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- [00:01]
Deborah Treisman
This is a message from sponsor Intuit. TurboTax Texas was getting frustrated by your forms. Now Taxis is uploading your forms with a Snap and a TurboTax expert will do your taxes for you. One who's backed by the latest tech which cross checks millions of data points for absolute accuracy. All of which makes it easy for you to get the most money back, guaranteed. Get an Expert now on TurboTax.com only available with TurboTax Live full service. See guarantee details@TurbotaX.com guarantees 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 Safari by Jennifer Egan, which appeared in the New Yorker in January of 2010.
- [00:55]
Greg Jackson
Lou is one of those men whose restless charm has generated a contrail of personal upheaval that is practically visible behind him, two failed marriages and two more kids back home in LA who were too young to bring on this three week safari.
- [01:09]
Deborah Treisman
The story was chosen by Greg Jackson, who's the author of the story collection Prodigals, and the novel Dimensions of a Cave, which came out in 2023. Hi, Greg.
- [01:20]
Greg Jackson
Hi, Deborah.
- [01:22]
Deborah Treisman
Welcome. I want to start with Jennifer Egan's work in general. Have you been a longtime fan?
- [01:28]
Greg Jackson
You know, I was thinking about this and I actually think this story was the first of her work that I read or encountered. And I remember reading it in the New Yorker the week it came out. Possibly someone had recommended it to me and possibly I just picked it up and read it. I was so blown away. I didn't know that it was going to be part of a novel or appear in slightly different form in a novel she wrote. But that was my introduction to her work. And, you know, I think it was a great introduction because everything I've read since has had some of these same qualities of just the sort of brilliance and scope and poignancy. There's something very moving about her work. So this was where it began. And yeah, I am a big fan.
- [02:14]
Deborah Treisman
And what do you, what do you think it was on that first reading when you say it? It had scope. What do you mean by that?
- [02:22]
Greg Jackson
For how much is packed in here? For what a kind of world or constellation of characters she brings to life and, you know, constellation of relationships and trajectories of characters across time. It's just remarkable how concise the story is given that sort of scope. And I was kind of Amazed that that could be accomplished in, you know, the space that she accomplished it in. But I think also the first time I read it, I just was simply, you know, moved. I was very affected emotionally, and I think only later on, subsequent readings and sometimes even teaching it, did I sort of go back and look more carefully and granularly at how just impeccably constructed it is and what it's doing on the level of language and themes and metaphors that you don't need to know to appreciate the story, at least the first time through, but it really rewards deeper and deeper penetration.
- [03:21]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah. So it was, as you said, it became part of her kind of novel in stories, A Visit from the Goon Squad. And I feel like the piece of the chapters in that book you can read entirely separately, and they work as stories. In fact, the first chapter began as a story, and there was no plan for a novel at that point. And at the same time, there are threads in each story that tie together to form a novel. And, you know, I'm not a fiction writer. I have no sense of how hard it is to do that if you have to kind of keep a global picture in your head at the same time that you're writing a smaller thing.
- [04:03]
Greg Jackson
Yeah, I think it must be incredibly challenging, I would say, to aspiring fiction writers, novelists, probably, not to try. And, you know, do not attempt this at home. Like, do not try to write a Jennifer Egan novel on your first try, because that construction is so careful and so perfectly done in the book. And you're right, it can be read separately, but all the stories do touch on one another in certain ways. And I think maybe, as we'll get into later, there are certain themes that kind of hang over the stories and bind them in addition to the kind of characters that recur. And I think that those themes are very present in safari as well.
- [04:41]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah. Well, we'll talk some more about it after the story. And now here's Greg Jackson reading Safari by Jennifer Egan.
- [04:50]
Greg Jackson
Safari by Jennifer Egan. Remember Charlie in Hawaii, we went to the beach at night and it started to rain. Rolf is talking to his older sister, Charlene, who despises her real name, but because they're crouched around a bonfire with other people on the safari, and because Rolf doesn't speak up all that often, and because their father, Lou, sitting behind them on a camp chair, is a record producer whose personal life is of general interest, those near enough to hear are listening closely. Remember how mom and dad stayed at the table for one more drink? Impossible. Their father interjects with a wink at the elderly bird watching ladies to his left. Both women wear binoculars even in the dark, as if hoping to spot birds in the fire lit tree overhead. Remember, Charlie, how the beach was still warm and that crazy wind was blowing? But Charlie is focused on her father's legs, which have intertwined behind her with those of his girlfriend, Mindy. Soon Lou and Mindy will bid the group goodnight and retreat to their tent, where they'll make love on one of its narrow rickety cots, or possibly on the ground from the adjacent tent, which she and Rolf share. Charlie, who is 14, can hear them. Not sounds exactly, but movement. Rolf, at 11, is too young to notice. Charlie throws back her head, startling her father. Lou is in his late 30s, his square jawed surfer's face gone a little draggy under the eyes. You were married to mom on that trip, she informs him, her voice distorted by the arcing of her neck, which is encircled by a puka shell choker. Yes, Charlie, lou says. I'm aware of that. The bird watching ladies trade a sad smile. Lou is one of those men whose restless charm has generated a contrail of personal upheaval that is practically visible behind him. Two failed marriages and two more kids back home in LA who are too young to bring on this three week safari. The safari is a new business venture of Lou's old army buddy Ramsay, with whom he drank and misbehaved, having barely avoided Korea almost 20 years ago. Rolf pulls at his sister's shoulder. He wants her to remember, to feel it all again. The wind, the endless black ocean, the two of them peering into the dark as if awaiting a signal from their distant grown up lives. Remember, Charlie? Yeah, charlie says, narrowing her eyes. I do remember that. The Samburu warriors have arrived, four of them, two holding drums and a child in the shadows minding a yellow long horned cow. They came yesterday, too, after the morning game run when Lou and Mindy were napping. That was when Charlie exchanged shy glances with the most beautiful warrior, who has scar tissue designs coiled like railroad tracks over the rigorous architecture of his chest and shoulders and back. Charlie stands up and moves closer to the warriors, a slender girl in shorts and a raw cotton shirt with small round buttons made of wood. Her teeth are slightly crooked. When the drummers pat their drums, Charlie's warrior and the other one begin to sing, guttural noises pried from their abdomens. She sways in front of them. During her 10 days in Africa, she has begun to act differently, like one of the girls who intimidate her back home in a cinder block town that the group visited a few days ago, she drank a muddy looking concoction in a bar and wound up trading away her silver butterfly earrings, a birthday gift from her father, in a hut belonging to a very young woman whose breasts were leaking milk. She was late returning to the jeeps. Albert, who works for Ramsay, had to go and find her. Prepare yourself, he warned. Your dad is having kittens. Charlie didn't care then and doesn't now. There's a charge for her in simply commanding the fickle beam of her father's attention, feeling his disquiet as she dances alone by the fire. Lou lets go of Mindy's hand and sits up straight. He has an urge to grab his daughter's skinny arm and yank her away from the warriors, but does no such thing. Of course. That would be letting her win. The warrior smiles at Charlie. He's 19 and has lived away from his village since he was 10, but he has sung for enough American tourists to recognize that in her world, Charlie is a child. Son, lou says into Rolf's ear, let's take a walk. The boy rises from the dust and walks with his father