Two stories from the new media venture Electric Literature are featured on this program. “Sir Henry,” Lydia Millet’s charming tale of a dog walker with very high standards and his elegant charges, including a dignified dachshund named “Sir Henry,” was subsequently published in Millet’s critically praised collection Love in Infant Monkeys. Literary commentator Hannah Tinti remarks on Millet’s deft combining of stories featuring animals in some way at risk (the writer works for the Center for Biological Diversity) and our celebrity culture. “Sir Henry” has a cameo appearance by David Hasselhoff. The story is rendered tenderly and comically by Tony Award-winner John Lithgow.

“Rick Moody is always doing fun stuff,” says Tinti, and in this case the well-known author of The Ice Storm among many published titles has probably taken the honors for first tweeted story. It appeared in increments, 140 characters at a time, in Electric Literature, and comic Mike Birbiglia and Aya Cash scintillate as the hopelessly mismatched couple in what Moody punningly entitled, “Some Contemporary Characters.”

“Sir Henry” by Lydia Millet; performed by John Lithgow
“Some Contemporary Characters,” by Rick Moody, performed by Mike Birbiglia and Aya Cash

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