Paul Theroux Reads V. S. Pritchett

Summary

Summary of "The New Yorker: Fiction" Podcast Episode: Paul Theroux Reads V. S. Pritchett

Podcast Information:

• Title: The New Yorker: Fiction
• Host/Author: WNYC Studios and The New Yorker
• Description: A monthly reading and conversation with the New Yorker fiction editor Deborah Treisman.
• Episode: Paul Theroux Reads V. S. Pritchett
• Release Date: March 1, 2025

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1. Introduction to the Episode

Deborah Treisman opens the episode by introducing the format of the podcast, highlighting that each month a writer selects a story from the New Yorker archives to read and discuss. This month's featured story is "The Necklace" by V. S. Pritchett, which originally appeared in the New Yorker in February 1958.

Paul Theroux is introduced as the guest reader. He is a renowned author with an extensive bibliography, including nearly 40 books of fiction such as Burma Sahib and The Vanishing Point. Theroux explains his personal connection to Pritchett, mentioning their friendship since London in 1973 when Pritchett was 73 years old. He expresses his deep admiration for Pritchett's mastery in short story writing, noting similarities between "The Necklace" and other iterations of the necklace theme by Maupassant, Somerset Maugham, and Henry James. He shares his own experience of writing a similar story titled "Another Necklace" in his collection Mr. Bones.

Paul Theroux (03:01): "It's about the material world. It says a pearl necklace or a necklace represents wealth, materialism, something that people want. There's always a sense of delusion in it."

2. Reading of "The Necklace" by V. S. Pritchett

Paul Theroux delivers a poignant reading of "The Necklace," capturing the nuanced emotions and intricate narrative crafted by Pritchett. The story revolves around Jim Drayton, a window cleaner, who finds a pearl necklace that becomes the catalyst for unraveling his seemingly stable life.

Notable Quotes from the Reading:

• Jim Drayton (06:03): "I was afraid of having a smile too big for my face. My mouth was watering all the time."
• Nell, Jim’s Wife (54:10): "I couldn't bear it. My father's dead, my mother's dead. I couldn't bear any more."
• Jim Drayton (60:03): "She's so bloody clever, said Nell."

The narrative effectively portrays Jim's internal conflict and the impending doom that the necklace signifies in his marriage. The subtle hints of deception and the gradual revelation of Nell's true nature keep the listener engaged, leading up to the story's climax where Nell's duplicity is fully exposed.

3. Post-Reading Discussion and Analysis

After the reading, Deborah Treisman facilitates an in-depth discussion with Paul Theroux about the story's themes, character development, and Pritchett's literary techniques.

a. Thematic Exploration: Class and Materialism

Theroux emphasizes that "The Necklace" is a meditation on materialism and class distinctions. He interprets the necklace as a symbol of wealth and the illusion it creates.

Paul Theroux (03:36): "It's about the material world. It says a pearl necklace or a necklace represents wealth, materialism, something that people want."

Treisman questions Pritchett's place in modern literature, noting that despite Pritchett’s critical acclaim, his works are less read compared to contemporaries.

Deborah Treisman (04:24): "But if three people have read his stories, they know that he's the master of the story."

Theroux responds by attributing Pritchett’s diminished prominence to changing literary interests, but asserts that his mastery in short story writing remains unparalleled.

b. Character Analysis: Jim and Nell

The discussion delves into the complexities of the characters, particularly Jim Drayton and his wife, Nell.

Theroux describes Jim as an honest, hardworking man who is inherently good but becomes a victim of Nell's manipulations.

Paul Theroux (60:46): "He is an honest man who doesn't look deeply into things and who is somewhat infatuated, deluded."

Treisman probes into Nell's inconsistent behavior and her resistance to lies, questioning whether her actions are a defense mechanism or indicative of deeper psychological issues.

Deborah Treisman (46:54): "At very early in the story, we're told that she doesn't like men who tell lies. She tells Plushie to stop telling them. She tells Jim to stop telling them."

Theroux interprets Nell’s dual behavior as a manifestation of internal conflict, suggesting she is both frightened by lies and aware of her own deceitful tendencies.

Paul Theroux (47:14): "I think what he's implying is that she's frightened by lies and that she knows that she's a liar."

c. Literary Techniques: Narrative Structure and Symbolism

Treisman and Theroux analyze Pritchett's use of narrative structure—starting at the police station and then providing a backstory—which serves to create suspense and gradually reveal the layers of deception.

Paul Theroux (49:21): "The narrative story doesn't have that detail sewn shut. It resonates in your mind."

Theroux highlights the symbolism of the necklace itself, representing more than just material wealth but also the fragility of honesty and the complexity of human relationships.

Paul Theroux (03:04): "There's always an angle to it. And I don't know of another object in life, like a bicycle or a car, that's the subject of the short story."

d. Humor and Irony in Pritchett’s Writing

Eudora Welty lauds Pritchett for being "one of the great pleasure givers in our language," attributing this to his skillful blend of humor and poetic elements.

Theroux concurs, noting the ironical and comic undertones that Pritchett weaves into the narrative, which add depth and contrast to the story’s darker themes.

Paul Theroux (56:19): "He really knew what he was doing and he never faked it. He told me once that he avoided endings of stories that were too pat... he liked the slow reveal and then he liked to leave you in a mood where you sort of finish the story yourself."

e. The Resolution and Reader’s Interpretation

The discussion touches upon the open-ended nature of the story’s conclusion, allowing readers to ponder Jim’s fate and the impact of Nell's actions.

Deborah Treisman (63:04): "So what is your ending for Jim? What do you imagine?"

Theroux suggests that Jim remains a fundamentally good and honest man, whose life is irrevocably changed by the events surrounding the necklace. He emphasizes that the story leaves room for personal interpretation, resonating like poetry.

Paul Theroux (63:04): "The great story is the Chekhov story or the Pritchard story or the Henry James story. The story that doesn't have a solid ending that resonates is one that's more like poetry."

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4. Conclusion

The episode concludes with Deborah Treisman providing a brief biography of V. S. Pritchett, highlighting his contributions to literature as a fiction writer, critic, essayist, and biographer. Theroux's extensive body of work and his lasting influence on contemporary literature are also acknowledged.

Treisman encourages listeners to explore more episodes of the New Yorker Fiction Podcast and to engage with the content through various platforms.

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Key Takeaways:

• V. S. Pritchett's "The Necklace" serves as a rich exploration of themes like materialism, class distinction, and the complexities of human relationships.
• Paul Theroux's reading and subsequent analysis provide deep insights into Pritchett's narrative techniques, character development, and symbolic use of objects.
• The podcast episode underscores the timeless relevance of Pritchett's work and his mastery in crafting stories that are both engaging and thought-provoking.

Notable Quotes with Attributions:

• Paul Theroux (03:01): "It's about the material world. It says a pearl necklace or a necklace represents wealth, materialism, something that people want."
• Jim Drayton (06:03): "I was afraid of having a smile too big for my face. My mouth was watering all the time."
• Paul Theroux (60:46): "He is an honest man who doesn't look deeply into things and who is somewhat infatuated, deluded."
• Paul Theroux (63:04): "The great story is the Chekhov story or the Pritchard story or the Henry James story. The story that doesn't have a solid ending that resonates is one that's more like poetry."

