831 Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard" (with Rachel Pastan) | My Last Book with David Denby

The History of Literature

Host Jacke Wilson begins by sharing a heartfelt email from a listener named Megan, reflecting on the shared isolation and community found through a

Key takeaways

• Rachel Pastin's novel follows Gwen, a theater director navigating her mother Bobby's death in a Pennsylvania suburb.
• The production of Chekhov's 'The Cherry Orchard' serves as a central mechanism for the protagonist to process grief and family history.

Main topics

• Literary community and listener connection
• Grief and theater in 'We're So Lucky to Live Here'

Notable quotes

I don't think I love anything as much as getting an email from a listener.

Conclusion

The episode highlights how literature provides a vital framework for u

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:01) The History of Literature podcast is a member of the Podglomerate Network and Lit Hub Radio. Hello, a theater buff returns home in the aftermath of a shocking loss. How does one deal with grief? How about mounting a production of Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard? We'll talk to novelist Rachel Pastin about this scenario today on the History of Literature. Speaker 3 (0:38) Okay, here we go. Welcome to the podcast. I'm Jack Wilson. We start today with an email. This comes from listener Megan, who writes, Hi, just saying hello and thank you for this show. As a 30-year-old in upstate New York, my taste in literature is not shared by my close friends, and I don't have any social media, so I'm not able to join friend groups that do. This podcast has helped me immerse myself in the world I adore and listen to amazing minds dream up and converse about context I so genuinely love to learn and hear about. Thank you so much. That's in all caps. Megan. I wrote to Megan to offer some words of thanks and encouragement, and I asked her if it would be okay if I shared her message here on the podcast, and she responded, quote, Jack, wow, thank you for getting back to me. That's just awesome. Of course you can use my message. Hope it resonates with someone else out there just like me. I'd be more than okay with you using my name as well. Hope this fall is finding you well. My next read will be the turn of the screw, thanks to you. Oh, Megan. Well, thank you so much. All caps. I don't think I love anything as much as getting an email from a listener. Although... At the moment, it might be getting an email from someone who's been enjoying our new book, Great Detective. I've got some news on that, which I'll save for later. But listener emails, those never fail to lift my spirits. And I love sharing them with the audience of listeners because I think a lot of people out there are just like Megan. I know I was for several years back in Wisconsin. I had friends who liked to read, but not quite the same books as me. And I had other friends who weren't readers at all, but who shared my other interests. And meanwhile, one of my favorite things to do, read great books. That went nowhere with anyone around me. People would try, but it wasn't the same. And sometimes, frankly, their comments made things worse. If you really love literature, you know what it's like when someone says something. This is one of my most painful memories. I hate to even dig this up. I was so disappointed and crushed, and I felt so trapped. Someone close to me, a relative, heard that I liked literature. Speaker 3 (3:07) And she said something like, well, you know, I had a friend who took a literature course in college and stood up and said to the professor, you know, sometimes red is just the color red, not a symbol of blood. Speaker 2 (3:22) And this person close to me was so Speaker 3 (3:25) proud, telling me this story and so smug. And I just thought, I'm not reading these books like they're a crossword puzzle or some kind of game. If that professor was doing that, then I don't really have time for that professor. I don't care if they're an English literature Speaker 1 (3:43) professor. It means nothing to me. Speaker 3 (3:44) If they're getting things wrong, I don't care. Why would I care? They don't own literature. I suspect the professor was probably pointing out something like how we associate red with a lot of different things, including blood, which the author can tap into by making something the color red if he or she so chooses. But the student created a straw man in this supposed triumph. But I Speaker 2 (4:12) don't care. I Speaker 3 (4:13) don't care what happened in somebody else's college course. Why would I care about that? Speaker 2 (4:21) I'm there. Speaker 3 (4:22) Here I am reading whatever I was reading at the time, Dante or Anna Karenina or something. And this person in my life is dismissing the book and my reading of it and Tolstoy and me. And by saying something like, in effect, conveying something like, well, the real world is based on common sense. Chuckle, chuckle, chuckle. You pointy-headed idiots who love literature don't get it and never will. And I get people who do this even now, who say, maybe you'll soon realize that literature is more than just words on a page. What makes you think I haven't realized that? I've been doing this stupid podcast for 830 episodes. You think I think literature is words on a page? Somehow I need you to point that out to me? Speaker 3 (5:14) get so riled up sometimes. We are going to do an episode on the great books soon. Great books, capital G, capital B, with a guest who wrote a whole book about this. And it's astonishing. I was astonished by how many of the arguments in her book are just things I don't engage with at all. Speaker 3 (5:39) This meta discourse about the great, like, should we read the great books? Should they be required? Which ones should be required? Are they too difficult to read without help? Are they good for us? Are they bad for us? I don't spend any time with any of those questions. Maybe five episodes out of 831 and counting. Speaker 1 (6:04) Because I honestly just don't care. I don't have to think about Speaker 3 (6:08) those things. I'd rather just read the books. Reading is what is getting me through life. Reading great books are the nutritional content that my body and my mind crave. It's not about scoring some points by saying red equals blood or by pointing out that red is sometimes red. It's about how to live and love and hate and