Fresh Air - Jean Smart bids farewell to ‘Hacks’

Episode Date: August 4, 2026

The fifth and final season of the HBO comedy series ‘Hacks’ is nominated for 24 Emmys, including one for Smart as best actress in a comedy series. The writers “raised the bar every single season," Smart tells guest interviewer Aarti Shahani. They talk about why the show is ending, Smart’s distant relative who narrowly escaped the Salem Witch Trials, and adopting a baby when she was in her 50s. Also, book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews the novel ‘Country People,’ by Daniel Mason. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter Follow us on Instagram Subscribe to our YouTube channel Check out the Fresh Air ArchivesSee pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

This is fresh air. I'm Terry Gross. The HBO series Hacks is nominated for 24 Emmys. That's a record-breaking number for a comedy series in a single year. It finished its fifth and final season this past spring. Our guest is the show's star, Gene Smart. She spoke with guest interviewer, Arthy Shahani. Arthy is a veteran NPR journalist, host of the podcast Art of Power, and author of the memoir, Here We Are. Here's Arthy. Jean Smart is on the cusp of making TV history. The star of the hit show Hax has been nominated again for outstanding lead actress in a comedy series. She won in that category for every previous season of Hacks. The show is about two female comedians, one at the start of her career, the other, played by Gene Smart, at the purported end of hers. While they can't stand each other at first, they are also ravenously ambitious. That is what fuels a zany journey that becomes about the creative process, chosen family, and finding love for a person whose worldview is antithetical to yours.

Today, Hacks star Gene Smart returns to fresh air to talk about her iconic role as the character Deborah Vance and also her life's work. Smart has previously won Emmys for her performances on the show's Frazier and Samantha Who. Her first claim to fame was starring in the 1980 sitcom. designing women. She's performed in dramas like Fargo, Watchman, and Mayor of East Town, and also on Broadway. She is a real unicorn in Hollywood, a mainstream female actor who has spent decades on the screen and many stories focused on women's relationships with each other, not with a man at the center. Gene Smart, welcome back to fresh air. Thank you. Happy to be here. I want to start

with one of my favorite episodes in all of TV history. And I've watched the long of TV. Yes, seriously. Chuckles the clown? You, you did it. In season five of Hacks, your character, Deborah Vance,

is preparing to do her big comeback show at Madison Square Garden. She gets it in her head that she just needs to wear this iconic, beaded white jumpsuit that was worn by her comedy hero, Carol Burnett. The problem is that the current owner is another female comedian who is a lesbian, and she and Deborah have bad blood, in part because Deborah has said some very homophobic things in the past to her.

Now Deborah is trying to butter up the jumpsuit owner to get her to sell it. The owner lives in a dream home in Montecino with her super hot younger girlfriend. They've invited Deborah to come spend the weekend. Deborah shows up with her business partner and young protege, Ava Daniels. And once they arrive, Deborah tells Ava, oh, you're going to pretend to be my lesbian lover over the weekend so we can endear ourselves to the host and get the jumpsuit. Ava, who is queer herself, is furious.

Let's hear the clip. Deborah, this is insane. I am not pretending to be a lesbian couple with you. I need that jumpsuit, please. It means a lot to me. I guess it wouldn't be too bad to spend. some time with the wife. Call me Chandler, because I want to fucking Monica. You're my girlfriend. Do not flirt with her and blow up my spot. You and I are in a committed

loving relationship. You're sleeping in the tub. I am not sleeping in the tub, okay? You know what? If you want me to do this, you got to give me $1,000. Your reaction, Gene Smart the first time you read that scene? Oh my God. It was... And it was funny because it was so clever because it was the first time in the entire series that we've seen Deborah completely at Ava's mercy and at a loss for words. She couldn't say anything to defend herself. So Ava just took full advantage and said and did all these dreadful things. Yeah, it was such a great reaversal. Oh, my God.

