Podcast Summary: "Tessa Hadley Reads John McGahern"

Podcast: The New Yorker: Fiction
Host: Deborah Treisman (New Yorker Fiction Editor)
Guest: Tessa Hadley (Author)
Episode Date: February 1, 2026
Story Discussed: “Gold Watch” by John McGahern (originally published March 1980)

Episode Overview

This episode of The New Yorker: Fiction features British author Tessa Hadley reading and discussing “Gold Watch,” a story by acclaimed Irish writer John McGahern. After the reading, Hadley and host Deborah Treisman explore McGahern’s unique style, the story’s themes of familial inheritance, patriarchy, masculinity, and the lingering influence of the past, especially as filtered through the dark, complicated relationship between fathers and sons.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

Tessa Hadley’s Relationship with McGahern’s Work

• Beloved Writers: Hadley places McGahern alongside Nadine Gordimer and John Updike in her “inner circle of beloved writers” (02:56).
• Initial Encounter: She first read McGahern in the 1980s and admired his “opaque, enigmatic, easy-looking, difficult stories” (03:11).
• Teaching McGahern: Hadley frequently taught his stories, noting students “marveled at his strange, unique, idiosyncratic technique” (03:34).

McGahern’s Literary Technique

• Surface Simplicity, Underlying Depth: Described as “a sort of surface lucidity… a surface simplicity almost” with meaningful repetitions that editors might otherwise cut (03:55).
• Rhythm of Language: The repetitions reflect the rhythm of his thought and language.

Why “Gold Watch”?

• Symbolic Object at the Center: The titular watch acts as an object around which “a universe of patriarchy, of country and city, of men unpicking and remaking power between them in the most deadly, dark way” unfolds (04:30).
• Balancing Light and Darkness: While “on some deep level, not a cheerful story,” there is also “loveliness” and “light” present (05:23).

Reading of "Gold Watch" by Tessa Hadley

• Full Reading: From 05:41 to 45:32, Hadley reads the complete story with careful attention to tone and nuance.

Post-Reading Discussion

Parallels to McGahern’s Life and Repetition in His Work

• Autobiographical Connections: Acknowledgment that McGahern had a difficult, abusive relationship with his father—a recurring theme in his fiction (46:39).
• Purpose of Repetition: The repeated archetype of tyrannical father, stepmother, and trapped son isn't just “technique”—it’s a psychological pattern in McGahern's work (47:00):
  • “It’s intrinsic to the habit, the pattern of his thought… He tells this story in different versions and variants over and over and over to the point of oddity… It builds a great archetypal story somehow.” —Tessa Hadley, 47:04

The Arc of the Story: From Lightness to Darkness

• Fairytale Beginning: The story begins with “lightness”—a chance, romantic encounter with “lyrical” prose (48:53).
• Foreshadowing Darkness: Even early trivial events (a man parting the couple in the street) subtly foreshadow the more profound obstacles to come (50:20).
• Men as Bearers of Darkness: In McGahern, “the men carry the darkness into all the stories… the women hold a hope of light and beauty” (51:10).

The Role of Women

• Pragmatic Female Lead: The unnamed woman is calm, practical, and clear-eyed, contrasting with the man's more idealistic and desperate longing for salvation (53:27):
  • “She is that sort of lucidity about life… Her pragmatism, as you say, all of those qualities seem exactly what was needed to undo the ugly spell that his life was under.” —Tessa Hadley, 53:38
• She’s Not a Saviour: Hadley suggests the woman is “a little bit afraid” of the narrator’s commitment to her as a saviour (54:49).

Dynamics of the Father-Son Relationship

• Contest of Martyrdom and Power: The relationship centers on a contest: who is more wronged, who is more martyred (56:59):
  • “They each want to be wronged. They each want to be put in the wrong by the other. And that is at least a part of why he goes back. … He doesn’t want to allow his father the luxury of being wronged.” —Tessa Hadley, 56:59
• Physicality of Resentment: The father’s passive-aggressive gestures—refusing to shake hands, ostentatiously withdrawing—are “visceral, not something in the head” (58:23).
• Competitive, Covert Aggressions: Treisman and Hadley enumerate each hostile act inflicted upon the other (insults, taking the watch, not announcing a marriage, etc.) (62:18).
• The Gold Watch as Emblem: The inherited watch symbolizes patriarchal power, generational transmission, and unresolved longing (63:02):
  • “The watch is an emblem of that [masculine power] and tangled... The transaction over the power, because it's so ugly and so damaged... is mysterious and opaque and covert.” —Tessa Hadley, 63:02

Time, Inheritance, and the Elusiveness of Resolution

• Time as Power/Defeat: The narrator, as the younger man, possesses “time ahead of him” in contrast to his father (64:17).
• Why Claim the Watch?: The son can’t “disown his childhood,” nor the pastoral world. To simply buy himself a new ugly watch isn’t available—he must “reckon with that man” he came from, and the longing for intimacy within labor and tradition remains (71:20).
• The Poisoned Watch: The father’s attempt to annihilate his son’s gift (the new watch) through poison is a final, pathological act—one that’s “absurd,” “devious,” and essentially futile (73:49, 74:23, 74:42).
• Poison and Violence: Poisoning the watch is “what you use to kill living things” and operates on the level of “poisoning the very soil that is the ground of their lives” (74:58).

