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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.
On the Look Back At It podcast.
1979, that was a big moment for me. 84 was big to me.
I'm Sam Jay. And I'm Alex English. Each episode, we pick a year, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it. With our friends, fellow comedians, and favorite authors.
Like Mark Lamont Hill on the 80s.
84 was a wild year. I don't think there's a more important year for black people. Listen to Look Back at It on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
On paper, the three hosts of the Nick Dick and Paul show are geniuses. We can explain how AI works, data centers, but there are certain things that we don't necessarily understand. Better version of play stupid games, win stupid prizes. Yes. Which, by the way, wasn't Taylor Swift who said that for the first time. I actually, I thought it was. I got that wrong. But hey, no one's perfect.
We're pretty close, though. Listen to the Nick Dick and Paul show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
This is Saigon, the story of my family and of the country that shaped us.
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Chapter 2: What led Roald Dahl to pivot to children's literature?
When Anne Hathaway was preparing for her role in a film called Eileen a few years ago, she, quote, got a lot of inspiration from Patricia Neal, specifically from a coffee commercial that she did. Hathaway continues, Such a weird reference, Anne, but I totally hear it, and I totally agree.
But while Neil might be hypnotizing to me and Anne Hathaway in this commercial, Dahl's attention is drawn to the beautiful young woman standing just out of frame. He quickly makes a game plan. He decides to totally ignore her, just as he ignored Neil at Lillian Hellman's dinner party all those years before. That's his move.
The day after the coffee commercial, again mirroring what he did with Neil all those years ago, he begins to pursue. Felicity, to her credit, totally rebuffs him. He's a married man, but as usual, Dahl isn't phased. He decides to orchestrate a really convoluted plan that feels like it was ripped out of a bad sitcom. As she's rejecting him, Felicity mentions she has an upcoming trip to Paris.
That's when Dahl strikes. He asks her, would you mind terribly picking up my favorite umbrella? I left it in Paris at my friend Annabella's place. Now, you may remember that Annabella is Dahl's actress ex-girlfriend. She's the one that Dahl chose to go up on stage in front of millions of people and accept the Oscar on his wife's behalf. And now she's going to repay the favor.
What follows is less the retrieval mission of an umbrella and more an elaborate ambush. Felicity gets to Paris and shows up at Annabelle's apartment, expecting the umbrella. And this better be like an umbrella made out of gold if she schlepped all the way here for it.
Once she's inside, Annabelle basically locks the door behind her and delivers what amounts to a university PowerPoint lecture on all of Dahl's amazing qualities. She keeps Felicity there for hours, trying to persuade her, and then hands her Dahl's $2 umbrella. The most surprising twist? The plan actually works.
As scripted by Dahl, the umbrella becomes the MacGuffin that brings him and Felicity together. When Felicity shows up at Dahl's holding his prized umbrella, the relationship begins. The two lovebirds become insatiable. They see everything they share in common is destiny. Dahl can't believe it when he discovers that he and Felicity have been born a few streets away from each other in Landaff.
It must be destiny. I used to be like this in relationships. I mean, everybody is, right? Your favorite order from Chinese restaurants is chicken with broccoli? My favorite order is chicken with broccoli. It's fate. That's how it feels for Dahl right now. He writes her tons of passionate love letters, including this one.
With each month and each week that goes by, the desire to see you more and more often grows stronger and stronger. It has become absolutely necessary that I see you and touch you and talk to you every few days. And I suppose that's what real love is all about. Lovemaking is another department and of course that is also necessary.
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Chapter 3: How did Dahl's first children's book perform in the market?
And her career has had a major comeback, starting with her big return to acting in a lead role in The Subject Was Roses, the film adaptation of a Pulitzer Prize-winning play. Here's Neal speaking to Terry Gross about what that job did for her.
Oh, I was furious that I was going to have to do it, and I didn't want to at all. And then we started rehearsals. We rehearsed for about a week.
And, oh, the first day I hated it, and the second day, and the third day I began to sort of like it. Well, at the end of that... I was the most delighted woman in the world. I mean, that's what I needed to begin to live again. And it really, it brought me back to life.
The film won raves, and Neal was nominated for Best Actress again. Her career is revived, and she continues acting for many more years. Now, even though Dahl is clearly the one who brought the divorce about, he goes into a funk when it actually happens. He becomes super depressed. Here's what he writes in his journal.
I become easily bored in the company of adults. I drink too much whiskey and wine in the evenings. I eat far too much chocolate, smoke too many cigarettes. I am bad-tempered when my back is hurting. I do not always clean my fingernails. I no longer tell my children long stories at bedtime. I bet on horses and lose money that way.
