2015-06-02
1 小时 15 分钟Michael Cunningham joins Deborah Treisman to read and discuss Harold Brodkey’s “Dumbness Is Everything,” from a 1996 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 Harold Brodke's story, dumbness is everything, which was published in the New Yorker in 1996.
When the car stopped, when the motor vibration and noise stopped and the wheels were still, the drunkenness shufflingly bulged and was dizzying more than before.
It pulsed in my head, stung my eyes, and rang.
The story was chosen by Michael Cunningham, who is the author of seven novels, including the hours and last years, the Snow Queen.
His own fiction first appeared in the New Yorker in 1988.
Hi, Michael.
Hello, Deborah.
So dumbness is everything is one of the last things that Brodke wrote before he died in 1996, and it was published posthumously in the magazine a few months later.
Why did you choose this story?
For several reasons.
I knew Harold.
I not only knew Harold, he was a hero of mine when I was in school.
Let's just say, was I the kind of kid who would call you at midnight and read you a long passage of Harold Brodke whether you wanted to hear it or not?
Yes, I was.
And years pass, calendar pages flipped, seasons change, and I met him and got to know him and knew him somewhat through his illness and his demise.
It is, as I think everyone will soon understand, a slightly unorthodox choice.
It's kind of extreme in many ways, but that is part of what drew me to it.