When Edith Wharton published The Glimpses of the Moon in 1922, she couldn’t have had any idea how well it would translate to the influencer era a century later. That said, she also didn’t know what influencers are. Writer and actor Tavi Gevinson and her partner Sam Freilich adapted Wharton’s novel for the modern age in a new audio series from Audible.
Glimpses of the Moon follows a social-climbing influencer, Susy (Gevinson), and a down-on-his-luck writer, Nick ( Adam DiMarco ), who scheme up a wedding for money and clout. Gevinson tapped Succession ’s J. Smith Cameron to narrate, and rounded out the cast with Chloe Fineman , Cristin Milioti, Gina Gershon, and The New Yorker ’s Jia Tolentino and Naomi Fry .
Gevinson was keen to integrate the added complications of social media into Wharton’s themes of class and marriage. “It is about class and the performance built into a marriage or a romantic relationship, and it made us think a lot about the performance built into social media,” she says. The idea struck Freilich around five years ago when he first read Wharton’s novel.
“[He] thought it felt so modern,” Gevinson says. “We obviously took a lot of liberties, but Edith Wharton is so great at somehow reading these characters and loving them at the same time.” The duo was also interested in diving into Wharton beyond The Age of Innocence and House of Mirth .
While Gevinson declares The Glimpses of the Moon an overlooked text, she notes that it has a ri.