2019-03-02
58 分钟Joy Williams joins Deborah Treisman to read and discuss "The Itch," by Don DeLillo, from a 2017 issue of the magazine. Williams is the author of four novels and five story collections, including "The Quick and the Dead," which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and "Ninety-Nine Stories of God." Her most recent book is "The Visiting Privilege: New and Collected Stories."
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 the Itch by Don DeLillo, which was published in the New Yorker in August of 2017.
She was checking his ankles, shins, and thighs.
She spoke absently about the pathology of the skin.
He liked this term.
It suggested a kind of criminal intent or an evil that befalls a person.
The story was chosen by Joy Williams, who's the author of four novels and five story collections, including 99 stories of God and the visiting privilege.
Hi, Joy.
Hi, Deborah.
So you said from the beginning when I first asked you that you wanted to read something by Don DeLillo.
Why was that?
Oh, he's my favorite author.
That's easy.
And I think his short stories are wonderful.
The Angel Esmerelda is a beautiful, compact, thrilling little book, and I hope he does another collection soon.
And it's amazing that a novelist of such great length and power can also master that shorter form.
Yeah.
Like you say, he ranges from a book like Underworld, which is more than 800 pages, a kind of epic, sweeping novel, to quite short stories.