Garrison Keillor: It is summer and Edith Wharton and her husband Teddy arrive in Lenox, Massachusetts, at their enormous mansion which they call a summer cottage. Teddy goes off to shoot small animals while Edith goes to her study to work on her novel about a determined young woman trying to make her way in New York society.
Suddenly, inspired, she writes at high speed a whole new chapter about a pig whose best friend is a spider although it has nothing to do with the determined young woman, and then, still inspired, she waxes the kitchen floor and beats the rugs and whips up a chocolate cake.
Rain falls on the country house and Mr. Wharton comes in from hunting and takes off his boots. Edith looks at his rifle leaning against the wall. How easy it would be to blow him away once and for all. What a bore he is. What a flathead. But she doesn't know how to get the gun off safety.
Night falls as guests arrive at the mansion for dinner. Novelists and businessmen mingle on the terrace, discussing modernism and real estate prices and looking at each other with barely disguised contempt, while Edith thinks longingly of her lover Morton Fullerton far away in France.
The guests gone, Edith Wharton walks in her moonlit garden, pondering her novel about the determined young woman. What to do about the pig? Maybe she could send the determined woman on a trip through the galaxies accompanied by gentle warriors and a furry thing and a frog. But it's late. Time to turn out the lights. Thank goodness, Teddy is fast asleep.