away from the fire. Twelve tents, each sleeping. Two safari guests form a circle around it, along with three outhouses and a shower stall where water warmed on the fire is released from a sack with a rope pull. Out of view are some smaller tents for the staff and then the black, muttering expanse of the bush where they've been cautioned never to go. Your sister's acting nuts, lou says, striding into the dark. Why? Rolf asks. He hasn't noticed anything nutty in Charlie's behavior, but his father hears the question differently. Women are crazy, he says. You could spend a goddamn lifetime trying to figure out why. Mom's not true, lou reflects, calmer now. In fact, your mother's not crazy enough. The singing and drum beats fall suddenly away, leaving Lou and Rolf alone under a sharp moon. What about Mindy? Rolf asks. Is she crazy? Good question, lou says. What do you think? She likes to read. She brought a lot of books. Did she? I like her, rolf says, but I don't know if she's crazy or what the right amount is. Lou puts his arm around Rolf. If he were an introspective man, he would have understood years ago that his son is the one person in the world who has the power to soothe him, and that although he expects Rolf to resemble him, what he most enjoys in his son is the many ways in which he is different, quiet, reflective, attuned to the natural world and the pain of others. Who cares? Lou says. Right, right, Rolf says, and the women fall away like the drumbeats, leaving him and his father together, an invincible unit amid the burbling whispering bush. The sky is crammed with stars. Rolf closes his eyes and opens them again. He is in Africa with his father. He thinks, I'll remember this night for the rest of my life. And he's right. When they finally return to camp, the warriors have gone. Only a few Die Hards from the Phoenix faction, as Lou calls the safari members who hail from there, are sitting by the fire comparing the day's animal sightings. Rolf creeps into his tent, pulls off his pants, and climbs onto his cot in a T shirt and underwear. He assumes that Charlie is asleep. When she speaks, he can hear in her voice that she's been crying. Where did you go? She says. What on earth have you got in that backpack? It's Cora, Lou's travel agent. She hates Mindy, but Mindy doesn't take it personally. It's structural hatred, a term she coined herself and is finding highly useful on this trip. A single woman in her 40s who wears high collared shirts to conceal the thready sinews of her neck will structurally despise the 23 year old girl girlfriend of a powerful male who not only employs said middle aged female but is paying her way on this trip. Anthropology books, Mindy tells Cora, I'm in the PhD program at Berkeley. Why don't you read them? Carsick, Mindy says, which is plausible, God knows. In the shuddering Jeeps, though untrue, she isn't sure why she hasn't cracked her Boaz or Malinowski or Julian Janes, but assumes that she must be acquiring knowledge in other ways that will prove equally fruitful. In bold moments, fueled by the boiled black coffee that is served each morning in the meal tent, Mindy has even wondered whether her insights on the links between social structure and emotional response amount to more than a rehash of Levi Strauss, a refinement, a contemporary application. She's only in her second year of coursework. Their Jeep is the last in a line of five nosing along a dirt road through grassland whose apparent brown masks a wide internal spectrum of color purples, greens, reds. Albert, the surly Englishman who is Ramsay's second in command, is driving. Mindy has managed to avoid Albert's Jeep for several days, but he has developed a reputation for discovering the best animals. So although there's no game run today, they're relocating to the hills, where they'll spend the night in a hotel for the first time this trip, the children beg to ride with him, and keeping Lou's children happy, or as close to happy as is structurally possible, is part of Mindy's job. Structural resentment the adolescent daughter of a twice divorced male will be unable to tolerate the presence of his new girlfriend and will do everything in her limited power to distract him from said girlfriend's presence, her own nascent sexuality being her chief weapon. Structural affection A twice divorced male's pre adolescent son and favorite child will embrace and accept his father's new girlfriend because he hasn't yet learned to separate his father's loves and desires from his own. In a sense, he too will love and desire her, and she will feel maternal toward him, though she isn't old enough to be his mother. Structural incompatibility A powerful twice divorced male will be unable to acknowledge, much less sanction, the ambitions of a much younger female mate. By definition, their relationship will be temporary. Structural desire. The much younger, temporary female mate of a powerful male will be inextricably drawn to the single male within range who disdains her mate's power. Albert drives with one elbow out the window. He has been a largely silent presence on the safari, eating quickly in the meal tent, providing terse answers to people's questions. Where do you live? Mombasa. How long have you been in Africa? Eight years. What brought you here? This and that. He rarely joins the group around the fire after dinner. On a trip to the outhouse one night, Mindy glimpsed him at the other fire near the staff tents, drinking a beer and laughing with the Kikuyu drivers. With the tour group, he rarely smiles whenever his eyes happen to graze Mindy's. She senses that he feels shame on her behalf because of her prettiness, because she sleeps with Lou, because she keeps telling herself that this trip constitutes anthropological research into group dynamics and ethnographic enclaves, when really what she's after is luxury, adventure, and a break from her four insomniac roommates. Next to Albert in the shotgun seat, Kronos is ranting about animals. He's the bassist for the Mat Hatters, one of the groups that Lou produces and has come on the trip as Lou's guests. Along with the Hatter's guitarist and a girlfriend each, these four are locked in a visceral animal sighting, competition, structural fixation, a collective, contextually induced obsession that becomes a temporary locus of greed, competition, and envy. They challenge one another nightly over who saw more and at what range? Invoking witnesses from their respective Jeeps and promising definitive proof when they develop their film back home. Behind Albert sits Cora, the travel agent, and beside her, gazing out his window, is Dean, a blonde actor whose genius for stating the obvious it's hot or the sun is setting or there aren't many trees is a staple source of amusement for Mindy. Dean is starring in a movie whose soundtrack Lou is helping to create. The presumption seems to be that its release will bring Dean immediate and stratospheric fame. In the seat behind him, Rolf and Charlie are showing their Mad magazine to Mildred, one of the bird watching ladies. She or her companion, Fiona, can usually be found near Lou, who flirts with them tirelessly and needles them to take him bird watching. His indulgence of these women in their 70s, strangers to him before this trip intrigues Mindy. She can find no structural reason for it. In the last row beside Mindy, Lou opens the large aluminum case where his new camera is partitioned in its foam padding like a dismantled rifle, and thrusts his torso from the open roof. Ignoring the rule to stay seated while the Jeep is moving, Albert swerves suddenly and Lou is knocked back down, camera smacking his forehead. He swears at Albert, but the words are lost in the Jeep's wobbly jostle through tall grass. After a minute or two of chaotic driving, they emerge a few feet from a pride of lions. Everyone gawks in startled silence. It's the closest they've been to any animal on this trip. The motor is still running, Albert's hand tentatively on the wheel. But the lions appear so relaxed, so indifferent, that he kills the engine. In the ticking motor silence, they can hear the lions breathe. Two females, one male, three cubs. The cubs and one of the females are gorging on a bloody zebra carcass. The others are dozing. They're eating, dean says. Cronus hands shake as he spools film into his camera. He keeps muttering, fuck. Albert lights a cigarette forbidden in the brush and waits, as indifferent to the scene as if he had paused outside a restroom. Can we stand? The children ask. Is it safe? I'm sure as hell going to Lou, says. Lou, Charlie, Rolf, Kronos, and Dean all climb onto their seats and jam their upper halves through the open roof. Mindy is now effectively alone inside the Jeep with Albert, Cora, and Mildred, who peers at the lions through her bird watching binoculars. How did you know? Mindy asks. After a silence, Albert