2024-05-01
54 分钟Rachel Cusk joins Deborah Treisman to read and discuss "The Bible" and “The Stolen Pigeons” by Marguerite Duras, which were translated from the French, by Deborah Treisman, and published in *The New Yorker* in 2006 and 2007. Cusk is a winner of the Whitbread First Novel Award and the Somerset Maugham Award, and is the author of five books of nonfiction and twelve novels, including "Arlington Park," "Outline," "Transit," "Kudos," and "Parade," which will be published in June.
This is the New Yorker fiction podcast from the New Yorker magazine.
I'm Deborah Treisman, fiction editor at the New Yorker.
Each month we invite a writer to choose a story from the magazine's archives to read and discuss.
This month we're going to hear two short pieces, the Bible and the Stolen pigeons by Marguerite Duras, which were translated from the French by me and appeared in the New Yorker in December of 2006 and April of 2007.
The stories were chosen by Rachel Cusk, who's the author of twelve novels, including the Outline trilogy and Parade, which will be published in June.
Hi, Rachel.
Thank you for joining us.
Hi, Deborah.
So when we first talked about doing this podcast, you were very interested in reading and talking about something by a french writer.
Why was that?
Completely upended my life almost three years ago and moved from England to France.
And I think that hasn't just been a complete sort of u turn in kind of personal history and sort of social feeling of belonging, but in terms of literature and language, it's been a fundamental change.
And actually being asked to make a choice from something, I suppose, roll call of the kinds of writers that I would have naturally sort of searched for that very much belonged to that sort of discarded or defunct history seemed completely strange.
And so now I mostly read in French.
It felt much more natural to find something french.
And Marguerite Duras has been very important writer for me in that process.
Yeah.
When we talked about your house, you said that she had been a lodestar for you.
In what way?
Well, I mean, the way that I acquired the level of French that I needed to be able to live here was not from going and having language classes, which I probably should have done, but from reading.