2017-05-01
1 小时 10 分钟Rachel Kushner reads and discusses “The Black Lights,” by Thom Jones.
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 Black Lights by Tom Jones, which was published in the New Yorker in October of 1992.
Weird.
Sleeping in the neuropsych ward at night, I sensed the presence of a very large rabbit under my bunk, a seven foot rabbit with brown fur and skin sores who took long, raking breaths.
I didn't want to do it, but I had to keep getting out of bed to look.
The story was chosen by Rachel Kushner, who's the author of two novels, telex from Cuba and the Flamethrowers, both of which were finalists for the National Book Award.
Hi, Rachel.
Hi, Deborah.
So can you tell me why you chose to read a story by Tom Jones today?
Because Tom Jones had died recently and I had been influenced by his fiction and knew him and had briefly studied with him.
I thought it would be a good time to revisit some of that work.
The obituary headline in the New York Times said something like, tom Jones janitor termed acclaimed author diese.
And while there was nothing that was factually incorrect, as far as I know in the obituary, that sort of summation, janitor turned acclaimed author seemed a bit mythologizing to me.
So I thought it'd be an interesting opportunity to look at his work again and have a conversation with you about it.
Yeah.
Also quite reductive.
I mean, he did work as a janitor for a period of his life, but that wasn't all he ever did.
No.