swivels around to look at her. Down the length of the Jeep he has unruly hair and a soft brown mustache. There's a suggestion of humor in his face, just a guess from half a mile away. He probably has a sixth sense, cora says, after so many years here. Albert turns back around and blows smoke through his open window. Did you see something? Mindy says, persisting. She doesn't expect Albert to turn again, but he does, leaning over the back of his seat, his eyes meeting hers between the children's bare legs, Mindy feels a jolt of attraction roughly akin to having someone seize her intestines and twist. She understands now that it's mutual. She sees this in Albert's face. Broken bushes, he says, like something got chased. It could have been nothing. Cora, sensing her exclusion, sighs wearily. Can someone come down so I can look, too? She calls to those above the roof. Coming, lou says. But Kronos is faster, ducking back into the front seat and then leaning out his window. Cora rises in her big print skirt. Mindy's face pounds with blood. Her own window, like Albert's, is on the Jeep's left side, facing away from the lions. Mindy watches him wet his fingers and snuff out his cigarette. They sit in silence, hands dangling separately from their windows, a warm breeze stirring the hair on their arms, ignoring the most spectacular animal sighting of the safari. You're driving me crazy, albert says very softly. The sound seems to travel out his window and back in through Mindy's like one of those whispering tubes. You must know that. I didn't, she murmurs back. Well, you are. My hands are tied forever. She smiles. Please. An interlude, then. Grad school. Berkeley. Albert chuckles. Mindy isn't sure what the chuckle means. Is it funny that she's in grad school? Or that Berkeley and Mombasa, where he lives, are irreconcilable locations? Kronos, you crazy fuck, get back in here. It's Lou's voice from overhead, but Mindy feels sluggish, almost drugged, and reacts only when she hears the change in Albert's voice. No. He hisses. No. Back in the jeep, Kronos is skulking among the lions, holding his camera close to the faces of the sleeping male and female taking pictures. Walk backward, albert says with hushed urgency. Backward. Cronos gently. Movement comes from a direction that no one is expecting, the lioness gnawing at the zebra. She vaults at Kronos in an agile, gravity defying spring that anyone with a house cat would recognize. She lands on his head, flattening him instantly. There are screams, a gunshot, and those overhead tumble back into their seats so violently that at first Mindy thinks they've been shot. But it's the lioness. Albert has killed her with a rifle he secreted somewhere, maybe under his seat. The other lions have scattered. All that's left is the zebra carcass and the body of the lioness cronus, legs splayed beneath her. Albert, Lou, Dean, and Cora bolt from the Jeep. Mindy starts to follow, but Lou pushes her back, and she realizes that he wants her to stay with his children. She leans over the back of their seat and puts an arm around each of them as they stare through the open windows. A wave of nausea rolls through Mindy. She feels in danger of passing out. Mildred is still in her spot beside the children, and it occurs to Mindy vaguely that the elderly birdwatcher was inside the Jeep the whole time that she and Albert were talking. Is Kronos dead? Ralph asks flatly. I'm sure he's not, mindy says. Why isn't he moving? The lion is on top of him. See? They're pulling her off. He's probably fine under there. There's blood on the lion's mouth, charlie says. That's from the zebra, remember? She was eating the zebra. It takes enormous effort to keep her teeth from chattering, but Mindy knows that she must hide her terror from the children, her belief that whatever turns out to have happened is her fault. They wait in pulsing isolation, surrounded by the hot, blank day. Mildred rests a knobby hand on Mindy's shoulder, and Mindy feels her eyes fill with tears. He'll be fine, the old woman says gently. You watch. By the time the group assembles in the bar of the Mountain Hotel after dinner, everyone seems to have gained something. Kronos has won a blistering victory over his bandmate and both girlfriends, at the cost of 32 stitches on his left cheek that you could argue, are also a gain. He's a rock star, after all, and several huge antibiotic pills administered by an English surgeon with hooded eyes and beery breath, an old friend of Albert's whom he unearthed in a cinder block town about an hour away from the Lyons. Albert has gained the status of a hero, though you wouldn't know it to look at him. He gulps bourbon and mutters his responses to the giddy queries of the Phoenix Faction. No one has yet confronted him on the damning basics. Why were you in the bush? How did you get so close to the lions? Why didn't you stop Cronos from getting out of the jeep? But Albert knows that Ramsay, his boss, will ask these questions and that they will likely lead to his being fired, the latest in a series of failures brought on by what his mother back in Minehead calls his self destructive tendencies. The passengers in Albert's Jeep have gained a story that they'll tell for the rest of their lives. They are witnesses to be questioned endlessly about what they saw and heard and felt. A gang of children, including Rolf, Charlie, a set of 8 year old twin boys from Phoenix, and Louise, a chubby 12 year old, leave the bar and stampede along a slatted path to a blind beside a watering hole. A wooden hut full of long benches with a slot they can peek through, invisible to the animals. It's dark inside. They rush to the slot. But no animals are drinking at the moment. Did you actually see the lion? Louise asks with wonder. Lion nests, Ralph says. There were two, plus a lion and three cubs. She means the one that got shot, charlie says impatiently. Obviously we saw it. We were inches away. Feet, rolf says, correcting her. Feet are made out of inches, charlie says. We saw everything. Rolf has already started to hate these conversations, the panting excitement behind them, the way Charlie seems to revel in it. A thought has been troubling him. I wonder what will happen to the cubs, he says. The lioness who got shot must have been their mom. She was eating with them. Not necessarily, Charlie says. But if she was, maybe the dad will take care of them, charlie says doubtfully. The other children are quiet, considering the question. Lions tend to raise their cubs communally. A voice comes from the far end of the blind. Mildred and Fiona were already there, or have just arrived. Being old and female, they're easily missed. The pride will likely take care of them, Fiona says, even if the one killed was their mother. Which it might not have been, Charlie adds. Which it might not have been, Mildred agrees. It doesn't occur to the children to ask Mildred, who was also in the jeep, what she saw. I'm going back, rolf tells his sister. He follows the path up to the hotel. His father and Mindy are still in the smoky bar. The strange celebratory feeling unnerves Rolf. His mind bends again and again to the jeep, but his memories are a muddle, the lioness springing a jerk of impact from the gun, Kronos moaning during the drive to the doctor, blood collecting in an actual puddle under his head on the floor of the jeep, like in a comic book. All of it is suffused with the feel of Mindy holding him from behind, her cheek against his head. Her smell not bready like his mom's, but salty, bitter, almost, a smell that seems akin to that of the lions themselves. He stands by his father, who pauses in the middle of an army story he's telling with Ramsay. You tired, son? Want me to walk you upstairs? Mindy asks, and Rolf nods. He does want that. The Blue Mosquitoe Night pushes in from the hotel windows. Outside the bar, Rolf is suddenly less tired. Mindy collects his key from the front desk, then says, let's go out on the porch. They step outside. Dark as it is, the silhouettes of mountains against the sky are even darker. Rolf can dimly hear the voices of the other children down in the blind. He's relieved to have escaped them. He stands with Mindy at the edge of the porch and looks at the mountains. Rolf senses her waiting for something, and he waits too, his heart stamping. There's a cough. Farther down the porch, Rolf sees the orange tip of a cigarette move in the dark, and Albert comes toward them with a creak of boots. Hello there, he says to Rolf. He doesn't speak to Mindy, and Rolf decides that the one hello must be for both of them. Hello, he greets Albert. What are you up to? Albert asks. Rolf turns to Mindy. What are we up to? Enjoying the night, she says, still facing the mountains, but her voice is tense. We should go up, she tells Rolf and walks abruptly back inside. Rolf is troubled by her rudeness. Are you