy Greer, an actor much loved for roles on series including Arrested Development and films such as Ant-Man. And if you recognize her voice, well, she's also done a lot of animated voiceovers, including for the spy spoof Archer. And now, Judy Greer performs The Anniversary Trip by Victoria Lancelotta.
The Anniversary Trip. They are sitting in a cafe on the Boulevard Saint-Germain, not far from the Odeon metro stop, three of them sitting, the wife with her husband, the husband with his mother, not inside the cafe, but at one of the tables on the sidewalk where the prices are exorbitant, but the view of the passing crowd is almost enough to counter this.
It is November, and Paris should be cold, damp, the sky a low gray sheet, but instead it has been sunny and too warm for the cashmere and corduroy they packed. Their collapsible umbrellas have been useless. The wife, Monica, is damp with an unpleasant sweat most of the time, wet skin cooling at the small of her back and between her breasts every time she stops moving.
it is close to four in the afternoon and they are drinking red wine vin rouge monica thinks corrects herself for elizabeth the mother un express for her son martin she herself is sipping an avion though what she really wants is a bourbon and soda jack daniels please but she is in no way brave enough to order such a thing such a crass american drink
at one of these cafes, in the presence of her husband's mother, Elizabeth. The older woman finishes her wine and lights a cigarette, gestures to the waiter, "'Encore,' she says, smiling, lifting her empty glass for him. He takes it and rushes off." Elizabeth is angular, her cheekbones jutting, her mouth wide, lips glossy red and thin.
She wears her silver hair in a neat bob, pulls it up and off her face, her cheekbones with enameled combs. She is more beautiful now in her 60s than her son's wife has ever been, will ever be. Monica recognizes this and accepts it.
Her husband does not notice, or noticing does not comment, or at least has not commented, not in the five years they've been married or the five on-again, off-again dating before that. Monica has never quite been able to think of Elizabeth as a mother-in-law, as someone for whom birthday greeting cards are designed with stamped gilded roses and unctuous sentiments in pastel script.
"'I should have ordered a half carafe instead,' Elizabeth says as the waiter returns with another small glass and a new ticket he slides under her ashtray. "'You would have had a glass, Martin?' He shrugs, eyes his wife's bottle of Evian. Are you sure you don't want anything else, he says, and she shakes her head.
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Chapter 7: What humorous elements are present in the stories shared?
If you'd rather drink in the room than go down to the lounge, that's perfectly fine with me. She pulls at the cigarette. How is her skin still so lovely, Monica wonders. and tilts her head back to exhale against the awning above them. "'You can drink from those awful bathroom glasses, and Monica and I will go down for aperitifs and pate.'
She reaches for her daughter-in-law's hand and squeezes her firm grip. "'It's very firm and cool, don't you think, my dear?' They are on this trip to celebrate an anniversary of sorts." It has been just over a year since Martin's father died of pancreatic cancer, six months from diagnosis to death, the perfect length of time, Elizabeth pointed out at the reception after the funeral.
Long enough for the two of them to say their goodbyes, but short enough that there was no protracted decline, no months or even years of false hopes and setbacks, no extended physical humiliation or dementia. He was an efficient man, and he was efficient in his dying.
He had been a professor of acoustics, retired, but for the occasional dissertation advice for a particularly promising doctoral student. His son, Martin, has a beautiful singing voice and ease and grace with stringed instruments. Monica herself is tone-deaf, as unmusical as it is possible to be.
When she confessed this at one of her first dinners with Martin's family, his mother had laughed in delight. "'Finally, someone like me!' she said and raised her glass to Monica. "'My dear, you have no idea how happy I am to hear that!' Even now it is hard for Monica to imagine how two women could be less similar than she and Elizabeth."
So, they are in Paris for two weeks on a trip that Elizabeth planned and booked and paid for, a trip that Martin and Monica would not quite have been able to afford on their own. Their hotel is small but elegant, close to the Seine and Musée d'Orsay. Their budget is not unforgiving, but it does not have room for extended or luxurious travel.
I don't want an argument about this, Elizabeth said, after a dinner of grilled shrimp and salad one hot night in August when she handed them their tickets and itineraries. This is something I promised your father I would do, she told Martin, her voice free of unsteadiness or sentiment.
We had planned to go to Paris for our 40th anniversary, she explained to Monica, which was obviously impossible under the circumstances, so I told him I would go anyway. But I don't relish the idea of traveling alone at this point. I don't know what to say, Monica said, and looked at Martin, whose face was impassive, his eyes focused out beyond the hedges in his mother's backyard.
I think I'll be having aperitifs with you, she says to Elizabeth now. They have all finished their drinks, and Elizabeth tucks bills under the ashtray, stows her cigarettes in her bag, and arranges her shawl over her shoulders. It is a lovely piece of fabric, purple and brown paisley shot through with gold, rich and exotic.
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Chapter 8: What final thoughts does Meg Wolitzer leave the audience with?
No one guesses she is American until she speaks, and even then her imperfect French charms waiters and taxi drivers. Dinner is at nine tonight, she says. I have a few shops I want to browse in the meantime, but you two go along. Take some time alone. She smiles at her son, a smile Monica recognizes. Distant, chill. Find something spectacular for your wife, Martin.
She slips through the narrow space between tables, the fabric of her slim black trousers whispering. Abiento, she calls to the waiter, who salutes as he rushes past. Abiento. Monica will remember this. I wouldn't mind just heading back to the hotel for a nap, Martin says, watching his mother as she crosses the street. You don't have to come with me, he says. You can do whatever.
Monica waits for him to finish his sentence. Whatever you want, whatever you feel like, but he does not. To find the right words would fatigue him, as many such efforts have since his father died, since long before that, as many efforts always have. She looks for their waiter but cannot find him.
She imagines him pouring wine and uncapping bottles of Stella Artois somewhere in the dark interior of the cafe. Martin kisses her cheek and moves off in the direction of their hotel, his head down. She stands on the corner, out of the way of the waves of people moving past and tries to decide what to do.
The sun is dipping behind rooftops and she finds herself in sudden shadow, though the light ahead of her is still gold and long. She will walk to the river, stroll back to their hotel along the quay. She wants to be sure these two weeks of seeing the Seine at every time of day in every available light.
She'd known before she came that Paris was beautiful, but she had not been prepared for how merciless the beauty was, how overwhelming. She'd been struck by the lack of what she understood as charm. It was not a charming city because it did not need to be.
She chooses a street she has not walked before and starts toward the river and falls into a peaceful, near absence of thought, a calm she associates with childhood. She does not know when exactly she became unable to love her husband. She knows only that she woke one night and looked at him, at his face, lovely as his mother's, but grave even in sleep, and thought, I am finished. I am empty.
I have nothing left for you. She reaches the quay and draws her coat more tightly around her. At this time of day, she cannot tell which looks deeper, the Seine or the sky. Monica's own mother was not beautiful. The most Monica can say, honestly, about her looking through old photo albums and clumsily framed snapshots is that at one time she was pretty enough.
She lives alone in a ranch house with a finished basement that she paid for outright with her settlement from the divorce. Monica sees her once a year or every other. She has been in Elizabeth's presence only a handful of times, and each time Monica is tense, alert, watching for the signs that her mother has had one beer too many.
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