The Ending’s Enigma

• Longing for Resolution: The mesmerizing late-night scene, the circling of the poisoned watch, and the narrator’s admission that “no word or truth came” encapsulate the existential futility of seeking neat conclusions (75:39, 76:17).
  • “You can write and write and write all the stories and books of your life that say your father was a terrible man, but it’s never going to take him away, out of your childhood and out of you.” —Tessa Hadley, 76:17
• No Final Justice: The possibility of “justice” or “redress” never fully emerges; time “hardly surprisingly, was still running, [and] did not have to run to any conclusion” (80:18).
  • “But time is still running. And of course, it doesn't bring redress, justice, fulfillment, resolution, but you're still alive… the possibility… of future and happiness and a bright life, a life with light in, remains open and possible, even though there's always going to be this… patriarchal violence which can't finally… be once and for all addressed and purged and judged and got rid of.” —Tessa Hadley, 80:50

Notable Quotes and Timestamps

• "They are in my inner circle of beloved writers, all three of them. They are among my favorite short story writers." —Tessa Hadley (02:56)
• "It's got the thing a really good short story often has, which is one thing you can hold in your hand. And out of that small thing, you can unpack... a universe of patriarchy, of country and city, of men unpicking and remaking power between them..." —Tessa Hadley (04:30)
• “He tells this story in different versions and variants over and over and over to the point of oddity... It builds a great archetypal story.” —Tessa Hadley (47:04)
• "Because that’s [McGahern’s] sensibility—a hunger for this light that is possible, this living that is other. And then a being drawn back to darkness." —Tessa Hadley (48:59)
• "In McGahern, it’s the men who carry the darkness into all the stories… the women... hold out a hope of light and beauty." —Tessa Hadley (51:10)
• "They each want to be wronged. They each want to be put in the wrong by the other." —Tessa Hadley (56:59)
• "This pocket watch slithers out, doesn’t it? From between the smooth sheets... But the transaction over the power, because it’s so ugly and so damaged... is mysterious and opaque and covert." —Tessa Hadley (63:58)
• “You can write and write and write all the stories and books of your life that say your father was a terrible man, but it’s never going to take him away, out of your childhood and out of you.” —Tessa Hadley (76:17)
• “Time is still running. And of course, it doesn't bring redress, justice, fulfillment, resolution, but you're still alive.” —Tessa Hadley (80:50)

Important Discussion Segments & Timestamps

• [02:56] – Hadley ranks McGahern among her “inner circle” of writers
• [03:11–03:51] – How Hadley first read and taught McGahern
• [03:55] – Explanation of McGahern’s distinctive style
• [04:30] – Why “Gold Watch” was chosen and its symbolic function
• [05:41–45:32] – Full story reading: “Gold Watch”
• [46:39] – Parallels with McGahern’s life and excessive repetition as literary method
• [48:53–50:41] – The story’s light, lyrical beginning and its foreshadowing
• [51:10–54:49] – Ambiguities of gender, the “hope of light,” and the pragmatic woman
• [56:38] – The father-son contest, recurring conflict, and power plays
• [62:18] – Itemization of their small acts of aggression
• [63:02] – Masculinity, archetype, and the gold watch as symbol
• [64:17–71:14] – Time, inheritance, and the impossibility of disowning one’s past
• [73:36–74:42] – The “poisoned watch” episode and its layers of meaning
• [75:39–80:50] – Reflections on the story’s enigmatic, unresolved ending
• [82:28–83:36] – Hopes for the future: Can the son ever escape becoming his father?

Memorable Moments

• The Scene of the Poisoned Watch: The father, trying to destroy the new wristwatch received from his son, submerges it in agricultural poison, attempting not just to ruin the gift but to reject what it symbolizes.
• Moonlit Epiphany: The narrator stands in the night, seeking a word or truth from the ticking ruined watch, but nothing is delivered, emphasizing the existential irresolution at the story’s heart.
• Archetypal Pattern: Hadley’s analysis that the story is “not just about an innocent man who needs to get rid of his wicked father. The darkness is inside the son for every reason. That’s what the story’s working out” (54:49).

Conclusion

Hadley and Treisman’s conversation peels back the layers of McGahern’s “Gold Watch,” from its luminous, fairytale opening to its bleakly unresolved conclusion. The discussion highlights the story’s archetypal father-son conflict, elusive longing for justice and closure, and the way in which time, memory, and inheritance both shape and ensnare us. McGahern’s technique—his surface simplicity and cyclical repetitions—matches the inescapable cycles of familial power and pain at the center of the story.

The episode ultimately leaves listeners with the ambiguous hope that, for all the pains of the past, something different—something better—may still be possible.

For reference, the episode’s full reading of “Gold Watch” begins at [05:41] and the post-reading, in-depth discussion begins at [46:39].