coming? He asks Albert. Why not? As the three of them ascend the stairs, Rolf feels an odd pressure to make conversation. Is your room up here, too? He asks. Down the hall, Albert says. Room 3. Mindy unlocks the door to Rolf's room and steps in, leaving Albert in the hall. Rolf is suddenly angry with her. Want to see my room? He asks Albert. Mine and Charlie's. Mindy emits a single syllable of laughter, the way his mother laughs when things have annoyed her to the point of absurdity. Albert steps into his room. It's plain, with wooden furniture and dusty flowered curtains, but after 10 nights in tents it feels lavish. Very nice, albert says. Mindy crosses her arms and stares out the window. There's a feeling in the room that Rolf can't identify. He's angry with Mindy and thinks that Albert must be too. Women are crazy. Mindy's body is slender and elastic. She could slip through a keyhole or under a door. Her thin purple sweater rises and falls quickly as she breathes. Rolf is surprised by how angry he is. Albert taps a cigarette from his pack but doesn't light it. It is unfiltered tobacco emerging from both ends. Well, he says. Good night, you two. Rolf had imagined Mindy tucking him into bed, her arm around him as it was in the Jeep. Now this seems out of the question. He can't change into his pajamas with Mindy there. He doesn't even want her to see his pajamas, which have small blue elves all over them. I'm fine, he tells her, hearing the coldness in his voice. You can go back. Okay, she says. She turns down his bed, plumps the pillow, adjusts the open window. Rolf senses her finding reasons not to leave the room. Your dad and I will be just next door, mindy says. You know that, right? Duh, he mutters. Then, chastened, he says, I know. Five days later they take a long, very old train overnight to Mombasa. Every few minutes it slows down just enough for people to leap from the doors, bundles clutched to their chests, and for others to scramble on. Liu's group and the Phoenix Faction install themselves in the cramped bar car, which they share with African men in suits and bowler hats. Charlie is allowed to drink one beer, but she sneaks two more with the help of handsome Dean, who stands beside her narrow barstool. You're sunburned, he says, pressing a finger to Charlie's cheek. The African sun is strong. True, charlie says, grinning as she swigs her beer. Now that Mindy has pointed out Dean's platitudes, Charlie finds him hilarious. You have to wear sunscreen, he says. I know I did. Once isn't enough. You have to reapply. Charlie catches Mindy's eye and succumbs to giggles. Her father moves close. What's so funny? Life, charlie says, leaning against him. Life. Lou snorts. How old are you? He hugs her to him. When Charlie was little, he did this all the time, but as she grows older, it happens less. Her father is warm, almost hot, his heartbeat like someone banging on a heavy door. Ow, lou says. Your quill is stabbing me. It's a black and white porcupine quill. She found it in the hills and uses it to pin up her long hair. Her father slides it out, and the tangled golden mass of Charlie's hair collapses onto her shoulders like a shattered window. She's aware of Dean watching. I like this, lou says, squinting at the quill's translucent point. It's a dangerous weapon. Weapons are necessary, dean says. By the next afternoon, the safari goers have settled into a hotel a half hour up the coast from Mombasa On a white beach traversed by knobby chested men selling beads and gourds, Mildred and Fiona gamely appear in floral print, swimsuits, binoculars still at their necks. The livid Medusa tattoo on Cronus chest is less startling than his small potbelly, a disillusioning trait he shares with a number of the men, though not Lou, who is lean, a little ropey, tanned from occasional surfing. He walks toward the cream colored sea with his arm around Mindy, who looks even better than expected and expectations were high in her sparkling blue bikini. After a swim, Lou goes in search of spears and snorkeling gear, resisting the temptation to follow Mindy back to their room, though clearly she'd like him to. She's gone bananas in the sack since they left the tents, hungry for it now, pawing Lou's clothes off at odd moments, ready to start again when he's barely finished. He feels tenderly toward Mindy now that the trip is winding down. She's studying at Berkeley and Lou has never traveled for a woman. It's doubtful that he'll lay eyes on her again. Rolf and Charlie are reading in the sand under a palm tree when Lou gets back with the snorkeling equipment, but Rolf puts aside the hobbit without protest and stands. Charlie ignores them, and Lou wonders momentarily if he should have included her. He and Rolf walk to the edge of the sea and pull on their masks and flippers, hanging their spears from belts at their sides. Rolf looks thin. He needs more exercise. He's timid in the water. His mother is a reader and a gardener, and Lou is constantly having to fight her influence. He wishes that Rolf could live with him, but his lawyer just shakes his head whenever he mentions it. The fish are beautiful, easy targets nibbling at coral. Lugh has speared seven by the time he realizes that Rolf hasn't killed a single one. What's the problem, son? He asks when they surface. I just like watching them, rolf says. They've drifted toward a spit of rocks extending into the sea. Carefully they climb from the water. The tide pools throng with starfish and urchins and sea cucumbers. Rolf crouches, pouring over them. Loose fish hang from a netted bag at his waist. From the beach, Mindy is watching them through Fionna's binoculars. She waves, and Lou and Rolf wave back. Dad, rolf asks, lifting a tiny green crab from a tide pool, what do you think about Mindy? Mindy's great. Why? The crab splays its little claws. Lou notes with approval that his son knows how to hold it safely? Rolf squints up at him. You know, is she the right amount of crazy? Lou gives a hoot of laughter. He'd forgotten the earlier conversation, but Rolf forgets nothing, a quality that delights his father. She's crazy enough, but crazy isn't everything. I think she's rude, rolf says. Rude to you? No, to Albert. Lou turns to his son, cocking his head. Albert. Rolf releases the crab and begins to tell the story. He remembers each the porch, the stairs, room three. Realizing as he speaks how much he has wanted to tell his father this as punishment to Mindy, Lou listens keenly without interrupting. But as Rolf goes on, he senses the story landing heavily in a way he doesn't understand. When he finishes talking, his father takes a long breath and lets it out. He looks back at the beach. It's nearly sunset and people are shaking the fine white sand from their towels and packing up for the day. The hotel has a disco, and the group plans to go dancing there after dinner. When exactly did this happen? Lou asks. The same day as the lions that night. Rolf waits a moment, then asks, why do you think she was rude like that? Women are cunts, his father says. That's why Rolf gapes at him. His father is angry, a muscle jumping in his jaw, and without warning, Rolf is angry too, assailed by a deep, sickening rage that stirs in him very occasionally, most often when he and Charlie come back from a riotous weekend around their father's pool, rock stars jamming on the roof, guacamole in big pots of chili, to find their mother alone in her bungalow drinking peppermint tea, rage at this man who casts everyone aside. They are not. He can't make himself repeat the word. They are, lu says tightly. Pretty soon you'll know it for sure. Rolf turns away from his father. There is nowhere to go, so he jumps into the sea and begins slowly paddling his way back toward the shore. The sun is low, the water choppy and full of shadows. Rolf imagines sharks just under his feet, but he doesn't turn or look back. He keeps swimming toward that white sand, knowing instinctively that his struggle to stay afloat is the most exquisite torture he can concoct for his father, knowing also that if he sinks, Lou will jump in instantly and save him. That night, Rolf and Charlie are allowed to have wine at dinner. Rolf dislikes the sour taste but enjoys the swimming blur it makes of his surroundings, the giant beak like flowers all over the dining room, his father's speared fish cooked by the chef with olives and tomatoes, Mindy in a shimmery green dress. His father's arm is around her. He isn't angry anymore, so neither is Rolf. Lou has spent the past hour in bed fucking Mindy senseless. Now he keeps one hand on her slim thigh, reaching under her hem, waiting for that cloudy look she gets. Lou is a man who cannot tolerate defeat, can't perceive it as anything but a spur to his own inevitable victory. He doesn't give a shit about Albert. Albert is invisible. Albert is nothing. In fact, Albert has left