Book Review: Ghosts, short stories by Edith Wharton (1937)

Edith Wharton is one of my favorite authors. She was one of those authors I had heard about for years before I finally started reading her books. It's been richly rewarding to discover her writing. Wharton was an insightful critic of high society, which she chronicled in her classic novels The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence. Ghosts is a collection of short stories by Wharton that all deal with the supernatural in one way or another. Ghosts was first published in 1937, the year of Wharton's death, and was the last collection of her writing to be published during her lifetime. There are 11 short stories included in Ghosts, which was republished by New York Review Books in 2021. Since it's spooky season, I thought it was a perfect time to read Ghosts.

Edith Wharton was by no means a horror or thriller writer, but she had a good sense of what made something creepy. That being said, reading all of her ghost stories one after another robbed the stories of some of their power. I saw the repetitiveness of the stories: a creepy old isolated mansion, weird servants, a vague unsettling feeling. When I got to the ninth story in the collection, "Mr. Jones" I knew pretty quickly that Mr. Jones was actually dead, but it took the heroine twenty pages to figure it out. In this collection, you're also expecting the stories to be creepy and weird, whereas if you're just reading a regular collection of Edith Wharton's short stories and you randomly come upon a ghost story, you're caught off guard it comes as more of a surprise. But it makes sense to have all of these stories collected together, and the fact that they are sometimes similar is a small quibble when you're talking about a writer as gifted as Edith Wharton. 

Two of the finest short stories in Ghosts are "All Souls'" the very last story that Wharton wrote, and "Pomegranate Seed" from 1931. I had already read these stories in the excellent 1988 collection The Stories of Edith Wharton, but it was a pleasure to revisit them. In these two stories, Wharton conjures up truly creepy emotions. "All Souls'" describes the unsettling scene of an abandoned mansion during a snowstorm. "Pomegranate Seed" follows Charlotte Ashby, who is married to Kenneth, whose first wife died some years before. Kenneth keeps getting strange letters from an unknown person that he refuses to discuss with Charlotte. I had to Google the title to figure out how it pertained to the story. Without spoiling too much, it's a reference to the Greek myth of Persephone and Demeter. "Pomegranate Seed" is truly creepy and unsettling. It reminded me a bit of "The Turn of the Screw" by Wharton's friend Henry James and "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, stories where you acutely feel the terror of the main character. 

Because Edith Wharton was a great writer, and an astute chronicler of the human condition, there are many fantastic quotes to be found throughout Ghosts. One of my favorites is from "The Eyes," where one character is describing a younger man's reaction to literature: "It was always—punctually, inevitably, with the inexorableness of a mechanical law—it was always the wrong thing that struck him." (p.36) We've all known someone like that.  

Another line that made me chuckle was this one: "Well, it was all rather puzzling, or would have been if it had been interesting enough to be worth puzzling over. But it was not." (p.150) Here's one of Wharton's characters describing life at a desert compound in Egypt: "Life had the light monotonous smoothness of eternity." (p.255) What a beautiful sentence. 

These stories are also fascinating because of the glimpse they give the reader of upper-class society during Wharton's lifetime. There are lots of people who are just wandering around Europe, trying to find themselves. Or living the good life on a newly inherited country estate. And there are servants. So many servants! So many people to attend to your needs and whims, make food for you and keep the fires burning at night. Sounds pretty good, except for the fact that your servant might actually be a ghost. 

If you're looking for some spooky tales by a great writer, pick up Edith Wharton's Ghosts. 

Theater Review: The Great Gatsby at Theatre in the Round Players

F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby was the first production of the 2026-27 season for Theatre in the Round Players. Located in Minneapolis, TRP has been around since 1953. This production of The Great Gatsby was adapted for the stage by Simon Levy. The adaptation was written for the Guthrie Theater in 2006, to celebrate the opening of their new building in downtown Minneapolis, along the Mississippi River. I saw that 2006 production of Gatsby at the Guthrie, and I wasn't that impressed with it. I can't say I remember a lot about it, but I remember the spectacle of it—they had a full-size car on stage! Impressive, but it felt strangely empty. 

