The Best Thing About the New Yorker …
...
18 September 2009
…is the fiction podcast.
I love the idea of writers selecting, reading, and discussing stories from the archives, both recent and long past (fiction editor Deborah Treisman‘s light touch as a host, and her gentle, soothing voice, are a pleasure). Writers have to spend a good amount of their time promoting themselves, so it’s wonderful when there’s a forum for admiring others.
So many writers and stories have come to my attention that I might never have known: Peter Taylor‘s “Porte-Cochere” (1949, read by Marisa Silver), Sergei Dovlatov‘s “The Colonel Says I Love You” (1986, read by David Bezmogis), Stephanie Vaughn‘s “Dog Heaven” (1989, read by Tobias Wolff), James Salter‘s “Last Night” (2002, read by Thomas McGuane), and Maeve Brennan‘s “Christmas Eve” (1972, read by Roddy Doyle), among others. Each one has left me stunned.
The podcast index can be found here.