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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.
From iHeart Podcast, Saigon. You don't think I'm serious about a free Vietnam? One city, a divided country, and the war that tore America apart. It's for Vietnam. They're pouring petrol all over here. Freedom for Vietnam! There's a fire coming to this country and it's going to burn out everything.
Listen to Saigon on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Now, everybody over here. Oh, it's one of my other favorite places. The Twilight Gazebo. Sunset Gardens. Twilight Gazebo. What's next? Dead Man's Grove? Mom, could you please try to be a little bit positive about this?
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Chapter 2: What personal journey did Roald Dahl undertake to discover his identity?
Could that sound any more idyllic? A writing hut in an apple orchard? A separate studio is actually pretty common among well-to-do writers. Dahl's Hut was modeled on one built for the poet Dylan Thomas. Playwright Arthur Miller wrote a lot in Brooklyn Heights, but also escaped to a sparse little 7-by-10-foot hut on his property in Connecticut. No decoration, no distractions.
The novelist Philip Roth also built himself a hut and constructed it with a standing, lectern-like desk so he could confront his characters on his feet, eye to eye. Virginia Woolf built a small garden lodge in Sussex, her famous room of one's own. Toni Morrison transformed a boathouse on the Hudson River in which to do her writing.
As I record this, I'm in my house in Brooklyn, two doors down from the brownstone where Norman Mailer wrote his most famous books. Mailer didn't exactly have a hut, but he renovated the top floor of his house, his office, to look and feel exactly like a ship with a long hull and slanted windowed ceilings, which is as crazy looking as you're imagining.
Apparently, Mailer was afraid of water and working all day in what felt like a boat forced him to confront his fears, which I guess he found helpful in his writing. John Cheever, the tortured Chekov of the suburbs, created maybe the most surreal office and morning commute of any writer I can think of. Every day, Cheever would put on a suit and tie as if heading to Wall Street.
He'd exit his apartment, take the elevator down with the other commuters heading to work, but he'd continue past the lobby to the basement of his building. He'd unlock a small storage room, strip down to his underpants, and write all day, surrounded by pipes and electrical boxes. When he was done, he'd get dressed and go back upstairs. Like I said, every writer does something unique.
Here's Dahl, again from Thrillmaker, on his setup inside his writing studio.
And I go into this splendid room, which I really enjoy because it's so comfortable. There's an armchair. I don't sit up at a desk. I lie back in an armchair.
And I put my feet up on a trunk, which I filled with wood to make it hard. And the trunk is tied to the legs of the chair with bits of wire so that I can put my feet on the trunk like that and push, and it won't go away.
Writing can be so scary. Laying back with your feet up helps you relax. Stephen Sondheim, the greatest writer of musical theater, wrote while fully laying down on his couch with a drink in his hand. David Milch, the brilliant creator of Deadwood and other TV shows, would lay with his back flat on the floor in his trailer and dictate all of his scripts to an assistant.
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Chapter 3: What unique writing rituals did Roald Dahl establish?
And that's exactly what Dahl was envisioning in his story, written over 70 years ago. Luckily, we're not quite there yet.
But in a few years, it's pretty easy to imagine that you'll be able to just open the newest AI bot and say, write me a thriller with the structure of Gillian Flynn, the outrageous characters of a Phoebe Waller bridge show, the witty dialogue of Billy Wilder, all in the tone of a dark, rolled doll story.
And in a few seconds, it'll pop out a story that would have taken me a year or more to wrestle out. Dahl's story is a cautionary tale. It's the antithesis of what makes his work so memorable, namely his incredibly compelling, unique voice that was mined from years of adventures. So, as we finish up, this feels like the moment that I'm supposed to opine on Dahl's legacy.
Chapter 4: How did Dahl's life experiences influence his writing process?
Honestly, the fact that he's still everywhere over 35 years after his death is a legacy in itself. I started keeping a list of every time Dahl or one of his creations popped up in something random I was watching or reading during the months that I made this show. The list got too long to keep up with. Once you start looking for him, you'll find him everywhere.
Whether it's a song lyric, or a politician's speech, or a TikTok about Matilda that has tens of millions of views. Even if you just looked for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory references, you'd be overwhelmed. A recent obituary I read in the New York Times for a pizza maker described him as the Willy Wonka of cheese.
A profile in Vulture of Jay Leno called the comedian's garage the chocolate factory, and he's Willy Wonka. Literally just this morning, I opened an email newsletter that I subscribed to on the science of happiness that referenced a golden ticket to well-being. I defy you to find anywhere near the same number of references to any other writer, with the possible, possible exception of Shakespeare.
Here's what I think Dahl's enduring presence in culture really means. The stories we tell our kids are so powerful, so foundational to who we become, that we'll keep them alive no matter what we learn about their creator. Dahl's creations aren't everywhere despite his flaws. They're everywhere because we've decided his flaws don't matter enough to let his stories die. This isn't nostalgia.
It's an active, collective moral decision. We're saying some art transcends its creator so completely that it belongs more to us than to them. Dahl's stories have become part of the architecture of childhood itself. Claire Dederer, who we heard from earlier in the season, wrote an essay quoting the writer Martha Gellhorn's views on how some great mid-century artists were horrible human beings.
Gellhorn wrote from experience, being married to Ernest Hemingway. She was also pals with Dahl and may have been thinking about both men when she said she didn't think an artist needed to be a monster, she thought a monster needed to make himself into an artist. I think there's a lot of wisdom in that, but I do wonder if Gellhorn was maybe asking the wrong question here.
Maybe the real question isn't whether or not Dahl's genius excuses his cruelty, but how his cruelty informed his genius. Who else could write so convincingly about the casual evil of adults except someone who understood that darkness intimately? Quoting a favorite European poet, Dahl once said, When I'm dead, I hope it said my skins were scarlet, but my books were red.
He definitely achieved that. Dahl was such a legendary, almost mythic figure by the end of his life, that his death was pretty shocking to people. Dahl passed away at 74 from a blood disease. According to writer Nadia Cohen, his family gathered around him and played one of his favorite pieces of music, while a nurse injected a lethal dose of morphine.
As the needle pricked him, Dahl shouted in obscenity. It was the last word he ever spoke. One last thing before we say goodbye, and this feels like kind of a perfect metaphor for any biographical work. You should know, Roald Dahl is not Roald Dahl. What I mean is, I haven't said his name correctly a single time over 10 episodes.
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