This is the writer's voice new fiction from the New Yorker.

I'm Deborah Treisman fiction editor at the New Yorker.

On this episode of the writer's voice we'll hear Treason, fiction editor at The New Yorker.

On this episode of the writer's voice, we'll hear Joseph O'Neill read his story, Rainbows, from the

October 5th, 2020 issue of the magazine.

O'Neill is the author of four novels, including Netherland, which won the Penn Faulkner Award for

Fiction in 2009, and The Dog.

His first story collection, Good Trouble, came out in 2018.

Now here's Joseph O'Neill. Rainbows.

I came to this country from Ireland at the age of 23.

Unaware of the existence of mentors.

I'm certain that I had never heard the word mentee. The words in Ireland

were not exactly the same as the words in America. When a classmate told me that she was going to meet her mentor,

I had to ask her to explain.

In America, she informed me, there was a social practice in which an older experienced person

donated time and knowledge to a younger relatively foolish person in order to help

the latter better understand the world's perils and pathways.

I was filled with a suspicion that bordered on disbelief.

I probably said, I go away.

Ireland has changed, everyone tells me, and maybe this sort of suspiciousness is no longer current. I doubt it however. I audited an undergraduate class in

anthropology. I needed a break from the dreariness and

difficulty of my master's degree which was in applied analytics. The class was titled Animals and People, the Pet, the Pest, the Hunting Asset,

...