I’m not quite sure why I’m starting at the beginning of the New Yorker Fiction Podcast. Completist? Maybe. Cause one is supposed to start from the beginning? Perhaps. Anyhow, these podcasts are about three years old now, and the stories are even older. They select stories from the New Yorker archives. You can still get the MP3s from the New Yorker web site. The general format is a New Yorker writer selects and reads a story of another New Yorker writer, and then discusses the story with Deborah Triesman, the fiction editor of the magazine. It’s a two person book club of intelligentsia.
Reunions
Richard Ford reads John Cheever’s Reunion
. Charlie, a young man, seeks out his father, divorced from his mother for three years, and who he doesn’t know very well. It’s a little bit of idolization. He wants a photograph to remember the meeting. They meet for lunch. But why his parents are divorced becomes apparent, and Charlie becomes disillusioned with he father. It’s a very poignant story, but not in a maudlin make you cry kind of way. More in a made me irritable way. On behalf of Charlie. I get the impression that Charlie isn’t irritated though. That’s okay, I’ll do it on his behalf.
Download (link is to New Yorker hosted MP3 and was valid as of the time of posting)
The Dating Game
Junot Díaz reads his own story, How to Date a Brown Girl (Black Girl, White Girl, or Halfie)
, though the selection was picked and discussed by Edwidge Danticat. The reading comes from an older C.D. of New Yorker fiction. I’m not quite sure what I think of this story. The style doesn’t bother me; it’s told as instructions from one person to another about how to date girls. As Danticat notes in their discussion, it’s a boy story (as opposed to a girl story), and it’s reflective more of a young man’s hopes rather than reality. The race, class, and sexual politics in it are very different than what I grew up with. I never even considered inviting someone over when my parents were gone in order to hopefully get some. But I was shyer and less bold than the narrator of this story. Interesting, but inconclusive.
Download (link is to New Yorker hosted MP3 and was valid as of the time of posting)
