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- [00:01]
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- [00:41]
Deborah Treisman
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 Cat by Margaret Atwood, which appeared in the New Yorker in March of 1990. The story was chosen by Jennifer Egan, whose published selection seven books of fiction, including the Pulitzer Prize winning A Visit from the Goon Squad and most recently, the Candy House. Hi, Jenny.
- [01:10]
Jennifer Egan
Hi, Deborah.
- [01:11]
Deborah Treisman
So on past episodes of the fiction podcast, you read stories by Laurie Siegel and Mary Gaitskill, and today you chose Margaret Atwood. Why was that?
- [01:23]
Jennifer Egan
Well, I like picking stories that I actually haven't looked at in a really long time but have stayed with me in some way. And I actually hadn't read Cat since the 90s, so I think part of it was just a wish to revisit it. And then once I did, in some ways it's really a story about a changing era, and yet its own era now feels way in the distance for all kinds of reasons. So as a cultural and personal artifact, it felt really fascinating to me.
- [01:53]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah. So it came out in 1990, and I think you had published your first story in the magazine the year before that. So you were aware of the New Yorker?
- [02:03]
Jennifer Egan
Oh, yes.
- [02:04]
Deborah Treisman
Did you read it first in the magazine?
- [02:06]
Jennifer Egan
I read it in the magazine and it felt really important somehow. I think part of it was my age. You know, I was 27 when it came out. I'm now 62. And at the time it felt like a reflection on a certain set of decisions that a young woman, a woman maybe a few years older than I was, had made. And it just felt very relevant to me at age 27. And so I think that was one reason it really struck me. Also, the kind of grotesqueness of it really stayed with me, and I found myself more put off by that now than I was then. And I think that's I really Noticed that I am getting more squeamish, and I don't know why that is, but I immediately wanted to push against that and sort of lean into it. So I did. It's like, if I'm backing away out of squeamishness, it's time to move forward.
- [03:00]
Deborah Treisman
Had you been a reader of Atwood's already? Were you reading her novels? Have they been important in your life?
- [03:06]
Jennifer Egan
Well, actually, Margaret Atwood was, I think, maybe the first professional writer I had ever watched live. She came to Penn when I was a student, and she. I can't remember the timing. I think. I'm not sure what year it was, but she was already very well known. And she was magnetic. I mean, I remember specifically this crowded room and all of us so excited to have this. And so she was the first literary superstar I ever witnessed. And I felt a very personal connection to her, even though we never actually said hello.
- [03:38]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah. And had you read novels of hers that were important?
- [03:42]
Jennifer Egan
I can't remember what I had read when I first saw her, but I knew of her and was excited to see this story when it came out, for sure.
- [03:49]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah. And as you said, it's kind of of its time. It's an era that. That we lived through, but now seems very far in the distant past, even though it's about 25 years. Do you think you read this story differently now?
- [04:05]
Jennifer Egan
Very, very differently. Because then it was a story about an older woman who had kind of screwed up. That's how I saw it. A tragic story of a woman who had made the wrong decisions and maybe couldn't have the life it turned out that she wanted. Now I see it as a story about a young woman who's figuring out what kind of future she wants. I mean, it's unbelievable how perspective changes everything.
- [04:32]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah.
- [04:32]
Jennifer Egan
And what I love about it, it's obviously very satirical and quite funny and really very acid in its portrayals. And yet it really has a heart. And there is pathos to it. But I find that pathos more tender now and kind of warm, because it doesn't. It feels like it's a story about loss as a process of discovering what will come next, as opposed to loss that's gonna result in having less loss.
- [05:01]
Deborah Treisman
As in loss of identity, loss of one's ideas about oneself. Right.
- [05:06]
Jennifer Egan
And loss of. I think it's also loss of a whole perspective that ultimately didn't pan out. And in a way that gets at the other ways that the story is so interesting to me now because as a cultural artifact, I mean this is a pre Internet story, but just so when Kat sits down at her desk and reads her mail, it's very easy to imagine her checking her email. That's not what this is, not what this means. She sits down and she opens up physical mail. And we all know that the world of magazines has been changed irrevocably by the Internet, and in fact all kinds of creative production has been. So it feels nostalgic in a way, even though the world that it's depicting, that I feel nostalgia for, is being depicted very critically by Margaret Atwood as a, you know, a kind of purveyor of ridiculous and false ideas of desire and acquisition.
- [06:02]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah, yeah. Well, let's talk some more after the reading. And now here's Jennifer Egan reading Cat by Margaret atwood cat.
