Muriel Spark wrote it in months while Nixon was still in office. Fifty-two years later, Melanie and Ed test whether the joke still lands.

Spark's 90-page novella, subtitled "A Modern Morality Tale," relocates Watergate to a Benedictine convent in Cheshire. The newly elected Abbess Alexandra has bugged the grounds, rigged her election, and reads Yeats and Milton over dinner while her sisters eat dog food. Her working theory is that the world wants a myth and facts don't matter. A stolen thimble doubles as the Watergate burglary; Sister Gertrude, the Kissinger figure, phones in advice from Peru while negotiating between cannibals and vegetarians. Melanie carries Alexandra's strategy forward into 2026 without much trouble; Ed flags the tonal divergence — Spark's abbess is composed and unbothered, where Nixon was paranoid and raving at portraits. The honest verdict is mixed: dry, esoteric, of its time. Glenda Jackson played Alexandra in Michael Lindsay-Hogg's 1977 film adaptation Nasty Habits.

Related episodes:
- Black Narcissus (1947) — https://whothehellarewe.libsyn.com/website/10th-anniversary
- Lilies of the Field (1963) — https://whothehellarewe.libsyn.com/website/lilies-of-the-field

Full discussion notes and the WTHAW catalog: https://melanieanded.substack.com

Who the Hell Are We? is hosted by novelists Melanie Benjamin and Edward Kelsey Moore. New episodes roughly monthly.

Lilies of the Field is a 1963 American comedy-drama film directed and produced by Ralph Nelson.

Praised by critics, Lilies of the Field earned five Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Supporting Actress for Skala. Poitier won the Academy Award for Best Actor, becoming the first Black actor to win in a leading role.

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📖 melanieanded.substack.com

It's book review week, Melanie and Ed discuss Prodigal Summer (2000) by author Barbara Kingsolver.

Also, Melanie explains why it has been her best sports weekend EVER.

More at melanieanded.substack.com or email melanded@whothehellarewe.com

Our hosts seem to have hit the eggnog early as they discuss The Shop Around the Corner, a 1940 American romantic comedy-drama film produced and directed by Ernst Lubitsch starring Margaret Sullavan, James Stewart, Frank Morgan, and Joseph Schildkraut.

More at melanieanded.substack.com or email melanded@whothehellarewe.com

Robert Mitchum's preacher in The Night of the Hunter was inspired by real murders that also shaped Jayne Anne Phillips's novel Quiet Dell.

Ed and Melanie trace the link between book and film, exploring how truth becomes myth and how art transforms tragedy.
More at melanieanded.substack.com or email melanded@whothehellarewe.com .

Robert Mitchum's sinister preacher, Charles Laughton's only directorial effort, and one of cinema's most haunting thrillers — The Night of the Hunter (1955) went unappreciated in its day. Ed and Melanie explore its striking imagery, Shelley Winters' fate, and Lillian Gish's quiet strength.

More at melanieanded.substack.com

It's Book Club week as Ed and Melanie take on Laughing Gas (1936) by P. G. Wodehouse. A book with aristocrats colliding with Hollywood child stars in a screwball farce of body-swapping and mischief.

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📖 melanieanded.substack.com

Melanie and Ed discuss Maurice (1987), the Merchant Ivory adaptation of E.M. Forster's novel of forbidden love. They explore the film's emotional tone, literary legacy, and what it meant to tell this story in 1987.

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🔗 melanieanded.substack.com
🌀 Originally released: July 8th, 2023