This episode not only showcases Pritchett's storytelling prowess but also highlights the enduring nature of his themes, making it a valuable listen for aficionados of classic and nuanced fiction.

Transcript

[Deborah Treisman]

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[Paul Theroux]

The People shape our country's story America250 is gearing up to celebrate the 250th anniversary of of the founding of America's democracy by collecting and preserving diverse stories from across the nation. Nominate any living person you think has a story to be preserved and celebrated for generations to come. Help tell our American story, every unique version of it. Visit america250.org nominate to submit.

[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 the Necklace by VS Pritchett, which appeared in the New Yorker in February of 1958.

[Paul Theroux]

It was my sister who started me using the word empty about Nell's gray eyes. It was not the word I would have used myself, but her eyes did make me feel I was going to fall clean through them.

[Deborah Treisman]

The story was chosen by Paul Theroux, whose almost 40 books of fiction include the novel Burma Sahib and the story collection the Vanishing Point, which came out in January. Hi Paul.

[Paul Theroux]

Hi Deborah.

[Deborah Treisman]

So in previous podcasts you've read stories by Jorge Luis Borges and Elizabeth Taylor. What made you decide to read VS Pritchett's story the Necklace Today?

[Paul Theroux]

I love this story, but also I could say I knew Pritchett when I lived in London. He was a friend of mine. He's much older. Pritchett used to say I'm as old as a century. So he was born in 1900. So I first met him in 1973. He was 73 years old. He was still writing and still publishing. He published his book about Chekhov in his late 80s. The story is very him because it's about an English writer, working man, and he chose a subject that's been written about before, the Necklace. So Maupassant wrote a short story called the Necklace. Somerset Maugham wrote a story called the Necklace. Henry James wrote a story called Paste, which is about a necklace. And I wrote a story about a necklace. It's called Another Necklace. It's in my collection, Mr. Bones short stories Another Necklace. I wrote Mine, because I loved the previous ones. And I really do like this story.

[Deborah Treisman]

And what's at stake in all of the necklace stories.

[Paul Theroux]

It's about the material world. It says a pearl necklace or a necklace represents wealth, materialism, something that people want. There's always a sense of delusion in it. It's not what it seems to be. It's not real. There's always an angle to it. And I don't know of another object in life, you know, like a bicycle or a car or. I don't know. That's the subject of the short story. This is one. I mean, maybe there is one out there, but I don't know of one.

[Deborah Treisman]

Yeah, this story was published in 1958. It falls pretty much in the center of his writing life, I'd say.

[Paul Theroux]

Yep.

[Deborah Treisman]

Do you think that it fits with the rest of his writing? Do you feel that it's of a piece with the other stories?

[Paul Theroux]

Very much so. I think that. Well, his fascination with working people. He didn't tend to write short stories about writers. He wrote them about people who lived in the country, lived by the sea, about sailors, about people who had work. And he also wrote about class. You can't write about work in England or anywhere else without writing about class. And this story really is about class. I take the story to be about truthfulness. It's about innocence and truthfulness.

[Deborah Treisman]

You are the third person to choose a Pritchett story to read on this podcast. But in general, he doesn't seem to be so widely read these days, at least relative to some of the other short story writers of his era.

[Paul Theroux]

Why?

[Deborah Treisman]

Do you think he's perhaps fallen a little out of favor?

[Paul Theroux]

I don't know. But if three people have read his stories, they know that he's the master of the story.

[Deborah Treisman]

Yes, absolutely.

[Paul Theroux]

He had two great gifts. One was criticism. He was a brilliant essayist and critic, literary critic. He was also a novelist. He was a pretty good novelist and he was a fairly good biographer. Biographer of Turgenev and Chekhov and Balzac. He didn't really have the means to be. He didn't have the time that it takes to be a great biographer. Biographer needs money, time, and access to a big library. He was always trying to make a living, and you make a living by doing a weekly book review. He reviewed for the New Yorker, but he was fascinated by the short story. Why he's out of favor could be explained by the fact that there's very little interest in. In the sort of things that fascinated him, which was the class system, English life, the Second World War, provincial life. But it's not. The subject matter isn't the thing. You know, you could say the same about Henry James or Bonpassant or others too. I think he was a great short story writer. His stories are models. If anyone wanted to become a short story writer, they could really profit by reading his stories.

[Deborah Treisman]

Okay, well, we'll talk some more after the reading. And now here's Paul Theroux reading. The Necklace by VS Pritchett.

[Paul Theroux]

