The New Yorker Radio Hour
The Writer Katie Kitamura on Autonomy, Interpretation, and “Audition”
08 Apr 2025
Katie Kitamura’s fifth novel is “Audition,” and it focusses on a middle-aged actress and her ambiguous relationship with a much younger man. Kitamura tells the critic Jennifer Wilson that she thought for a long time about an actress as protagonist, as a way to highlight the roles women play, and to provoke questions about agency. “I teach creative writing, and in class often ... if there is a character who the group feels doesn't have agency, that is often brought up as a criticism of the character,” she tells Wilson. Other students will say, “ ‘She doesn't have any agency,’ as if a character without agency is implausible or in some way not compelling in narrative terms. But of course, the reality is very few of us have total agency. I think we operate under the illusion or the impression that we have a great deal of agency. But in reality when you look at your life, our choices are quite constricted.” “Audition” comes out this week.
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Jennifer Wilson is a critic at The New Yorker, but one with a very wide purview. She'll write about digital breakups or finding an apartment, as well as her latest obsession in the world of literature, which at the moment is a new book by Katie Kitamura.
Katie Kitamura's new novel, Audition, is about a middle-aged actress living in New York City who meets a much younger man, a playwright. And the two embark on a kind of undefined relationship that's mysterious to us as readers. We have to kind of interpret for really long periods of the novel what's going on between them. And, you know, it's set in a theater and this is a novel about roles.
And this is also a character who's trying to figure out gender roles. You know, what kind of figure should she be to this young man? Is she a romantic interest? Is she a maternal figure? What are the appropriate gender roles for a woman? I think is one of the things that probably drew Katie Kitamura to the theater for this most recent novel.
The New Yorker's Jennifer Wilson spoke with Katie Kitamura about Audition, which comes out this week.
You know, this first scene in the novel kind of primes us to read the rest as being sort of about interpretation. And, you know, it struck me that your last novel, the main character, was an interpreter. So what is it about interpretation that's continuing to inspire you or nag at you?
I mean, I really wanted interpretation to be at the center of this novel. In a funny way, even more than in my last novel where the character is literally a simultaneous interpreter. Because I wanted that... feeling of interpretation to be very active for the reader as well.
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