This is the New Yorker fiction podcast from the New Yorker magazine.

I'm Deborah Treisman, fiction editor at The New Yorker.

Each month we invite a writer to choose a story for Patriceman, fiction editor at the New Yorker.

Each month we invite a writer to choose a story from the magazine's archives to read and

discuss.

This month we're going to hear Safari by Jennifer Egan, which appeared in the New Yorker

in January of 2010.

Lou is one of those men whose restless charm has generated a contrail of personal upheaval

that is practically visible behind him.

Two failed marriages and two more kids back home in LA who

were too young to bring on this three-week safari. The story was chosen by

Greg Jackson, who's the author of the Story collection Prodigals, and the novel,

Dimensions of a Cave, which came out in 2023.

Hi, Greg.

Hi, Deborah.

Welcome.

I want to start with Jennifer Egan's work in general. Have you been a long time fan?

You know, I was thinking about this and I actually think this story was the first of her work that I read or encountered.

And I remember reading it in the New Yorker the week it came out.

Possibly someone had recommended it to me and possibly I just picked it up and read it I was so

blown away I didn't know that it was going to be part of a novel or appear in

slightly different form in a novel she wrote but that was my introduction to her work and you know I think it was a great

...