The Necklace Just checking up on a necklace your wife brought in this afternoon, the older of the two detectives said to me when we got to the police station. He was sucking a peppermint and was short of breath. The younger one kept his hands in his raincoat pockets and didn't say a word, and neither did I. We went into an inner room and sat down. I was afraid of having a smile too big for my face. My mouth was watering all the time. I could feel the words swelling up on me. We only did our duty. If you find something in the street, you take it to the police. Of course, if it's valuable you may get a reward, but not necessarily. Anyway, you don't do it for the reward. But all that week I'd kept my eyes open for a notice saying reward. Then the young detective pulled the necklace out of his pocket and put it on the table. Do you recognize this, Mr. Drayton? He asked. I recognized it at once. That's it, I said. I found it Saturday. Exactly where? They asked. And what time, I told them. Do you know who it belongs to? They asked. If I had known, I would have taken it to them, I said. I wouldn't have brought it here. It was a silly question, and the next ones were silly too. It doesn't belong to you? The young one asked. Or your wife? Asked the older one. Definitely not, I said. I found it in the street, I told you. Do you know Mrs. Faber? The young one asked. No, I said. What's she got to do with it? You're a window cleaner, aren't you? Asked the older one. She lives at 17 Launceston Road. Do you do a job there? No, I said. I do 24:51 and the flats at the end. What's the idea? And you say you found it at the corner of Alston street and the promenade on Saturday? That's it. I just told you, I said. Just checking up. We have to check up on all lost property, said the older one, and the younger one must have had a nod from him because he got up and left the room. I looked up at the dark green glossy walls in the frosted window and then I heard Nell's voice and her heels on the floor outside in the passage. I sat there trying to remember everything as her voice came nearer, but there wasn't time. The one thing I could think of was Saturday, January 11th. All that rain and the football match. We beat Hopley Rangers 3 0. Even when I have been going over it since, my mind gets stuck there. Saturdays in the season I used to pack up the job early and go home to my dinner and when Plushie came round, my mate Plushie Edwards, we would go off. We'd both been playing for the Rovers a couple of years. Nell sometimes came too, but she didn't take to Plushie much. Come to that, she must have hated him. It went back to the time when she first met me and Plushie told her I was a married man with two children and not to break up a happy home. Plus she was always having a lark like that with her. I don't like men who tell lies, Nell said. It worried her when people made jokes. She really believed them. But as I say, Saturday football. I'm coming round Alston street off the promenade on my way home. And there it is. A necklace with three strands of big pearls lying in the gutter. I looked up and down the promenade. The weather was squally. The rain had browned the pebbles on the beach and had softened the sishing of the sea. The only moving things in sight were the back of the bus that had passed and two or three children running out of the rain a long way off and the seagulls. I looked down at the gutter again. It surprised me. The necklace was still there. I propped my bike against a lamp and went back and picked the thing up. The pearls were hard and cold like rice, but wet. I wiped the dirt off them and looked up at the windows of the houses. If there had been someone looking out I would have shouted. Anyone lost anything? There was no one. I don't mind admitting that seeing a thing like this upset me. In this job you see money, watches and rings left about on desks and dressing tables the whole time. It doesn't worry me, but it annoys me. People miss something and the next thing they're saying, it's the window cleaner. I put the necklace into my pocket and I got on my bike. But the rain started coming down hard now and I thought, this means no blooming football. Plushie was waiting at my house already, just as fed up as I was about the weather. The necklace went out of my head. Here, lay off. I'm a bachelor, said Plushie when I kissed my wife. You're late, she said to me. She always said that. You two aren't playing football in this, are you? You're wet. Yes, look at his hair. That German crop never suited him, did it, Nell? Said Plushie, starting his usual locks and pretending to dribble a ball around our kitchen as he spoke. And where have you been? Hill street. That blonde at 27, I bet. Look at his face. No, he's not been near Hill Street. Oh, no. Dear, oh dear, oh dear. I did Launceston Road this morning, I said. I thought you were going up the avenue, my wife said. Her gray eyes looked empty and truthful. I did the avenue yesterday, I said. We had been married two years and this was her way of loving me, knowing everything I did now and then. She overloved me by getting it wrong. When I was out on the job, I would have the idea that she was with me because I was always thinking of her. So when she said she thought I was up the avenue, I felt confused. As if she had been up there and I hadn't spotted her. Or as if I ought to say I had been up the avenue so that she wouldn't have missed me. See what I mean? Sounds silly. I was so soppy about her that I didn't know which was me and which was Nell. Coming to the game, Nell? Plushie asked her. And when she said she had something better to do than stand in the mud and the rain, Plushie left me alone and started on her. What's she up to, Jim? He asked me. Ironing, she said. I'm sorry for the poor girl who has to do yours. Have you found her? There'll be no tears at Plushie's wedding, I said. It was one of my mother's sayings. It'll be more like a court case, Nell said. Seriously, Jim. She means it, said Plushie. I changed my clothes and at 2 o'clock plushy and I went off. I took up window cleaning when I came out of the army. Plushie persuaded me into it. The money was good, he said. He'd heard women all over the country crying out loud in every street to get their windows clean. Just count the windows in this town, he said to me. More windows than people. Every window a ruddy sos. Someone's got to do them. But Plushie got fed up with it. After a year, the women got him down. They're screaming all day for you, he said. You turn up and it's the wrong time. Women at you all day long, following you round the house, watching to see you don't mark their curtains or spoil their carpets. Calling upstairs to someone to lock the drawers. It's the window cleaner like they'd got the burglars in. Plushie went off to work in a factory but I like being on my own. I stayed on, took over some of his customers. That is how I met Nell. Bad luck to see the new moon through glass, Plushie said when I told him about meeting her. And she did look sort of moony. She was in the back bedroom of a house in the Avenue fixing her earrings and doing up her face. When I came up the ladder outside she had reddish hair brushed up so that it was like new copper lit by electric light. Her face was broad, calm and white. It was my sister who started me using the word empty about Nell's gray eyes. It was not the word I would have used myself, but her eyes did make me feel I was going to fall clean through them. She took her hand from her ear so quickly that she knocked a scent bottle over and at the same time she shut one of the drawers with her knee. A man like Plushie who upsets some of the customers by singing non stop while he worked have taken his comb out and run it through his hair and gone on singing. So he made out. When I told him it's a lie, he would have done just what I did. I opened the window and climbed in and said, sorry miss, let me wipe it up with the leather. If your old lady carries on, say it was the window cleaner. She stood over me looking insulted and watched me wipe the scent off the carpet with the leather. The only thanks I got was Close the window when you go out. My Aunt Mary won't mind about the rug, I swear, she said, my Aunt Mary. But afterwards she swore she didn't. The woman she worked for was misnamed Mrs. Merry, a gloomy lady in a houseful of books. I never saw so many with a voice like a high class ship going out to sea, very snobby. So I might have made a mistake. But it took a bit of time for me to get it into my mind that Nell was not the niece of this rich old bookworm. Fate is a funny thing. Once it gets going it never stops. I'd been working at different houses in the Avenue for more than a year and I had never set eyes on Nell. But now I seemed to run across her one day after the other I asked her if her aunt had been angry about the scent. No, Nell said she didn't mind. That's not my aunt. My aunt's in Manchester. I'm the maid. I felt a fool trying to puzzle this out. Nell looked up and down the street as if she were looking for someone. I told her. She said she didn't mind. The lady you work for, you mean? I asked. No, my Aunt Mary in Banchester. She said I tell her everything. I asked her to come out with me, but she changed her mood and said her aunt in Manchester would not like that and neither would Mrs. Merry. In those early days it was always the same. This aunt of Nell's in Manchester wouldn't let her do anything, and to talk to Nell was like talking to two people, for she would turn her head aside when I said anything as if she were discussing it with this old aunt of hers or someone else before she answered. I couldn't make out what age Nell was either, to see her short and solid with her chin up, marching in slow, long steps down the street. She looked obstinate, like a schoolgirl. Other times when we were talking at a street corner, she had a small disbelieving smile at the corner of her mouth, like a woman of 30. She confused me. She was one person one minute and another the next. In the end she said she would come out to the pictures with me, but I had to ask Mrs. Merry first. I've said Mrs. Merry was like a ship. She bumped alongside her dining room table when she came in and docked at last in an armchair not in dry dark, she was rocking a large glass of gin. She asked me a lot of questions about myself, my mother and my sister in a hooting sort of voice and said Nell was a refined, quiet girl and that she didn't like her going out. She's an orphan, you know, Mrs. Merry said loudly. I understand her aunt brought her up very carefully. You can see her aunt in Manchester. When Nell and I left the house, I could hardly speak for the idea that her Aunt Mary was walking beside us. And later I could pretty well feel her sitting beside us at the pictures. I got fed up. We went to a milk bar afterwards and El took her coat off. She showed me her bracelet and her wristwatch. Aunt Mary, I bet, I said. Yes, nell said with her nose in the air. Aunt Mary. Her voice was small and soft and seemed to me to come very clearly from a long way off. There was no getting away from this aunt