One of the challenges of adapting The Great Gatsby to a different medium is how do you keep it from just being lots and lots of Nick Carraway talking? Obviously, the entire novel is told through Nick's voice, and from Nick's perspective. We do get moments that are outside of Nick's perspective, but those moments are all things that other people tell him: when Jordan tells him about Daisy and Gatsby's courtship, and when Gatsby tells Nick about his own past. I thought this adaptation at Theatre in the Round did a good job of not being overly reliant on Nick's narration. 

I really appreciated the decision by the costume designer to make Gatsby's pink suit a vibrant, bright shade of pink. In the movie versions with Robert Redford and Leonardo DiCaprio, Gatsby's pink suit is a shade of light pink—they both look great, of course, but I appreciated the bright, almost salmon color, which made Gatsby stand out even more while he was wearing it on stage.

The performances were all excellent. John Blocher brought out Tom Buchanan's vapid boorishness. Kendra Alaura's portrayal of Jordan Baker accentuated her vibrancy, which can sometimes get lost in adaptations. Gavin Webb was excellent as Nick Carraway, hitting all the right notes as Nick is sometimes naive, and at other times sharp and insightful. Jake Leif brought Jay Gatsby to life wonderfully, adding the right notes of mystery and intrigue.

For me, the highlight of the show was Nina Broberg's excellent performance as Daisy Buchanan. Broberg gave Daisy an attractive vitality—her Daisy felt like a real, three-dimensional person. Daisy is a very hard role to play. The more I re-read The Great Gatsby, the more I puzzle over Daisy. It's easy to make Daisy a shallow villain. Mia Farrow captured Daisy's flighty shallowness in the 1974 movie, but she didn't capture Daisy's allure. Daisy needs to have a charm and an allure, because the audience needs to figure out what is driving Gatsby to go to such lengths to pursue her. Something that strikes me the more I read Gatsby is how Daisy hardly ever says what she means. Perhaps because her marriage to Tom is so awful, she has learned how to hide her true feelings through concealed or coded language. 

There’s always something beneath the surface of what Daisy is saying. For example, when she says to Gatsby, “You always look so cool,” Nick narrates “She had told him that she loved him, and Tom Buchanan saw.” (p.125) Daisy's true meaning isn't reflected in the language that she uses. She's also having to use coded language because she can't outright say "I love you" in front of Tom. I've always been puzzled over Daisy's crying over Gatsby's shirts. I finally asked my friends Katharine and Nicole one day "Why is Daisy crying about Gatsby's shirts? Is she really that shallow that she's crying over these material things, or is there something more going on here?" Katharine adapted a graphic novel of The Great Gatsby, and Nicole is a novelist and a teacher who has taught Gatsby for years, so I figured they would have some insight. And they did. They both said that Daisy is really crying about the last five years, and her feelings for Gatsby. Her tears over the shirts finally made sense to me. 

The scenes between Daisy and Gatsby after they reunited had real passion and heat. When they're dancing at Gatsby's party, Daisy and Gatsby get as close as they can without kissing, and you can feel their desire to escape from polite society and be alone. 

Theatre in the Round's production of The Great Gatsby was excellent, and it came closer to the heart of Fitzgerald's classic novel than the recent Broadway musical. 

Book Review: Exhausting Jesus at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, by Klecko (2026)

From my afternoon at MIA with Klecko. Photo by Mark C. Taylor

Could you stare at a single painting for 100 hours? That's the challenge that the poet and writer Klecko set out for himself in his most recent book. Released in June, and titled Exhausting Jesus at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the book chronicles Klecko's journey as he examines the painting Christus Consolator, from 1851 by the Dutch artist Ary Scheffer. Klecko divided his 100 hours into one-hour viewing segments, and throughout the book we see how Klecko approaches the painting, and the community that coalesces around him as his mission gets more attention. 

Klecko writes that he has two jobs as a poet: "Observe and Love, these are the only things you need to do if you want to be a successful poet. In my world, Observe and Love is more than a mantra, it's a lifestyle." (p.193) These two words, observe and love, play a large role in the book. And honestly, they should play a large role in every artist's practice. Simply put, that is what we all should strive to do: observe and love. 

