Sleight of Hand

·58 min·5 clips

A husband calmly explains how he disposes of wives without murder or divorce, revealing his sinister creativity.

Nothing is quite as it seems. Meg Wolitzer starts with the old image of having nothing up her sleeve, then uses it to talk about how fiction works. The trick is listening. A writer can fool the ear the way a magician fools the eye, but only if the storyteller knows what the listener expects next. So the magic talk stays practical. Wands, capes, and stage misdirection fade out. What matters is shape, consequence, and the quiet pressure a story puts on whoever is listening. The hour holds to that idea without overexplaining it. Matthew Love steps in briefly from the production side, talking about the charged silence around live readings at Symphony Space in New York. The appeal is plain and useful. He connects stories, performance, and community to the life of Selected Shorts, then hands the hour back to the fiction. The final piece names magic outright. Dave Eggers' "The Alaska of Giants and Gods" follows Wolitzer's setup about tricks inside stories and tricks created by telling them. Kate Burton reads it. The introduction notes her stage and screen work, including Scandal, Grey's Anatomy, The Dropout, and Inventing Anna. Then Eggers shifts the mood. The story separates proud, public happiness from a smaller, lonelier kind that does not flatter anyone. Outside Seward, Alaska, an ancient recreational vehicle, a passenger seat, red wine, black trees, and sleeplessness do the early work. Nothing flashy. The unease slips in quietly, which is the point. By the time the feeling turns, the hand has already moved.

As heard by us

A literary hour where fiction's sleight of hand does the work, and the room goes very still.

Selected Shorts argues for fiction as a quiet form of sleight of hand, with the show more interested in how expectation is guided than in any blunt surprise.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You want a fiction hour where sleight of hand matters as much as the story.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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