of hers. She lived in a huge house. Nel said that had an enormous lawn in the shape of an oval with a gravel path round it and a deodar at one end. What's a deodar? I asked. A deodar a tree, she said. In the summer she used to lie in a hammock under it. She taught me French. She was an educated girl, you could see that. But I expect you are thinking what I was thinking. If Nell's aunt was so rich and classy, why was an educated girl like Nell down in this place working as an ordinary maid? I came straight out with it. No, said Nell. She began a lot of remarks with no. When I asked her things, there was trouble. You got into trouble? I asked. No, she said. Her husband did so. Aunt Mary was married? She had got married only two years back. Nell told me he was an elderly clergyman. I asked Nell what the trouble was. It's private, she said. She just waved her hands. I had expected her to have broad, flat, strong hands, but they were small and plump. When she saw me looking at them, she put them in her lap and folded her fingers into her palms. But I had seen she had a bad habit. She bit her nails. I used to remember this when I got to taking her home to see my mother and sister. Class. That's all it is, my sister said, loaded down with Aunt Mary's jewelry and lying in bed all day long doing her face. She did not like Nell's ladylike accent. One Saturday after football I told Plushie about Nell's Aunt Mary and the clergyman. Do you reckon Nell's hiding something? I asked. Has she been in trouble? No, he said. She just doesn't see the funny side. What's funny in it? I asked. Clergyman, Plushie said. So on Sunday I decided to get at it and I asked Nell again about the clergyman. No, she said in her usual way. He was jealous of her, giving me things. He had two children of his own. I couldn't stay after that. I can't bear jealousy. What was the clergyman's name? I asked. No, you're going to cause trouble. How could I do that? I don't know, she said. You could. If you go and see him and tell him anything, I'll never speak to you again. I never want to hear the name of Aunt Mary again, I said. Then I calmed down. What about you and me? You know, sort of getting fixed up. Married. Nell was watching me as if I were trying to steal something from her. She sat there. We were sitting in a shelter by the sea and she was two girls, one of them looking insulted I oughtn't to have said that about her aunt. She got up and walked off. It was dark and she didn't speak all the way home. And she shook my hand off her arm when I touched it. The next morning at 8 o'clock she was outside our house. I went to the gate and she ran and banged her head hard against my ribs, nearly knocking the wind out of me, and put her arms round me. She was crying. I took her in at the front door into our sitting room and told the others to keep away. She's dead, she said, sitting back for me. Aunt Mary's dead. I told you a lie. She died last year. I couldn't bear her to be dead. She was going to look after me and she left all her money, everything, to that clergyman. I didn't want her money but I couldn't bear it. My father's dead, my mother's dead. I couldn't bear any more. There's me, I said. Forget it. I told you a lie. She sobbed in my arms. It wasn't long before Plushie came in and we were all laughing. My mother, my sister, even Nell. Blooming murderer, said Plushie when he heard it. Look at him. No conscience kills a poor girl's auntie just to get his way. Shut up, Plushie, said my mother. The girl's upset. It's easy for you, Bar, Plushie said. But I was getting fond of Aunt Mary. Nell gaped at him. Well, Nell, plushie said, he'll have to be your Aunt Mary now. And so I was for except for some worry about where the clergyman had moved to and how he ought to do something for her. But all this was my mother's argument. Aunt Mary was a back number. Nell and I got married and we were on our own. The rain stopped in the afternoon on that Saturday when I found the necklace. There was a lot of arguing when we got to the ground about whether we should play because of the mess the field was in. And when we did start playing it was a question of which side could stand up. Even chaps who were standing still suddenly fell down. The crowd was killing itself with laughter. You kicked the ball and you were flat on your back. Plushie and three others slid for yards into the Hopkley goal and couldn't stop themselves. The Hopply goalie came out at them and went head first at Plushie. Their two heads cracked wood against wood. You could hear it across the field. Plushie lost on this deal and knocked him out for a few minutes. That is why, after the game he went to the doctor's. Instead of coming home and having his tea with Nell and me as he usually did, I went back home alone. There was a change in Nell. She had done her ironing and she had put on her blue dress and she had done her hair. I don't mean that sort of change, though she didn't often laugh. But now she came to me nearly laughing. She had the hot look of too much love. She even had some love left over for Plushie and was very upset when I told her about him. She couldn't keep still. She rubbed against me like a cat when I sat down to tea and then she leaned forward to me, pushing her plate nearer, looking at me while I was telling her about the game. Once or twice she interrupted me. Sorry. I love you, she said. I went on telling her about the game. Presently she sat back and said, haven't you forgotten something? She was smiling, but it was a heavy, greedy, large eyed smile, as if her own natural smile had been made larger by a reflector. Have I left the bike out? Sometimes I forgot to put the bike away. Think, she said. Since we had got married she liked giving orders. Slowly the smile went. No, she said shortly and left the room. She really marched out of it. She went into the bedroom. I waited for her to come back and when she didn't I called out, I want some more tea. She did not answer. I pushed back my chair and went into the bedroom. She was standing at attention with her back to me in the middle of the room, doing nothing with her hands at her sides. She did not turn round often when I didn't guess what she was thinking. She used to run off in this way and stand in the next room, stiff and sulking. It would take a long time finding out what was the matter, for the only person she was on speaking terms with was herself. It happened a lot before we were married, but now when she turned round suddenly her face was half smiling and appealing. She was wearing the necklace. When women put on something new they look high and mighty, as if you had got to get to know them all over again. I don't like it. They also look 10 years older. The pearls made Nell's neck look thick. They also made her look as if she wasn't married any longer unless you could afford to pay the extra. I wished I was rich and could have bought pearls for her. Well, not bought them myself but sent her in somewhere to buy them. I don't like those shops. She came toward me with half a clever tear in one eye. I call it Clever. It wasn't real. Sorry, sorry, she said. Don't be cross with me. I couldn't help it. The necklace fell out of your pocket. It fell out of your pocket when I was putting your overalls away. I wasn't going through your pockets, I swear. That's what you think. It fell onto the bed and she stepped to the bed and pointed to the place on the green quilt where it had fallen. Some joke Plushie had once made about his landlady going through his pockets came back to me. For the first time I knew that Nell had been going through my pockets on and off ever since we were married. Nell, I said, that's not a present for you. I didn't buy it. I found it in the gutter in Alston street coming home dinner time. You thought it was for you. Who is it for? She asks, all her newness going. You found it lying in the street. It isn't for anyone, I said. I don't know who it belongs to. We'd best take it to the police station. Police, she said, frightened. Yes, I said. Some poor kid must have dropped it. Her face hardened. You weren't in Alston street, she said. You told Plushie you were in Hill Street. I heard you. No, I didn't, I said. Plushie said that? No, tell me the truth. You're hiding something, she said. Where did you find it? Easy on, I said. I told you, I found it in the gutter in Alston Street. And why didn't you tell me, hiding it in your pocket? I wasn't hiding it, I just put it there. No, tell me the truth, she said again. I am, I said. I'm going to take it round. I forgot it. Some poor kid's mother is carrying on. I bet her mother, she said. Whose mother, Jim? You bought it for some girl. She put her hands to her neck, took the necklace off and threw it on the bed. Oh, she cried out, you've bought it for some girl. That's why you were hiding it. And then she gave a howl and fell sideways on the bed, crying into the pillow with her blue dress drawn up above her knees and her legs coming out of it in a way so ugly and aw, I could not believe it. I'd seen my mother do this once years ago, and of course I'd seen my sister do it often. She was a past master. The whole house stood still when my sister took a dive, but I thought it was the sort of thing that only went on in our family when I was a child. I said to myself, so this is the girl whose aunt used to lie in a hammock under a deodatalking French class. There's nothing in it. I wished the time was two hours ago and I was playing football. I wished Plushie would come round. My tea's getting cold, I said after a bit. It must have been the way I said it. She sat up at once and came to the kitchen. She poured out the tea and sat down in front of me, and I liked her better with the necklace off, but her round face had become square and her white skin was thickly red down to her neck. Her mouth was as small as a penny. She had picked up the necklace and put it beside her plate. I'm waiting, she said. Plushie got hurt this afternoon, I said. You got a crack on the head. You could hear it right across the field. She did not answer for a long time, and then she said, you told me that. I remembered I had. How can you tell such lies? She said. Hear it across the field. No. I'm sick of Plushie. Who are you married to? Is Plushie dead? I hope so. Oh dear, oh dear, I said. Stop talking like Plushie, she said. Who is it for? Who did you buy it for? What's her name? I want the truth. I've told you, I said. Aunt Mary warned me about you, she said. Your Aunt Mary never saw me, I said. Aunt Mary's dead anyway. Before she died, she said, Aunt Mary had come back into our lives. It had been so long since we had even mentioned her or her husband that I could hardly remember who she was. For the moment I realized what a long way we had traveled since Aunt Mary's time, and I thought of what my mother had once said about how quickly the dead drop back into the past. But having her brought back like this from the grave in this tone woke up my old jealousy. I admit it. I was jealous of Aunt Mary. Please, Jim, Nell said in a softer, pleading voice. Who did you buy it for? Why did you do Hill street this morning? So we went over the streets again. Launceston Road, the promenade. Alston Road, across the High street. You bought it at Cleavers, she said. Learn some geography, I said. It wasn't near Cleaver's. Learn it, she sobbed. That's all I do. I. I sit here all day thinking of where you are. One girl after another, just like Plushie. You're jealous, I said. Of course I'm jealous, she shouted in a thick, curdled voice like a man's. Now look, I said. I put My hand on hers and she did not take it away. She turned her head from me and then said quietly, as though she was speaking to the necklace, I know you found it, Jim. