Read Me to Sleep, Ricky

For the 17th episode of Read Me to Sleep, Ricky, host Rick Whitaker reads excerpts from Elizabeth Hardwick's 1979 novel Sleepless Nights. "A brilliant night in New York City. It is Saturday and people with debts are going to restaurants, jumping in taxi-cabs, careening from West to East by way of the underpass through the Park."

Episode 16 of Read Me to Sleep, Ricky features a 1949 story, Camp Cataract, by Jane Bowles (1917-1973) read by your host, Rick Whitaker. 

"Call me Ishmael." The greatest of American novels, by Herman Melville. Part One: in which Ishmael and Queequog lie abed and together and are married. 

Rick Whitaker, host of Read Me to Sleep, Ricky, reads Stefan Zweig's 1927 novella "Confusion." A bewildered young man in Berlin is sent by his father to a university in a small town. There, a brilliant lecture awakens in him a passion for learning—as well as a  peculiarly intense fascination with the professor who gave the talk. The student grows close to the professor, be­coming a regular visitor to the apartment he shares with his much younger wife. He takes  it upon himself to urge his teacher to finish the great work of scholarship that he has been laboring at for years and even offers to help him in any way he can. The professor welcomes the young man’s  attentions, at least on some days. On others, he rages without apparent reason or turns away from his disciple with cold scorn. The young man is baffled, wounded. He cannot understand. But the wife understands. She understands perfectly. And one way or another she will help him to understand too.

Arthur Annesley Ronald Firbank was born in 1886, the son of Sir Thomas Firbank, MP, and Lady Firbank. He had an older brother, a younger brother, and a sister. At the age of ten Firbank went briefly to Uppingham School, and then on to Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He converted to Roman Catholicism in 1907. In 1909 he left Cambridge without taking a degree. Living off his inheritance, he traveled around Spain, Italy, the Middle East, and North Africa. Openly gay and chronically shy, he was an enthusiastic consumer of alcohol and cannabis. He died of lung disease in Rome, aged 40, having composed some dozen novels. For this episode of "Read Me to Sleep, Ricky," your host Rick Whitaker reads Firbank's 1923 novel "The Flower Beneath the Foot." 

Herland is a utopian novel written in 1915 by American feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman. It describes a society of women who bear children without men, an ideal social order free of war, conflict, and domination. It was first published in monthly  installments in 1915 in a magazine edited and written by Gilman. It was followed by its sequel, With Her in Ourland and is considered to be the middle volume in her trilogy,  preceded by Moving the Mountain (1911). It was not published in book form until 1979. Gilman is also author of "The Yellow Wallpaper." Special thanks to writer Slim Russell for recommending Herland for "Read Me to Sleep, Ricky," the podcast hosted by Rick Whitaker.  

For the tenth episode of "Read Me to Sleep, Ricky," a reading of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1867 translation of Dante's Italian poem "Inferno," introducing American readers to the work of a much-loved poet. Dante's "Divine Comedy" went on to also include "Purgatory" and "Paradise," and Longfellow translated all three. His elaborate and often awkward poetry is an ideal soporific, and will surely put you to sleep.  

Midway upon the journey of our life
    I found myself within a forest dark....

A reading of two short stories by James Joyce from "Dubliners," his only collection of short fictions, published in 1914.  

Tonight I'll read Emily Post's original book, "Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics, and at Home" published 100 years ago in August 1922. 

A reading of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 1892 story of female hysteria The Yellow Wallpaper. 

In this episode I read Ralph Waldo Emerson's 1844 essay "Experience."

A reading aloud by host Rick Whitaker of Oscar Wilde's famous 1897-8 poem written after his release from prison--in what was called Reading Gaol. It was first published anonymously, with just the name "C.3.3." (Cell block C, landing 3, cell 3). Wilde, having been convicted of "gross indecency," was largely persona non grata after his sentence, and he spent the rest of his life in exile. His poem's first edition of 800 copies sold out within a week, and continued to sell after his name had been added in 1899. 

During Wilde's imprisonment, Charles Thomas Wooldridge was hanged after being convicted of fatally cutting the throat of his wife. He was 30 years old.

The music for this, the fourth episode of Read Me to Sleep, Ricky, is by Brad Garton.  

Tonight I'll read aloud Dorothy Parker's medium-funny, short book of 1922 "Men I'm Not Married To." With music by Brad Garton. We hope this will put you right to sleep. 

In the second episode of Read Me to Sleep, Ricky, I'll read from Ludwig Wittgenstein's 1922 Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.  

Tonight I’ll be reading aloud from Gertrude Stein’s 1922 collection Geography and Plays. Following an earnest introduction by Sherwood Anderson, the experimental texts by Stein include Susie Asado, Ada, Miss Furr and Miss Skeene, A Collection, France, Americans, Italians, Ladies' Voices, and many many more. So get into bed, turn off the lights, close your eyes, and let Ricky read you to sleep. Photo of Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein in Paris, 1922, by Man Ray.