the group and returned to his Mombasa apartment. What matters now is that Mindy understands this. He refills Mildred's and Fiona's wine glasses until their cheeks are patchy and flushed. You still haven't taken me bird watching, he chides them. I keep asking, but it never happens. We could go tomorrow, mildred says. There are some coastal birds we're hoping to see. Is that a promise? A solemn promise. Come on, charlie whispers to Rolf. Let's go outside. They slip from the crowded dining room and skitter onto the silvery beach. The palm trees make a slapping, rainy sound, but the air is dry. It's like Hawaii, rolf says, wanting it to be true. The ingredients are there. The dark, the beach, his sister. But it doesn't feel the same without the rain, Charlie says. Without Mom, Ralph says. I think Dad's going to marry Mindy, charlie says. No way. He doesn't love her, so he can still marry her. They sink onto the sand, still faintly warm, radiating a lunar glow. The ghost sea tumbles against it. She's not so bad, charlie says. I don't like her. And why are you the world's expert? Charlie shrugs. I know Dan. Charlie doesn't yet know herself. Four years from now, at 18, she'll join a cult across the Mexican border whose charismatic leader promotes a diet of raw eggs. She'll nearly die from salmonella poisoning before Lou rescues her. A cocaine habit will require partial reconstruction of her nose, changing her appearance, and a series of feckless, domineering men will leave her solitary in her late 20s, trying to broker peace between Rolf and Lou, who will have stopped speaking. But Charlie does know her father. He'll marry Mindy because that's what winning means, and because Mindy's eagerness to finish this odd episode and return to her studies will last until precisely the moment when she unlocks the door to her Berkeley apartment and walks into the smell of simmering lentils, one of the cheap stews that she and her roommates survive on she'll collapse onto the sway backed couch they found on the sidewalk and unpack her many books, realizing that in the weeks of lugging them through Africa she has read virtually nothing, and when the phone rings, her heart will flip. Structural dissatisfaction returning to circumstances that once pleased you after having experienced a more thrilling or opulent way of life and finding that you can no longer tolerate them. Suddenly Rolf and Charlie are galloping up the beach, drawn by the pulse of light and music from the open air disco. They run barefoot into the crowd, trailing powdery sand onto a translucent dance floor overlaid on lozenges of flashing color. The shuddering bass line seems to interfere with Rolf's heartbeat. Come on, charlie says. Let's dance. She begins to undulate in front of him, the way the new Charlie is planning to dance when she gets home. But Rolf is embarrassed he can't dance that way. The rest of the group surrounds them. Louise, the 12 year old, is dancing with Dean, the actor. Ramsey flings his arm around one of the Phoenix Faction moms. Lou and Mindy dance close together, their whole bodies touching. But Mindy is thinking of Albert as she will periodically after marrying Lou and having two daughters, Lou's fifth and sixth children, in quick succession, as if sprinting against the inevitable drift of his attention. On paper. He'll be penniless, and Mindy will end up working as a travel agent to support her little girls. For a time. Her life will be joyless. The girls will seem to cry too much, and she'll think longingly of this trip to Africa as the last perfect moment of her life, when she still had a choice, when she was free and unencumbered. She'll dream senselessly, futilely, of Albert, wondering what he is doing at particular moments and how her life would have turned out if she'd run away with him, as he suggested, half joking when she visited him in room three. Later, of course, she'll recognize Albert as nothing more than a focus of regret for her own immaturity and disastrous choices. When both her children are in high school, she'll finally resume her studies, complete her PhD at UCLA, and begin an academic career at 45, spending long periods doing social structures fieldwork in the Brazilian rainforest. Her youngest daughter will go to work for Lou, become his protege, and inherit his business. Look, charlie tells Rolf over the music, the bird watchers are watching us. Mildred and Fiona are sitting on chairs beside the dance floor, waving in their long print dresses. It's the first time the children have seen them without binoculars. Maybe we remind them of Birds, charlie says. Or maybe when there are no birds, they watch people, rolf says. Come on, Rolfus, charlie says. Dance with me. She takes hold of his hands. As they move together, Ralph feels his self consciousness miraculously fade, as if he were growing up right there on the dance floor, becoming a boy who dances with girls like his sister. Charlie feels it too. In fact, this particular memory is one she'll return to again and again for the rest of her life, long after Rolf has shot himself in the head in their father's house at 28, her brother as a boy, hair slicked flat, eyes sparkling, shyly learning to dance. But the woman who remembers won't be Charlie. After Rolf dies, she'll revert to her real name, Charlene, unlatching herself forever from the girl who danced with her brother in Africa. Charlene will cut her hair short and go to law school. When she gives birth to a son, she'll want to name him Rolf, but her parents will still be too shattered for her to do this, so she'll call him that privately, just in her mind. And years later she'll stand with her mother among a crowd of cheering parents beside a field, watching him play, a dreamy look on his face as he glances at the sky. Charlie, rolf says. Guess what I just figured out. Charlie leans toward her brother, who is grinning with his news. He cups both hands into her hair to be heard above the thudding beat. His warm, sweet breath fills her ear. I don't think those ladies were ever watching birds, rolf says.
- [42:52]
Deborah Treisman
That was Greg Jackson reading Safari by Jennifer Egan. The story appeared in the New Yorker in January of 2010 and was included in A Visit from the Goon Squad, which came out later that year. It was also included in the 2010 volume of best American Short Stories.
- [43:07]
David Remnick
Hi, this is David Remnick. I'm proud to share the news that three films from the New Yorker documentary series have been shortlisted for the Academy Awards, and they are Incident, Seat 31, Zoe Zephyr, and Eternal Father. And they all immerse you in the finest cinematic journalism, exploring themes of justice, identity and the bonds that shape us. These extraordinary films, which were created by established filmmakers as well as emerging artists, will inform, challenge and move you. I encourage you to watch them along with our full slate of documentary and narrative films@newyorker.com video.
- [43:46]
Deborah Treisman
So, Greg, the story begins with Rolf asking Charlie if she remembers a night in Hawaii on an earlier trip. We never hear very much about that earlier trip, or really anything other than the fact that their mother was on that Trip, why do you think we begin there, and why do you think Rolf is so obsessed with that moment?
- [44:10]
Greg Jackson
I think there are probably different readings, as you get to know Rolf's character, about why he's specifically fixated on that moment. You know, the most direct way in which it relates to what's going on in the story is that the mother was there. And this idea of the absence of mothers, which relates to the killing of the lioness and this question about who's going to raise the children, the cubs, the skepticism that the father is going to do it, the moment when Mindy is sort of likened to a lion herself, where she's acting as sort of a surrogate, imperfect surrogate mother. So I think that's the most literal kind of way in which we might understand what it's doing. But I think maybe more significantly, the idea of memory is fundamental to the story and fundamental to the novel that it appears in. And this urge to remember. We're told several times that Rolf forgets nothing. This urge to remember, this desire for other people to remember, it stands in contrast in the story to, I think, different ways of dealing with the passage of time and the irrecoverability of the past. Memory is almost, in a way, a little bit like storytelling. It's sort of active and immediate and has a kind of organic quality. You know, I think in different parts of the story, the. That's sort of juxtaposed with, quite specifically with cameras and photographing and a different sort of dealing with the fact that time cannot be stopped or recaptured. But there's an attempt in certain ways to capture time through different means than memory itself or story.