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I didn't say anything and after a moment she said softly, a valuable thing like that. It's just Woolworth trash, I said. Look at the clip, she said fearfully, handing the necklace to me. It's worth hundreds. Get away, I said. It is, I know it is, she said. I picked up the necklace. The clip meant nothing to me, but hearing her soft, truthful voice again, I felt sad. Put it on again, I said. You look nice in it. Oh, I couldn't do that, she said. It isn't ours. Go on, you put it on before. Let's see you just once more, I said. It's yours, I said, laughing. I have explained she did not like jokes. She frowned. Then she leaned nearer to me but not looking at me, as if not to see me. Jim, she said in a very low voice, you didn't find it in the street. Truthfully, you didn't, did you? I won't say anything. What do you mean you knocked it off, she said. The way she said this, as if she were whispering in my ear in the dark, frightened and excited me. Now she was searching my face for some hint or clue. There was a long silence between us. I reached for the necklace and said, I'm going round to the police with it now. I'm not a thief. But as I reached there was a flash in her eyes as she snatched it at 2 as quickly as a cat. There'll be a reward, she said, jumping up and standing away from me. We must have both caught the necklace because it snapped and all the pearls scattered onto the carpet and over the lino. It was like during the war when our corporal got his false teeth knocked out in the street. They went everywhere. We were both down on our hands and knees at once. She was on the carpet, I was on the lino by the dresser. This was how Plushie found us. There was a big piece of plaster on his forehead, under the curl of his black hair where the goalie's head had cracked him. Don't step on them. My wife called out. There's always something going on here, Plushie said. Stand still, we both said, straightening up. Let us pray, said Plushie, kneeling down to what is it? Nell told him. Found it, said Plushie sarcastically, getting up and standing above us. What finds a necklace in the gutter with no neck in? It doesn't tell his best friend. Have you got the clip? My wife asked me. Got a clip too, said Plushie. Diamonds I bet. Proper window cleaner story. Lost your voice, Jim? Can't you sing? Nell reached up from the floor and put some of the pearls into a saucer. I bet he only whistles, Plushie said. Whistling isn't strong enough, Jim. You know that. Whistling doesn't keep it off. Help us, said Nell. Stop talking temptation, said Plushie, bending down to look. By rights they ought to be singing now in case I slip one into my pocket. Remember old Charlie, Jim? Used to whistle like a canary. He was up someplace. Hill Street. 27. You know it, Jim, 27. Don't put on that face with me. Charlie started whistling the moment he put the ladder up round floor. He's whistling fine. First floor okay, second floor. Getting short of breath. Whistle gets weak. What happens? Lady's diamond ring comes clean across from the other side of the room to him. He tries to blow it back. He can't. It comes clean through the glass. He can't get a sound out. Leans back and back, falls off the ladder. Three weeks in hospital. Get on with the job, mate. Have you got the clip, Nell? I said. I'm looking. I reckon singing's better. We always used to sing when we were working together, didn't we Jim? Remember your lady Nell at the avenue plus she put on the high class hoot of Mrs. Merry. Why doesn't someone stop that man singing? Well I did stop. I stopped right in the middle of a bar. Next thing a five pound note starts talking to me out of her handbag, other side of the room and waving its hands about just like I'm talking to you now. Her watch you mean, Said Nell, getting up. Her watch, said Plushie. Yes, said Nell. I mean her watch. She missed a watch. I thought I'd never hear the last of it. Nothing funny about that Plushie. I could have lost my place. Plushie did not like this. What do you mean, Nell? I asked. It was all right. I found it for her, Nell said. Oh, said Plushie sarcastically. That's something off my mind. Those two hated each other. We can't take it round like this, Nell said when we all stood up and looked at the saucer full of pearls. She dropped the clip on top. Too true. You can't, said Plushie. Looks too much like a ruddy share out. We argued about it for a long time. I was the only one in favor of taking it round and telling the police what happened. I did not want a valuable thing like this in the house, and we could go round to Cleavers or someplace like that and get them restrung until Monday. It would be the end of the week before we could get them to the police. But Plushie's a witness, said Nell. He'll tell them you found it and we broke it by mistake. Yes, said Plushie. And you'll get a reward. What do I get? 10 pounds, said Nell. 20, said Plushie. First installment on a motorbike. Pop up to London for the weekends. No, Aunt Mary's was worth hundreds, said Nell. Oh, said Plushie. Got Nell's Aunt Mary back to stay with you, he said to me. You never told me. Is she comfortable? A bit cramped in here for her, isn't it? Nell put her chin up and looked like the geography teacher at our school when I was a boy. Nell really did hate Plushie, and getting a crack on the head had livened him up even more. He was a lad. We made Aunt Mary comfortable in the bath, according to him, or on top of a cupboard, and they made up a long tale of how she wasn't getting on with the clergyman. His children got on her nerves and she wanted a rest, Plushie said. Nell struggled against it and then she couldn't hold out any longer. She started to laugh. She laughed as I had never seen her, doubling up over the arm of a chair, and then suddenly she got angry. Stop telling lies, Plushie, she called out. On Monday, Nell took the pearls down to Cleaver's to be restrung. Sit down, Mrs. Drayton, the older detective said to Nell, and the young one went out and came back in a moment with two cups of tea. When Nell came into any room where I was, the place was changed, and where I was, who I was and what I was would get mixed up in my mind. It was like beginning to get drunk. Nell pushed the cup of tea away scornfully. It's just routine, the older one went on. We've been asking your husband about the necklace you took round to Cleaver's to be restrung. It broke, I said. Just a minute, son, the detective said, and to Nell, now you say it is your necklace, your own property. Like you said to Mr. Cleaver, it is mine. Is that correct? I had half got up from my chair and had tried to catch her eye when she walked in, but she came in warily, not looking at me but into each corner of the room and then up at the window back at the door. I might have been a stranger when she looked in my direction. She didn't see me, at any rate. She quickly turned her head to one side. That's correct, she said. I think my mouth stuck wide open. Just a minute, the young detective said to me sharply, shutting me up. But your husband says he found it at the corner of Alston street in the promenade, the other one said to her. She looked at the young detective, then at the older one, then at me. I used to say that she confused me because she was like a couple of girls whispering secrets to each other. But now she was one woman, clear and decisive and firm in voice. There was nothing a long way off in it. It rang and rang true and harsh. That's a bloody lie, said Nell. Nell. I cried. I had never heard Nell use language before in my life. It's mine. Nell shouted at me. You know it is. Mr. Cleaver knows it is. I asked him what it was worth. He repaired it for me before he recognized it. It's been in my family for years. It belonged to my Aunt mary, I told Mr. Cleaver. He knows. Bring him here. He knows. It came to me when she died two years ago. She brought me up. Ask her husband, the Reverend Dickens. He lives in Manchester. Nell, I said. What's the address of the Reverend Dickens? Asked the older detective. Find out. You're so bloody clever, said Nell. If she was more than one girl, I'd never seen this one before, red and square in the face and her eyes moving like knife tips. Well, said the dick, it's exactly like a necklace lost by a Mrs. Faber. Is it? Snapped Nell. Well, it isn't hers. It's mine. It was my Aunt Mary's. I told you. She gave it to me. She gave me everything, all the things I have. Oh, said the detective. Other things. What were they? That's my business, said Nell. Mrs. Drayton, said the detective. You haven't got an aunt. And you never did have, did you? Your father and mother live in London, don't they? They're dead, I said. Killed in the war. What's that got to do with it? Nell, what's going on? Nell suddenly took notice of me, as if she were seeing me for the first time. Her expression went through three changes. It was like seeing three photographs of a person quickly. The first was the square, raging face. The second lost its color and softened. The third looked pale and sly. This one spoke to me in a low voice across the table, as if we were sharing a secret. You silly sucker, she half whispered. You're covering up for Plushie. I won't Have Plushie. And then she shouted at the detective. Plushie whipped it off. Mrs. Faber. Out with Plushie. Out, out. My husband knows it. She got up and rushed for the door, but the young one was standing there. I've left the window cleaning trade now. I gave it up after the case. I had to. There was too much talk. Nell got three months. She was mad. She must have been. That's the only thing I can think. But she didn't look mad at court. She had just one word for all of us. The police, me, Plushie, old cleaver, everybody liars. The only straight people in the world were her and Aunt Mary. It came out in court that she'd worked this Aunt Mary game a couple of times before she met me. Once in Deptford and another time at a place near Bristol. What for that she might have got off first offence? Her old auntie got around. Plushie whispered to me when the police were reading her record out to the judge. Tiring at her age. The last I saw of Nell was going downstairs out of the dock with the wardress. She didn't even look at me. I couldn't believe it. I still can't believe it. My mind goes back to the first time I saw her through the back bedroom window at Mrs. Mary's, fixing the earrings. Not hers, but Mrs. Merry's. And I say to myself, January 11th, we beat Hopley 3 0. And I get stuck there.

