"You Must Know Everything" by Isaac Babel (read by George Saunders @

George Saunders reads Isaac Babel's short story "You Must Know Everything" and discusses it with The New Yorker's fiction editor, Deborah Treisman.
In the fourth New Yorker fiction podcast, George Saunders reads Isaac Babel. I know Saunders very well, although I knew next to nothing about Isaac Babel.
Saunders sets up this story very briefly before diving in to the read. There’s something fantastic about the way Saunders read the story-full of emotion and affect. He absolutely made the story come to life and his commentary at the end made the story even better.
Babel was 21 when he wrote this story (he was amazingly prolific-his Complete Works is over 1,000 pages), and Saunders is blown away by the amount of depth such a young writer fits into the story. Saunders says that for him Babel is a combination of Hemingway and Kerouac-Hemingway because Babel edited his storied very intensely and Kerouac because he wasn’t afraid to add the occasional poetic touch.
In the story, a young boy is going to visit his grandmother. As the story opens, he explains that he was always very observant. He knew everything about the streets of his city, Odessa. He knew the stores and the anomalies in the buildings. He observed every new window. Until someone teased him for looking in a lingerie store.
When he gets to his grandmother’s he is prepared to be there for a while since he has a lot of studying to do. The rest of his family is out, but he has Hebrew, Russian and Music lessons to do that night. he doesn’t mind most of the lessons but the music… oy!
He enjoys the company of his grandmother. She was wise and knowledgeable and fed him well. It was always warm there between cozy and claustrophobic. She also had a dog. And then we get this fascinating piece about the grandmother (via the dog).
she loved us all, particularly Grandmother who was so hard and merciless.
That one strange line reveals so much about the grandmother. Later she wakes out of a soporific state and demands:
“Study and you will have everything- wealth and fame! You must know everything. The whole world will fall at your feet and grovel before you. Everybody must envy you. Do not trust people. Do not have friends. Do not lend them money. Do not give them your heart!”
It’s a socking moment full of intensity and disdain and yet it doesn’t seem wholly out of character. But what is even more shocking is when she rails on the girl who is working for her in the kitchen. The girl drops a plate and the grandmother goes in and yells:
Get out, you little slut! … You are breaking my things. Get out!
It’s quite an amazing story.
The interviewer says that Saunders would be writing more about the mean Grandmother and the nice dog and he laughs and agrees. Then he says how inspiring Babel is. That he gets so much out of so little. And more importantly how a typical writer may have used one outburst as a climax, but instead, we get the second more shocking climax the happens “off screen.”
They also talk about the advice from the Grandmother. Saunders says the advice is not Babel’s, as he had friends and was very generous. Although at the same time he seemed to be taking the “know everything” advice to heart. The main character seems to be absorbing everything he can already. And babel himself, Saunders says, would pay a woman for the privilege of looking in her purse.

[@user-qe6bl1lb7u]

One of his best, written at age 21

[@viviensuttie4417]

Beautifully written and beautifully read.

[@GazeMeShoes]

excellent.

[@carloschacal9334]

Exceptional reading except for the backgroung music that diverts your attention.

[@mr.lavander7145]

3:30

[@SP-ki5gn]

Thank you.