Deborah Treisman
Appearances
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The New Yorker Celebrates a Hundred Years as a Poetry and Fiction Tastemaker
Just for the record, we're reading everything.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The New Yorker Celebrates a Hundred Years as a Poetry and Fiction Tastemaker
And you and the great Hannah Eisenman, who you work with, how many poems come in each week?
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The New Yorker Celebrates a Hundred Years as a Poetry and Fiction Tastemaker
And we publish about a hundred.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The New Yorker Celebrates a Hundred Years as a Poetry and Fiction Tastemaker
We have people in a given year, Jory Graham is... Wie funktioniert das alles?
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The New Yorker Celebrates a Hundred Years as a Poetry and Fiction Tastemaker
Can you remember a time where you've open an envelope and it's somebody that you hadn't heard of and you just, by the end of, you know, half an hour later, you're singing, oh, happy day? Well, can I remember a time when I opened an envelope? Touché and fair enough. Or a PDF and enclosure, fair enough.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The New Yorker Celebrates a Hundred Years as a Poetry and Fiction Tastemaker
But once Ross made the crucial hire of Catherine White, an editor who insisted on bringing the best of fiction and poetry to the magazine, Things changed. And over a century's worth of issues, we've published an immense body of short fiction and poems.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The New Yorker Celebrates a Hundred Years as a Poetry and Fiction Tastemaker
Kevin Young, and I want a little shout out here to Debra Garrison, who was so wonderful at Knopfen, helping us all out. Thank you so much. Happy anniversary.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The New Yorker Celebrates a Hundred Years as a Poetry and Fiction Tastemaker
That's The New Yorker's fiction editor, Debra Triesman, along with our poetry editor, Kevin Young. A century of fiction and a century of poetry come out this month, and of course you can always subscribe at newyorker.com. I'm David Remnick, this is The New Yorker Radio Hour. Thanks for joining us, and see you next time.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The New Yorker Celebrates a Hundred Years as a Poetry and Fiction Tastemaker
And so you went back and read every single one. And how many poems do we have? Any idea, Kevin?
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The New Yorker Celebrates a Hundred Years as a Poetry and Fiction Tastemaker
Deborah Triesman and Kevin Young have just put together two anthologies to celebrate the New Yorker Centennial. Deborah has been the magazine's fiction editor and my colleague since 2003, and she's just edited A Century of Fiction at the New Yorker. Kevin joined us as poetry editor in 2017.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The New Yorker Celebrates a Hundred Years as a Poetry and Fiction Tastemaker
He's an amazing poet and the director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture. And in his spare time, he's edited the new book, A Century of Poetry at the New Yorker. Kevin, du hast gesagt, als du erwachsen bist, hast du eine Kopie des New Yorker Buches von Poems Anthology gekauft, das 1969 veröffentlicht wurde.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The New Yorker Celebrates a Hundred Years as a Poetry and Fiction Tastemaker
Was erinnerst du dich an, als du das Buch gelesen hast, wer dabei war und vielleicht zumindest zu dem Punkt, wer es nicht war?
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The New Yorker Celebrates a Hundred Years as a Poetry and Fiction Tastemaker
And then you who come along so many years later were only the sixth black poet in our pages.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The New Yorker Celebrates a Hundred Years as a Poetry and Fiction Tastemaker
What accounts for that?
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The New Yorker Celebrates a Hundred Years as a Poetry and Fiction Tastemaker
For the big poets in the 50s, I think they would have found the New Yorker anathema somehow.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The New Yorker Celebrates a Hundred Years as a Poetry and Fiction Tastemaker
Und die erste Note ist ein sehr kurzes Nein, danke. Und plötzlich wird es viel wärmer. Als Fiktionseditor, auch heute, lebst du in Angst vor dem Verlangen eines potenziellen Geniuses? Wenn Dinge kommen, was denkst du immer?