[Deborah Treisman]

That was Paul Theroux reading the Necklace by VS Pritchett. The story appeared in the New Yorker in February of 1958 and was included in Pritchett's complete collected stories, which was published by random house in 1991.

[Paul Theroux]

Hey, listeners, this is Toni Collette and I'm excited to introduce my new audio fiction series, Madame Ram. It tells the incredible dramatized true story of Georgia Frontier, a former showgirl who inherited the LA Rams after her husband's death and shook the NFL. Using astrology to guide her decisions, she became one of the most controversial and influential figures in modern sports. Follow Madame Ram on Apple podcasts, Spotify or wherever you're listening now.

[Deborah Treisman]

So, Paul, coming back to the idea of the many necklace stories, I read an interview with Pritchett from 1985 where he talked about how he came to write this story and he said, the necklace I wrote as an exercise because I thought I had lost the ability to write a story. I was working on the New Statesman at the time and I was awfully busy and I suddenly realized that I was running short of short stories and I thought I'd better try and do something about it. And I remembered that Henry James had decided that he must really write a necklace story. The necklace story of Maupassant is a classic model. And an astonishing number of writers have turned to that story and said, I must write a necklace in a different way. And so I did it for that reason. It did release me. So now that we've heard the story, do you think it fits the model?

[Paul Theroux]

Oh, yes. Oh, yes. And, you know, that's strange. I didn't realize that he said that. But that's a very telling detail because I had a similar experience. I mean, I was kind of casting about and I thought of the Montpassant story, and I thought, I'd like to write a necklace story. And I wrote one myself. So all those stories are different, but the focus is on this object, this glittering object. And it's very characteristic of his stories because he's writing about things that really matter. And he's usually about. He's writing about disillusionment, too. And a lot of his stories are about that. The disillusionment of usually the protagonist, someone who's telling the story. Or it could be a character in the story who finds out something very important. So a crushing detail. And I think the innocence of Jim, the narrator of the story, is something that one is struck by when you're hearing it, because you hear he falls in love. The woman that he's in love with seems to him when he's married, he says she seems like two people. Other selves appear, he says, sometimes one of the selves that is talking to her and sometimes another self. He can't quite get it straight. Her changes of mood. She says jokes seem real to her and upsetting. And you get the impression very strongly she's a liar and this story and that he's being deceived. But the story is told in a very interesting way because it starts with them at the police station and then it breaks off and he brings us up to date and he tells about his marriage and about being a window cleaner and all that, and all the details leading up to. And then the end of the story. The last 10% of the story lasts few pages. We're back at the police station and she's claiming that it's her necklace, that she's a liar, and so she's a schemer. She's got an angle, and she tells very convincing lies.

[Deborah Treisman]

Well, from very early in the story, we're told that she doesn't like men who tell lies. She tells Plushie to stop telling them. She tells Jim to stop telling them. At the end, she says Jim Pleshy and the police are all liars. Is that all a performance? Or is she perhaps in denial about her own sense of truth? What is going on?

[Paul Theroux]

I think what he's implying is that she's frightened by lies and that she knows that she's a liar. She knows that she stretches the truth. She knows that she's living in a kind of fantasy. And when other people indulge in frightens her, it scares her because she thinks she can only function with honest people, like most crooks, you know, I mean, as a liar, it would worry her a lot if someone else was lying. So she has to deal with people who are innocent, truthful, easy marks, you know.

[Deborah Treisman]

Mm. And perhaps her resistance to Plushie has to do with the fact that he is also a bit of a thief and his jokes she interprets as lies.

[Paul Theroux]

Yeah, he's a bit of a fantasist. And he's constantly. Yes. Or making up stories. He's a tease, too. Cause he teases. And teasing is a form of being fantastical, too. So he's actually a very good character. And the story would be different if he wasn't in it. If it was just the protagonist, Jim and the wife, it would be a good story. But having this. You know, this is often true in paintings when you see a person, a witness, when there's a witness in a painting, someone looking on, or there's this other person in the story, he's a witness, he's a friend. And he sort of sees through her too, because he's sort of. He's not crooked, but you can tell that he suspects she is. So, yeah, he's sort of got her a number, whereas the narrative story doesn't. He's innocent. I mean, he doesn't know. He's like, what's going on here? My goodness. Even when this kind of dated thing, when Nell says, bloody, no, I bloody didn't. Something, whatever, and he's shocked she's using the word bloody, he hadn't seen that before.