It was so much fun that episode for all of the reversals. birth going on. I remember watching Deborah in season two back when she was supposed to be entertainment on a lesbian cruise, and she just offended everyone there. Got put off the ship. And then by season five, your character is kissing Ava on the lips. Yeah, yeah. Anything for a jumpsuit, I guess. In addition to the fashionista mandate, what's important about this evolving relationship between Deborah and lesbians? Well, I was very pleased that, I mean, from what I read and what I heard, that a lot of our lesbian fans really enjoyed that episode didn't feel like they were.

were being catered to or pandered to or treated with this respect and that they felt that it was truthful but still sort of satisfied whatever whatever fantasies they might have had about Deborah and Eba. I just, I thought it was just written so cleverly and done so well and Paul directed it brilliantly and it was really fun. Yeah, it put me, it's like this very interesting wish fulfillment without, without. Truly being with a sudden. Well, it's such an interesting relationship. And I don't think, I can't think of any other movie or TV show that has had a relationship like this one.

It just is so nuanced and so deep and so, but also has been fraught with a lot of pain. I mean, that relationship was it was mother-daughter, it was best friend, it was enemies for a while, it was respectful co-workers. I mean, it was, you know, and Deborah had such an unhealthy relationship with her daughter. I think that filled a huge hole in her life and a massive amount of guilt that she had about her daughter. It's interesting because I was very close to both my parents. My dad was kind of my favorite person in the world. And I think I always kind of got along with men easier than women. And I could see that in Deborah,

is that she's had this gap in her life of feminine energy that Ava kind of disrupted and she thought, what is this? Who is this person? It was driving me crazy. I think you just named what was landing so deeply for me. It was that so many modern women actually have this. You know, we survive by, you know, forging alliances with men. Mm-hmm.

And now you see her thriving with this growing feminine energy. Absolutely. You and your co-star Hannah Einbinder, who plays Ava Daniels, have an interesting parallel in real life. You both at the very beginning of your careers got cast and hit. It shows about female friendships that went on for many seasons. Do you find yourself trying to mold Hannah in your image? Oh, my God. No.

She wouldn't be remotely interested in that. Yeah, no. And she's going to be so annoyed. It's like I tell her, every time I tell this next story, I always say, I'm never going to tell the story again, I promise. but can I tell it one more time? And then I, you know, it's when she was still in awe of me, which was years ago. It was shortly after we started shooting the show, and I think she, you know, really listened to my advice and everything.

But she came up to me and she said, I just have to thank you because I heard you really, really went to bat for me, you know, when I auditioned. And I said, I told the producers, you know, I thought you had to be the one. And in fact, I said that if they didn't hire you, I wasn't going to do the show. And she looked at me and she said, really? I said, no. What are you nuts? What are you crazy? And as it was coming out of my mouth, I thought, oh, Gene, I can't believe you're going to say this.

You don't even know this girl. I said, please laugh, please laugh. But of course, she did. Thank God she laughed. I just couldn't resist. You know, of all the shows that you have starred in, I've heard you talk about Fargo with the most, I know, reverence or nostalgia. And in that series, you play Floyd Gerhardt, matriarch of the Gerhardt crime family. Yes.

After her husband has a sudden stroke, the question becomes, who is going to run the family business? Let's play a scene from Fargo season two when you as Floyd Gerhardt are sitting at the dining room table with your son Dodd each jockeying for position. Let's play the clip. Sit.

Need something. This moment. How will things go in the next few weeks? We'll decide. Let me finish your grandfather. left the ashes of the Weimar Republic and came to this country to build a name for himself. He built an empire from a shoe shine box. And then, and only then, did he send for your father?

Ma, I know the story. No, you don't. Because if you did, you'd know that you are just a small part of it. That's what an empire is. It's better than any son. We're daughter. Eat. I'm not hungry.

I'm your mother. You will eat with me. Your time will come. It will. But this isn't it. And if you stand by me now, I promise you that as soon as this crisis is over,

I'll hand you your legacy. And I'll turn my thoughts to the grave. Your reaction to that clip? Oh, I'd forgotten about that scene. Yeah, that was a great scene. Noah Holly, so brilliant writer. It was one of those parts where I had the same reaction when I read the, I had a certain speech that he sent me to audition with. I had the same reaction to it that I had when I first read the pilot's script for Deborah Vance, for Hax.

