Work of Art

Selected Shorts

Symphony Space

Arts, Fiction, Books, Society & Culture

4.4 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 23 February 2023

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Host Meg Wolitzer presents stories of inspirations small and large. In these tales, writers investigate moments in which art inspires life, or life inspires art, especially in a visual medium. In Elizabeth Crane’s “Blue Girl,” read by Valorie Curry, a young woman's secret life is given an unusual public forum. In Jai Chakrabarti’s “Lessons with Father,” commissioned for our Small Odysseys anthology, a middle-aged child tries to connect with her late father through brushstrokes. The reader is Purva Bedi. And in William Boyd’s “Varengeville” read by Dan Stevens, a young man strays from his famous family as he discovers himself on canvas.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You've stopped to look at a painting hanging in a gallery, but how did that painting come
0:10.1	to be?
0:11.1	I'm Meg Wallitzer and on the next selected shorts, fiction that breaks down the process
0:15.2	of making art.
0:16.8	Stay with us for the aspiration, inspiration, and perspiration that produced those all
0:21.3	important brush strokes.
0:38.5	You're listening to selected shorts where our greatest actors transport us through the
0:42.5	magic of fiction one short story at a time.
0:46.5	Artists get asked certain questions over and over again.
0:50.1	What's your daily routine, who are your influences, and most common of all, where do you get your
0:55.1	ideas?
0:56.1	It's easy to see why these same questions arise so often.
1:00.1	To onlookers, art can seem like magic, and everyone wants to know what goes on behind
1:05.0	the curtain.
1:06.5	Even artists wonder about other artists.
1:08.7	The idea of how someone got that story usually refers to journalism.
1:13.4	But how, say, did check off Get His Story, a work of fiction, not journalism, Lady with
1:18.6	Laptog?
1:19.6	Does a work of art start out a certain way and then suddenly change a lot?
1:24.2	Grace Paley has a short story and a collection with the title, Enormous Changes at the Last
1:28.7	Minute.
1:30.3	Which I suspect may be how some great art comes to be.
	...

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