[Deborah Treisman]

Yeah, well, she slips around, at least in Jim's perception of her. In fact, he can't even really see her. He doesn't know quite what she looks like. You know, he has no idea what age she is. She could be 30. She could be a child. And her face keeps changing shape.

[Paul Theroux]

That's right. That's right. That's good, isn't it, that she seemed physically to change when she puts the Necklace on. She looks different. And then when she gets angry, she's different. And then there's a very telling detail. Early on, her eyes. Her eyes are empty. And in other words, it looks like a simple story. People say, oh, well, this is a story about English life, but it's not. It has a lot of profundity and a lot of angles. It's a very useful story to analyze. You can analyze the. How he brings it off.

[Deborah Treisman]

Yeah. Early in the story, when Jim's talking about her and he says, I was so soppy about her that I didn't know which was me and which was. Now there's a complete confusion for him. This marriage is pure confusion. He never knows what's coming.

[Paul Theroux]

Yes. She sort of groomed him. She sort of overwhelmed him. Because when he's at work, he thinks about her and he says, I know that she was thinking about me, and it's very confusing. And she's sort of obsessive in that respect. Yeah, she's in his head in a worrying way, A way that kind of worries him.

[Deborah Treisman]

Let's get back to the question of class in this story. Now, Pritchett himself was not, as I think you've mentioned, was not born into a literary family. His father had a shop, and then he was a traveling salesman. He was constantly running from debt and creditors. And Pritchett Left school at 15, I think, and his first job was in the leather trade, and then he was a shop assistant. So he didn't start writing at all, I think, until he took a job as a journalist in his 20s.

[Paul Theroux]

That's right.

[Deborah Treisman]

So for him, he's coming from the working class. Right. So it seems natural that people in that class would be in his stories. But do you think he has a sort of sociological perspective on it?

[Paul Theroux]

Oh, yes. Yeah. Yeah. He was fascinated by the nuances of class, and he was what? You know, George Orwell said I was upper lower middle class. And you think upper lower middle class. Yeah. So it's kind of the. It's the class of the H.G. wells hero, you know, shopkeeper class, the draper's assistant. So not lower class, not working class, not lower class, but some. Just a few notches up front. And Pritchett was very aware of it. I mean, and he got a knighthood, and it was a big deal that he got a knighthood because he always felt. Not undeserving. Exactly. But the likes of him, you know, didn't get knighthoods. He also came up at a time when class distinctions were very, very important. When there was certain. If you came from a certain class, you couldn't do things you were unable to. You weren't worthy, you weren't welcome. And so he was very aware of how class was an imprisoning aspect of social life. And there's a lot of class in this story. For example, I mean, the dubious maid. She pretends to have class. She has an accent. His sister remarks on her accent. And she talks about Aunt Mary. Her Aunt Mary, who has a deodatri and a gravel driveway and books and she's married to a clergyman and she has jewelry and whatnot. And it's all beyond the experience of the man that she buries, of the narrator of the story. So class is definitely part of this story. It's a very subtle thing in the story. In a way. You need to be pointed toward it. Otherwise the story doesn't have the same impact. But it really is about class, his class. The class of the woman whose windows he's watching. And the pretense of class, of the woman he marries, who's a crook, actually, who's a deceiver and a con artist, is another class altogether. I mean, that's. I suppose, the Dickensian part of the story is that she's a crooked. And when he sees her through the window, she's putting on a pair of earrings. They're the earrings that belong to the person who employ her. And you get the impression she covets them. And when she sees the pearls, she's thrilled. She wants them. She has to have them.

[Deborah Treisman]

Yeah. She's so materialistic and she so much wants to put her own class behind her. Why does she marry this very modest man?

[Paul Theroux]

Yeah, there's a good question. She must see something in him. I think what she sees in him is his truthfulness, his honesty, his humility. And the fact that he's a pawn in her game. And she obviously can see that she might be able to use him somehow. And for the reasons that some people get married. They fall in love and they're lonely.

[Deborah Treisman]

Yeah. I'm just wondering if you think she has genuine feelings for him or if he's just a way of escaping her life as a maid.

[Paul Theroux]

I have the feeling that she has no feelings for him, really, that he's useful, but he loves her. He's besotted with her. You can see that. But she's. Because she's been around. I mean, if she's tried to scheme in other places, that's kind of an interesting aspect, that she's a practiced operator. She's a practiced schemer.

[Deborah Treisman]

Yeah.

[Paul Theroux]

In this story he's got a light touch and I like the light touch of it. All of it is suggesting and things not stated but suggested. That's quite a good thing too.

[Deborah Treisman]

Yeah. I feel like the story's a kind of slow reveal of Nell, you know, and she's being revealed to Jim in the course of the story. And so she's revealed to us at the same time until the final moment where she goes off without a last look and scowling and screaming and swearing and undoes everything.

[Paul Theroux]

I think there's another aspect to it. It's something that the narrator notices, which is that he's truthful and he's got a good memory. But she doesn't always remember her lies. And so when he mentions, she said, well, I told Aunt Maren, he said, but she's dead. And then she forgets well before she died and she gets confused. That's quite good too, that he remembers it and she doesn't.

[Deborah Treisman]

Yeah. Now, Eudora Welty called Pritchett one of the great pleasure givers in our language. She said, any Pritchett story is all of it alight and busy at once, like a well lit fire. What do you think is the center of that pleasure giving? Is it the humor?

[Paul Theroux]

I think that he really knew what he was doing and he never faked it. He told me once that he avoided endings of stories that were too pat, where there was a detail in oh, that's what it's all about, that sort of thing. That he liked the slow reveal and then he liked to leave you in a mood where you sort of finish the story yourself. And it's something that's pretty rare. But the pleasure of the Pritchard story is that he always wrote about something that he understood extremely well. So his stories about Ireland are based on the fact that he lived in Ireland, about Spain, ditto. He stuck to the things that he knew, to the people that he knew. And there's always humor in his stories. In fact, some of the most upsetting things in his stories are tinged with humor or comedy. And it makes them darker, it makes them scarier and weirder, which I think is also true of a great writer. So he had all those qualities. He was also a perfectionist. Further. First, he had confidence in his own stories. He knew that his stories were good. He was a modest man, but he wasn't so modest or so humble that he'd say, well, I tried. I don't know whether that story works. He would say, no, no, I Think that story is right.

[Deborah Treisman]

In that interview I read, he also said I have a rather ironical comic sense of life. And in fact, that is an important point to me. I've always thought that the comic is really an aspect of the poetic. It is the sister of the poetic quality. My fundamental view about the story is that it begins as a poetic insight and. And that it is also a way of seeing through a situation, a glimpse through, as someone has said, in which you are in fact writing something perhaps like a short poem.

[Paul Theroux]

That's right. He often compared the short story to a poem and felt that a poem was like a ballad, that a story needed a strong poetic element in it.

