Joshua Ferris Reads George Saunders
24 Aug
Like you need one more source for podcasted fiction. But just in case you haven’t discovered it already, the New Yorker publishes a great monthly podcast.
They feature some of your favorite writers reading some of their favorite writer’s stories. The very best stuff: interviews with The New Yorker fiction editor Deborah Treisman.
The latest: Joshua Ferris of George Saunders’s “Adams.” Political satire at its wonky best. Here’s a taste of the opening:
I never could stomach Adams and then one day he’s standing in my kitchen, in his underwear. Facing in the direction of my kids’ room! So I wonk him in the back of the head and down he goes. When he stands up, I wonk him again and down he goes.
Recent others include. . .
Joyce Carol Oates reads Eudora Welty’s “Where Is the Voice Coming From?”; Roger Angell reads John Updike’s “Playing with Dynamite”; A. M. Homes reads Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”; Aleksandar Hemon discusses Bernard Malamud’s “A Summer’s Reading”; Mary Gaitskill reads Vladimir Nabokov’s “Symbols and Signs”; T. Coraghessan Boyle reads Tobias Wolff’s “Bullet in the Brain”; Jhumpa Lahiri reads the short story “A Day,” by William Trevor.
Clear out your iPod—the archive goes back to May ’07.
def want to see video of ferris on saunders. two titan heavyweights=classic.
ferris sounds much older than i imagined. i still picture him as a young dude dragging his writing desk through the bowels of brooklyn, barely breaking a sweat, huffing and sweating, a new out of shape, fit , college grad. wife in tow. who would have thought the dinner party was next? then saunders came to the end.