I dislike Mother's Day and Father's Day and all the other days and all the cards that people buy and send out. I hate my own birthday. I'm going bald.
Sheesh, if that doesn't sound like a late midlife crisis, I don't know what does. The man who spent his 20s living like James Bond, literally, now confronts the dissolution of his marriage and growing old. His hip replacement seems to add insult to injury.
It forces him to reckon with the distance between the adventurous, glamorous young spy he once was and the aging, irritable, physically broken man he's become. It's ironic, of course, because he's only just now finally achieved the incredible success with his writing that he's always dreamed of.
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Chapter 4: What challenges did Dahl face during his early writing career?
Still, Dahl finds himself face to face with his own decline. The one thing that brings him out of it is getting to marry Felicity.
Do you remember when Diana Ross double-tapped Lil' Kim's boobs at the VMAs? Or when Kanye said that George Bush didn't like black people? I know what you're thinking. What the hell does George Bush got to do with Lil' Kim? Well, you can find out on the Look Back At It podcast. I'm Sam Jay.
And I'm Alex English.
Each episode, we pick a year, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it.
Including a recent episode with Mark Lamont Hill waxing all about crack in the 80s. To be clear, 84 was big to me, not just because of crack.
Yeah.
I'm down to talk about crack all day, but just so y'all know. I mean, at this point, Mark, this is the second episode where we've discussed crack. So I'm starting to see that there's a through line.
We also have eggs on the table right now.
Thank you for finishing that sentence. Yes. I don't think there's a more important year for black people. Really? Yeah. For me, it's one of the most important years for black people in American history. Listen to Look Back at It on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Chapter 5: How did Dahl's success evolve over time after his initial struggles?
The United States will not stand by and allow any power, however great, take over another country.
From iHeart Podcast, Saigon. Please allow me to introduce Joseph Sherman. You don't think I'm serious about a free Vietnam? I should stop talking so much.
I like hearing you talk.
one city, a divided country, and the war that tore America apart.
This is for Vietnam. I've taken a hit from Japanese ground fire. They're pouring petrol all over him. He's holding matches. I'm on a landmine! For freedom! Let's get out! Freedom for Vietnam!
Saigon, starring Kelly Marie Tran and Rob Benedict.
Sting hears madness. The world should hear about this. There's a fire coming to this country and it's going to burn out everything.
Listen to Saigon on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Real talent is defined by what people can do, not where they learn to do it.
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Chapter 6: What themes are prevalent in Dahl's children's books?
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Things get dark again a few years later. Death and illness have been constant themes for Dahl over the past couple decades, and here they come again. Dahl takes Ophelia on a Caribbean vacation with Felicity and her youngest daughter, Lorena. 27-year-old Lorena, a fashion editor at Harper's Magazine, begins complaining of headaches and a strange buzzing in her ear.
Dahl's blood pressure immediately spikes. The symptoms are too familiar. He summons a doctor immediately. The same urgent response he once had for Theo, for Olivia, for Neil. But the diagnosis comes back. It's just an ear infection. Antibiotics are prescribed, crisis averted. Or so they think. When the vacation ends, Lorena flies to South Africa for a photoshoot.
She has no idea that the doctors were wrong about it being an infection. It's actually an aggressive brain tumor. She collapses at the airport from an aneurysm. At 27, Felicity's daughter has passed away. Felicity is shattered, and Dahl, he's haunted. Another brain trauma in someone close to him, his stepdaughter. This statistical impossibility leaves him stupefied.
According to Felicity's older daughter, Charlotte, Dahl somehow blames himself as if he were the common denominator in some terrible equation, a walking curse. All he can do now is hold Felicity through her grief. By the time Lorena passes away, Dahl is a world-renowned children's author. So let's go back a little bit to before Dahl meets Felicity.
I want to tell you more of the origin story of Dahl making this giant pivot to kids' books. I mentioned in our last episode that Dahl finally found his voice by changing up his intended audience. Here's what brought him to that point. Desperation. The same emotion that's motivated pretty much every author ever.
Alfred Knopf has just rejected Dahl's latest stab at adult fiction with the words every writer dreads. He was, quote, let down by the manuscript. Ugh, just hearing that sends a shiver up my back. Getting this difficult feedback, Dahl goes into a funk. His most recent collection of short stories didn't exactly set the world on fire, and now this.
Dahl lets the gloom of the rejection overtake him for about six weeks. Then his agent, Sheila St. Lawrence, steps in with a lifeline. She reminds him how his story about the gremlins once changed his life.
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Chapter 7: How did Dahl's personal life impact his writing?
