Episode 36: Jim Phelan & Suzanne Keen — John Cheever’s “The Death of Justina”

Project Narrative

In this episode of the Project Narrative Podcast, Jim Phelan and Suzanne Keen discuss John Cheever’s 1960 short story, “The Death of Justina.” Suzanne Keen is a Professor of English at Scripps College in Claremont, California. Keen wrote the book on narrative empathy, Empathy in the Novel, which came out in 2007 and opened up a rich and wide ranging debate about the affective dimensions of reading fiction and their consequences for the lives of readers when they’re not reading. Keen’s most recent contribution to that critical conversation is Empathy and Reading: Affect, Impact, and the Co-Creating Reader. Keen has written several other books, including Romances of the Archive in Contemporary British Fiction, Thomas Hardy’s Brains: Psychology, Neurology, and Hardy’s Imagination, and the widely adopted textbook, Narrative Form. In addition to her work on the novel and narrative theory, Keen has published a volume of poetry, Milk Glass Mermaid, and individual poems in numerous literary magazines.