Dave Eggers reads Roddy Doyle's "Bullfighting," and discusses it with The New Yorker's fiction editor, Deborah Treisman. "Bullfighting" was published in the April 28, 2008, issue of The New Yorker and can be found in "Bullfighting: Stories." Dave Eggers's new novel, "A Hologram for the King," comes out this month.
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 bullfighting by Roddy Doyle.
Other people didn't really get it, especially women.
Grown men getting together like that, as if it was weird or unnatural or a bit silly.
The story was chosen by Dave Eggers, author of three novels and the memoir, a heartbreaking work of staggering genius who was the founding editor of McSweeney's, a publishing house in literary magazine.
His new novel, a hologram for the King, comes out this month.
Hi, Dave.
Hi.
So you and Roddy Doyle have become friends, I think.
How did you first meet and start reading his work?
Was it through McSweeney's or before that?
I have no idea.
I never can remember anything.
But we've known each other for about ten years now, and he's done a number of benefits for 826 Valencia tutoring center, and he opened a similar center in Dublin called Fighting Words.
So we've been friends and allies for a long time now.
And how about his work?
How did you first come across it?
Well, I read Roddy's work way before I met him.