It's the Christmas season at SteynOnline, and as always we will have a full slate of seasonal programming in the days ahead. Tonight, though, we present the third of this year's seasonal Tales for Our Time, my monthly series of audio adventures that we offer as a bonus for Mark Steyn Club members and which every December turns to more festive fare.
I'm delighted by your reception of our first two Yuletide tales - Little Women at Christmas, followed by Holmes, Watson and a Christmas goose in The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle. North Carolina Steyn Club member Susan Havey writes:
Mark – you will never know how much your Tales for Our Time means to me. They are directly responsible for the upswing in the quality of my life. How? Instead of listening to the news when I go to bed at night I now listen to your Tales... I love the stories, the timber of your voice. I learn something new from listening to books that I have never read before and visiting old favorites such as Alcott and Doyle warms my heart.
Please don't stop with the video poetry either! See you in Rochester and Vancouver...
Thank you, Susan - and I hope the third of our Christmas entertainments is also to your tastes. It's one of the most famous of all American short stories - and, in fact, a perfectly constructed story. Which is all the more remarkable when you consider the circumstances of its creation. In my introduction, I talk about the author "O Henry", the real life behind the nom de plume, and one of the most productive couple of hours ever spent in a New York bar. And then we'll attend to the tale - of a loving but impoverished couple in an eight-dollar-a-week furnished flat on the eve of Christmas:
Della finished her cry and attended to her cheeks with the powder rag. She stood by the window and looked out dully at a gray cat walking a gray fence in a gray backyard. Tomorrow would be Christmas Day, and she had only $1.87 with which to buy Jim a present. She had been saving every penny she could for months, with this result. Twenty dollars a week doesn't go far. Expenses had been greater than she had calculated. They always are. Only $1.87 to buy a present for Jim. Her Jim. Many a happy hour she had spent planning for something nice for him. Something fine and rare and sterling...
To hear me read The Gift of the Magi, prefaced by my own introduction to the story, please click here and log-in.
We launched The Mark Steyn Club last year, and I'm very touched by all those SteynOnline supporters across the globe - from Fargo to Fiji, Vancouver to Vanuatu, Cook County to the Cook Islands - who've signed up to be a part of it. As I 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 my columns, audio interviews, video content, all our movie features and songs of the week. None of it's going behind a paywall, because I want it out there in the world, being read and being heard and being viewed, and maybe changing an occasional mind somewhere along the way.
That said, if you've enjoyed our members-only bonus features such as our Steyn Club radio serials and you're looking for a Yuletide present for someone special, I hope you'll consider our limited-time-only Christmas Gift Membership, which this year includes a personalized Christmas card from yours truly along with a handsomely engraved Tales for Our Time sampler. Aside from our monthly audio adventures, 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 yours truly;
~Transcript and audio versions of The Mark Steyn Show, SteynPosts, and our other video content;
~My video series of classic poetry;
~Priority booking for the second Mark Steyn Club Cruise (following October's sell-out inaugural cruise);
~Advance booking for my live appearances around the world, including my upcoming tour with Dennis Miller;
~Customized email alerts for new content in your areas of interest;
~and the opportunity 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 that special Gift Membership. As soon as you join, you'll get access not only to The Gift of the Magi but to all the other audio adventures listed below.
One other benefit to membership is our Comment Club privileges. So, if you regard this gift as one of those you hasten to exchange on Boxing Day, then feel free to comment away below. And do join us tomorrow for more Christmas entertainment - including a video tale.
For previous Tales for Our Time, click below:
#1: The Tragedy of the Korosko
by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
#2: The Time Machine
by H G Wells
#3: The Secret Agent
by Joseph Conrad
#4: The Prisoner of Zenda
by Anthony Hope
#5: The Cat That Walked By Himself
by Rudyard Kipling
#6: The Diamond as Big as the Ritz
by F Scott Fitzgerald
#7: The Rubber Check
by F Scott Fitzgerald
#8: A Christmas Carol
by Charles Dickens
#9: Plum Duff
by Mark Steyn
#10: To Build a Fire
by Jack London
#11: The Overcoat
by Nikolai Gogol
#12: The Thirty-Nine Steps
by John Buchan
#13: The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
by Robert Louis Stevenson
#14: The Man Who Would Be King
by Rudyard Kipling
#15: His Last Bow
by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
#16: Greenmantle
by John Buchan
#17: Metamorphosis
by Franz Kafka
#18: The Scarlet Pimpernel
by Baroness Orczy
#19: Little Women at Christmas
by Louisa May Alcott
#20: The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle
by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Fran Lavery
I'm not sure which part of this audio presentation I loved more, the introduction or the actual narration of the story. I like to think of it this way, the special gift being our exceedingly experienced narrator reading aloud this very sweet American short story, and the exquisite gift box and wrapping being the fascinating story about the life of the author of the tale. I'm now thinking about the other American artists who spent time in prison and gave the world their talents and gifts. Merle Haggard comes first to mind. I think he also had a pretty rough life.
Sometimes when you receive a gift wrapped so beautifully you want to wait some time and cherish it before pulling off the ribbon and wrappings and appreciate it for the thoughtfulness and care that went into the packaging alone. That's what I'm doing now, just reflecting about the life of the Porter family and what a tumultuous short life they each lived. I'm curious what happened to the little daughter who survived her mother and sibling. I imagine she found a new home when her father went to prison. Being separated from both parents and left alone has to be the most crushing things to happen to a young child. It happens though, more often than we would want to know.
Thank you, Mark, and all who work behind the scenes at Oak Hill Media to keep this winning feature of Steyn Online going strong. It can't be easy but you all make it look very smooth and easy.
Felice Navidad as they say in Honduras.