- [06:15]
Jennifer Egan
On the 13th of November, day of unluck, month of the dead, Cat went into the Toronto General Hospital for an operation. It was for an ovarian cyst, a large one. Many women had them, the doctor told Cat. Nobody knew why. There wasn't any way of finding out whether the thing was malignant, whether it contained already the spores of her death, not before they went in. He spoke of going in the way she'd heard old veterans in TV documentaries speak of assaults on enemy territory. There was the same tensing of the jaw, the same fierce gritting of the teeth, the same grim enjoyment, except that what he would be going into was her body, counting down, waiting for the anesthetic. Cat, too, gritted her teeth fiercely. She was terrified, but she was also curious. Curiosity has got her through a lot. She'd made the doctor promise to save the thing for her, whatever it was, so she could have a look. She was intensely interested in her own body, in anything it might choose to do or produce, although when Flaky Dania, who did layout at the magazine, told her this growth was a message to her from her body and she ought to sleep with an amethyst under the pillow to calm her vibrations. Cat told her to stuff it. The cyst turned out to be a benign tumor. Cat liked the use of benign, as if the thing had a soul and wished her well. It was big as a grapefruit, the doctor said. Big as a coconut, said Cat. Other people had grapefruits. Coconut was better. It conveyed the hardness of it, and the hairiness, too. The hair in it was red, long strands of it wound round and round inside, like a ball of wet wool gone berserk, or like the guck you pull out of a clogged bathroom sink drain. There were little bones in it too, or fragments of bone, bird bones, the bones of a sparrow crushed by a car. There was a scattering of nails, toe or finger. There were five perfectly formed teeth. Is this abnormal? Cat asked the doctor, who smiled now that he had gone in and come out again unscathed. He was less clenched. Abnormal? No, he said carefully, as if breaking the news to a mother about a freakish accident to her newborn. Let's just say it's fairly common. Cat was a little disappointed. She would have preferred uniqueness. She asked for a bottle of formaldehyde and put the cut open tumor into it. It was hers. It was benign. It did not deserve to be thrown away. She took it back to her apartment and stuck it on the mantelpiece. She named it Hairball. It isn't that different from having a stuffed bear's head or a preserved ex pet or anything else with fur and teeth looming over your fireplace. Or she pretends it isn't. Anyway, it certainly makes an impression. Jer doesn't like it. Despite his supposed yen for the new and outre, he is a squeamish man. The first time he comes around, sneaks around, creeps around. After the operation he tells Cat to throw Hairball out. He calls it disgusting. Cat refuses point blank and says she'd rather have Hairball in a bottle on her mantelpiece than the sopp dead flowers he's brought her, which will anyway rot a lot sooner than Hairball will. As a mantelpiece ornament. Hairball is far superior, Jer says. Cat has a tendency to push things to extremes, to go over the edge merely from a juvenile desire to shock, which is hardly a substitute for wit. One of these days, he says, she will go way too far. Too far for him is what he means. That's why you hired me, isn't it? She says. Because I go way too far. But he's in one of his analyzing moods. He can see these tendencies of hers reflected in her work on the magazine. He says all that leather and those grotesque and tortured looking poses are heading down a track. He and others are not at all sure they should continue to follow. Does she see what he means? Does she take his point? It's a point that's been made before. She shakes her head slightly, says nothing. She knows how that translates. There have been complaints from the advertisers. Too bizarre, too kinky, tough. Want to see my scar? She says. Don't make me laugh, though. You'll crack it open. Stuff like that makes him dizzy anything with a hint of blood, anything gynecological. He almost threw up in the delivery room when his wife had a baby two years ago. He told her that with pride. Kat thinks about sticking a cigarette into the side of her mouth as in a black and white movie of the 40s. She thinks about blowing the smoke into his face. Her insolence used to excite him during their arguments. Then there would be a grab of her upper arms, a smoldering violent kiss. He kisses her as if he thinks someone else is watching him and judging the image they make together. Kissing the latest thing hard and shiny, purple mouthed, crop headed kissing a girl. A woman. A girl in a little crotch hugger skirt and skin tight leggings. He likes mirrors but he isn't excited now and she can't decoy him into bed. She isn't ready for that yet. She isn't healed. He has a drink which he doesn't finish, holds her hand as an afterthought, gives her a couple of avuncular pats on the off white outsized alpaca shoulder leaves too quickly. Goodbye Gerald, she says. She pronounces the name with mockery. It's a negation of him, an abolishment of him, like ripping a medal off his chest. It's a warning. He'd been Gerald when they first met. It was she who transformed him, first to Jerry, then to Jer. Rhymed with flair, rhymed with dare. She made him get rid of those sucky pursed mouthed ties, told him what shoes to wear, got him to buy a loose cut Italian suit, redid his hair, a lot of his current tastes in food, in drink, in recreational drugs, in women's entertainment underwear were once hers. In his new phase, with his new hard stripped down name ending on the sharpened note of R, he is her creation as she is her own. During her childhood she was a romanticized Catherine dressed by her misty eyed fussy mother in dresses that looked like ruffled pillowcases. By high school she'd shed the frills and emerged as a bouncy round faced Kathy with gleaming freshly washed hair and enviable teeth, eager to please and no more interesting than a health food ad at university she was cath blunt and no bullshit in her take back the night jeans and checked shirt and her bricklayer style striped denim peaked hat. When she ran away to England she sliced herself down to cat. It was economical, street feline and pointed as a nail. It was also unusual in England you had to do something to get their attention, especially if you Weren't English safe in this incarnation? She ramboed through the 80s. It was the name, she still thinks, that got her the interview. And then the job. The job was with an avant garde magazine, the kind that was printed on matte in black and white, with overexposed close ups of women with hair blowing over their eyes, one nostril prominent, the razor's edge. It was called Haircuts as Art. Some real art. Film reviews, a little stardust. Wardrobes of ideas that were clothes and of clothes that were ideas. The metaphysical shoulder pad. She learned her trade well, hands on. She learned what worked. She made her way up the ladder from layout to design, then to the supervision of whole spreads and then whole issues. It wasn't easy, but it was worth it. She had become a creator. She created total looks. After a while she could walk down the street in Soho or stand in the lobby at Openings and witness her handiwork incarnate strolling around in outfits she'd put together, spouting her warmed over pronouncements. It was like being God. Only God had never got around to off the rack lines. By that time her face had lost its roundness, though the teeth, of course, remained. There was something to be said for North American dentistry. She'd shaved off most of the hair, worked on the drop dead stare, perfected a certain turn of the neck that conveyed an aloof inner authority. What you had to make them believe was that you knew something they