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The New Yorker Celebrates a Hundred Years as a Poetry and Fiction Tastemaker
Ann Beattie, 44 rejections before Roger Angel.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The New Yorker Celebrates a Hundred Years as a Poetry and Fiction Tastemaker
Deborah, there was a period, a long period, where people would refer to The New Yorker Story, that there was this thing called The New Yorker Short Story. What was it and how did that reputation develop, fairly or not?
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The New Yorker Celebrates a Hundred Years as a Poetry and Fiction Tastemaker
Und als du zurückgingst und ein paar dieser Sachen gelesen hast, wie hast du sie reagiert? Hast du sie mehr begeistert, als du dachtest, oder warst du mit ihnen müde?
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The New Yorker Celebrates a Hundred Years as a Poetry and Fiction Tastemaker
What choice did you make?
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The New Yorker Celebrates a Hundred Years as a Poetry and Fiction Tastemaker
I hope, yeah. For the most part.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The New Yorker Celebrates a Hundred Years as a Poetry and Fiction Tastemaker
The New Yorker's fiction editor Deborah Treisman will continue in a moment.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The New Yorker Celebrates a Hundred Years as a Poetry and Fiction Tastemaker
And wound up killing 20, 30,000 people or so before it was over with.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The New Yorker Celebrates a Hundred Years as a Poetry and Fiction Tastemaker
The thing that seems to date maybe fastest, when I look back at old New Yorkers, is humor. I'll read the supposedly hilarious Alexander Wolcott, and I don't know what the hell he's talking about, three quarters of the time.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The New Yorker Celebrates a Hundred Years as a Poetry and Fiction Tastemaker
As it was a New Yorker story?
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The New Yorker Celebrates a Hundred Years as a Poetry and Fiction Tastemaker
Aber einige davon sind so großartig.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The New Yorker Celebrates a Hundred Years as a Poetry and Fiction Tastemaker
Also, wenn du das heute hattest, du dachtest, es wäre erfolgreich, dann würde es gehen. I would hope. Do people write it?
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The New Yorker Celebrates a Hundred Years as a Poetry and Fiction Tastemaker
Kevin, you went with a different choice on how you organized this book. Maybe you should explain it.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The New Yorker Celebrates a Hundred Years as a Poetry and Fiction Tastemaker
So you intersperse the time, the progression of the day and it's ingenious and it really works. You begin the anthology, Kevin, with a poem by a Polish poet. Erzähl mir die Geschichte dieses Poems, wann es erscheint. Und vielleicht könntest du es für uns lesen.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The New Yorker Celebrates a Hundred Years as a Poetry and Fiction Tastemaker
It was the issue right after 9-11. Which I remember getting. Yeah, with the black cover by Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly and a long narrative by a lot of reporters about what had happened.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The New Yorker Celebrates a Hundred Years as a Poetry and Fiction Tastemaker
Ich erinnere mich daran, dass Alice Quinn mir dieses Lied gegeben hat. Ich war wie alle anderen ein Verrückter. Ich habe eine halbe Woche im Büro geblieben. Ich war wie ein Puddel. Ich war wie ein Puddel und ich habe dieses Lied bekommen. Wir haben es einfach auf die Rückseite gelegt, was wir nicht normalerweise machen.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The New Yorker Celebrates a Hundred Years as a Poetry and Fiction Tastemaker
This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. In February, just a couple of weeks from now, the New Yorker will mark its centenary, a hundred years of publishing. And yet, when we began, the New Yorker's founding editor, Harold Ross, saw the magazine almost purely as what he called a comic paper. Those first issues were light as air.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The New Yorker Celebrates a Hundred Years as a Poetry and Fiction Tastemaker
Deborah, how do you see politics filtering or not filtering into the short stories that you read week after week?
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The New Yorker Celebrates a Hundred Years as a Poetry and Fiction Tastemaker
Deborah, I want to ask you about your day-to-day work as a fiction editor. How many stories does The New Yorker get a week?
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The New Yorker Celebrates a Hundred Years as a Poetry and Fiction Tastemaker
Das sind viele Geschichten.