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Study 050 - Miriam (Patreon)

Published:
2023-07-14 16:40:20
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

Truman Capote makes his dramatic entrance on the show with his early short story Miriam, and it's SCARY good.

Special thanks to Heather Klinke for reading!

Here's that NY Times article on Capote's own interpretation of the story.

Next up: creepy kids continue with Sweets to the Sweet by Robert Bloch

Comments

Joe Beck

Huge if Tru.

KateSherrod

Heather's finest performance on this show since The Yellow Wallpaper! She is never less than wonderful, of course, but I felt like she really, really believed this one. Has a little Heather tried to invade her life at some point, when Chad wasn't around? Or maybe succeeded? Blink twice if she's in the room right now, Heather! I'll send Krampus to save you.

Sweatin' to the Great Oldies

You can't spell Truman Capote without "man cope". Or "portmanteau", "amputator", "computer", or "contempt". More importantly to the story: "ape Truman"

Jeremy Impson

Heather really brings a verisimilitude to her performance of creepy, unsettling children. I swear, this is intended as a complimentary comment.

It's a Ghost.

I definitely got the impression that Miriam was a real entity and one that that feeds on a person's aloneness and dullness of life combined with, as Capote himself put it, "that evil element" in each of us "that has never had a chance to expand or flower." The main reason I think she has to be something beyond a figment of Mrs. Miller's mind is that Miriam mentions having previously lived with an old man who didn't have a lot of money, and then it seemed like the man Mrs. Miller saw on the street was supposed to be this man. So maybe Miriam really did live with the old man before, and when she was with him, she *was* him. What she did and said while she was with him came from his "evil element," but then he eventually ran out of money, and so she moved on to Mrs. Miller, someone who was also alone and living a dull repetitive life, and also importantly, had some money to spare. And when she was with Mrs. Miller, she was Mrs. Miller, and everything she said and did was a manifestation of Mrs. Miller's "evil element." The first thing Miriam had Mrs. Miller do for her was buy her a movie ticket, which maybe was a "test" to insure that Mrs. Miller had the money and ability to "please" Miriam. If Mrs. Miller didn't have the money, Miriam wouldn't have stuck with her, and if Mrs. Miller wasn't that alone, living her simple, repetitive life, then Miriam wouldn't have sought her out in the first place, or, in fact, maybe Mrs. Miller wouldn’t have even been able to see her.

Jim Cannon

Poor Miriam Miller, having some kind of psychotic break and having no one to turn to for help. The neighbors write her off as a crazy old lady - which appears to be an accurate, if unkind, description of what is happening - and she literally has no one else she can talk to about what is happening to her. On the other hand, she's treated herself to some cake. So there is a silver lining! But seriously, a rather tragic story. I'm solitary by nature and in general not a great friend because of that, but at least I have my family to keep me from disappearing into the wilderness and becoming a complete hermit. I can see another version of me evolving into Mrs. Miller all to easily, fragile psyche and all.

Darth Pseudonym

The idea that Miriam is a suppressed piece of Mrs. Miller made me think of the moment a lot of young adults have when you suddenly realize that you don't have to justify yourself to anyone -- when you have your own money and no oversight for the first time, and it hits you that if you want to go to the movies, you can just go to the movies. If you want ice cream, you can just go get ice cream. At first it feels like you're doing something wrong, doing things without permission, and it takes a little time to adjust to the idea that you have sole responsibility for yourself. To me, it felt like there's a subtext that Mrs. Miller has spent her whole life under somebody else's oversight, first her parents and then her husband, and even after Mr. Miller's death, she kept living the way he would have wanted, gray and joyless. Miriam seemed like a projection of those impulses she has been holding down -- the desire to go buy cherries and cookies and real flowers, the things she been denying herself out of some sense of expectation or duty. She feels guilt and fear about buying things just for her enjoyment, about wearing jewelry and silk. It isn't wrong to want to have nice things, but when you've spent so many years having to ask for them (or avoiding asking because you know the answer is no), it feels like you're sneaking around when you act on it.

Kristin Tipping

This reads almost like a horror version of Joanna Russ’s The Little Dirty Girl, but 40ish years in advance. If you ever read The Little Dirty Girl for the podcast I’d be excited to hear your thoughts on the similarities and differences between the two.

Ben Gilbert

True Man Person sounds like a character from Frank Belknap Long’s The Man From Time like Daring Moonson or Man Live Forever.

Colm Kearns

Loving (and being deeply unsettled by) Creepy Kid Month! Can I recommend Shirley Jackson's 'The Sorcerer's Apprentice' for this or a future return to the theme?

Steve

I think Miriam is Truman Capote, and that's exactly what a visit from Capote would be like.