didn't know yet. What you also had to make them believe was that they too could know. This thing. This thing that would give them eminence and power and sexual allure, would attract envy to them, but for a price. The price of the magazine. What they could never get through their heads was that it was done entirely with cameras. Frozen light, frozen time. Given the angle, she could make any woman look ugly. Any man as well. She could make anyone look beautiful, or at least interesting. It was all photography. It was all iconography. It was all in the choosing eye. This was the thing that could never be bought, no matter how much of your pitiful monthly wage you blew on snakeskin. Despite the status, the Razor's Edge was fairly low. Paying Cat herself could not afford many of the things she contextualized so well. The grottiness and expense of London began to get to her. She got tired of gorging on the canapes at literary launches in order to scrimp on groceries, tired of the foggy smell of cigarettes ground into the red and maroon carpeting of pubs, tired of the Pipes bursting every time it froze in winter, and of the Clarissas and Melissas and Penelopes at the magazine rabbiting on about how they had been literally, absolutely, totally freezing all night, and how it literally, absolutely, totally usually never got that cold. It always got that cold. The pipes always burst. Nobody thought of putting in real pipes, ones that would not burst next time. Burst pipes were an English tradition, like so many others. Like, for instance, English men charm the knickers off you with their mellow vowels and frivolous verbiage, and then once they'd got them off, panic and run, or else stay and whinge. The English called it whinging. Instead of whining, it was better, really, like a creaking hinge. It was a traditional compliment to be whinged at by an Englishman. It was his way of saying he trusted you. He was conferring upon you the privilege of getting to know the real him, the inner whingeing him. That was how they thought of women, really. Whinge receptacles. Cat could play it, but that didn't mean she liked it. She had an advantage over the English women, though she was of no class. She had no class. She was in a class of her own. She could roll around among the Englishmen, all different kinds of them, secure in the knowledge that she was not being measured against the class yardsticks and accent detectors they carried around in their back pockets, was not subject to the petty snobberies and resentments which lent such richness to their inner lives. The flip side of this freedom was that she was beyond the pale. She was a colonial. How fresh, how vital, how anonymous, how finally of no consequence, like a hole in the wall, she could be told all secrets and then abandoned with no guilt. She was too smart. Of course. The English men were very competitive. They liked to win. Several times it hurt. Twice she had abortions because the men in question were not up for the alternative. She learned to say that she didn't want children anyway, that if she longed for a rugrat, she would buy a gerbil. Her life began to seem long. Her adrenaline was running out. Soon she would be 30, and all she could see ahead was more of the same. This was how things were when Gerald turned up. You're terrific, he said, and she was ready to hear it, even from him, even though terrific was a word that had probably gone out with 50s crew cuts. She was ready for his voice by that time, too. The flat, metallic nasal tone of the Great Lakes with its clear, hard Rs and its absence of theatricality, dull, normal. The speech of her people. It came to her suddenly that she was in exile. Gerald was scouting. Gerald was recruiting. He'd heard about her, looked at her work, sought her out. One of the big companies back in Toronto was launching a new fashion oriented magazine, he said. Upmarket International in its coverage, of course, but with some Canadian fashion in it too, and with lists of stores where the items portrayed could actually be bought. In that respect they felt they'd have it all over the competition. Those American magazines that assumed you could only get Gucci in New York or Los Angeles. Heck, times had changed. You could get it in Edmonton, you could get it in Winnipeg. Cat had been away too long. There was Canadian fashion now. The English quip would be to say that Canadian fashion was an oxymoron. She refrained from making it, lit a cigarette with her cyanide green Covent Garden boutique leather covered lighter as featured in the May issue of the Razor's Edge, looked Gerald in the eye. London is a lot to give up, she said. Lovely. She glanced around the see me here Mayfair restaurant where they were finishing lunch. A restaurant she'd chosen because she'd known he was paying. She'd never spend that kind of money on food. Otherwise where would I eat? Gerald assured her that Toronto was now the restaurant capital of Canada. He himself would be happy to be her guide. There was a great Chinatown. There was world class Italian. Then he paused, took a breath. I've been meaning to ask you, he said, about the name. Is that Cat? As in crazy? He thought this was suggestive. She'd heard it before. No, she said. It's cat, as in KitKat. That's a chocolate bar. Melts in your mouth. She gave him her stare, quirked her mouth just a twitch. Gerald became flustered, but he pushed on. They wanted her. They needed her. They loved her, he said, in essence, someone with her fresh, innovative approach and her experience would be worth a lot of money to them, relatively speaking. But there were rewards other than the money. She would be in on the initial concept. She would have a formative influence. She would have a free hand. He named a sum that made her gasp inaudibly. Of course, by now she knew better than to betray desire. So she made the journey back, did her three months of culture shock, tried the world class Italian and the great Chinese, and seduced Gerald at the first opportunity, right in his junior vice presidential office. It was the first time Gerald had been seduced in such a location, or perhaps ever. Even though it was after hours, the danger frenzied him. It was the idea of it, the daring, the image of Cat kneeling on the broad loom in a legendary bra that until now he'd seen only in the lingerie ads of the Sunday New York Times, unzipping him in full view of the silver framed engagement portrait of his wife that complemented the impossible ballpoint pen set on his desk. At that time he was so straight he felt compelled to take off his wedding ring and place it carefully in the ashtray first. The next day he brought her a box of David Wood Food Shop chocolate truffles. They were the best, he told her, anxious that she should recognize their quality. She found the gesture banal, but also sweet. The banality, the sweetness, the hunger to impress. That was Gerald. Gerald was the kind of man she wouldn't have bothered with in London. He was not funny, he was not knowledgeable, he had little verbal charm. But he was eager. He was tractable. He was blank paper. She took pleasure in his furtive, boyish delight, in his own wickedness, and he was so grateful. I can hardly believe this is happening, he said, more frequently than was necessary and usually in bed. His wife, whom Cat encountered and still encounters at many tedious company events, helped to explain his gratitude. The wife was a priss. Her name was Cheryl. Her hair looked as if she still used big rollers and embalm your hairdo spray. Her mind was room by room Laura Ashley wallpaper, tiny unopened pastel buds arranged in straight rows. She probably put on rubber gloves to make love and checked it off on a list afterwards. One more messy household chore. She looked at Cat as if she'd like to spritz her with air deodorizer. Cat revenged herself by picturing Cheryl's bathrooms, hand towels embroidered with