It catapulted him into Eleanor Roosevelt's living room and inspired Walt Disney to throw him a party. That's what you should be doing more of, Sheila tells Dahl, with the kind of conviction that only great agents can muster. You have a natural bent in this direction and a ready audience hungry for it. Isn't that just the dream scenario for a writer with his literary agent?
She sees potential where he can't. She's fighting for his future when he's stuck mourning his past. Sheila recognizes that Dahl needs a radical shift. Children's literature could give him unlimited freedom and boundless worlds to build. Dahl's initial response to his agent when she has this brilliant career-saving insight is the same reaction he had with Neil and Felicity when he first met them.
He completely ignores her. After decades positioning himself as a sophisticated writer of adult fiction, a pivot like this feels like a surrender, a step down. This is a guy who's very sensitive about how he's perceived. Remember how much he downplayed his writing of the James Bond film, making fun of it to anyone that would listen? That same malicious pride is at work here.
But then, a few days later, something shifts in Dahl. Maybe it's thinking about Olivia and Theo. Maybe it's the bleak future he senses he's in for if he sticks with only writing for adults. Maybe it's all the bills stacking up for Neil's rehab. Dahl's resistance begins to crack. He calls his agent and doesn't exactly commit, but promises he'll give a children's story a try.
But he's determined no one will ever mistake this pivot for a failure or a retreat or feel sorry for him. His ego constructs a defensive fortress, and you can hear it in every interview he ever gives on the topic. Like here, on BBC One, speaking to Terry Wogan. There's absolutely no question to me that writing, we're talking about fine children's books, is far, far harder.
I think I can almost prove it because there is no writer of consequence in the world or who's ever lived who hasn't had a go at a children's book from Tolstoy to Graham Greene's done four. He's our finest living novelist. You're smiling, you see. Well, okay. Because they didn't succeed.
Man, I wish I could just give Dahl a hug here, you know? Tell him no one is looking down on him for his pivot. Maybe I'm especially sensitive to it, because I always wanted to write movies, like the ones I grew up with. Instead, I've built a career writing TV and audio dramas. And I've caught myself getting defensive about it, too.
For Dahl, this defensiveness becomes almost a refrain, a mantra he repeats in interview after interview, as if he's still trying to convince himself of something, even as his children's books make him more famous and more successful than his adult fiction ever did. Here he is on Pebble Mill from the BBC.
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Chapter 8: What was the significance of Dahl's relationship with Felicity?
To my mind, I don't think there's any question that to write a children's book of comparable quality to a fine adult novel or story is more difficult. It's much more difficult to achieve the children's book. Now, why is that? Goodness knows.
I do wonder if all this insecurity about becoming a children's author actually has a positive effect on Dahl's writing. He's so scared of being perceived as Dr. Seuss that he refuses to abandon his sophisticated adult themes.
The violence, the grotesquerie, the corruption, all those delicious elements from his adult writing, he's going to transplant them right into his children's stories, which is a big part of what makes these books work so well. The darkness doesn't disappear. It just finds a new home. This is such an important lesson that so few writers seem to have gleaned.
I bought a ton of books to read to my kids, written by authors and comedians I love who are making their first stab at writing for children. In these books, all of them totally abandon the qualities that make me like them so much. The only exception is Fran Liebowitz, who managed to write a kid's book that still has all of her hilarious crankiness and cynicism.
Now, while Dahl repeats over and over that writing for kids is just as challenging as writing for adults, he surprisingly downplays any deeper meaning to his work. There are very few messages in these books of mine, he says. They are there simply to turn the child into a reader of books. I don't really buy that. A lot of great writers like to downplay their intentions and messages.
I remember sitting in a small workshop when I was starting out. Aaron Sorkin came to speak. I nervously raised my hand and asked about the themes I thought I spotted in his new show. He basically shot back that he's really lazy and watches a lot of baseball on TV, and sort of implied that I was seeing more in his script than he intended. Which may be true. I'm a lunatic when it comes to his work.
But it's also true that writers deflect and minimize when it comes to their messages. Sometimes it's out of modesty. Sometimes it's protecting their process. But it's rarely the full story. With Dahl, his themes practically leap off the page. Take Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
Colin Burrow, from the London Review of Books, nails it in his essay when he writes, The book is rooted in Dahl's whiplash experience of moving from austere post-war England to the glittering excess of 1950s America, a land seemingly flowing with chocolate and honey. The moral isn't subtle.
Charlie Bucket, the impoverished English boy who savors a single chocolate bar who keeps his appetites in check, he's the one who inherits Wonka's kingdom. Meanwhile, the gluttonous Augustus Gloop, the spoiled Veruca Salt, the obsessive Violet Beauregard, they're all undone by their insatiable American-style appetites. It's a searing critique of unchecked commercialism wrapped in a candy coating.
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