grieve and cry and embrace the beauty of a great painting or a waterfall or a thunderstorm in the middle of Iowa, which is where I am now as I prepare this show. It's about authors who call forth all our powers, Plato and Aristotle and Machiavelli and Nietzsche. And Virginia Woolf and Emily Dickinson, they're calling forth all our powers, stretching us out, teaching us things, challenging us. Now, I'm kind of far away from Megan's email, but just know this, Megan, I have been you. And I am here for you. And all the yous everywhere who love books, who get it, and who also live a life that's separate from literature, engaging in the world with other friends who like sports or kayaking or accounting or whatever it is you do when you're not reading books, and loving your family for better and worse, and sometimes being by yourself and putting in your headphones, listening to podcasts, and finding that there are others who love reading books too, like me and like the guests. I'm lucky enough Speaker 2 (7:37) to have on the show. Speaker 3 (7:39) And I mentioned this when talking about the tour. We had 11 people on the tour from all walks of life who went around England seeing author homes and locations of novels and trying on Jane Austen costumes. And we saw a play at Shakespeare's Globe Theater. We met professors and scholars and bookstore owners and so on. And the 11 of us now have a wonderful group thread where everyone is supportive of each other, sharing news, sharing excitement, telling each other about plays we just saw or tickets that we're excited to get or book covers of something we can't wait to dive into or some personal news about new opportunities or stuff our kids are doing or how recovery from surgery is going. And we don't talk about the weather or politics or religion or all those other Hot Topics, we mostly talk about literature. We found a commonality together, and we're all different, but we have excitement and passion in common, and it's fun. I think you'll find a group like that, Megan. I hope you do. I wish I could run a dating site or a friend site or some kind of networking operation because I have a feeling that the thousands of people listening to this podcast could probably be quite close to one another. And I wish I could match up a dozen of you or something to be in a kind of circle. Speaker 3 (9:02) But we kind of have too much going on already, so we'll save that idea for later or for never. Thank you again, Megan, and good luck to you. Here's my other news. Emma and I are headed to Italy next week. In fact, we're celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary by returning to Bologna and Venice and the Dolomites, all the places you like to go when you're empty nesters and you can travel in the off-season. I can't wait. And I studied in Bologna, as you may have heard. I've made some lifelong friends there, and we're going to see a bunch of them, a reunion of sorts, a million years after our time together as young people, when we were young and full of fagioli, so to speak. As listeners... In case you're worried, you won't notice a thing. That's the beauty of being able to schedule episodes in advance. I have to scramble a little bit now, but we'll have episodes every Monday and every other Thursday for you, even while we're gone. But since Emma and I are the fulfillment department of HOL Press, you will have to wait a little longer to get your copy of Great Detective. If you order it by Thursday this week, no problem. We'll get those out the door on time. After that, there will be a slight delay because we are out of the country. And again, this is Great Detective, a lovely two-volume book and a handsome slipcase cover. It's the first choose-your-own-adventure book for grown-ups and the first choose-your-own-adventure book for smart kids and grown-ups that take two people. Two people do this together. You each get your own copy of the book and you each inhabit the mind and point of view of a different character. Speaker 3 (10:50) grown-ups and smart kids, let's say fourth or fifth grade on up, high school, college, it's a great way to spend some time together with someone you love. Or you can buy it for two siblings. They can try the book together. One of you will be Sherlock Holmes trying to solve crimes. The other, maybe, trying to solve crimes. The other will be Sherlock's new sidekick trying to impress the great detective. But here's the thing. Each of you has a secret. that you cannot reveal to the other. So even as you're trying to catch the criminals, you're trying to outwit one another. Speaker 3 (11:25) Over 120 different endings. Read long enough and you might get to all of them. That's at historyofliterature.com. Use code LOVE26. Love for the 25th wedding anniversary. How perfect. Love kind of fits for everything. Might have to keep this discount in place for a while. Love26 will get you a discount. And if you order by Thursday, September 24th, you will get your books quite quickly. Or if you're a little more patient, Speaker 3 (11:55) Afterwards, please indulge us. One only gets married for 25. You know, that's even more rare than getting married, isn't it? I've never really thought of it that way. You could get... How often can you get married? Some people get married 10, 12 times. You're not going to do that with... You're not going to be married for 25 years 10 or 12 times. Maybe you could do it twice. Someone's probably done it three times, but that won't be me. Speaker 3 (12:24) Okay, getting back to this idea of reading books, why we read literature and why and how it helps, let's talk about Chekhov. Rachel Pastin has written a novel in which literature is prominent at a crucial point in one's life. And frankly, that's kind of important, isn't it? If literature isn't there for us at crunch time, then it doesn't really deserve our reverence in quite the same way. If it falls short, then it's not doing what I'm hoping that it's doing. And if Chekhov can't provide it for us, maybe no one can. Now, I did an episode on the cherry orchard before, way back when, and that episode, which is in our archives, includes a discussion with Mike Palindrome. And here's what I said about the play to help orient the listener. The Cherry Orchard was from 1904, and it gives us yet another familiar pattern. The Moscow Art Theater staged it, and Stanislavski sank his teeth into it, and Chekhov worried that he was getting it all wrong. It's about a woman who