Programming note: please join Mark tomorrow, Saturday, for an all-American semiquincentennial edition of his weekend music show Mark Steyn on the Town. It airs at 5pm UK/6pm Western Europe/12 noon North American Eastern. You can listen from almost anywhere on the planet by clicking the button at top right here.
~Ahead of that, welcome to the eightieth audio entertainment in our series Tales for Our Time. We are in our ninth season, and we've built a spectacular archive that runs the gamut from A to Z ...well, not quite, but certainly A to W - Jane Austen to P G Wodehouse.
For America's semiquincentennial weekend, welcome to a meditation on the theme by Nathaniel Hawthorne, author of The Scarlet Letter and much else. As Mark discusses in his introduction, My Kinsman, Major Molineux is generally taken to be an allegory of the American Revolution, but with many complex aspects that have divided scholars over the years. In tonight's opening episode a New England country boy arrives in the big town:
It was near nine o'clock of a moonlight evening, when a boat crossed the ferry with a single passenger, who had obtained his conveyance at that unusual hour by the promise of an extra fare. While he stood on the landing-place, searching in either pocket for the means of fulfilling his agreement, the ferryman lifted a lantern, by the aid of which, and the newly risen moon, he took a very accurate survey of the stranger's figure. He was a youth of barely eighteen years, evidently country-bred, and now, as it should seem, upon his first visit to town...
To hear Mark introduce and read the opening installment of My Kinsman, Major Molineux by Nathaniel Hawthorne, please click here and log-in.
~We launched The Mark Steyn Club over nine years ago, and we're immensely heartened by all those SteynOnline supporters across the globe - from Fargo to Fiji, Vancouver to Vanuatu, Surrey to the Solomon Islands - who've signed up to be a part of it. As Mark said at the time, membership isn't for everyone, but it is a way of ensuring that all our content remains available for everyone - all his columns, audio output, video content, every movie feature and Song of the Week.
That said, we have introduced a few bonuses for our members - not locking up our regular content, which will always be free, but admitting members to a few experimental features, such as this series of audio adventures. In Tales for Our Time Steyn revisits some classic fiction he's mentioned in books and columns over the years - old stories that nevertheless speak to our own age. Our first serialisation was The Tragedy of the Korosko by the aforementioned Arthur Conan Doyle; next came The Time Machine by H G Wells; and then The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad, and The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope. Two of those Mark has since updated in contemporary iterations. He has always liked reading stories, and he did do a little of it professionally a zillion years ago. So, if it works, we may release them as audio books on CD or Audible a ways down the road. But for the moment they're an exclusive bonus for Mark Steyn Club members.
If you'd like to hear this Tale, all you need to do is join the Club - either for a full year or, if you suspect we're some fly-by-night shifty Canuck scamsters and you want to see how it goes, a mere experimental quarter. And, aside from Tales for Our Time, The Mark Steyn Club does come with other benefits:
~Exclusive Steyn Store member pricing on over 40 books, mugs, T-shirts, and other products;
~The opportunity to engage in live Clubland Q&A sessions with Steyn and his guest hosts, such as this coming Wednesday's;
~Transcript and audio versions of The Mark Steyn Show and our other video content;
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~Advance booking for his live appearances such as our annual Mark Steyn Cruise;
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~and the chance to support our print, audio and video ventures as they wing their way around the planet.
To become a member of The Mark Steyn Club, please click here - and don't forget our gift membership. It makes a perfect birthday present for anyone who enjoys classic fiction.
One other benefit to membership is our Comment Club privileges. So, if you like or dislike this Tale for Our Time, or consider Steyn's reading of it a bust, then feel free to comment away below. And do join us tomorrow for Part Two of My Kinsman, Major Molineux.