lilies, fuzzy covers on the toilet seats. The magazine itself got off to a rocky start. Although Kat had lots of lovely money to play with, and although it was a challenge to be working in color, she did not have the free hand Gerald had promised her. She had to contend with the company board of directors, who were all men, who were all accountants or indistinguishable from them, who were cautious and slow as moles. It's simple, Cat told them. You bombard them with images of what they ought to be, and you make them feel grotty for being the way they are. You're working with the gap between reality and perception. That's why you have to hit them with something new, something they've never seen before, something they aren't Nothing sells like anxiety. The board, on the other hand, felt that their readership should simply be offered more of what they already had. More fur, more sumptuous leather, more cashmere, more established names. The board had no sense of improvisation, no wish to take risks, no sporting instincts, no desire to put one over on the readers just for the hell of it. Fashion is like hunting, Cat told them, hoping to appeal to their male hormones, if any. It's playful, it's intense, it's predatory, it's blood and guts. It's erotic. But to them it was about good taste. They wanted dress for success. Cat wanted scattergun ambush. Everything became a compromise. Cat had wanted to call the magazine all the Rage, but the board was put off by the vibrations of anger in the word rage. They thought it was too feminist, of all things. It's a 40s sound, Cat said. 40s is back. Don't you get it? But they didn't. They wanted to call it or French for gold, and blatant enough in its values but without any base note, as Cat told them. They sawed off at Felice, which had qualities each side wanted. It was vaguely French sounding, it meant happy, so much less threatening than rage. And although you couldn't expect the others to notice, for Cat it had a feline bouquet that counteracted the laciness. She had it done in hot pink lipstick scrawl, which helped some. She could live with it, but it had not been her first love. This battle has been fought and refought over every innovation in design, every new angle. Katz tried to bring in, every innocuous bit of semi kink. There was a big row over a spread that did lingerie half pulled off and with broken glass perfume bottles strewn on the floo. There was an uproar over the two nuvo stockinged legs, one tied to the leg of a chair with a third different colored stocking. They had not understood the man's $300 leather gloves positioned ambiguously around a neck. And so it has gone on for five years. After Gerald has left, Kat paces her living room. Pace, pace. Her stitches pull. She's not looking forward to her solitary dinner of microwaved leftovers. She's not sure now why she came back here to this flat berg beside the polluted inland sea. Was it Jer? Ludicrous thought, but no longer out of the question. Is he the reason she stays, despite her growing impatience with him? He's no longer fully rewarding. They've learned each other too well. They take shortcuts now, their time together has shrunk from whole stolen, rolling and sensuous afternoons to a few hours snatched between work and dinner time. She no longer knows what she wants from him. She tells herself she's worth more. She should branch out. But she doesn't see other men. She can't somehow. She's tried once or twice but it didn't work. Sometimes she goes out to dinner or a flick with one of the gay designers. She likes the gossip. Maybe she misses London. She feels caged in this country, in this city, in this room. She could start with the room. She could open a window. It's too stuffy in here. There's an undertone of formaldehyde from Harbaugh's bottle. The flowers she got for the operation are mostly wilted. All except Gerald's from today. Come to think of it. Why didn't he send her any at the hospital? Did he forget? Or was it a message? Hairball, she says. I wish you could talk. I could have a more intelligent conversation with you than with most of the losers in this turkey farm. Hareball's baby teeth glint in the light. It looks as if it's about to speak. Kat feels her own forehead. She wonders if she's running a temperature. Something ominous is going on behind her back. There haven't been enough phone calls from the magazine. They've been able to muddle on without her, which is bad news. Reigning queens should never go on vacation or have operations either. Uneasy lies the head. She has a sixth sense about these things. She's been involved in enough palace coups to know the signs. She has sensitive antennae for the footfalls of impending treachery. The next morning she pulls herself together, downs an espresso from her mini machine, picks out an aggressive touch me if you dare suede outfit in armor gray, and drags herself to the office. Although she isn't due in till next week. Surprise, surprise. Whispering knots break up in the corridors, greet her with false welcome as she limps past. She settles herself at her minimalist desk, checks her mail. Her head is pounding. Her stitches hurt. Jer gets wind of her arrival. He wants to see her ASAP and not for lunch. He awaits her in his newly done wheat on white office with the 18th century desk they chose together, the Victorian inkstand, the framed blow ups from the magazine, the hands in maroon leather, wrists manacled with pearls, the Hermes scarf twisted into a blindfold, the model's mouth blossoming lusciously beneath it. Some of her best stuff. He's beautifully done up in a lick. My Neck, silk shirt, open at the throat and eat your heart out. Italian silk and wool loose knit sweater. Oh, cool. Insouciance. Oh, eyebrow. Language. He's a money man who lusted after art and now he's got some. Now he is some body art. Her art. She's done her job well. He's finally sexy. He's smooth as lacquer. I didn't want to break this to you until next week, he says. He breaks it to her. It's the board of directors. They think she's too bizarre. They think she goes way too far. Nothing he could do about it. Although naturally he tried. Naturally. Betrayal. The monster has turned on its own mad scientist. I gave you life. She wants to scream at him. She isn't in good shape. She can hardly stand. She stands despite his offer of a chair. She sees now what she's wanted, what she's been missing. Gerald is what she's been missing. The stable, unfashionable, previous tight assed Gerald. Not Ger. Not the one she's made in her own image. The other one, before he got ruined. The Gerald with a house and a small child and a picture of his wife in a silver frame on his desk. She wants to be in that silver frame. She wants the child. She's been robbed. And who is my lucky replacement? She says she needs a cigarette, but she does not want to reveal her shaking hands. Actually, it's me, he says, trying for modesty. This is too absurd. Gerald couldn't edit a phone book. You, she says faintly. She has the good sense not to laugh. I've always wanted to get out of the money end of things here, he says. Into the creative area. I knew you'd understand. Since it can't be you at any rate. I knew you'd prefer someone who could. Well, sort of build on your foundations. Pompous asshole. She looks at his neck. She longs for him, hates herself for it and is powerless. The room wavers. He slides toward her across the wheat colored broadloom, takes her by the gray suede upper arms. I'll write you a good reference, he says. Don't worry about that. Of course we can still see one another. I'd miss our afternoons. Of course, she says. He kisses her. A voluptuous kiss, or it would look like one to a third party. And she lets him in. A pig's ear. She makes it home in a taxi. The driver is rude to her and gets away with it. She doesn't have the energy. In her mailbox is an engraved invitation. Jer and Cheryl are having a drinks party