{"podcast":{"title":"Private Life: A New York Review Podcast","slug":"private-life-a-new-york-review-podcast-7689958","podcast_index_feed_id":7689958,"rss_url":"https://feeds.transistor.fm/private-life","website_url":"https://www.nybooks.com","image_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/gnQ-tYKkQUrf9KBbX-Lv2CitGexgv0Aij1cs3L5VRhY/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:1400/h:1400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS8wODA5/ZGRiYmU0NTg3OTY0/Y2RkNDQzMTJhZjU3/NWUyZS5wbmc.jpg","author":"New York Review Podcasts","episode_count":22,"summary":"Private Life is a podcast from The New York Review, hosted by contributor Jarrett Earnest. Each episode offers intimate, in-depth conversations with distinguished voices from across the literary landscape—about their lives, their work, and the ideas that shape both. Along the way, they revisit pieces from the The New York Review of Books's robust sixty-year archive (some episodes of the podcast will feature newly recorded readings of these classic essays) to situate arguments within contemporary culture. The show also includes discussions of titles from our book publishing arm, New York Review Books, featuring talks with translator Mark Polizzotti on Andre Breton's surrealist masterpiece Nadja and musician Richard Hell on the re-issue of his novel Godlike. Other early episodes find Joyce Carol Oates ruminating on true crime, while Darryl Pinckney opens up about the perils of memoir and his formative friendship with essayist Elizabeth Hardwick. Private Life is a personable, expansive invitation for longtime subscribers and a new generation of readers alike to connect with the past, present and future of The New York Review.","last_synced_at":"2026-07-09T00:19:47.670598+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/private-life-a-new-york-review-podcast-7689958"},"episode":{"title":"Mark Polizzotti on André Breton, Translation, and Surrealism","slug":"mark-polizzotti-on-andr-breton-translation-and-surrealism","published_at":"2026-03-25T18:55:55+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/private-life-a-new-york-review-podcast-7689958/mark-polizzotti-on-andr-breton-translation-and-surrealism","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/private-life-a-new-york-review-podcast-7689958","url":"https://share.transistor.fm/s/9431fa65","audio_url":"https://media.transistor.fm/9431fa65/5802ef59.mp3","summary":"In this episode of Private Life , Jarrett Earnest is joined by Mark Polizzotti to discuss André Breton’s surrealist novel, Nadja , originally published in 1928 and translated into English by Polizzotti for NYRB Classics in 2025. Polizzotti gives insight into the process of translation, the facts of the real Nadja’s life, and the quotations and photography that Breton employed to evoke the woman behind the “ethereal phantom.” André Breton was a French poet, writer, and theorist, best known as a pioneering Surrealist and Dadaist. He published Claire de Terre , a collection of poems, in 1923 and the Surrealist Manifesto ( Manifeste du surréalisme )in 1924. Breton also cofounded the literary magazine Littérature in 1919. Mark Polizzotti is a writer based in New York. He has translated over seventy books from the French, including Command Performance (NYRB Classics, 2025) by Jean Echenoz and The Drunken Boat: Selected Writings (NYRB Poets, 2022) by Arthur Rimbaud. Polizzotti is the author of Revolution of the Mind: The Life of André Breton (1995), Sympathy for the Traitor: A Translation Manifesto (2018), and Why Surrealism Matters (2024). He is currently the publisher and editor-in-chief at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. To find Nadja and other NYRB Classics, visit our book imprint at nyrb.com. Subscribe to The New York Review of Books , which, in addition to twenty print issues a year, provides online access to our full archive going back to 1963.","meta_description":"In this episode of Private Life , Jarrett Earnest is joined by Mark Polizzotti to discuss André Breton’s surrealist novel, Nadja , originally published in…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":4545,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/private-life-a-new-york-review-podcast-7689958/episodes/mark-polizzotti-on-andr-breton-translation-and-surrealism/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/private-life-a-new-york-review-podcast-7689958/mark-polizzotti-on-andr-breton-translation-and-surrealism.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}