Memoirist and critic Vivian Gornick joins Violet Lucca to discuss Gornick’s essay “Put on the Diamonds” with novelist Sigrid Nunez, whose review of Italo Svevo’s A Very Old Man also runs in the October issue. Together Gornick and Nunez consider the inescapable evil that is humiliation; the unevenness of power; its connections to vulnerability and vengefulness; and the dire need to think well of ourselves. Later they unpack the concept of “sturdiness” in one’s voice and discover the lines in storytelling through a surrogated versus an unsurrogated self.

Read Gornick’s essay: https://harpers.org/archive/2021/10/put-on-the-diamonds-notes-on-humiliation-vivian-gornick/

Read Nunez’s review: https://harpers.org/archive/2021/10/a-very-old-man-italo-svevo/

This episode was produced by Violet Lucca and Andrew Blevins

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