tomorrow evening, postmarked five days ago. Cheryl is behind the times. Kat undresses, runs a shallow bath. There's not much to drink around here. There's nothing to sniff or smoke. What an oversight. She's stuck with herself. There are other jobs, there are other men. Or that's the theory. Still, something's been ripped out of her. How could this have happened to her when knives have been slated for backs? She's always done the stabbing. Any headed her way she's seen coming in time and thwarted. Maybe she's losing her edge. She stares into the bathroom mirror, assesses her face in the misted glass. A face of the 80s, a mask face, a bottom line face. Push the weak to the wall and grab what you can. But now it's the 90s. Is she out of style so soon? She's only 35 and she's already losing track of what people 10 years younger are thinking. That could be fatal. As time goes by, she'll have to race faster and faster to keep up. And for what? Part of the life she should have had is just a gap. It isn't there. It's nothing. What can be salvaged from it? What can be redone? What can be done at all? When she climbs out of the tub after her sponge bath, she almost falls. She has a fever, no doubt about it. Inside her something is leaking or else festering. She can hear it like a dripping tap, a running sore, a sore from running so hard. She should go to the emergency ward at some hospital, get herself shot up with antibiotics. Instead she lurches into the living room, takes hairball down from the mantelpiece in its bottle, places it on the coffee table. She sits cross legged, listens, filaments wave. She can hear a kind of buzz, like bees at work. She'd ask the doctor if it could have started as a child, a fertilized egg that escaped somehow and got into the no, said the doctor. Some people thought this kind of tumor was present in seedling form from birth or before it. It might be the woman's undeveloped twin. What they really were was unknown. They had many kinds of tissue, though, even brain tissue, though of course all of these tissues lack structure. Still, sitting here on the rug, looking in at it, she pictures it as a child. It has come out of her after all, her child with Gerald, her thwarted child, not allowed to grow normally, her warped child taking its revenge. Hairball, she says, you're so ugly only a mother could love you. She feels sorry for it she feels loss. Tears run down her face. Crying is not something she does not normally, not lately. Hairball speaks to her without words. It is irreducible. It has the texture of reality. It is not an image. What it tells her is everything she's never wanted to hear about herself. This is new knowledge, dark and precious and necessary. It cuts. She shakes her head. What are you doing sitting on the floor and talking to a hairball? You are sick, she tells herself. Take a Tylenol and go to bed. The next day she feels a little better. Dania from Layout calls her and makes dove like sympathetic coos at her and wants to drop by during lunch hour to take a look at her aura. Kat tells her to come off it. Dania gets huffy and says that Kat's losing her job is a price for immoral behavior in a previous life. Cat tells her to stuff it anyway. She's done enough immoral behavior in this life to account for the whole thing. Why are you so full of hate? Asks Dania. She doesn't say it like a point she's making. She sounds truly baffled. I don't know, says Cat. It's a straight answer. After she hangs up, she paces the floor. She's crackling inside like hot fat under the broiler. What she's thinking about is Cheryl bustling about her cozy house, preparing for the party. Cheryl fiddles with her frieze, framed hair positions, an overloaded vase of flowers, fusses about the caterers. Gerald comes in, kisses her lightly on the cheek. A connubial scene. His conscience is nicely washed. The witch is dead. His foot is on the body, the trophy. He's had his dirty fling. He's ready now for the rest of his life. Cat takes a taxi to the David Wood food shop and buys two dozen chocolate truffles. She has them put into an oversized box, then into an oversized bag with store logo on it. Then she goes home and takes Hairball out of its bottle. She drains it in the kitchen's drainer and pats it damp, dry, tenderly with paper towels. She sprinkles it with powdered cocoa, which forms a brown pasty crust. It still smells like formaldehyde, so she wraps it in Saran Wrap and then in tinfoil and then in pink tissue paper, which she ties with a mauve bow. She places it in the David Wood box in a bed of shredded tissue with the truffles nestled around. She closes the box, tapes it, puts it into the bag, stuffs several sheets of pink paper on top. It's her gift, valuable and dangerous. It's her messenger, but the message it will deliver is its own. It will tell the truth to whoever asks. It's right that Gerald should have it. After all, it's his child too. She prints on the card, Gerald, sorry I couldn't be with you. This is all the rage. Love, K. When evening has fallen and the party must be in full swing, she calls a delivery taxi. Cheryl will not distrust anything that arrives in such an expensive bag. She will open it in public, in front of everyone. There will be distress. There will be questions. Secrets will be unearthed. There will be pain. After that, everything will go way too far. She is not well. Her heart is pounding. Space is wavering once more. But outside the window it's snowing. The soft, damp, windless flakes of her childhood. She puts on her coat and goes out. Foolishly. She intends to walk just to the corner, but when she reaches the corner, she goes on. The snow melts against her face like small fingers touching. She has done an outrageous thing. But she doesn't feel guilty. She feels light and peaceful and filled with charity and temporarily without a name.
- [42:43]
Deborah Treisman
That was Jennifer Egan Reading Cat by Margaret Atwood. The story appeared in the New Yorker in March of 1990 and was included in Atwood's collection Wilderness Tips, which was published in 1998 by McClelland & Stewart in Canada and Doubleday in the US and is also available from Audible.
- [43:01]
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.
- [43:32]
Deborah Treisman
So, Jenny, we talked about how culture has changed since this story came out in 1990, how publications, magazines have changed. But how do you read this now in terms of the kind of gender war in it and the power struggle between this man and this woman. Do you think that your perspective on that or our perspective as readers when reading this story has shifted?
- [43:56]
Jennifer Egan
Well, it's interesting in a way. It's very contemporary in that Cat is the more kind of alpha figure in the pair and Jer, as she calls him, is the more malleable, what you could think of as gendered as more female in a Traditional way. But in the end, he has the power. He has the power to get rid of her. It's a world that's run by men. That's the world she's writing about. I don't know if that would be true nowadays. The board wouldn't be all men. That wouldn't be acceptable. It wouldn't be allowed. Nor, frankly, would be gloves clutching a woman's neck. A lot of the imagery she describes is very much from a fashion moment that I remember really well, because I actually wrote an article for the Times Magazine about fashion models at that time. And I remember, you know, that was the era of heroin chic and this notion that somehow portraying violence against women or women in real distress as somehow sexy was okay, even though it wasn't okay at all for that to be happening in real life. And I think Margaret Atwood actually writes kind of specifically about the impact of those images, the way in which they summon desire. But I feel now that we have a sense that some of that is really not okay anymore. Yeah.
- [45:14]
Deborah Treisman
So it's not the right desire to summon.
