Allegra Goodman reads John Updike's "A & P," and discusses it with The New Yorker's fiction editor, Deborah Treisman. "A & P" was published in the July 22, 1961, issue of The New Yorker and is collected in "The Early Stories: 1953-1975."
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 a and p by John Updike.
You know, it's one thing to have a girl in a bathing suit down on the beach where, what with the glare, nobody can look at each other much anyway.
And another thing, in the cool of the A and P.
The story was chosen by Allegra Goodman, whose own fiction has been appearing in the magazine since 1991.
Her most recent novel is the Cookbook Collector.
She joins us from the studios of the Christian Science Monitor in Boston.
Hi, Allegra.
Hi.
So I know that Updike has been really important to you as a writer.
Did you ever actually meet him?
You know, I only met him once, I believe, and it was actually at a New Yorker photo shoot years ago.
Richard Avedon took some photos of fiction writers in the New Yorker.
I think I was standing between John Updike and Nicholson Baker.
So I met him then.
He was charming.
And had you been reading him at that point?
You know, I've been reading him since high school, like so many other people in America.