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 story by Shirley Jackson called the Lottery.
77Th year I've been in the lottery, old man Warner said as he went through the crowd.
77th time.
The Lottery was chosen by AM.
Holmes, who is the author of six novels, including this book will save your life and two story collections.
She has published a personal history and two short stories in the New Yorker.
Hi, Anne.
Hi, Deborah.
You wrote an introduction to Jackson's collection, the Lottery and other stories, and in it, you referred to the lottery as an icon in the history of the american short story.
What did you mean by that?
You know, I meant several things.
I mean, I think the lottery is a story that is, I think, taught in every american school, and I often think it's taught at a point in young people's lives where we're just waking up to the oddity of things and the terror that is in everyday life.
And so I think it is iconic in the sense that it is a deeply american story, a deeply terrifying story.
And it's also a story that after you've read it, you never fully forget it.
It kind of comes and goes, but it lingers there.
I think it embeds in the young american psyche in some way.
I was taught it in a canadian high school.