- [45:17]
Jennifer Egan
Exactly. And it's also interesting to think about it in the context of the Handmaid's Tale, which I'm not sure Margaret Atwood had published yet at the time that she visited Penn, but certainly she had by the time this story came out. And one thing that I love about it is some of the same elements are at play. You know, women reproduction, childbearing. But in this context, it's in a very contemporary, at its time context, and very different from the more speculative kind of fantastical approach that she took in the Handmaid's Tale. And it really speaks to her range and also to the many innovative ways she has approached some of this material.
- [45:59]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah. I mean, what's interesting, going back to the depiction of violence against women as a fashion tool or an inciter of desire, that the person who wants to do that in this piece is Kat. It's her idea. These are her stagings. For Jer, it goes too far.
- [46:15]
Jennifer Egan
Right.
- [46:15]
Deborah Treisman
She's constantly pushing too far, and it makes him uncomfortable. Should we see a kind of empowerment in that and that she's claiming these things, or is it more that she's kind of absorbed a desire that's not hers?
- [46:31]
Jennifer Egan
It's interesting. I mean, the desire she's trying to provoke, and she's very clear about this, is the desire to buy, the desire to emulate. She says specifically, nothing sells like anxiety. And of course, we all know that's true. That's how advertising has worked from the very beginning. Now, of course, we see it in all kinds of ways that were really unimaginable at the time that this story was published. And in that way, it's almost quaint to think of some of this happening just in the world of magazine advertising, as opposed to images that teenagers, for example, are looking at all day long, often created by each other. But this idea of harnessing the gap between image and reality, between some notion of an imagined life and one's own lowly, granular, day to day existence, that is as old as image culture itself. And it's. As someone who's been fascinated by that my whole career, fascinating to read her take on it.
- [47:31]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah, yeah. The difference between, you know, luxury leather gloves around a woman's neck and assist with teeth. Different form of grotesqueness.
- [47:42]
Jennifer Egan
Yeah. And also the idea that these aren't even things she herself can afford. Kat is creating a fantasy world that she has no access to. And so then out of that comes this horrible, misshapen entity that can't even be explained fully. No one quite knows why it exists. It's very suggestive that it has these elements. And I must at the time have been intrigued enough to look this up and learn that it was all real.
- [48:11]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That these cysts exist. It's funny cause Margaret told me actually that Bob Gottlieb, who was editor of the New Yorker at the time, in 1990, thought she had entirely invented this. This was part of her gothic imagination.
- [48:25]
Jennifer Egan
That's so interesting. Yeah, I mean, I've always had a kind of slightly ghoulish quality, which I'm worried is starting to evaporate. But I was really fascinated by that. My grandfather was an orthopedic surge, and I always loved his medical books. Part of what I loved about them, frankly, were images of the grotesque, you know, the human form, not as it quote, unquote, should be. And again, even those notions, of course, have changed. But the idea of this strange suggestive symbol, it's a thing, but it also feels very symbolic of what we're not sure. Sitting right in the middle of a story that's very much about the world of image making and the basically fakeness of it. I mean, she says it's all photography. I love that juxtaposition. I mean, this story really holds up under extremely close examination. There are all kinds of parallels. You know, she talks about how her own teeth are so beautiful, orthodontically, you know, shaped North American teeth. And then there are these strange teeth in this entity so why do you.
- [49:31]
Deborah Treisman
Think she takes it home and puts it on her mantle?
- [49:35]
Jennifer Egan
Well, part of it is just her nature. She's very curious, which is something else I love about her. I love that that is really what we learn about her almost before anything else, and that that's been kind of a solace to her. I mean, I'd be surprised if there's any writer who wouldn't say the same. You know, curiosity is the thing that makes everything okay because it makes everything interesting, even bad things. So the very fact that it's suggestive and repulsive is a reason to explore it, is a reason to hold onto it rather than to push it away. That seems, for me, to be representative of some kind of really deep artistic sensibility. And I also love the fact that it comes from her. So she feels a kind of affection toward it, which I think is actually a very healthy impulse. You know, she thinks, oh, this is from me. I'm gonna hold onto it. I'm gonna take responsibility for it.
- [50:33]
Deborah Treisman
Right. That kind of goes hand in hand with the thing about her and children and how she's had two abortions, and she's learned to say she didn't want a kid anyway. And obviously, that's not the truth. And even she thinks of this as her child with Jer. Right? This is what her womb has produced or her body has produced from their relationship. This kind of stunted thing with some teeth and hair. So probably that explains some of the kind of protectiveness of it.
- [51:00]
Jennifer Egan
And also the wild and appalling thing that she does at the end, which I think at the time, I'm not sure how I read that originally, but I know the way I saw it this time was, you know, the whole relationship with Jer was misshapen. He's married. You know, he's gonna have that life of a home and a family with someone else. So if she wants that, she's on the wrong path. And so for me, this time, giving Hairball to Jer and his wife in what she imagines will be a destructive way, we don't really know whether any of that's gonna happen. I found myself thinking, you know, they might just never even see it. We don't know. She loves the thought of this big, you know, wild gesture, but who knows? But this time I thought, it's a kind of expiation. She's getting rid of it. And again, it a little bit gets back to social norms, because in 1990, maybe, it seemed like if you hadn't had a kid by 35, it was gonna be really hard. But, I mean, I've written about single mothers by choice. I mean, that is only a growing trend. I don't even know how common was IVF at that point. Like, there are so many ways that this woman can have that life if that's what she wants, that it doesn't feel like it's something that's off limits to her at all. And in that way, you know, it's so easy to think of, you know, the future as frightening, and it is in some ways. But it's also easy to forget that it has made a lot of things a lot easier than they used to be. For women, particularly.
- [52:31]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it seems to me that what's happened with Kat is she's been enamored of this whole kind of image creation, false front fashion world, of getting edgier and edgier and edgier, and she's thought this was going to last, this was going to be her thing. She is the queen of this kind of kinky bondage fashion representation. And then she's 35. And it's not that I have a hard time with this, but it surprises me in this story because the story is about a very strong woman at this age. At 35, what she's wanting is to be the woman in that silver frame on Jer's desk. She's wanting to be a wife with a baby. And there's something sort of retro about that, that she's hit this point and she's not wanting to be someone who goes it alone and does IVF and has a child and raises it. She's wanting that life, that kind of, as you said, tenderness in a way.