During hour number 17, Klecko tells us one of his goals for the project: "What I'd like to accomplish is to remind you that if you invest 100 hours, or even a fraction of that, staring and contemplating on a single object, it just might change your life. It's changed mine." (p.47)

One of my favorite quotes from the book is this one: "As my thoughts twisted like a kaleidoscope, I realized that graveyards and art galleries may be the only places that held abject beauty and silence in perfect balance." (p.52) As someone who also finds solace and beauty in those places, I strongly agree. Or to borrow Klecko's phrase, "I didn't disagree." 

Klecko also describes impactful moments he's had at other art museums. You'll discover his love for Edward Hopper, and you'll want to Google all of the paintings Klecko mentions in the book. One of my favorite tidbits is his story about seeing Monet's lily pads at the Met in New York City. A woman came up to him and struck up a conversation about how wonderful it would be to see Monet's gardens in France. 

"I told her I would prefer to stay in New York with the painting, because if you visited the beautiful gardens in France, people would strike up conversations, and that would destroy the moment." (p.167) 

But don't read too much into that one interaction; it's usually Klecko who is striking up conversations with his fellow gallery occupants, and these are always entertaining. Klecko has the rare ability to strike up a conversation with anyone about pretty much anything.

Another quote I really liked was this one: "No amount of time will ever suffice when you are in the presence of beauty." (p.74) Well said, which at least partly explains why I'm so slow at art museums. 

Exhausting Jesus is mainly written in prose, but there are poems interspersed throughout. One of my favorite poems ends with these lines:

"In a crazy world we still have art, and you know what

That might be the difference

That might be what saves us" (p.148) Amen. 

Christus Consolator is a fascinating painting, as it contains 15 people, plus one Jesus. There's a lot going on in the painting, so it's a good candidate for long viewing. The painting has a fascinating story. Scheffer painted several versions of this painting, and it was big hit in the art world of the 1850's. The painting in MIA's collection came to the museum in a roundabout way. The painting was discovered in a janitor's closet in a church in Dassel, Minnesota, a small town about 50 miles west of Minneapolis. When the church realized the value of the painting, and how expensive it would be to conserve and care for it, they donated it to MIA. 

I'll confess, I've probably bypassed Christus Consolator numerous times in Gallery 357. Religious-themed paintings are not my personal favorite, although the art history classes I took in college helped deepen my knowledge of the Bible, since so many paintings were illustrating scenes from the Bible. I can appreciate these paintings, but I'm more naturally drawn to other subjects, like landscapes or portraits. Gallery 357 houses some of my favorite artworks from the permanent collection at MIA, like the incredible Veiled Lady sculpture by Raffaele Monti, the slightly creepy Portrait of Clementine by Henri Lehmann, and the somewhat enigmatic Temptation by William-Adolphe Bouguereau and On the Thames, a Heron by James Tissot. I liked Temptation so much that I had a poster of it on my wall at college. There are about a billion artists who have painted the female form, but for my money Bouguereau is one of the artists who really succeeded at presenting the beauty of women. 

Klecko's 100 hours take him through all seasons, and all types of weather. He writes about how the weather affects people's behavior. "In that silence I have watched, thought and deduced that the weather outside impacts how people are going to communicate inside the Institute...it's surprised me that people in the gallery are far less social in the summer...Looking back, it seems to me that the majority of quality conversations have taken place with people in parkas." (p.216) Maybe there's a certain solidarity among people when the weather is bad—we're getting through this together. And in Minnesota, there's no shortage of bad weather. There's a coffee shop I go to a lot to write, and I've learned that what I think about how the weather and attendance will correlate is usually the opposite. If it's crummy weather outside, I think "Oh, it'll be packed today with people getting out of the weather," and then there's no one there. And when it's beautiful weather and I think people will be outside enjoying it, the coffee shop is packed. Go figure. 

This past Sunday, I went to MIA to check out Christus Consolator in person, and to spend some time with Klecko, who has embarked on a new 100-hour project at MIA. We looked at a John Singer Sargent painting of donkeys, we talked about F. Scott Fitzgerald, we looked at Richard Avedon's gorgeous and haunting 1957 portrait of Marilyn Monroe, and we met a new friend who asked if she could eavesdrop on our conversation, and who promptly bought two copies of Exhausting Jesus. 

Exhausting Jesus at the Minneapolis Institute of Art is a wonderful book, one that reminds us of the power of art and what can happen when we look deeply and long at art, in communion with other people.