"Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter"

[fiefoe]

The foreign: sour cherries stuffed with bacon as appetizer; the familiar: what Aunt Julia considered memorable reads - "The Sheik" and "Son of the Sheik" (ok, I didn't know that), by 'a certain E. M. Hull'.

The even numbered chapters are episodes from the fictional radio soap opera, (yes, the young narrator makes attempts at writing Borgesian stories,) and the plots are rather shocking to someone who doesn't keep up with this genre:
__ a doctor finds out at his niece's wedding that she was pregnant by her champion-surfer brother
__ a young Jehovah's Witness is about to castrate himself to prove his innocence in front of a respectable judge

• This was a privileged occasion for putting to the test that moral rule that... had it that it was better to understand men than to judge them. He .. noted in himself, rather... an invincible benevolence, mingled with tenderness and pity.
  
• Art and money are mortal enemies, like pigs and daisies.