“If the Jazz Age had Fitzgerald and Waugh, the era of coke and Wayfarers had Ellis and Tartt. And now it has Anolik.”
Once Upon A Time… at Bennington College
Season 2 of the Once Upon A Time… Podcast Franchise
From C13Originals (A Division of Cadence13) & Lili Anolik
Release Date -- September 29, 2021
ABOUT THE PODCAST
It’s the groves of academe: Bennington College, the wildest and wickedest school in America. In the last great decade: the 1980s. Bennington class of ’86, class of Bret Easton Ellis, future writer of American Psycho and co-leader of the literary Brat Pack; Jonathan Lethem, future writer of Motherless Brooklyn and MacArthur Fellow; and Donna Tartt, future writer of The Secret History and Pulitzer Prize winner. All three are, at various times, infatuated and disappointed with one another, their friendships stimulated and fueled by rivalry as much as affection. And all three will mythologize Bennington in their fiction—fiction that, as we’ll discover, isn’t always fiction, is often fact—and thereby become myths themselves.
From the Peabody-nominated C13Originals studios and Vanity Fair's Lili Anolik, comes the latest installment in the “Once Upon a Time…” franchise, Once Upon a Time… at Bennington College. This is a tale of money, murder, madness, and—of course—genius. This is, too, a multi-dimensional expose: the secret history of The Secret History revealed; the secret history of three of the greatest writers of Generation X revealed; and the secret history of Generation X itself revealed.
To Supplement the podcast:
Summer Issue 2019
Esquire
The Secret Oral History of Bennington: The 1980s' Most Decadent College
This piece is the seed out of which Once Upon a Time… at Bennington College grew. It contains many photos of our Bennington players—visuals, i.e., pictures of young Bret, Donna, and Jonathan, to go along with the audio, i.e., my podcast.
“A 14-part podcast exploring the secret, messy, sexy, arty, druggy 1980s collegiate lives of the soon-to-be-famous novelists Donna Tartt, Jonathan Lethem and Bret Easton Ellis: Once Upon a Time... at Bennington College. Gen X Bloomsbury, essentially.”
“Did a podcast about Donna Tartt go too far? Once Upon a Time... at Bennington College has changed the way I’ll read The Secret History forever.”
“Anolik goes beyond dishing out dirty details, [the podcast] is a look at the aspirations and values of the Gen X-ers who defined 1980s and 1990s literary culture.”
“Gripping.”
“In these riveting episodes, Anolik speaks with dozens of alums to understand how Bennington allowed these young writers to mythologize their collegiate experience — and mythologize themselves.”
“Through interviews with classmates, professors, and even Ellis and Lethem themselves, [Anolik] creates a narrative that’s juicier and more entertaining than any fan fiction the publishing world could come up with.”
