Selected Shorts’ Holiday Special: “Peas, Pancakes, and Pretensions”

Guest host Robert Sean Leonard presents food-related fictions, from a diverse group of writers. First, a characteristically short short from Lydia Davis: “Letter to a Frozen Peas Manufacturer,” which is just what it sounds like but also something more. Leonard is the reader. In Nora Ephron’s “Serial Monogamy: A Memoir,” read by Mary Kay Place, the late foodie, wit, and screenwriter debones her romantic life by way of her cooking. And our final work is an excerpt from Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert read by Christina Pickles, in which the socially ambitious doctor’s wife gets her first taste of real luxury.