- [53:33]
Jennifer Egan
I mean, who knows if she really wants that or ends up pursuing it. For sure, that is very much what she thinks she wants at that point. But what I wonder, too, is whether what she's feeling is that her current path has kind of dissipated, like there's nowhere to go, partly because of her age. That in some way she just can't, at 35, you know, know the trends of very young people in the way that she could at, say, 25 maybe, too, because it's a new era. She has an 80s face. She says, yeah, and it can be really hard to keep reading the Cultural Room as your job.
- [54:11]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah.
- [54:12]
Jennifer Egan
You know, how do you stay relevant? How to have ideas that other people will care about? That's so hard. But I kind of think, my God, not. Gerald, please, you could do better. I mean, she's gonna Come up with something better. I think she kind of knew from.
- [54:28]
Deborah Treisman
The beginning she could do better. But in a way, this is her kind of Pygmalion story, that she has taken someone who wasn't particularly attractive. All he had going for him is he was sort of eager and excited about it. And she's turned him into cutthroat, high fashion guy who will kick her out the door when she's having her ovary operated on. You know, it's like, don't leave the office for surgery. It's sort of like she got what she wished for in a way, because she recreated this man and then he wasn't what she wished for. She wished for the one who kept the picture of his wife on his desk.
- [55:05]
Jennifer Egan
And maybe the one who has enough of a center that he can't be recreated by someone else and won't cheat on his wife delightedly for five years. But yeah, I mean, it's interesting because there's that really poignant moment where she says something about there's a gap, there's something that's not there. But in a way, her whole job has been about exploiting a gap between fantasy and reality. You know, that gap is what's kept her employed. So it's no surprise that she feels its presence. But I think part of what she's feeling is a kind of maturity that makes that gap no longer appealing. That she wants something different.
- [55:51]
Deborah Treisman
Right. I mean, the gap is what she doesn't have. Right. It's not there in her life, but she isn't quite sure what it is.
- [55:57]
Jennifer Egan
Yeah, exactly.
- [55:58]
Deborah Treisman
A baby is the easy thing to say because we're dealing with things coming out of her body, but who knows if it's that? Yeah. And she gives her baby hairball away.
- [56:09]
Jennifer Egan
Exactly. And what she has is her curiosity, her humor, her wit, and a kind of creative approach. I feel like she's a. She's well rid of all of it. You know, it feels very hopeful in that way. I love that we return to childhood. Like there's this sense of snow and gentleness and back to the beginning when she was Catherine. That whole idea of being shaped from the outside comes up in all kinds of ways in the story that I really love. Obviously, one of them is advertising, but also just the way that, you know, growing up we do define ourselves so much by like, what we wear, who we hang out with, what kind of music we listen to. And so thinking back on those different versions of ourselves is very kind of sweet. Like, I find that very lovely and I think it's so beautifully described. So, so pithily in the story.
- [57:04]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah. Though in a way. The paragraph with the names and the whole concept of her name through the whole story, where she starts off as this romantically frilly Catherine dressed by her mother, and then she's Kathy and she's all like bouncy and round faced, and then she's Cath wearing her take back the night shirt and her lumberjack shirt and she becomes Cat. And then in her very last act, she signs her note K. And then she's nameless in that last line of the story. So I guess the question is, is she gone or what comes next? She's only temporarily nameless, but what's the next name going to be? And maybe that's what you're saying when it's a sort of hopeful look to the future at the end.
- [57:51]
Jennifer Egan
Exactly. I think that's really the difference between how I read it then and how I read it now, because I think then I felt like, well, who knows? It's all gone. She's 35. Whoa, that's pretty old, I thought, at 27. But now I just think, yeah, okay, you got through all those phases, now let's grow up and find out what comes next. It's unbelievable how differently it reads in that way.
- [58:18]
Deborah Treisman
So you have a lot of hope for her.
- [58:20]
Jennifer Egan
Totally. Oh, my God. I mean, these are funny stories she'll think back on. Yeah, I find it extremely hopeful.
- [58:28]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah. The act of taking the hairball, wrapping it up, putting it in the chocolate box, sending it off by delivery car. You know, what a concept in a 30 years pre Uber.
- [58:41]
Jennifer Egan
It's true.
- [58:43]
Deborah Treisman
To her, that's a destructive act, or that's a big fuck you, I'm out of here. And you've been an ass in doing this to me. But it does remake her. Do you think she's trying to draw a line or you think she's just getting revenge?
- [58:58]
Jennifer Egan
I mean, I think she means to destroy for sure. It seems like it's the equivalent of, you know, calling the wife. Or it's sort of her version of that moment where someone who's been having an affair with a married person says, you know what? You can't just dump me and go on with your life. That's wrong and I'm not gonna let you do it. And because she has her own kind of going too far sensibility, she finds an extremely flagrant and wild way to do it, which I found hard to read. It's funny, I found it easier to read About Haribal. While reading it aloud on the page, I recoiled from it.
- [59:37]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah.
- [59:37]
Jennifer Egan
So, no, I think she means absolutely to be destructive. She has a mean streak. I mean, she says it herself. You know, she's the one who's used to stabbing people in the back. Part of what she's so shocked at is that it's happened to her. And I kind of. I do like the fact that Margaret Atwood doesn't go too soft here. You know, it's a suggestion of softness, but Cat is tough.
- [60:00]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah.
- [60:01]
Jennifer Egan
Cat, whoever. She's gonna be next.
- [60:04]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah. I mean, another thing the story goes into is that kind of body horror related to women's bodies, particularly in gynecological things. You have Jer, who throws up when his wife gives birth, you know, and can't stand anything gynecological, and he's so put off by this cyst on the mantle and so on. And there's a line between that and what she does in the images in the magazine. One is body horror for arousal purposes, in a way, and one is just gross. And maybe Atwood's saying these are kind of the same thing, or maybe not.
