The New Yorker: Fiction · The New Yorker

Rachel Kushner Reads Edna O’Brien

June 1, 2022·1 hr 6 min·5 clips

Edna O'Brien secretly changed her stories after publishing them in The New Yorker—here's why it matters.

Rachel Kushner reads and discusses Edna O'Brien's 1962 story 'Come Into the Drawing Room, Doris,' exploring themes of women's autonomy, innocence, and landscape. The conversation delves into O'Brien's revisions, the story's Cinderella-like structure, and its commentary on Irish society and gender dynamics.

As heard by us

Rachel Kushner's Edna O'Brien reading turns a first party into something cold, comic, and quietly exposing.

Rachel Kushner reads Edna O'Brien's "Come Into the Drawing Room, Doris" as a story of first exposure: Mary, seventeen and new to parties, steps into a Commercial Hotel gathering where hospitality has a chill under it.

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