2015-07-01
45 分钟Yiyun Li joins Deborah Treisman to read and discuss Patricia Highsmith’s “The Trouble with Mrs. Blynn, the Trouble with the World,” from a 2002 issue of the magazine.
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 Patricia Highsmith's story the Trouble with Misses, the Trouble with the World, which was published in the New Yorker in 2002.
Elsie handed Misses Palmer a cup of tea with three lumps of sugar, but no scone because Misses Blaine said they were too indigestible for her.
Misses Palmer did not mind.
She appreciated the sight of well buttered scones anyway, and of healthy people like misses Blaine eating them.
The story was chosen by Yi Yun Lee, the author of two novels and two story collections whose own stories have been appearing in the New Yorker since 2003.
Her work was included in the magazine's 20 under 40 issue and anthology in 2010.
Hi, Ian.
Hi, Deborah.
Now, the last time that you were on the podcast, which was in 2009, you chose a story by the irish writer John McGarren, which was set in a small irish town, and this story is set in a small town on the english coast.
So I'm thinking there's something that draws you to this kind of setting.
There is that quietness, the danger in the quiet setting that I feel drawn to.
I think they're very different stories, but there's something about this kind of stillness of small town life.
Yes.
You know, apparently I feel that we can, if you live in New York.
City or San Francisco, you see all.
These dramas of lives, but dramas within, you know, these little communities are quite.
Fascinating to me and much more private.