Was that I just, I could hear this woman in my head. I knew exactly who she was, what made her tick. and the fact that she was named Floyd and I never asked Noah why he named her Floyd because I just came up with my own theories and I didn't want him to sort of disabuse me with that but I did ask him when we were done because I had come up with this whole backstory

of how she, her father had always wanted a boy and he was going to name him Floyd come hell or high water but he had a girl named her Floyd anyway and taught her how to be a rancher and how to ride and how to shoot how to hunt, how to be tough, how to, you know, everything that he would have taught his son, and that he named her Floyd. And so I asked Noah, finally, when our season was done, I said, why did you name her Floyd?

And he said, oh, my wife has an aunt named Floyd. I just thought it sounded cool. Oh, okay. Well, overthinking, it helped you, deliver it. Yeah, but I mean, that show... Oh, I'm sorry. Not a lot. I mean, I somewhat.

I mean, when I was doing 24, the brilliant Gregory Itson and I who had actually done a play together years before, and so it was great fun to get back together with him. He and I, he and I was playing the president, and I was playing the First Lady, and he and I came up with a little bit of a backstory about did we ever have kids, and if we did, what happened, and where are they?

And so we told one of the producers one day, And he just kind of looked at it. I was like, oh, yeah, okay, that's nice. Do your little actory thing. That's nice. Okay. Well, in playing Floyd, the matriarch mafia boss, how did you grow creatively in that role? Is that a great role?

I loved playing her. I would have loved to have played her a little longer. And it was so nice to be just rid of any kind of physical vanity. the clothing, the hair, no makeup, everything, and just be able to just do the work and not think about all the other superfluous stuff. Although I do remember, because I said to the hair gal, I said, I don't want to wear a wig.

I want to be able to grab my hair or touch it or whatever I want to do. I don't want to wear a wig. And I said, just cut my hair really short and put a brown. Oh, that hairdo was your idea? Yeah, I said put a, brown mousy rinse in it and and permit or whatever and and she did and i just remember i looked at the i almost started to cry but i went so there she is there she is yep there she is wow transcending vanity that's great yeah well it's nice because you think god the men get to

feel this way almost all the time you know they get out of the shower run their hand through their hair. Makeup artist might powder them for a second, you know, and they get to just think about the work, not like, oh, God, how come you're lighting me like that? Or, oh, God, I have to hold my stomach in, or, oh, God, this or that. You know, and it's, I've had a few roles like that, and it's so freeing. But that was, and it was, and it was, I was surrounded by such remarkable actors. I mean, I've, I mean, I've had that experience on so many shows. I've been so lucky. But there was something about that show.

I mean, every single human being on that set in front of the camera behind it was on their A game. And it was the most extraordinary experience doing Noah's script. Let's rewind back to the very beginning, by which I mean 1692. You descend from a woman. Aha, yeah. Oh, my God. We're going to go there. You descend from a woman prosecuted in the Salem witch trials.

Yeah. My eight times great grandmother. I can't believe you brought that up as I was looking in my closet. I went, what should I wear? I mean, and I didn't know if the studio was going to be cold or not. So I almost grabbed my 1692 hoodie. Oh, my God. I had my hand on it.

Wow. And it says 1692, they missed one. Because she was not hung. She was not. She was not. Tell us about her. She missed being hanged by one day. She confessed, in quotes.

And they think that she was actually very clever, and she noticed that people who confessed, it bought them some time because they wanted you to examine your soul and all this kind of simple. Because, of course, nothing back then, nothing they loved more than a repentant sinner. And people who didn't confess were hanged immediately.

But she was, what I found out about her was she was an eccentric gal, Grandma, and I think it was probably very, very easy to accuse her of being a witch. She had kind of gotten in trouble a couple of times, and she was now an older woman, and she had owned a book on fortune telling, which back then was considered very suspect. She had also gotten in trouble because she and a couple of her daughters sort of had a little cat burglary ring in Beverly, Massachusetts, which is outside of Salem. And her daughters would make friends with the maids of all the rich people in town and steal stuff for us. And also, too, I found out this was not on part of the show, which I did, which was called Who Do You Think You Are, the Gene? show. But I found out through Wikipedia and some other source that she had a lock of hair that was, quote, of another color. I'm assuming white. What other color could it be? And it was what they call an elf lock, which from what I've read is like a kind of like a dread lock where your

hair has become matted and twisted. And it was four feet seven inches. long when they arrested her. And she can't have been taller than that. Wow. And when they arrested her, they wanted to cut it, and she flipped out and said if they cut it off, she'd die. So she was an interesting person. Clearly related to you.