- [45:53]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah, it's almost funny reading this story now it's only 14 years old, and. And yet that moment, you hit that moment where Kronos and his bandmates say, well, we'll be able to tell who was closer when we can get home and develop the film. You know, it's such a different. Photography served a different role in relation to memory, because by the time you got a photograph, it was already a memory. It wasn't in the moment. But I feel that there's almost a sense with Rolf that memory is a burden for him, that he can't forget things. So for me, in a way that him being stuck in this moment in the past, sort of anchored in a moment that he can't recapture, it feels like a weight to me.
- [46:45]
Greg Jackson
Yeah, no, I think that's right. And I think, you know, there's all these ways in which the story that's supposedly about people going on a safari becomes a story in which the people, the humans on this journey are likened to animals. And they become the sort of the world in which we maybe also the bird watching ladies are kind of observing play out, as you might almost watch a nature documentary, with all of these sort of structurally determined roles and places in the kind of their hierarchies, their niches, their ecosystem. There's something that's very fixed about how they're sort of bouncing off one another, how they're living in response to one another, and their inability to sort of escape the consequences of these stimuli, for lack of a better word. And, you know, I think some of them do kind of ultimately escape that. The things that happened kind of early in their lives or at pivotal moments that they can't go back to. There's a moment when Mindy is trying to. Or she's fixated on remembering the point at which she could have run away with Albert. And she's fixated on this as the moment when she could have made another choice, but obviously she didn't. And she can't go back and change that choice. She's living with the consequences. And it's sort of like when she gives up reliving that moment that she's able to actually move forward. And she does manage to move forward in her life after this disastrous marriage. But with Rolf, you get the feeling that he doesn't actually break free of the past. He doesn't sort of find himself unable to let go of these sorts of memories, these things that are sort of haunting him. And I think in that way, it is sort of a burden, and it's part of the reason why he's one of the characters who doesn't. Doesn't sort of make it doesn't sort of get out of this ecosystemic grapple that these characters find themselves in where they're kind of disastrously compelling one another in ways that prove extremely fateful.
- [48:46]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah, yeah. It seems as though almost everyone in the story is misdirecting their behavior. You know, if we think of this as kind of an animal behavior documentary, you know, Charlie wants her father to focus on her, so she starts acting out this budding sexuality for other men. Rolf wants to be mothered by Mindy, and he sort of acts out in anger at her. Lou marries Mindy because he wants to beat out Albert. So all of these kind of desires. It's almost like a diagram with arrows, you know?
- [49:27]
Greg Jackson
Yeah. No, and I think when, for the few characters who do eventually Sort of break free. It's sort of learning not to live in this kind of preordained, structurally determined response to one another. You know, to actually sort of have some distance from whatever other people are doing. The factors in their environment, their emotional or libidinal urges, or the way other people provoke them. You know, it's the ones who are able to get past that that can kind of move on. But, you know, this omniscient vision that the story gives us is very much one like that kind of David Attenborough documentary where it seems like, you know, this lion is just destined to have this issue with this other lion and the cubs are going to suffer the consequences. And there's power games and there's status and there's some sort of gravity to the dynamic that the characters really struggle to resist or get past.
- [50:26]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah, yeah. And I suppose it's true of most of the stories in A Visit from the Goon Squad, which I call stories because that's how I first experienced them. I know it's also a novel, have a kind of structural conceit to them. You know, one is told as a PowerPoint presentation and so on. And here if we have a structural conceit, it's this. It kind of revolves around that anthropological glossary in the middle, which I guess is coming from Mindy, though it's written in textbook language, kind of a spoof of what Mindy's studying and so on. I suppose as a literary device, it allows Egan to tell us a lot about the dynamics that are going on. Do you think that serves some other role in the story as well?
- [51:21]
Greg Jackson
I think. Well, it may very well. I think for me it seems like dime store anthropology, if you want to call it that. It does start to kind of make the idea of anthropology almost sort of bleed into this idea of like zoology or ethology, where the human characters are being looked upon as these sort of animal like figures. There's a lot of places where if you kind of dive into the text really carefully, you can find Egan often, you know, giving characters animal like behaviors. Albert hisses. Mindy paws off Lou's clothes. The children stampede. There's constant little kind of Easter eggs like this to find where the characters are being aligned with sort of animal qualities. And, you know, I think at the end when you find out maybe the bird watching ladies were never watching birds at all, you're sort of, I don't know, you could see them as almost God like figures that are kind of standing in some omniscience Almost like the omniscience of the narration regarding the events that are going on. Or you could see them as a sort of stand in for us reading the story, or even a stand in for the observing public that's interested in the scandals and dramas and tragedies of public figures, of celebrities of whom Lou is sort of one. And, you know, at least the world he operates in is a world of celebrity. He's very solicitous of these women and flirts with them in a way that Mindy doesn't understand. But Lou, for whom celebrity and fame are so important, understands, you know, that they're an audience and the power and importance of an audience. And, you know, this is all to say that I think a lot of these different devices are doing work to kind of guide us into this vision of the characters in a kind of ethological or zoological frame. I think it's no coincidence that the devastation that Lou leaves behind him as compared to a contrail which is sort of like this, you know, the sign in the sky which is the, you know, the realm of birds and perhaps of the bird watching ladies. You know, I think the group that doesn't really get much airtime in the story, but the other group on the safari with them, it could have been. They could have been from anywhere. But they specifically come from Phoenix, you know, which is a bird, and not just any bird, but a bird that's famous for kind of immolating and a sort of self destruction and then that rises from its ashes. All these characters, or most of them go through some sort of process of self destruction and immolation and, you know, some rise from their ashes like Mindy and Charlie, but some don't. Like Rolf.
- [54:03]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah, yeah. The birdwatchers are fascinating because we don't know much about them. We never hear them, almost never hear them speak. Just a few choice lines and they're almost invisible to the others. You know, it's no coincidence, I'm sure, that they're sitting in a blind and are not even noticed and that Mindy and Albert have this long, tense, loaded conversation about their desire and don't notice that Mildred is sitting in between them through the course of it. You know, there's just. There's something about them that they are sort of floating spirits or as you said, they're standards for the reader. Yes, there's a detached kind of nature watching side of them. And by consequence, to us too, as readers.
- [55:01]
Greg Jackson
Yeah, no, they're really perfect. They work on so many levels and they are sort of invisible. On the question of who's. Who's visible, who's being watched and who's invisible. And doing the watching, I think, is very important. I think even the idea of watching itself is extremely important in this story as a kind of counterpoint to. To photographing. You know, I. I hadn't really realized this until, looking at the story more carefully, just how important this juxtaposition is, how important cameras are. In a way, binoculars are like a camera, but they're different. They have this ongoing quality. You're watching something in real time, whereas the cameras have the quality of capturing something of kind of freezing it, of taking it outside of time. The first time we hear about Lou's camera, he takes it out of this case and it's compared to a rifle. He assembles it like a rifle. Then Kronos gets out of the jeep to go photograph the lions, to shoot them. And that's the fateful decision. That then means Albert has to take an actual rifle out of the car and actually shoot the lions. So there's some way in which this camera is photographing. This idea of the kind of like capturing reality. There's something acquisitive or possessive that I think is compared with and likened to weapons in a way. And this is sort of reprised later on when Lou and Rolf are spearfishing. Lou has speared seven fish and Rolf and has speared none. And Lou sees this and says, you know, what's wrong, son? Like, why aren't you spearing them? And, you know, Rolf very tellingly says, I just like watching them.
