Guest host Robert Sean Leonard presents two works, by J. Robert Lennon and Nora Ephron, curated with the online food and cooking community Food52. We love mouthwatering stories about food on Selected Shorts, so we were delighted to have an opportunity to partner with the site’s co-creators Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs.
Our first story, “Breadman,” is by J. Robert Lennon, a fun and idiosyncratic writer we like a lot. He’s the author of eight novels, including Mailman, Familiar, and Broken River, and the story collections Pieces for the Left Hand and See You in Paradise. His stories have been featured in The Paris Review, Granta, Harper’s, Playboy, Electric Literature, and The New Yorker, among other publications, and in anthologies such as Best American Short Stories, Best American Nonrequired Reading, and Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards. Lennon teaches creative writing at Cornell University, and he is also a musician and composer.
The husband in “Breadman” thinks he’s going to buy some fancy focaccia for his wife, but then things get a little crazy. And who better to turn the ordinary into the extraordinary than Kyle MacLachlan? He’s best known for his leading role as Special Agent Dale Cooper in “Twin Peaks,” for which he won a Golden Globe Award, as well as its prequel “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me” and the 2017 limited series revival. His film and television credits include “Dune,” “Sex and the City,” “Desperate Housewives,” “How I Met Your Mother,”” The Good Wife,” “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.,” “Inside Out,” and “Portlandia.” Recent film work includes “The House with a Clock in Its Walls,” “High Flying Bird,” “Giant Little Ones,” and “Fonzo.” MacLachlan is also a winemaker, producing in the Walla Walla region of Washington State under the deliciously theatrical label Pursued by Bear.
The second of our two works featured as part of our collaboration with the website Food52 is a contemporary classic. It’s an excerpt from the late Nora Ephron’s autobiographical novel Heartburn, which fictionalizes the breakup of her marriage to Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein.
Ephron (1941 - 2012) was the author of six essay collections, including I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman, a New York Times bestseller; I Remember Nothing: And Other Reflections; and the novel Heartburn. She received Academy Award nominations for best original screenplay for When Harry Met Sally..., Silkwood, and Sleepless in Seattle, which she also directed. Additional films include You’ve Got Mail and Julie & Julia, and the plays Love, Loss, and What I Wore, with Delia Ephron, and Lucky Guy, for which she received a posthumous Tony Award nomination.
The narrator of Heartburn finds out that she’s living a lie, but in this punchy segment, she has a satisfying moment of truth. And giving a dead-to-rights reading is Academy Award-nominee Joan Allen.
Allen began her New York career off-Broadway in “And a Nightingale Sang.” Her Broadway credits include “The Heidi Chronicles,” “Impressionism,” and “Burn This,” for which she won a Tony Award. She is an original member of Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company, where she has appeared in more than 25 productions, including “Balm in Gilead,” and most recently, “The Wheel.” Allen is a three-time Academy Award nominee for her roles in “Nixon,” “The Crucible,” and “The Contender.” Additional film credits include “Pleasantville,” “Face/Off,” “The Notebook,” “The Ice Storm,” “The Upside of Anger,” “The Bourne Identity” series, and “Room.” On television, she is known for her portrayal of Georgia O’Keefe in the 2009 biopic of the same name, and she has had recurring roles in “Luck,” “The Killing,” and “The Family.”