Certainly didn't help her cause when she did that. But when I found that out, these tears just sprang to my eyes. I just thought, I couldn't believe my eyes. I was reading, they actually let me hold original transcripts from the 1600s. And I was reading her arraignment. And I saw those, when I first saw the words, witchcraft, I just couldn't believe it. And when they brought my grandmother into the room, these young women started screaming and pretending to faint. And it was, and you could tell at first she was frightened.

But then she started to get angry, and they had to tell her to kind of calm down. But it was weird because I thought, am I having some kind of weird past life regression? Because the names were familiar to me. And I'm thinking, okay, this is really crazy. It was like right out of a scene from The Crucible, that famous play by Arthur Miller, about the trials. And then I realized that, of course, Arthur Miller, when he was writing that play, he had access to all the same history that I was being given by these historians and genealogists.

And it was just bizarre. It was just crazy. We're listening to guest interviewer Arthur Shahani's conversation with Gene Smart. Smart won Emmys for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for the first four seasons of the hit series, HACS. She's nominated again for HACC's fifth and final season. We'll hear more of their conversation

after a break, I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air. This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to the conversation guest interviewer Arthur Shahany recorded with actor Gene Smart, smart stars in the HBO series Hacks about two female comedians, played by Smart and comedian Hannah Einbinder, who form a close bond despite being at completely different stages in their lives and careers. Hacks concluded its fifth and final season this past spring, and is now nominated for 24 Emmys, breaking the record for most nominations received by a comedy series in a single year.

In its first four seasons, Smart won Emmys for outstanding lead actress in a comedy series, and she's nominated again this year. Jean Smart's first claim to fame was starring in the 1980s sitcom Designing Women. Since then, she's appeared in a number of shows, including Fargo, Watchmen, and Mayor of East Town, and she's performed on Broadway. You met the love of your life, Richard Gilliland, on the set of designing women. Yes. And I want to ask about him first.

How did you know that Richard was the one? It was just an instant thing. It really was. It was just instant. The day we met, we were never apart after that. And he just, I mean, I don't know. I mean, nobody made me laugh the way he did. He was so warm and so easy to talk to and so funny.

And I just, I remember I walked into this building over at Warner Brothers. We were getting ready to do a table read of episode five. And the show had never aired yet. We weren't on the air yet. And we were shooting the fifth episode. and I looked up the stairwell and I saw this guy talking to somebody. And I recognized him. I'd seen him on television. I didn't know what was name.

But I thought, I've seen that guy before. But I just had these great little smile lines. And he just looked so. And I thought, oh, I wonder if he's here to be on Arshell? Because there were other productions in the building. And yeah, there he was. And so I walked in the room and there he was sitting across from me. And yeah, it was just.

instant. And I started inviting him into my trailer to play, do crossword puzzles. And then he invited me to see a play that he was in, which was pretty bad, but he was absolutely hysterical in it. And I went about 12 times. You guys were married for 35 years, which seems like a very rare thing in Hollywood. It was half my life. Yeah. How'd you manage? How'd you manage to stay married together for that long? Well, yeah, I mean, I don't know if the statistics, I don't know what the statistics are compared to other professions. I don't think they're probably drastically different.

But I do think that, at least for actors, you're constantly meeting attractive, interesting people and different people all the time. All the time you're exposed to different people. And sometimes you're out of town working with these attractive, attractive, interesting people who are all kind of at their most attractive and interesting because they're working. And so that can be, of course, very hard on a marriage. But like I said, we had similar values.

We'd both been married before. And again, I mean, it's just, I don't know. It's the, nobody made me laugh like him. his career as I understand it took a bit of a backseat so that the family could focus on your career was that an easy or difficult decision no it was difficult it wasn't really a decision it kind of evolved that way and it was it didn't it um it was difficult it was hard on him um which i understand and, you know, he, both of us, you know, grew up in the 50s with traditional family values and traditional role models.