- [56:42]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah.
- [56:43]
Greg Jackson
So he's kind of part of the world of the watchers, like the bird watching ladies. And that's sort of a different world from the people like Lou and Kronos.
- [56:52]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah. And he's the only one to kind of clue into the birdwatchers. You talked earlier about the idea that the narration is sort of omniscient, but I wanted to look at that because it's not an omniscient narration. Most of the time we're jumping between minds at this kind of, you know, close third person. And sometimes we slip from one mind to another without quite noticing it. But we go through Charlie's perspective and Lou's and Rolf's and Mindy's, and it's a little different from an omniscient outside observer wondering how what you think of that way of moving within people's thoughts in the story.
- [57:33]
Greg Jackson
Well, I mean, I think that there's, you know, obviously within omniscient narration there's probably omniscient narration that sort of sticks to omniscience the whole time. But I think often omniscience narration does alight on particular perspectives at different times and move between them. And, you know, that ability to move between perspectives gives the story the ability to capture so many different people and perspectives within a short space. But it also allows these incredible jumps in time, a kind of omniscience that through time, which is in many ways the, you know, probably the core theme and preoccupation of the larger novel. A visit from the goon squad. The goon in question is time itself. Or at least the time that the line comes up in the book is, I think two people say, maybe more. Time's a goon, meaning that time kind of enacts this sort of violence or brutality on us. It does its work when we're not paying attention. It kind of, you know, it casts things aside. It rides roughshod over kind of moments as they happen. And that kind of omniscient move that Egan allows herself at the. Toward the end of the story, which is quite unusual, the kind of jump forwards in time. You know, usually it's much more common, obviously, to kind of jump back, to have flashbacks. And flashbacks in their own way, or characters revisiting their past can be very poignant. You know, they have the element of nostalgia. They have the element of the fact that the past can't be changed and that the past is irrecoverable. But these flash forwards, these jumps forwards, I think, are actually even more sort of heartbreaking and poignant, partly because they then kind of turn the present of the story into that irrecoverable past. They give the present of the story that feeling of the nostalgia and knowing where the characters are going to go and how they might look back on these moments. And then they also sort of foreclose the possibility that the future, the unwritten future that lies ahead of characters in most stories, you know, is there for them to seize freely and that they might change or act differently. Instead, you know, that we actually know their future and we feel the kind of pain of knowing that, you know, where they're going to go, that they might not escape or escape from the kind of ramifications and consequences of the moments that we've just seen depicted in the story. So there's something, you know, I think it's heartbreaking. I think it's hard to be that heartbreaking without being able to see such a large span of life and see how those Moments connect.
- [60:18]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah. I mean, those flash forwards are just devastating. Although there is light at the end of the tunnel for Charlie and for Mindy, and there isn't for Ralph. There's so much negativity, even in their stories, their futures. And I agree, it casts the light of nostalgia on a trip that's very complicated, in which people are having a lot of negative emotions as well. It's funny how that looking backwards light can change so much. And you have Mindy in the future thinking of this as the last perfect moment in her life, when in fact, it wasn't perfect.
- [61:02]
Greg Jackson
No. And that feeling of wanting to go back to it is so. And maybe do something different or make a different decision. It's so poignant. It's obviously something we all experience. You know, I think it's so interesting, and, I mean, it's very overt in a certain way, that in a story that's so much about time, there's a character named Chronos, you know, the Greek personification of time. And I hadn't really picked up on this before, but, you know, he works for. He plays in the band the Mad Hatters. You know, my kids are a little too young for me to read Alice in Wonderland, but I looked up some details about the Mad Hatter because I was interested. And it turns out the Mad Hatter is singing, or asked to sing for the Queen of Hearts. And she, you know, she stops him and condemns him to death because for, quote, unquote, murdering the time. And she condemns him specifically to having his head cut off. Well, he actually, he escapes. He isn't killed. But then time sort of stops for him. And then we have this moment when the lion leaps on him and it says, she lands on his head. But like the Mad Hatter, he escapes, having his head, you know, decapitated. And then a little while later, Rolf says, is Cronos dead? Sort of. Is time been murdered?
- [62:22]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah, yeah.
- [62:23]
Greg Jackson
And the line that really stuck out to me, this on this reading as kind of like the most crushing and central line in the whole piece, although I think I read over it countless times without noticing it, is just a little before when Albert sees that Kronos has gotten out of the jeep and he says, no. He hisses, no, back in the jeep. Walk backward, Albert says with hushed urgency. Backward, Kronos. It's like he's urging time to go backward and he's urging the impossible, which is that you could go back from a fateful decision that's going to have consequences that ramify out, perhaps indefinitely. Forever.
- [63:02]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah. And of course, Kronos as an embodiment of time, he's a spoiler. He's the one who blunders off and costs this lioness her life and leaves, Leaves the cubs motherless. And time is what really destroys Rolf, at least. And there's also the idea that, you know, a vacation is, in a sense, a time when you put real life on hold and pause it. So this entire story is, in a way, a break from normal time. And they assume, you know, Lou assumes he's going back to his life, and that'll be it with Mindy. And Mindy assumes she's going back to grad school. And there are all these assumes, assumptions about real life, the real lives they're going back to. And this being a break from those, though, in a way, the thing that changes that, at least for Mindy and Lou, is Albert. If it hadn't been for Albert offering up this other option and Mindy taking it, Lou and Mindy would have gone their separate ways, probably.
- [64:10]
Greg Jackson
Yeah. No, definitely. And I think, you know, it's very much driven by Lou's competitiveness, his need to win. And, you know, it's the same competitiveness that, you know, dominates Kronos and his bandmate and their girlfriend's fixation on the animals. The same competitiveness to win that gets him out of the Jeep. And, you know, that kind of competitive urge, that need to win is not. It can seem sort of triumphant, but it's not really something that these people are in control of. It seems to kind of lead them both into a certain ruin or at least have, you know, significant consequences for everyone involved.
- [64:52]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah. And then, you know, there's. In the midst of it all, there's these two children. There's Charlie and Rolf. Charlie really just wants her father to notice her and be a father to her. And Rolf really wants a mother. He's a little confused by his father. There's this whole spectrum of sexual awareness. Right. And it's completely heightened in Mindy and Albert and Lou, and it's just starting. And Charlie and Ralph doesn't have it, and he can't quite fathom it. And perhaps that's part of his watching, you know, trying to understand what's happening around him. I mean, who knows? I don't think we can know from this story why he becomes suicidal, but there's something about, you know, he still has an innocence that he's about to lose in this story.
