2021-07-02
1 小时 5 分钟Susan Choi joins Deborah Treisman to read and discuss “Found Objects,” by Jennifer Egan, which was published in The New Yorker in 2007. Choi is the author of five novels, including “My Education” and “Trust Exercise,” which won the National Book Award in 2019.
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 found objects by Jennifer Egan, which was published in the New Yorker in December of 2007.
The woman glanced up, her soft brow, brown eyes moving over Sasha's face.
What did she see?
Sasha wished that she could turn and peer into the mirror again, as if something about herself might at last be revealed, some lost thing.
But she didn't turn.
She held still and let the woman look.
The story was chosen by Susan Choi, who's the author of five novels, including my Education and Trust Exercise, which won the National Book Award for fiction in 2019.
Hi, Susan.
Hi.
So what made you choose this story by Jennifer Egan to read today?
You know, a couple of things.
One is just that I love this story and it so rewards rereading.
I've not just been rereading this story, but teaching it for years now, and my students always really connect with it.
But the other thing is that I had a feeling it would be really fun to read aloud, and it was.
The story is about a troubled young woman who steals from other people and is trying to cope with that situation through therapy.
What do you think it is in the story that your students connect to?
They always admire the brilliant structure, the way in which Jennifer Egan really enables us to inhabit Sasha through especially her description of the object, that tactility, and the deliciousness of these objects.