So that was difficult. And we actually separated for a year. And that was excruciating, but it was also probably ended up being a good thing because I really, I think I really understood what wedding vows meant. I was very humbled with the fact that Richard did not ever give up on us and I had and I felt

I feel bad about that that I put him through that. But he always believed that somehow we'd get back together and and we did. I think that that next Christmas after we got back together we were having a Christmas party

and a friend of ours was there who had recently been ordained so he could marry some other friends of ours and I said, hey, Greg's here. Let's, let's renew our vows. He said, oh, great. And so we hadn't told anybody. It was just sort of a spur of the moment thing.

And so my son, who was about eight, nine, then he and his buddy, I said, set up some chairs, you know. And so he started, he and his friends were sitting up rows of chairs. And people thought, oh, God, Gina Richard, you're going to put on a little show or something, you know. I don't know what they thought. and I was wearing, I was just wearing a pair of black pants and a leopard print sweater. And he had on a Hawaiian shirt and jeans. And I said, well, this won't do, you know, so I went and I got some fake flowers and I put them in my hair. And he went and got his tuxedo jacket and put it on over his Hawaiian shirt.

I'm sure he looks ridiculous. And we just said, what was? in our hearts and how grateful we were to be back together. It was great. One more question about your personal life. You gave birth to your first child when you were 37, 38, what they call the advanced maternal age. 38, yes. And then at age 57, you adopted a baby? Yes. Explain that. Well, we knew two cars. couples who had adopted babies from China and just, and I had wanted to have another child, but it just wasn't in the cards and I had a miscarriage and that was really painful. And I just thought, I really wanted another baby. And so we started talking about it and Richard would always say, oh, no, no, I think we're too old or too old. And by the time we finally did, we finally do. We probably were.

It took so many years to talk him into it. And at one point, we were actually going to start the paperwork, but then my father was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, and I just couldn't deal with it. So I kind of put it on the back burner for a while. But then we started again. But unfortunately, that was right when China was hosting the Olympics, I believe, and everything just slowed down to us, nails pace.

So it took about five years. once we started doing the paperwork. And the paperwork was overwhelming. It was just endless. It was just endless. It was worth it. But it took a long, a long time. But, you know, at that age, I felt like I peaked in my 50s.

I felt like I could do anything. And it was just a thrill. And it was so cool because when they place that baby in your arms, you realize in that split second that, it doesn't matter that you gave birth to that child or not it's like it's just it was just instant it's like that just thing of this I'm going to love you and protect you you know for the rest of my life and it was it was just really cool

but it was it was a little a little um it was kind of dismayed that so many of our friends most of them really seemed to disapprove when I told them what we were going to do um and uh but when we brought the baby me home. All my girlfriends are just so jealous. They're like, my God, oh my God. And all the husbands were like, thanks a lot, Richard. Jesus, she doesn't stop talking about this.

My guest is actor Gene Smart. She has won seven Emmys, including four for playing the comedian Deborah Vance on Hacks. She's nominated again this year for outstanding lead actress in a comedy series for the show's fifth and final season. More after the break. This is fresh air. This is Fresh Air. I'm Arthy Shahani, back with actor Gene Smart. She stars in the critically acclaimed show HACS. She's won four Emmys for her role and has been nominated again this year for outstanding lead actress in a comedy series. Her other shows include Designing Women, Frazier, Fargo, and Mayor of East Town. Okay, this last part of our conversation is a spoiler for anyone who has not seen Hax Season 5. So you have officially been warned. In the last episode of the season, Deborah Vance and her young sidekick, Ava Daniels, are in Paris. Deborah has been diagnosed with cancer, is refusing treatment, and wants to go out on her own terms.

So Paris is supposed to be their last rendezvous before Deborah checks herself into a European Center for Assisted Suicide. In this scene, they are at the train station, waiting for their train eating. Let's hear the clip. So, um, what are you going to ask if you get to, you know, meet your maker? My plastic surgeon? Aw. No, really. In 1980, Burt Reynolds called me, and I called him back, but he never returned.

What was that about? That's what you want to know. I pretty much have everything else figured out. In fact, I think he or she or, you know, they, them, might have some. questions for me, actual. They, them. Okay. Non-binary god.

