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Rachel Aviv

👤 Person
309 total appearances

Appearances Over Time

Podcast Appearances

The New Yorker Radio Hour
Rachel Aviv on Alice Munro’s Family Secrets

I try not to respond with judgment. I think I just listened. But we're sitting here. It's just us two. I mean, why write a biography if you're not going to sort of – Yeah, I think, you know, Andrea said in a letter to him, like, he had responded, you know, I'll make sure I didn't, like, say anything too flattering, essentially, about Jerry.

The New Yorker Radio Hour
Rachel Aviv on Alice Munro’s Family Secrets

I try not to respond with judgment. I think I just listened. But we're sitting here. It's just us two. I mean, why write a biography if you're not going to sort of – Yeah, I think, you know, Andrea said in a letter to him, like, he had responded, you know, I'll make sure I didn't, like, say anything too flattering, essentially, about Jerry.

The New Yorker Radio Hour
Rachel Aviv on Alice Munro’s Family Secrets

I try not to respond with judgment. I think I just listened. But we're sitting here. It's just us two. I mean, why write a biography if you're not going to sort of – Yeah, I think, you know, Andrea said in a letter to him, like, he had responded, you know, I'll make sure I didn't, like, say anything too flattering, essentially, about Jerry.

The New Yorker Radio Hour
Rachel Aviv on Alice Munro’s Family Secrets

And she said, I didn't mean cross out flattering adjectives. I meant, you know, scrap the whole book.

The New Yorker Radio Hour
Rachel Aviv on Alice Munro’s Family Secrets

And she said, I didn't mean cross out flattering adjectives. I meant, you know, scrap the whole book.

The New Yorker Radio Hour
Rachel Aviv on Alice Munro’s Family Secrets

And she said, I didn't mean cross out flattering adjectives. I meant, you know, scrap the whole book.

The New Yorker Radio Hour
Rachel Aviv on Alice Munro’s Family Secrets

Right. And she said, you know, to ignore this is to ignore sort of the context in which these stories are written. I think there was this—he was trying to hold onto this idea, and the family members were too, that something—that this was between Jerry and Andrea, like this sort of delusional idea that it was a two-person interaction.

The New Yorker Radio Hour
Rachel Aviv on Alice Munro’s Family Secrets

Right. And she said, you know, to ignore this is to ignore sort of the context in which these stories are written. I think there was this—he was trying to hold onto this idea, and the family members were too, that something—that this was between Jerry and Andrea, like this sort of delusional idea that it was a two-person interaction.

The New Yorker Radio Hour
Rachel Aviv on Alice Munro’s Family Secrets

Right. And she said, you know, to ignore this is to ignore sort of the context in which these stories are written. I think there was this—he was trying to hold onto this idea, and the family members were too, that something—that this was between Jerry and Andrea, like this sort of delusional idea that it was a two-person interaction.

The New Yorker Radio Hour
Rachel Aviv on Alice Munro’s Family Secrets

I think it's Vandals from 1993. Talk about that story. I read the letters that Alice wrote to her agent and she said, first she wrote that she had started a story and she called it about, it was about the subject. And she said she approached it from different angles and then she felt like she was going to throw up and she burned it. And then two months later, she had written a draft of Vandals.

The New Yorker Radio Hour
Rachel Aviv on Alice Munro’s Family Secrets

I think it's Vandals from 1993. Talk about that story. I read the letters that Alice wrote to her agent and she said, first she wrote that she had started a story and she called it about, it was about the subject. And she said she approached it from different angles and then she felt like she was going to throw up and she burned it. And then two months later, she had written a draft of Vandals.

The New Yorker Radio Hour
Rachel Aviv on Alice Munro’s Family Secrets

I think it's Vandals from 1993. Talk about that story. I read the letters that Alice wrote to her agent and she said, first she wrote that she had started a story and she called it about, it was about the subject. And she said she approached it from different angles and then she felt like she was going to throw up and she burned it. And then two months later, she had written a draft of Vandals.

The New Yorker Radio Hour
Rachel Aviv on Alice Munro’s Family Secrets

It's about a young girl named Liza and her younger brother. And in the summers, they go every day to play with this man and his wife, who has sort of become a mother figure. And the man is sexually abusing the children. It sort of emerges. The story is sort of structured as an investigation into whether The mother knows and chooses to look away or doesn't know but should know.

The New Yorker Radio Hour
Rachel Aviv on Alice Munro’s Family Secrets

It's about a young girl named Liza and her younger brother. And in the summers, they go every day to play with this man and his wife, who has sort of become a mother figure. And the man is sexually abusing the children. It sort of emerges. The story is sort of structured as an investigation into whether The mother knows and chooses to look away or doesn't know but should know.

The New Yorker Radio Hour
Rachel Aviv on Alice Munro’s Family Secrets

It's about a young girl named Liza and her younger brother. And in the summers, they go every day to play with this man and his wife, who has sort of become a mother figure. And the man is sexually abusing the children. It sort of emerges. The story is sort of structured as an investigation into whether The mother knows and chooses to look away or doesn't know but should know.

The New Yorker Radio Hour
Rachel Aviv on Alice Munro’s Family Secrets

And in that story, there are lines. Or images that are almost lifted from the letter that Andrea wrote to her mother disclosing her abuse and from a letter that Jerry wrote about their relationship. So it feels, you can sort of see pieces of sort of language, sentences that must have like lit her up in somewhere, like made her feel like she had to build a story around it.

The New Yorker Radio Hour
Rachel Aviv on Alice Munro’s Family Secrets

And in that story, there are lines. Or images that are almost lifted from the letter that Andrea wrote to her mother disclosing her abuse and from a letter that Jerry wrote about their relationship. So it feels, you can sort of see pieces of sort of language, sentences that must have like lit her up in somewhere, like made her feel like she had to build a story around it.

The New Yorker Radio Hour
Rachel Aviv on Alice Munro’s Family Secrets

And in that story, there are lines. Or images that are almost lifted from the letter that Andrea wrote to her mother disclosing her abuse and from a letter that Jerry wrote about their relationship. So it feels, you can sort of see pieces of sort of language, sentences that must have like lit her up in somewhere, like made her feel like she had to build a story around it.

The New Yorker Radio Hour
Rachel Aviv on Alice Munro’s Family Secrets

She did for a while. It must have been horrific. You know, she said that for a while she almost tried to convince herself to be hopeful, and she felt like, okay, here she is. She's getting it out. She's working through it. You know, there was one story, Rich as Stink, that has this image of a daughter wearing a wedding dress that burns.

The New Yorker Radio Hour
Rachel Aviv on Alice Munro’s Family Secrets

She did for a while. It must have been horrific. You know, she said that for a while she almost tried to convince herself to be hopeful, and she felt like, okay, here she is. She's getting it out. She's working through it. You know, there was one story, Rich as Stink, that has this image of a daughter wearing a wedding dress that burns.