Topical Guide 874

Mark Dorset

Soul, Spirit, Inner Self
Good Will
Wickedness

Leaving Small’s Hotel, Chapter 1:

There are two epigraphs at the start of Dead Air. The first comes from the correspondence of Denis Diderot, but I found it in P. N. Furbank’s biography of Diderot, so I’m going to read it as I found it:

It was [Diderot’s] impression . . . that every tendency was to be found in the heart: noble, base, healthy, perverse, exalted, lustful and homicidal. . . . This, he once told Mme Necker, was the “secret history” of the soul. “It is a dark cavern, inhabited by all sorts of beneficent and maleficent beasts. The wicked man opens the cavern door and lets out only the latter. The man of good will does the opposite.”

Performance: Dialogue

The second is from The Two Thousand and Six Month Man by Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks:

INTERVIEWER: Do you remember the national anthem of your cave?
THE 2000-YEAR-OLD MAN: I certainly do. I’ll never forget it. You don’t forget a national anthem in a minute.
INTERVIEWER: Let me hear it, sir.
THE 2000-YEAR-OLD MAN (sings): Let ’em all go to hell . . . except cave seventy-six!

Here is Carl Reiner interviewing Mel Brooks (as the Two Thousand and Six Months Man), on the origin of singing, songs, and anthems:

Leaving Small’s Hotel, Chapter 1:

And now, ‘The Daughter of Mr. Yummy,’ episode one of Dead Air.”

Here is Kraft’s reading of the episode from Chipps & Company’s series of readings from Leaving Small’s Hotel for LTV Studios:

Have you missed an episode or two or several?

• You can begin reading at the beginning or you can catch up by visiting the archive or consulting the index to the Topical Guide. The Substack serialization of Little Follies begins here; Herb ’n’ Lorna begins here; Reservations Recommended begins here; Where Do You Stop? begins here; What a Piece of Work I Am begins here; At Home with the Glynns begins here; Leaving Small’s Hotel begins here.

• You can listen to the episodes on the Personal History podcast. Begin at the beginning or scroll through the episodes to find what you’ve missed. The Substack podcast reading of Little Follies begins here; Herb ’n’ Lorna begins here; Reservations Recommended begins here; Where Do You Stop? begins here; What a Piece of Work I Am begins here; At Home with the Glynns begins here; Leaving Small’s Hotel begins here.

• You can listen to “My Mother Takes a Tumble” and “Do Clams Bite?” complete and uninterrupted as audiobooks through YouTube.

• You can ensure that you never miss a future issue by getting a free subscription. (You can help support the work by choosing a paid subscription instead.)

• At Apple Books you can download free eBooks of Little Follies, Herb ’n’ Lorna, Reservations Recommended, Where Do You Stop?, What a Piece of Work I Am, and At Home with the Glynns.

• You’ll find overviews of the entire work in An Introduction to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy (a pdf document), The Origin Story (here on substack), Between the Lines (a video, here on Substack), and at Encyclopedia.com.

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The illustration in the banner that opens each episode is from an illustration by Stewart Rouse that first appeared on the cover of the August 1931 issue of Modern Mechanics and Inventions.

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