Podcast Summary: The New Yorker: Fiction

Episode: Karen Russell Reads Louise Erdrich
Date: October 1, 2025
Host: Deborah Treisman (Fiction Editor, The New Yorker)
Guest: Karen Russell

Main Theme

This episode features acclaimed author Karen Russell reading "The Stone," a short story by Louise Erdrich originally published in The New Yorker (September 2019). Russell and host Deborah Treisman then engage in a deep, nuanced conversation exploring the story's emotional center, the relationship between human and nonhuman entities, and the mysterious, often ambiguous resonance of Erdrich's writing. The episode delves into Erdrich’s unique narrative voice, her treatment of time, the importance of ambiguity, and the elemental qualities of her characters and themes.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Karen Russell’s Affinity for Louise Erdrich

• Personal Connection: Russell emphasizes her deep admiration for Erdrich, noting their writerly kinship and occasional personal exchanges.
  • "She's been someone, she's so important to me long before I met her. You know, I was reading her novels. My best friend gave me the Antelope Wife when we were in graduate school." (02:09)
• Shared Interests: Both writers share an interest in other-than-human nature—flowers, trees, rituals, and animacy, setting the stage for the story discussion.

2. Tonal Complexity and Narrative Voice

• Multilayered Storytelling: Russell credits Erdrich’s ability to weave multiple tonalities and time signatures, capturing vast expanses of time within a compact narrative.
  • "How to write a story that's short but contains many time signatures. This is a story that tells a woman's entire life and it also distills 1.1 billion years ... under 10 pages, which is really quite sorcerous." (03:47)
• The Living World as Character: Both commentators appreciate how Erdrich treats nature (and objects like the stone) as animated, integral forces within the stories, not passive scenery.

3. Story Themes: The Human and Nonhuman Relationship

• Who is the Central Character?

  • The narrative focus floats between the unnamed woman and the enigmatic stone, pointing to a kind of dual protagonism.
  • "It's hard to really identify one protagonist...there's something equally freighted, maybe, about the respect that this story has for both woman and stone." (22:06)

• Animacy, Mystery, and Agency

  • The stone is neither simply a symbol nor wholly inert; its presence blurs the line between animate and inanimate.
  • Russell recalls Erdrich’s quote: "A stone is a heavy secret." (02:58)

• Ambiguity and Open Interpretation

  • The story deliberately resists closure or easy explanation, inviting multiple interpretations of the stone’s role—object, companion, symbol, or autonomous agent.
  • "You could see the stone maybe as just a screen for this woman's projection, if you want to. A kind of mirror. But I think the way that it's written, you know, it really allows for the stone to have its own kind of autonomous existence." (23:34)
  • Ambiguity enriches rather than frustrates the narrative, reflecting Russell’s and Erdrich’s resistance to “pat” morals or explanations.

4. The Stone's Biography and Metaphorical Resonance

• Deep Time Meets Human Time: The story’s central passage expands from the woman's lifespan to the billion-year geological history of the stone, an extraordinary compression and dilation of time.

  • "This wave worn piece of basalt that the woman had slept with for more than a decade was thrown from a rift in the earth 1.1 billion years ago, which still says nothing." (24:46; quoting Erdrich via the story)

• Parallels Between Stone and Human

  • The stone and the protagonist both undergo cycles of rupture, healing, and transformation, mirroring one another.
  • "The kinds of meanings that it accretes and then sort of sheds as it moves under the surface...there's a by analogy. You can understand, like. Yeah. The Stones kind of biography is a bit...the sort of ruptures that people undergo in their private lives or that we all experience collectively." (24:13; 37:52)

• Ambivalence, Attachment, and Detachment

  • The stone brings comfort but also isolation; its loss and return correspond with shifts in the protagonist’s emotional and creative life.

5. Notable Literary Observations

• Symbolism and Literalism: Russell references Flannery O’Connor’s thoughts on symbolism:

  • "If you want to say the wooden leg is a symbol, you can say that, but it is a wooden leg first...It increases the story in every direction." (26:13)

• Fairy Tale, Myth, and Fact: The story fuses mythic quality with realism, especially in its conclusion, which suggests molecular continuity between the woman and the stone.

