Gish Jen’s “The Resisters”

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 14 February 2020

⏱️ 13 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the near future, the Internet is sentient and her name is Aunt Nettie. Gish Jen’s novel “The Resisters” imagines a dystopian world with two classes: the “netted” (people who work) and the “surplus” (people who merely consume). The book follows Gwen, a terrific baseball pitcher from a surplus family that’s politically active. When her pitching attracts the attention of Aunt Nettie, she must choose between realizing her talents or staying with her family and being a resister. Baseball, for Jen, epitomizes the magic of chance and natural talent. “I wanted to write about our times,” she tells Katy Waldman. “But, to write in a realistic mode about our times and everything that’s happening, we would have nothing but shock and anger.” “The Resisters” was published on February 4th.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:11.0	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.
0:14.6	Gish Jen first came to readers' attention almost 30 years ago.
0:19.0	Her debut novel was about an immigrant family from China, and it had
0:23.0	the somewhat ironic title, Typical American. Gish Jens' eighth book has just come out, and she talked
0:29.2	about it with the New Yorker's Katie Waldman. The Resisters is a new book that's just come out,
0:35.2	and it's a dystopia. It's a dystopic fiction.
0:38.0	It is set in a future where there is one class, The Netted, who are allied with the Internet.
0:45.6	The Internet, of course, has taken over everything and has permeated every aspect of life.
0:50.9	And then there is the surplus class, and their job is basically to consume all of the
0:56.4	goods that this privilege cast produces. So the novel follows a surplus family. The daughter is Gwen.
1:05.9	She's sort of this wonderkind baseball pitcher, and so she gets scouted to play for the Olympic team. So the
1:13.8	Resisters is definitely a book about politics, but it also happens to be a wonderful baseball novel.
1:19.7	And it gets at the sort of aesthetic quality of the game, how unpredictable and often beautiful and sometimes boring it can be.
1:32.0	So when Gishdren and I talked recently, we started with baseball.
1:36.9	So you live in Cambridge, right?
1:38.9	So you must be a Red Sox fan.
1:40.9	I am a Red Sox fan, but I have to say that, you know, I come from a very, very, very strongly, you know, pro-Yankies family.
1:48.3	Really?
1:49.2	Okay.
1:50.3	Well, you know, it's interesting because, you know, what most people have asked me is, you know, are you a baseball fan?
1:56.6	And, you know, I will say that baseball was so important to my family that a couple summers
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