Nicole Krauss on Seeing Manhood Through a Woman’s Eyes
Editor’s Note: Read Nicole Krauss’s new short story “To Be a Man.”
“To Be a Man” is a new story by Nicole Krauss, adapted from the author’s upcoming story collection of the same name (available November 3). To mark the story’s publication in The Atlantic, Krauss and Thomas Gebremedhin, a former senior editor at the magazine, discussed the story over email. Their conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.
Thomas Gebremedhin: “To Be a Man” is anchored by two longer stories. The first recounts the narrator’s romantic relationship with a man known as the German Boxer; the second concerns her friend Rafi’s marriage. The two longer stories are told in the third person, but they are bookended by sections of first-person narration, in which the protagonist considers her adolescent sons. When did you first land on this structure, and why does “To Be a Man” require it?
