2019-02-02
50 分钟Joseph O'Neill joins Deborah Treisman to read and discuss "The Pet," by Nadine Gordimer, from a 1962 issue of the magazine. O'Neill's four novels include "The Dog" and "Netherland." His most recent book, the story collection "Good Trouble," was published last year.
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 pet by Nadine Gordimer, which was published in the New Yorker in March of 1962.
Erica Morgan, she sometimes had educated Africans to lunch, told him that he could sit in the living room and listen to the radio if he liked, but he never did.
The story was chosen by Joseph O'Neill, who's the author of four novels, including the Dog in Netherland, which won the 2009 Penn Faulkner Award for fiction.
Hi, Joe.
Hi, Deborah.
So what drew you to Nadine Gordimer?
How did you first come across this story?
I've actually been familiar with this story for a while because I teach up at Bard College, and one of the courses I was teaching was a course on political fiction.
And I looked at this story and I saw that it was quite interesting on that front.
In that particular framework, we did look at the politics and we looked at the historical context which was apartheid South Africa, and a context which is now a sort of mythic context for students at college these days, but which was, when I was at their age, very important.
I mean, in the eighties, you know, there was a lot of activism surrounding apartheid, international activism and the movement of free Nelson Mandela was a sort of important part of, you know, a student experience in those days.
And so I suppose from a personal point of view, reading the story reminded me of that era.
Right?
And the story is about a white couple who employ a black servant who's actually not from South Africa, but from Nyazaland, which is 3000 miles away.
That setup has some inherent political content.
Do you think of the story as being explicitly political?
I mean, when I read for politics, I'm not really reading for explicit proclamations.