Love. Well, I meant more of an energy. I don't think there's gonna be a gender fluid barista waiting for me at the Pearl Gate. It's too bad. I love a macho when I get there. Hey, are you doing? Come with that?

Yeah, yeah, go for it. Wow. Guess the best part of dying for a person with disordered eating is having a second croissant. Actually, the best part of dying is not having a second croissant. save receipts because you know you will never get audited again. Actually, I think the best part of dying is knowing how pissed people are going to be when they realize how much money you left your dogs.

But the worst part of dying is that I don't get to see how my corgues decide to spend that $550,000. What do you think of that scene? Yeah, that was a great scene. Bert Ronald. You know, it was so, it was very much in character. you know, for Deborah to make that decision to do that. You know, you were mentioning earlier you think that Deborah's character really unfolds over the course of the series.

And how would you summarize what that evolution is? I think she just becomes so much more relaxed, you know. She's made peace with her daughter, even though it was kind of an unpleasant piece in the sense that she realized she was never going to be able to repair. her that relationship, that it was never going to be what it should have been. And that's a hole that Ava fills to a certain extent. So she's kind of been making peace with people, even before she realized that she was sick. It's like she's relaxing in her life a little bit, and she's allowing, she's allowing Ava to sort of

sometimes take control or give her some advice and and when she stands up to to Bob Lipka played by the wonderful Tony Goldwin that's

a huge thing for her very freeing very freeing and she's thinking screw it I don't need Madison Square Garden I don't need the money from the ticket good sales, I just want to talk in front of people who want to hear me talk. And so just

get me at stage in the park, let anybody who wants to come, come. You know, you never, she wouldn't have done that season one or two. Is Deborah Vance and Hacks a creative challenge for you, or more like the easy reward after a lifetime of challenges? There weren't things like I didn't, you know, because there was a slight accent involved with Floyd, which adds, you know, another layer that you need to work through so you can get to, you can just stop thinking about it and let it just come naturally. That's another sort of added challenge. But they were both emotionally demanding, but in very different ways, you know. They were similar in the way, in the sense that they both were kind of held a lot of their feelings in,

you know. But the thing about Deborah was it's just so fun to make people laugh and just to see how people responded to the show was such a, such a thrill. And she got to be just more and more three-dimensional, more and more human and less guarded as time went by, which was really nice. You know, Gene, you are kind of making a case for me, all right? I want to have this conversation. I wanted to have this conversation with you for a little bit of a hidden agenda, okay. Okay. Which is that, yes, you all say hacks is over. Season five was the last season. But I think it's the wrong call. I don't get why.

Well, it was written as a five-year show from day one. They had every season already in their heads, written in their heads, if not already written. from years before they even met me. That's how they sold it. That's how they pitched it to me. That's how they pitched it to the network. They felt that it ended in an appropriate way. Of course, they had no way of knowing

how big the show was going to become. And I felt that I was ready to move on from the character. So it all kind of gelled nicely. I know you're okay with it being over, but just if I'm, one more question I think about is, how are you feeling now that you are a little bit away from the filming of it? Well, I'm not missing getting up at 4 in the morning and wearing high heels all day. I don't know if you notice, but the heels got shorter and shorter as the season's one. I wore some killer heels season one that I couldn't wear today. The thing is, though, unlike our darling crew,

who had to kind of rip off the band-aid. For us in the cast, particularly Hannah and I, we have an entire award season coming up. So we're going to still be living with the show, talking about the show, doing interviews about the show, going to ceremonies and things through next February. So after that, it might feel a little more real. Well, Gene Smart, thanks for joining us.

Thank you so much. Jean Smart spoke with guest interviewer Arthy Shahani. The fifth and final season of Hacks is nominated for 24 Emmys, including one for Smart for Best Actress in a Comedy Series. Arthy is a veteran NPR journalist, host of the podcast Art of Power, and author of The Memoir, Here We Are. Coming up, Marine Corrigan reviews a new novel by Daniel Mason, who she says has a magic touch as a writer.

