2023-11-01
1 小时 19 分钟The author joins Deborah Treisman live at the Hot Docs podcast festival to read and discuss the story “Varieties of Exile,” which was published in a 1976 issue of The New Yorker.
This is the New Yorker fiction podcast from the New Yorker magazine.
I'm Deborah Driesman, 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 varieties of exile by Mavis Galant, which appeared in the New Yorker in January of 1976.
I was 19 and for the third time in a year, engaged to be married.
What I craved at this point was not love or romance or a life added to mine, but conversation, which was harder to find.
The story was chosen by Margaret Atwood, who's the author of more than 40 books of poetry and fiction, including the novels the Handmaid's Tale and the testaments and the story collection Old Babes in the Wood, which was published earlier this year.
This is the first episode of the New Yorker Fiction podcast to be recorded in front of a live audience at the Hot Talks podcast Festival in Toronto on October 21, 2023.
Thank you, Margaret, for doing this.
You are a longtime admirer of Mavis Gallant's work and of her herself.
And we actually, ten years ago, taped a podcast of a different story by Mavis Galant.
How would you sum up what she did in fiction, Mavis?
Well, first of all, she was a tough old bird, and she was very fond of Graham.
He actually interviewed her quite a long time ago.
He did it for CBC Radio.
And I think they got on like a house on fire, because although they weren't quite the same generation, they were close.
They both had pretty strong connections with World War Two.
So I think they had a lot in common and a lot to talk about, and they enjoyed a good drink.
Or two just to go.
This is Graham Gibson, your husband.