- [65:45]
Greg Jackson
Yeah, no, I think entirely. And, you know, I think maybe even you know, this place where we begin. The first thing we sort of learn about Charlie is that she despises her real name, Charlene. And there's almost a way in which, or a sense that maybe she wants to be a boy or be a little more like a boy, because she sees Luz, you know, the way that he treats Rolf and includes him in things. Rolf is described as his favorite child. Maybe there's a desire to kind of step into that role or have that relationship with her father. But, you know, at the end, after all of this, she's gone through all of this and sort of emerged from the ashes of her own self destruction. You know, she resumes her. Her real name, Charlene. And there's some line. I don't know exactly what it is, but she unlatches herself from the girl who was dancing with her brother in the past. And I think that unlatching is somehow really essential. It's sort of the way in which these characters are able, although it's very hard one, to free themselves from living in just response to one another and how the dynamics among them are compelling them to be. And I think Rolf isn't actually able to unlatch himself. And that's probably, you know, he can't unlatch himself from these memories, from the feelings that well up inside him. You know, it's too hard to speculate exactly about what goes on with him, although we learn a little bit more about him in the novel. But, you know, I think in a way, it's sort of like growing up maturing, becoming a real person. For a lot of these characters, at least the ones that manage it is unlatching yourself from environment, family, sexual or libidinal impulses. Being able to actually sort of make your own decisions and not just live in reaction or response.
- [67:41]
Deborah Treisman
Or in competition.
- [67:42]
Greg Jackson
Yeah, or in competition. Yeah.
- [67:43]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah. I mean, there's no question that Charlie running off to join a cult with a charismatic cult leader is a repetition of what she's done on the safari. You know, wanting the approval of the leader, the charismatic leader of the pack, you know.
- [68:05]
Greg Jackson
Yeah.
- [68:06]
Deborah Treisman
So there's so much in here.
- [68:08]
Greg Jackson
There's so much.
- [68:09]
Deborah Treisman
I'm almost not sure what to go back to. But for me, the central heartbreak for Rolf in the story is the death of that lioness and how it plays out in his mind as these, you know, abandoned cubs who probably won't be taken care of by their father and the casualness with which, you know, they've been orphaned in that way.
- [68:34]
Greg Jackson
Yeah, No, I think that's the center of the story. And you know, the kind of way in which, like perhaps another lioness who's not his mother, you know, Mindy is sort of compared to that sort of figure. And clearly, you know, these stand ins, these surrogates, this idea that the kind of community is going to raise them, you know, it isn't. It isn't really the same in human life or the human world as maybe it is in the. In the world of lions. Although, you know, Lord knows, I know very little about the world of lions. Were there any interesting things that came up in the process of editing it? Because it is a little different from the version that appears in the novel. I think most of what doesn't appear is mostly just things that might pertain more to other aspects of the novel. But, you know, I don't know, it somehow came out so perfect in the way that it stands on its own. I wondered if you had talked about any of these things with her or if there's anything to share there.
- [69:37]
Deborah Treisman
You know, it's 14 years ago, so I don't remember all the details of what we talked about. I know that we. I do remember that we talked at length about the flashforwards and how much of that there should be, how much a story could contain of that. In that sense, it needed to be different when it's on its own than in the book. So that was an element. I mean, it. I talked to her about the story recently and she mentioned that she first wrote a story about a safari back in the 1980s. And it was based on a trip that. A safari that she had gone on with her mother and her stepfather and her younger brother. And that that story didn't work at all. And it was much too close to her actual experience and so on. But the pieces of it that remained, the only pieces that remained in this version or this story, which is a different story, were the idea of this fragile younger brother and the actor. The actor who kind of has no expression and speaks in platitudes, who was actually an actor who was on their safari for her. He was inspired by a real person. So what do you think Dean, the actor is doing in the middle of this story? Why do we have this guy who just states the obvious?
- [71:04]
Greg Jackson
He's pretty inscrutable. I mean, he's kind of a good comic device. I find myself always sort of laughing, I think, especially at the time when he says, once is not enough. You need to reapply. I don't know why that one really gets Me. And there's something maybe about Dean, for me, that feels a little bit like. It's almost like the mask version of a person. It's just so superficial. There's something, you know, we're never going to inhabit his perspective in the story. We're never going to really dip into his mind. There's something that we can't kind of penetrate. It's almost too. Just on the surface, but.
- [71:42]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah. Yeah. Well, you have no idea if there is a mind in there. In a way, it's like, you know, maybe it's the camera has stolen his soul. Who knows?
- [71:51]
Greg Jackson
Yeah.
- [71:52]
Deborah Treisman
Which is. You know, it's made me think of the. Just that opening scene where you have the warriors coming with their drums and enacting this sort of cultural anthropological show for an audience. And you have that one moment where you sort of slip into the warriors awareness, and he's like, oh, God, you know, I left home. I was a man at 10. But I can see in your culture that this girl is still a child. And I find that moment sort of hilarious because here they are, you know, like in a National Geographic with their oxen and drums, and then you get a little flash of his mind.
- [72:37]
Greg Jackson
This is like an example of how brilliant and subtle Egan is. You can read all of this, and it just are. They're perfectly chosen details that make sense within the story. But there's also all of this kind of like, deep, maybe intentional, maybe intuitive theme work going on. You know, there's this. The warriors show up. There's four of them, two holding drums and a child in the shadows minding a yellow longhorned cow. You know, even the child there is actually doing a job like an adult. And then a little way down, Charlie kind of winds up in some hut or bar. It says, in a hut belonging to a very young woman whose breasts were leaking milk. You know, it's not even a young woman. It's a very young woman. Like, people have grown up so much more quickly and are so much more on the way to adulthood in this world, like the warrior who left home at 10 than Charlie and Rolf are. But there's also the suggestion that somehow, you know, being here, you know, not that there's anything kind of mystical about being on a safari or being in Africa, but just even over the course of this story, there's some way in which Rolf and Charlie also are growing up more quickly. You know, these questions of what it means to be an adult or a child in these paths of development. But a lot happens in the course of this story, this three week safari that does seem to kind of, I don't know, push Charlie and Rolf forward in some way in their maturation. And it seems to have affected them in at least some ways for the rest of their lives. Or at least the part that we know about.
- [74:11]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah, Mindy too. Yeah, Mindy too. Suddenly, instead of being a kind of carefree grad student eating lentils, she's a wife and a mother and stressed out because her kids cry too much.
- [74:26]
Greg Jackson
I don't know what that's about. I've never experienced kids who get in the way of your professional life. Yeah.
- [74:34]
Deborah Treisman
Well, thank you, Greg.
- [74:36]
Greg Jackson
Thank you. Thanks so much.
- [74:38]
Deborah Treisman
Jennifer Egan is the author of seven works of fiction, including A Visit from the Goon Squad, which won a Pulitzer Prize in 2011, Manhattan Beach, a winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, and the Candy House, which was published in 2022. She's been publishing fiction and nonfiction in the New Yorker since 1989. Greg Jackson has published a story collection, Prodigals, and a novel, the Dimensions of a Cave, which was one of the New Yorker's Best Books of 2023. He's been publishing fiction in the magazine since 2014. You can download more than 200 previous episodes of the New Yorker Fiction Podcast or subscribe to the podcast for free in Apple Podcasts. On the Writer's Voice podcast, you can hear short stories from the magazine read by their authors. You can find the Writer's Voice and other New Yorker podcasts on your podcast app. Tell us what you thought of this program on our Facebook page or rate and review us in Apple Podcasts. This episode of the New Yorker Fiction Podcast was produced by Jill Duboff. I'm Debra Treisman. Thanks for listening.
- [75:46]
David Remnick
Hi, this is David Remnick and I'm pleased to share the news that I'm Not a Robot. A live action short film from the New Yorker's Screening Room series has been shortlisted for the Academy Awards. This thought provoking film grapples with questions that we can all relate to about identity and technology and what it means to be human in an increasingly digital world. I encourage you to watch I'm Not a Robot along with our full slate of documentary and narrative films@newyorker.com video.
- [76:17]
Deborah Treisman
From PRX.