  • "It merges a fairytale ending just with biological fact. I mean, you know, you're moving beyond the full stop syntax of this woman's death...to all things in the universe." (28:16)

6. Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Ambiguity and Indifference:

  • "You know, in that interview you guys did ... you ask Louise, if the stone is benevolent or malevolent, how does she see it? And she says the stone is indifferent. I think there Is something mysterious and consoling about understanding that." (41:24)

• On the Endurance of Stories and Stones:

  • "And, well, I hope it will be here when we're not." (48:43)
  • "It will be like the stone itself." (48:49)

• On Human–Nonhuman Connection:

  • Russell recalls her own childhood rituals with plants, seeing her affinity reflected in the story.
  • "I sometimes, when I was a kid and I really did need to be studied or something, felt precarious. I would touch leaves or trees...I felt such affection for certain plants just in my neighborhood." (45:46)

Timestamps for Important Segments

| Timestamp | Segment Description | |-----------|---------------------| | 01:06 | Episode & Story Introduction; explanation of format | | 02:09 | Karen Russell discusses her admiration for Erdrich | | 03:47 | On the art of holding multiple tones; story's time signatures | | 05:36–21:00 | Full reading of "The Stone" by Karen Russell | | 22:06 | Discussion of protagonist, story's emotional center | | 24:46 | Geological time and stone's biography—expanding narrative scope | | 26:13 | Flannery O’Connor quote on literalism vs. symbolism | | 28:16 | Two timescales and the merging of human and geological lifespans | | 33:38 | The stone as both comfort and constraint; ambiguous effects | | 36:29 | On narrative ambiguity, discomfort, and interpretive openness | | 41:24 | The stone’s indifference; existential readings | | 45:46 | Russell’s personal ritual connection; grounding and unmooring nature relationships | | 48:43 | Metaphor of story-as-stone; desire for lasting legacy |

Notable Quotes

• Karen Russell on Erdrich's Narrative Range (03:47)
  "How to write a story that's short but contains many time signatures. This is a story that tells a woman's entire life and it also distills 1.1 billion years into a story that's under 10 pages, which is really quite sorcerous."

• Deborah Treisman on Human–Stone Interaction (30:05)
  "Louise has this theory that she's talked about in a few places that stones might be using us. Right. That when a stone wants to be moved it makes us pick it up."

• Karen Russell on the Stone’s Ambiguous Role (33:54)
  "In the beginning, it makes her feel really happy...At the same time, it shuts her off from a lot of what her normal, you know, romantic development would be, her involvement with other people. It keeps her kind of a loner."

• Erdrich via Russell on Endings (28:16)
  "It merges a fairytale ending just with biological fact...to all things in the universe."

• On Indifference and Consolation (41:24)
  "She says the stone is indifferent. I think there is something mysterious and consoling about understanding that."

• On Identity and Lasting Essence (45:34)
  "This nameless kernel of identity that can be submerged or damaged, but never completely lost. Even in death. There's a small pebble of self that may be nothing more than a molecular bond, yet it means that we were here and lived on earth." — Louise Erdrich, via Deborah Treisman

• Team Stone over Technology (49:00)
  "I prefer, I mean, and I advocate for a relationship with stones over, like, I don't know, AI lovers. That's just my position, Deborah. I'm Team Stone." — Karen Russell

Flow and Utility

This conversation offers new dimensions with each turn, transitioning from close literary analysis to big philosophical questions. Karen Russell and Deborah Treisman probe how Erdrich’s ambiguity, time compression, humor, and mythic overlay foster open interpretation, resonance, and a sense of the cosmic, without diminishing the poignancy of individual experience. Listeners are left with profound reflections on history, consciousness, identity, the agency (or indifference) of the nonhuman, and the unresolvable mysteries at the heart of enduring literature.

For Listeners Seeking

• A literary reading and discussion rich in nuance and feeling.
• Multiple interpretive approaches to contemporary short fiction.
• Insight into the works and minds of two of today’s most acclaimed writers.
• Explorations of nature, materiality, time, and ambiguous intimacy in fiction.