The New Yorker: Fiction · The New Yorker

Nathan Englander Reads Chris Adrian

July 1, 2024·1 hr 4 min·5 clips

Nathan Englander explains how Chris Adrian's story about Walt Whitman became a vessel for processing his own brother's death.

A seaside ad slips in before the program begins. Deborah Treisman then brings back the usual editorial frame, introducing herself as fiction editor and explaining the monthly archive choice. Nathan Englander is this episode's reader, and he has chosen Chris Adrian's "Every Night for a Thousand Years," published in the magazine in October 1997. The personal link stays light. Treisman notes that Englander and Adrian crossed paths in the Iowa writing program, so the choice feels rooted in literary familiarity rather than name-dropping. Then the story takes over. It opens with the worst cases being sent to Union Square Hospital, where one figure keeps visiting, reading, fetching, and helping. Time moves slowly. The excerpt follows the streets past Lafayette Square, the President's House, the canal, Murder Bay, the mall, and the Capitol. Lincoln is seen through a window. Mrs. Lincoln seems to move behind glass, still looking for the son who died two winters before. The city is grim without being dressed up: dirty water carries boots, bonnets, vegetables, animals, and a dead cat over thin ice. Still, small kindnesses keep breaking through. The walker brings candy for children who come out of shanties and trade riddles in the alleys. Near the Capitol, the ridiculed Washington statue becomes the setting for a private collapse and a wrenching cry. Treisman closes by returning to podcast business, giving Englander's credits and pointing listeners to the magazine's fiction podcasts.

As heard by us

Nathan Englander frames Chris Adrian's 1997 story as a mournful walk through wartime Washington, rich in grief, charity, and street-level detail.

Nathan Englander chooses Chris Adrian's "Every Night for a Thousand Years," a New Yorker story from October 1997, for reasons he names as empathetic, political, personal, and poetic.

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