This is Fresh Air. This is fresh air. Many writers hold down day jobs to pay the bills, but Daniel Mason is that rare literary creature. His 2020 short story collection was a finalist for the Pulitzer, and his 2023 historical fiction was a finalist for the National Book Critic Circle Award. Simultaneously, Mason has maintained a second career

as a psychiatry professor at Stanford. Our book critic, Marie O'Rourgan, says, That academic background stands him in good stead for his latest novel, Country People. Here's Marines Review. Shakespeare was wise to the fact that most folks prefer lighter entertainments in the summer. Hence, a midsummer night's dream, that confection of a play in which rustics and royals and meddlesome fairies collide in a forest. Country People by Daniel Mason is a satisfying spin on the barb's bubble of an immutable. For anyone slow to catch on, Mason even ends his novel with an elementary school performance of a midsummer night's dream.

The wanderers into a Vermont forest here are not exactly royals. But you might say they're the kind of people Jefferson had in mind when he proposed that the United States be governed, not by an inherited aristocracy, but by an aristocracy of the intellect. Or perhaps not. Kate is a hot shot, a distinguished scholar of Blake and Milton. Currently teaching in California, she's been offered a one-year visiting professorship at a college in Vermont. Miles, her husband, has been working, sort of, on his dissertation for the past 14 years, something to do with Russian folklore. To be fair, though, Miles, an eternal graduate student, does provide caretaking to the couple's two young children,

as well as for Kate, who's been diagnosed with MS. He also tends to their dog, Giuseppe, who's possessed, much like Miles himself, of a fairly useless skill. Giuseppe has been bred to hunt truffles. Energized by the thought of a year in their new place, the family drives cross-country. arriving at a sylvan wood where they'll live, suspiciously rent-free, in the house of a faculty member on sabbatical. The digressive plot of country people contains golden threads of academic force. To my taste, passages like this one, contrasting Kate and Miles' student evaluations, are some of the funniest in the novel.

Our omniscient narrator tells us that Kate taught popular courses, which according to her teaching evaluations were super fun and interesting, probably not useful for a job, but still mind-blowing. The narrator continues to fill us in. Over the past decade, watching their course enrollments dwindle, Kate's colleagues had been forced to pander, changing English 7, Shakespeare, to Sex in Shakespeare, English 28, Middle March, to learning programming from Middle March, a novel. But Kate was hardcore. Again, according to our narrator, the reviews for the courses Miles taught as a teaching assistant described him as nice, if sometimes hard to follow, and said that he got caught up in arcane topics. so that a lecture on Torgenyev would somehow end in Ecuador. Once, a student wrote that Miles was disheveled, not in a gross way, in a nice way. Another wrote, My friend had a crush on him, which we thought was funny.

As the novel settles into Vermont, its humor shifts from the dry wit variety to the wacky excess of tall tales. Miles is jazz to get to to know some actual rural folk, since his dissertation, after all, involves peasants. The locals he talks to on nature trails and in the waiting room of the emergency clinic espouse beliefs that make the witches and dragons of Russian folklore seem colorless by comparison. Flat earth theories and hollow earth theories abound, along with the conviction that the area is studded with mass subterranean super rat lines, a veritable vermin expressway, one of which is said to run under the house Miles and his family now occupy. And seductive fairies spring up in the shape of a children's

ski coach and an erotically charged drama teacher who entices Miles into helping her stage an unbaudlerized version of a midsummer night's dream. to inevitably quote Puck's immortal line, Lord what fools these mortals be. Thanks to Mason's own magic touch as a writer, country people mostly charms rather than condescends. Sometimes his jokes do go on for too long, like the footnote sprawling over three pages,

listing adults who attended the school play. And sometimes, much like the hollow early, I was conscious of the absence of a solid core to this novel. But then I reminded myself that silliness for its own sake is an underrated virtue in art, and there's silliness a plenty in country people to keep readers entertained. Marine Corrigan is a professor of literature at Georgetown University. She reviewed country people by Daniel Mason. Tomorrow on fresh air, Donald Trump took in about

$2.2 billion last year while serving as president. New York Times journalist Eric Lipton will talk about his Pulitzer Prize winning investigations into Trump's profits and related conflicts of interest. Last month, Lipton was one of the Times reporters subpoenaed by the Justice Department in connection with reporting about Air Force One. I hope you'll join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air. Fresh Air's executive producer is Sam Brigger. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our engineers today are Charlie Khyr and Adam Stanishefsky.

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