The New Yorker: Fiction · The New Yorker

Greg Jackson Reads Jennifer Egan

March 1, 2024·1 hr 15 min·5 clips

Jackson decodes the moment when a lioness leaps on Kronos, symbolizing time's brutal and unstoppable force.

The frame stays lean. Deborah Treisman opens with the podcast's monthly ritual, names Jennifer Egan's Safari and its archive date, then turns to Greg Jackson's pick. Greg starts with memory. He says the story may have been his first meeting with Egan's work, which gives the choice a quiet charge without making a speech of it. Then the reading settles in. The passage stays close to Lou's family and companions, where charm, age, desire, and bad parenting keep slipping into ordinary talk. Rolf's discomfort feels private. His unease around Mindy, even over pajamas with small blue elves, catches childhood shame with a clean, exact touch. Mindy hovers nearby. Her pillow-plumping and window-adjusting read as nervous care, the kind of domestic fuss the story trusts us to understand. The train shifts the mood. On the old overnight route to Mombasa, people move on and off while Lou's group packs into a bar car with other passengers. Charlie starts testing distance. Allowed one beer and nudged toward more by Dean, she hears his platitudes through Mindy's earlier judgment and laughs. Lou hears it too. His question pulls Charlie back into a father-daughter rhythm that is warm, sharp, and familiar as she leans against him. Then the image turns. A porcupine quill loosens Charlie's hair, and the shattered-window comparison gives the lovely gesture a little danger. The close returns to the frame. Treisman notes Egan's long history in the magazine and Jackson's fiction credentials, bringing the editorial room back after the story's held breath.

As heard by us

A poised reading of Jennifer Egan's "Safari," where family tension travels just beneath the surface of a glittering trip.

Greg Jackson's reading of Jennifer Egan's "Safari" brings a sharp family unease to The New Yorker Fiction Podcast. Lou arrives as the kind of man whose charm has left damage behind him: two failed marriages, children back in Los Angeles, and a three-week safari that gathers old…

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Greg Jackson reads Jennifer Egan's 'Safari' aloud -- Lou's restless charm, Charlie's porcupine quill, a train to Mombasa.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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