Opening Lines

John Yorke explores The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, novelist and veteran of the Vietnam War. Published in 1990 it’s a collection of interlinked stories about a platoon of American soldiers fighting an invisible enemy in the booby-trapped jungles of Vietnam.
But Tim O’Brien is not telling a straightforward factual war story, he’s also reflecting on the nature of experience and memory, and the power of storytelling. The title story describes not just the physical objects the soldiers carried but the profound emotional burden of guilt, trauma and grief.
The narrator of the stories is called Tim O’Brien, just like the author, but he is a fictional character. One of the book’s main themes is the relationship between truth and fiction, and O'Brien frequently blurs the distinction between the two, suggesting that a fictional story may have more emotional truth than a strictly factual one.
The Things They Carried is both a vividly portrayed collection of stories about the often surreal nature of the Vietnam war, and a meditation on the memories of those who fought in it. It reveals that the heaviest burdens soldiers carry are often the invisible ones, and that stories can be a way of coming to terms with those burdens after the fighting has ended.
John Yorke has worked in television and radio for over 30 years and shares his experience as he unpacks the themes and impact of the books, plays and stories dramatised in BBC Radio 4’s Sunday Drama series. As former Head of Channel Four Drama and Controller of BBC Drama Production he has worked on some of the most popular shows in Britain - from EastEnders to The Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless. He created the BBC Writers Academy and trained a generation of screenwriters - now with thousands of hours of television to their names. His acclaimed books Into the Woods and Trip to the Moon explore the structure and power of narrative, and he writes, teaches and consults on all forms of storytelling, including many podcasts for R4.
The Things They Carried is published by 4th Estate.
Recording of Tim O’Brien from an interview for The National Endowment for the Arts on 9 November, 2011.
Contributor:
Dr Alex Vernon, ME and Ima Graves Peace Distinguished Professor of English at Hendrix College, Arkansas. Author of Peace Is A Shy Thing, a literary biography of Tim O’Brien.
Researcher: Henry Tydeman
Production Coordinator: Dawn Williams
Sound: Iain Hunter
Producer: Kate McAll
Executive Producer: Caroline Raphael
A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

Midnight Cowboy, a 1965 novel by the American writer James Leo Herlihy, is best known to most for its film adaptation, starring Jon Voight as Joe Buck – a naïve dreamer from Texas - and Dustin Hoffman as Enrico "Ratso" Rizzo, a New York street pickpocket.
The novel tells the story of Joe Buck’s childhood in Texas, provides context for his naivety and emotional illiteracy, and explains what drives him to move to New York in his 20s, to seek his fortune providing sexual services to rich frustrated women.
Directed by John Schlesinger, the 1969 movie version focuses less on Joe’s early life – and more on the relationship between Joe and Ratso in New York. The film won best picture at the Oscars the following year. The novel, which didn’t achieve mainstream success, fell out of print in the shadow of the film.
But, as John Yorke explains, the story of Midnight Cowboy, however simple, was groundbreaking in the mid 1960s: bringing characters at the margins of society to the centre, and dealing with themes of sexuality and sexual frankness in a powerful new way.
John also explores how Herlihy connects the story with the political uncertainty of 1960s America, and looks at what drove him to write the book.
John Yorke has worked in television and radio for over 30 years and shares his experience as he unpacks the themes and impact of the books, plays and stories dramatised in BBC Radio 4’s Sunday Drama series. As former Head of Channel Four Drama and Controller of BBC Drama Production he has worked on some of the most popular shows in Britain; from EastEnders to The Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless. He created the BBC Writers Academy and trained a generation of screenwriters, now with thousands of hours of television to their names. His acclaimed books Into the Woods and Trip to the Moon explore the structure and power of narrative, and he writes, teaches and consults on all forms of storytelling, including many podcasts for Radio 4.
Contributors:
James Leo Herlihy, from Studs Terkel WFMT radio archive, broadcast 1969.
Howard Schuman, from Open Book, BBC Radio 4, 10 August 2003.
Readings by William Hootkins for Open Book, BBC Radio 4, 10 August 2003.
Excerpts from Midnight Cowboy by James Leo Herlihy, Simon & Schuster, Inc, 1965.
Excerpts from John Schlesinger's 1969 film adaption of Midnight Cowboy.
Researcher: Henry Tydeman
Sound: Iain Hunter
Producer: Jack Soper
Executive Producer: Sara Davies
Production Hub Coordinator: Dawn Williams
A Pier production for BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds

For the 100th title to be explored in Opening Lines, John Yorke picks up the 1988 novel Libra by the heavyweight American writer, Don DeLillo.
In this second episode considering the book, he focuses in on the endless conspiracies that surround its central subject - the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Does the fact that DeLillo chooses to feed the conspiracy industry by inserting a second shooter taking aim at Kennedy from the mythic grassy knoll matter, given that this is a work of fiction? Or does DeLillo present a world governed as much by chance and co-incidence as it is by conspiracy?
To help him answer those questions, John speaks with David Aaronovitch, author of Voodoo Histories: How Conspiracy Theory Has Shaped Modern History; Pullitzer Prize-winning author and journalist Jennifer Egan; and Professor Jesse Kavadlo, president of the Don DeLillo Society.
John Yorke has worked in television and radio for over 30 years and shares his experience as he unpacks the themes of the books, plays and stories dramatised in BBC Radio 4’s Sunday Drama series. As former Head of Channel Four Drama and Controller of BBC Drama Production he has worked on some of the most popular shows in Britain - from EastEnders to The Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless. He created the BBC Writers Academy and trained a generation of screenwriters - now with thousands of hours of television to their names. His acclaimed books Into the Woods and Trip to the Moon explore the structure and power of narrative, and he writes, teaches and consults on all forms of storytelling, including many podcasts for R4.
Libra by Don de Lillo is the 100th title covered by Opening Lines. The series began in January 2023 with Lady Chatterly’s Lover. Since then John Yorke has explored novels from Anna Karenina to Gone with the Wind, plays from Shakespeare to Eugene O’Neill and ground-breaking non-fiction like John Hersey’s Hiroshima. Each episode provides background, context and some expert discussion in advance of Radio 4’s Sunday afternoon drama, and all 100 titles can be heard on BBC Sounds.
Contributors: Pullitzer Prize winning author Jennifer Egan, David Aaronovitch & Professor Jesse Kavadlo
Sound: Sean Kerwin
Readings: Eric Stroud
Researcher: Henry Tydeman
Production Hub Coordinator: Dawn Williams
Producer: Geoff Bird
Executive Producer: Sara Davies

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

For the 100th title to be explored in Opening Lines, John Yorke picks up the 1998 novel Libra by the heavyweight American writer, Don DeLillo. The book centres around the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the event DeLillo says marked ‘a turning point in consciousness’ for Americans. He presents a fragmented portrait of the country at the height of the Cold War, following the misfortunes of disaffected loner Lee Harvey Oswald - as well as the large cast of rogue operators planning to use him to bring the President down.
In the first of two-parts, John looks to find what makes this widely acclaimed novel stand out from the hundreds of other books and films spawned by the world-shaking events in Dealey Plaza back in November 1963. He speaks with, among others, Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Jennifer Egan, a self-proclaimed DeLillo acolyte, who says of Libra that the “sense of the chaos and the noise of contemporary life invading the narrative I was very drawn to, and, you know, have tried to emulate, frankly.”
John Yorke has worked in television and radio for over 30 years and shares his experience as he unpacks the themes of the books, plays and stories dramatised in BBC Radio 4’s Sunday Drama series. As former Head of Channel Four Drama and Controller of BBC Drama Production he has worked on some of the most popular shows in Britain - from EastEnders to The Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless. He created the BBC Writers Academy and trained a generation of screenwriters - now with thousands of hours of television to their names. His acclaimed books Into the Woods and Trip to the Moon explore the structure and power of narrative, and he writes, teaches and consults on all forms of storytelling, including many podcasts for R4.
Libra by Don de Lillo is the 100th title covered by Opening Lines. The series began in January 2023 with Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Since then John Yorke has explored novels from Anna Karenina to Gone with the Wind, plays from Shakespeare to Eugene O’Neill and ground-breaking non-fiction like John Hersey’s Hiroshima. Each episode provides background, context and some expert discussion in advance of Radio 4’s Sunday afternoon drama, and all 100 titles can be heard on BBC Sounds.
Contributors: Pullitzer Prize winning author Jennifer Egan & Professor Jesse Kavadlo.
Sound:
Researcher: Henry Tydeman
Production Hub Coordinator: Dawn Williams
Producer: Geoff Bird
Executive Producer: Sara Davies

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

Alice Childress’s first major work is set in a world that she knew very well both as a performer and a writer – the theatre. It’s 1957 and rehearsals are beginning for a new Broadway production – Chaos In Belleville – an anti-lynching play written by a white playwright. Veteran Black actor Wiletta Mayer is to star in the play, but after years of compromise she finally finds herself unable to go along with the patronising and insensitive portrayal of Black characters that she’s experienced throughout her career. Her consequent clash with the white director opens up deep faultlines throughout the cast and the result is chaos, not in Belleville, but on Broadway.
John Yorke has worked in television and radio for over 30 years and shares his experience as he unpacks the themes and impact of the books, plays and stories dramatised in BBC Radio 4’s Sunday Drama series. As former Head of Channel Four Drama and Controller of BBC Drama Production he has worked on some of the most popular shows in Britain - from EastEnders to The Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless. He created the BBC Writers Academy and trained a generation of screenwriters - now with thousands of hours of television to their names. His acclaimed books Into the Woods and Trip to the Moon explore the structure and power of narrative, and he writes, teaches and consults on all forms of storytelling, including many podcasts for R4.
Valerie Curtis Newton is Head of Directing and Playwriting at the University of Washington School of Drama. She is also the Founding Artistic Director for The Hansberry Project, a professional African American theatre lab. Her many directing credits include two productions of Trouble In Mind.
Alice Childress archive clip taken from American Theatre Wing’s documentary series ‘Working in the Theatre’ – April 1987
Reader: Samantha Dakin
Music: Torquil MacLeod
Researcher: Henry Tydeman
Production Hub Coordinator: Dawn Williams
Sound: Sean Kerwin
Producer: Torquil MacLeod
Executive Producer: Sara Davies
A Pier production for BBC Radio 4