David Rabe Reads John Updike

The New Yorker: Fiction

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Yorker, Wnyc, Literature, Books, New, Fiction, Arts

4.6 • 3.6K Ratings

🗓️ 1 February 2020

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

David Rabe joins Deborah Treisman to read and discuss “The Other Side of the Street,” by John Updike, which appeared in a 1991 issue of the magazine. Rabe, a fiction writer, playwright, and screenwriter, is the author of more than a dozen plays, including the Tony Award-winning “Sticks and Bones,” “In the Boom Boom Room,” and “Hurlyburly.” He received the PEN/Laura Pels Theatre Award as a Master American Dramatist in 2014. His novels include “Recital of the Dog” and “Girl by the Road at Night.”

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the New Yorker Fiction Podcast from the New Yorker magazine.
0:07.0	I'm Debra Treesman, fiction editor at The New Yorker.
0:10.0	Each month we invite a writer to choose a story from the magazine's archives to read and discuss.
0:15.0	This month we're going to hear the other side of the street by John Uptike,
0:19.0	which was published in The New Yorker in October of 1991.
0:23.0	He inhaled Hayesville happiness.
0:25.0	He saw his entire life passed and to come as an errant encircling of this forgotten center.
0:32.0	The story was chosen by David Raib, the playwright and fiction writer,
0:36.0	whose novels include Recital of the Dog, Dinosaurs on the Roof, and Girl by the Road at Night.
0:42.0	Hi, David.
0:43.0	Hi.
0:44.0	So I know some other ideas came up, but Uptike was pretty much the first writer you thought of reading for the podcast.
0:51.0	Why was that?
0:53.0	He's been in my mind since I first started writing or thought about writing.
0:59.0	He was always meaningful to me, and there's a period of time where I stopped reading him.
1:05.0	I just willfully stopped because I felt like it was the only way to write.
1:11.0	The way he was doing it.
1:13.0	So I just stopped.
1:15.0	I can remember talking to friends, and I would develop some harsh opinions of him that were really authentic on some level,
1:24.0	based on just the need to separate.
1:27.0	What for you is at the heart of his appeal?
1:31.0	It's funny way.
	...

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