2014-09-30
40 分钟Rebecca Curtis joins Deborah Treisman to read and discuss Leonard Michaels’s “The Penultimate Conjecture,” from a 1999 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 the penultimate conjecture by Leonard Michaels.
He should have taken the risk.
He should have been more like linguist, more manly.
Enough.
Nockman said.
Nockman to himself.
The story was chosen by Rebecca Curtis, whose fiction has been appearing in the New Yorker since 2001.
Her collection of stories, 20 grand and other tales of love and money, came out in 2007.
Hi, Rebecca.
Hi.
Now, Leonard Michaels died in 2003, which was four years after this story was published.
Were you reading his work back then?
I think the first time I read his story was probably in an anthology, actually in the best american.
I think I read girl with a monkey and was very struck by it because it's such a sexy story, but also very dark and very taut and condensed.
And also murderers.
George Saunders taught us murderers in the MFA program I was at in Syracuse.
What was it about his style that drew you in?