- [60:38]
Jennifer Egan
That's interesting. Yeah. I mean, I think saving Hairball is not just about being gross. It seems like it's also about curiosity. This feeling of, like, wait, what is this? You know, it's so strange. It's so suggestive. So I feel like that's part of it. I mean, I remember as a kid, you know, going to the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, and I was, like, a shot toward, like, the conjoined twins in formaldehyde. You know, all of that stuff, that was totally me. So I guess I really, in a way, even though now for some reason I'm squeamish, that curiosity about malformation of any sort, something that has been preserved, that is strange. I am all about that. I love that stuff. So I guess I don't think it's just about being strange, or I don't think it's just about offending Jer or, you know, wanting to revel in something that she finds horrible. I'm not sure she finds it horrible. She's interested in it.
- [61:44]
Deborah Treisman
Mm. But he finds it horrible.
- [61:46]
Jennifer Egan
Right. Which is, in a way, his expression of horror at it is the first sense we have of him and of the extreme gap in perception between them. I mean, honestly, if there's one moment in the story that it's not that I don't believe it, but I don't believe it suggests a viable Path for Cat, it's saying she really wants to be living with Gerald and being his wife. I just don't buy it.
- [62:16]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah.
- [62:16]
Jennifer Egan
There's nothing about him to make that an appealing notion.
- [62:20]
Deborah Treisman
The last a few weeks.
- [62:21]
Jennifer Egan
Yeah, exactly. Like, it's just another fantasy. Just like the other images that she has traded in. This one is the kind of 1950s fantasy of the perfect home, which, you know, there's a whole lot of scholarship about how that was dreamed up to try to get women back home after they learned they could weld, plumb do a lot of other really interesting things that they thought only men could do.
- [62:45]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah. Yeah. And the funny thing about her being so taken with Jer at the moment that he's withdrawing from her is you think back to what she thought about the British men, you know, the whingeing men, which is one of the funniest lines I've ever read. Funniest paragraphs where she's like, it was his way of saying he trusted you. He was conferring on you the privilege of getting to know the real him, the inner whinging him. Right. The humor there is fantastic.
- [63:13]
Jennifer Egan
It's a funny story. And I also. I love that. I mean, it's satire to a large extent, so it should be funny, but it also feels quite serious. It's about serious things. But, you know, humor is just always a good thing. You know, if you can pull it off and make it funny, it seems to me that it's just doing more.
- [63:34]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah.
- [63:34]
Jennifer Egan
And I felt that all the way through.
- [63:36]
Deborah Treisman
Yeah. And she starts it funny just with the doctor gritting his teeth and saying, I won't know till I go in there. You know? Exactly. And what he was going in there was to. There are some really hilarious takes on men.
- [63:51]
Jennifer Egan
Very much so. And also, I love just the little thing about class in England. I mean, I lived in England for two years, and I really know exactly what she's talking about. You're without class, and you're also without class. Even little asides and moments, the pipes that are always bursting. The way that everyone's always shocked when it's really cold. Like, as if that never happens when it's. There's no cold, like in English winter, at least in my experience.
- [64:19]
Deborah Treisman
Bad heating.
- [64:20]
Jennifer Egan
Yeah. There's just. There are so many little observations that feel explored to their fullest. And that's. To me, when humor is achieved, it's a sign that things are being pushed as far as they can go. A lot of things end up funny if you keep pushing Them. And to me, this story is just full of that kind of pushing.
- [64:38]
Deborah Treisman
Right, the going too far.
- [64:40]
Jennifer Egan
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Well, yes, I'm so glad you said that because really, the story itself is the same thing. You know, it's outrageous, it's disgusting. And I'm so glad Margaret Atwood did it. You know, more power to her.
- [64:56]
Deborah Treisman
So interestingly, when Atwood included the story in her story collection, she retitled it Hairball.
- [65:04]
Jennifer Egan
That's right.
- [65:05]
Deborah Treisman
So the importance of the name has switched from one person to another entity.
- [65:11]
Jennifer Egan
That's so interesting. I had forgotten that. That's a fascinating choice given the importance of naming and the importance of Kat's.
- [65:19]
Deborah Treisman
Name in the story.
- [65:20]
Jennifer Egan
Yeah. I wonder what motivated that. Exactly. I mean, maybe it was a sense that, you know, when the story ends, she's no longer Cat, so in a way, it's not exactly Cat's story anymore. I wonder.
- [65:36]
Deborah Treisman
Well, there's that moment towards the end where Haribald tells her all the things she doesn't want to know about herself. What do you think it's telling her?
- [65:44]
Jennifer Egan
I don't know. It's so fascinating that we don't hear that and that she's ill and sort of in that weird feverish state. I mean, my guess is it's a feeling that she has as she sits with Haribahl rather than actual revelations that it proffers, because I feel like maybe we would hear them. But I guess the way I interpret it is that, you know, you're done with this. This is really played out and it's time to be a different person in a way, or be a person beginning from the inside out rather than starting from the outside and working in, which is one of those huge aspects of growing up that I think is so hard in a culture saturated with media, because we are invited, and in fact, I mean now, far more than in 1990, invited and even required to present ourselves as products, ideally on a day to day or moment to moment basis. How do you figure out who you are amidst all of that stuff? I don't know, but people are still doing it, so it must be possible.
- [66:58]
Deborah Treisman
Well, thank you so much.
- [67:00]
Jennifer Egan
My pleasure. Thank you.
- [67:06]
Deborah Treisman
Margaret Atwood, a winner of the Governor General's Award, the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and the Hans Christian Andersen Literature Award, among many others, is the author of more than two dozen books of fiction, including the Handmaid's Tale, the Testaments, and Old Babes in the Wood. Jennifer Egan's books of fiction include the Keep A Visit from the Goon Squad, Manhattan beach and the Candy House. She's a winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, among other honors. She has been publishing fiction and nonfiction in the New Yorker since 1989. You can download more than 200 previous episodes of the New Yorker Fiction Podcast, including episodes in which Jennifer Egan reads and discusses stories by Laurie Siegel and Mary Gaitskill, 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 Chloe Procinos. I'm Deborah Treisman. Thanks for listening.
- [68:28]
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.
- [69:08]
Deborah Treisman
From PRX.