Beanz

There's an episode of Community where new students start repeating everything the main group says and there's nothing they can do to stop it and it's infuriating. That episode stuck with me. They only got through it by beating them at their own game but children don't give af...

Aaron La Vene

Maybe I’m crazy but is it not that “the old man that was broke” referenced by Miriam …. was her late husband who’s pension maybe was good enough for her but maybe unable to take care of both of them? And her seeing the man and getting away from him and him tipping his hat. Maybe that’s her getting away from the idea she even needs or wants a man in her life again and wants to begin living life her own way? Miriam and her shopping are representative of this? Maybe he wouldn’t let her eat all of her favorite sweets. Now she can. Etc

Ethan Cordray

Gosh, that passage Heather read from the end of the story might be one of the finest passages of prose we've ever had on the show. The way it moves through emotions from relief, to calm reflection, to a renewed dread, perfectly expressing each moment while moving on in such brief sentences...This Capote guy can really write!

John LaSala

Considering your recent exploration of "It's a Good Life" and last year with "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" (which, coincidentally was only two days off from being exactly a year earlier), I was surprised when you didn't reveal that "Miriam" was the inspirational source of the Twilight Zone episode, "Nightmare As A Child." I mean, as far as I can tell, it's not! But it's fairly similar, at least on the surface: a woman is visited by an odd little girl who is awfully forward and shares her name. Anyway, it's very worth a re-watch: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0734599/ Bonus: when I recently re-watched this episode, I was struck by how reminiscent the score was of Jerry Goldsmith's Poltergeist theme. Was Jerry remembering this old Twilight Zone episode from a two decades earlier, and taking inspiration from the creepy-little-girl theme? Nope! Turns out, music by Jerry Goldsmith! Compare: https://youtu.be/PZ_zWAGhfr8 to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uA4qj2iTX0Q&t=42s

Ravewolf

Funny how times change. We think and speak easily of the main character as if they were an ancient little old lady, but would they have even been so old by today's standards? If Miller had been living alone and evidently retired for "several years" by only age 61, then she must have retired to a quiet life alone in only her fifties. I realize that some life insurance was involved in this case, but that's hard to imagine nowadays, with or without it. These days, I see headlines about much older people going back into the workforce. Anyway, it's odd how scary this story is when it may mainly involve just a reflection of the main character's own self. She must view that inner self with an incredible level of dread for her experience of it to be like this.

Forrest Rush

I prefer Jug of Silver in this collection, but Miriam would definitely be a great Twilight Zone ep. The short story collection containing this along with The Grass Harp was a hard back I borrowed from an aunt as a teen and never returned. That back cover photo of Truman stretched out on a settee staring into the lens, well he was not my type but that gaze certainly stirred something in me way back then. Needless to say, how disappointed I was to start seeing him on Dick Cavett and Johnny Carson and hearing his voice. I adored his writing, but could never reconcile his persona with it. I do like to imagine that he used his brutal wit and sharp tongue to slay all who dared to opress him while growing up in Alabama. It definitely wasn't that way, but it's nice to imagine.

Eric - Speaker in Digressions

I think my first introduction to Truman Capote was the movie "Murder By Death," which always makes a good double feature with "Clue" (and Eileen Brennan is in both), if you don't mind cringing at some 1970s humor and Peter Sellers playing Comedy Chinese. I've never actually read anything by Capote, though, but this episode makes me much more curious--especially now that you've brought him back from the dead to tell us truths.

Jason of the K

"Life is for the living!" My view is that the child is -life-, trying to impart passion, spontaneity, and zeal into these old folk who are otherwise just drifting on auto-pilot. And we gotta talk about Chris' pronunciation of the word "chimera" with the soft ch (as in "church") versus the hard ch (as in "chemical"). Not sure if it is a British-ism (and kudos to Chris for keeping his american speech so clean after years across the pond, I find myself subconsciously imitating Rachel after just a few podcasts!) but I've always heard/said it as "Kai-mera" and 10 year old DnD players certainly can't be wrong!

Pete Williams

If you want a good snow story i recommend the Glamour of the Snow by Algernon Blackwood.

Andrew Trnacek

A short story is a natural orange? Btw an orange isn’t natural it is a deliberate hybrid between a pomelo and a mandarin. Take that Capote.

Andrew Trnacek

I want to hear a discussion between truthman capote and lying Vincent price that deserves an entire dedicated episode

Morbid Smile Art

This was a good one! Amazing reading by Heather as always.

Drix

If youre keen on more cold weather stories, maybe its time to cover The Horror Horn by E.F. Benson. It has a style of monster that I'm not sure has been really covered yet too