[Deborah Treisman]

And then thinking that the comedy is an aspect of the poetic. That's an interesting thought.

[Paul Theroux]

Oh, yeah, very much so. Comedy is present throughout his work and even in his book reviews, his essays. He's funny. He's very funny and wise, and there's always asides in it. But he had a great sense of humor himself, and he was a great listener. I would say that one of the gifts he had was a gift for listening. And then he was a mimic, too. So later he could tell you a story of what he'd heard. He had a very stable ego. I could say. He would listen if you met him. He'd ask you a question, tell you a few things, and then he would listen. And that made him a writer.

[Deborah Treisman]

Well, it's also what made him so good at dialogue, isn't it?

[Paul Theroux]

Oh, yeah, yeah. He had a very good ear. Like in this story, he says Nell often starts a sentence with no, and that's a kind of tick. There are people who start sentences with so or well, and, you know, that's kind of common. But he notices this. And in a way, it tells who she is too. Kind of resisting. Resisting. Resisting.

[Deborah Treisman]

Yeah. No, no. She doesn't want things to be like that, so she's saying no to them. Yeah, yeah. The humor in this story is also fantastic. I love the part where he says this was her way of loving me, knowing everything I did now. And then she overloved me by getting it wrong.

[Paul Theroux]

It's good, isn't it?

[Deborah Treisman]

Hilarious lines.

[Paul Theroux]

And it's good that even the way he puts it, this was her way of loving me, knowing everything. But you know, that it's not love, that she needs to know where he is. I mean, she's worried. She's not truthful. She wants to know exactly what's happening. That's what he's doing. I mean, being innocent and a Loving man himself. He sees that. He's kind of touched by it. Moved by it.

[Deborah Treisman]

Yeah, yeah. He tries to be in the wrong place so that she can be right.

[Paul Theroux]

Yep. Right. Yeah.

[Deborah Treisman]

Ultimately, at the very end of the story, you know, when she's being hauled off to prison, he concludes that she must be mad. You know, she's actually deranged in some way or she's in some kind of denial. Do you think that's the case?

[Paul Theroux]

No, I think because he's truthful, he can only understand criminality as madness, not as deviousness or evil or wickedness. He thinks that she's possessed. So that's a kindly way of him explaining it. And also he says he doesn't really want to explain it. All he can think about is the football match.

[Deborah Treisman]

Yeah. He wants to go back and that.

[Paul Theroux]

His mind stops that day. The rain, his friend Plushie and the football match. He doesn't want to look into it. He doesn't want to look into what could possibly be evil, thievery. Lying. Lying.

[Deborah Treisman]

Yeah. And the police also entrap him because in that first scene, they say your wife brought the necklace in, which he didn't do.

[Paul Theroux]

Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah.

[Deborah Treisman]

So he's being lied to on all sides and giving back honesty.

[Paul Theroux]

Yeah. Well, I mean, I think the key to the story is that he is an honest man who doesn't look deeply into things and who is somewhat infatuated, deluded. And he's a happy guy. He's not looking for much. He wants to do the right thing. As soon as he finds the necklace, he thinks, well, maybe I'll get a reward. The idea of keeping it never occurs to him. Whereas it's the first thought that his wife has.

[Deborah Treisman]

Yeah. He says, I'm not a thief. Yeah.

[Paul Theroux]

So I think that in a way, he's like a little. I don't know, you might say a Charlie Chaplin character or something like that. I mean, he's a simple fellow and he intuits. But when he starts talking about, she seemed like two people, she seemed like she had a different fate. All of that stuff is intuitive. But he doesn't go the whole way and say, she's crooked, she's devious. He thinks, oh, this is kind of curious about. It's a curious thing about her. She seems like two people, two selves. She's old, she seems young, she seems this, she seems that. Her eyes and whatnot. The reader understands this, but he doesn't. But he gives her enough information. I mean, I think that's the Brilliance of the story.

[Deborah Treisman]

You said earlier that a good story is one where the reader can kind of come up with their own ending.

[Paul Theroux]

Yeah, I think so. I think it's not sewn shut, it's not nailed down. It resonates in your mind. So it's not Edgar Allan Poe. I think readers generally like a story where it's all sewn up and over and ah, that was it, you know, the O. Henry ending. But I think the great story is the Chekhov story or the Pritchard story or the Henry James story. The story that doesn't have a solid ending that resonates is one that's more like poetry. And I think that's the poetry that Pritchard is talking about. And there's poetry in this story, Without a doubt.

[Deborah Treisman]

Yeah. So what is your ending for Jim? What do you imagine?

[Paul Theroux]

Oh, Jim. Jim has a friend. Jim has a friend, Plushie. He's got his friend. They're going to play football and like Pritchett, he'll beat someone because he's straight. He's a good guy, he works hard. Pritchett eventually found true love, Dorothy, and he wrote a story about it called the Marvelous Girl. They had a real loving, close, highly charged marriage. Their marriage was just, you know, the ideal. They were together all the time. She made his lunch, she typed his short story, she typed his essay. They traveled together. So they had a very solid marriage. So in Jim's, he's a guy, he's solid, he's not crooked. He didn't get his reward, but he found out the truth about this. It's a marriage that wasn't destined to have a future. So you don't worry too much about him because he's basically a happy man. He's also insightful and so the thing that you take away from the story is that he looks into things and he sees things. He doesn't always reach conclusions, but he always has a lot of information. So he'll be all right? He'll be fine.

[Deborah Treisman]

Well, thank you, Paul.

[Paul Theroux]

Thank you, Deborah. It was great talking to you.

[Deborah Treisman]

VS Pritchett, who was born in 1900 and died in 1997, was a British fiction writer, critic, essayist and biographer. He published six novels and numerous short story collections including the Saint and Other Stories, the Camberwell Beauty and a Careless Widow and Other Stories. Among his non fiction books were the memoir A Cab at the Door and biographies of Balzac, Turgenev and Chekhov. He was knighted in 1975. Paul Theroux's non fiction books include the Great Railway Bazaar and On the Plain of a Mexican Journey, a winner of the James Tate Black Award and the Whitbread prize. He's published 39 books of fiction, including the novels the Mosquito coast and Burma Sahib and The story collections Mr. Bones and the Vanishing Point. He's been publishing fiction in the New Yorker since 1979. You can download more than 200 previous episodes of the New Yorker Fiction Podcast, including episodes in which Paul Theroux reads and discusses stories by Jorge Luis Borges and Elizabeth Taylor, 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. Hey podcast listeners.

[Paul Theroux]

I'm Chris Marocco, food director of Bon.

[Deborah Treisman]

Appetit and Epicurious and host of the Dinner SOS podcast. Every week on Dinner sos, my Test Kitchen colleagues and I help listeners figure out what they should be cooking right.

[Paul Theroux]

Now and this winter, we're helping you.

[Deborah Treisman]

Embrace all things cozy cooking, letting you join the Ba Bake Club and getting back to basics with simple strategies to.

[Paul Theroux]

Level up your home cooking. So don't miss out. Listen to and follow Dinner SOS wherever you get your podcasts, and if you.

[Deborah Treisman]

Have your own kitchen question, email us at dinnersos at bonapetit. Com. Happy cooking.

[Paul Theroux]

From prx.