This is the New Yorker Fiction Podcast from the New Yorker magazine.

I'm Debra Treesman, Fiction Editor at the New Yorker.

Each month we invite a writer to choose a story from the magazine's archives to read and discuss.

This month we're going to hear a father-to-be by Saul Bello,

which was published in the New Yorker in January of 1955.

The notion that all were on depression and affliction,

instead of saddening him, had the opposite influence.

It put him in a wonderful mood.

It was extraordinary how happy he became, and in addition, clear-sighted.

The story was chosen by Kami Apoordas, whose novel, How to Behave in a Crowd, was published in 2017.

Hi, Kami.

Hi, Debra.

So when did you first read Saul Bello?

I probably first read Saul Bello after I moved to Chicago,

so it would have been around 2012 or 2013.

Not that I didn't know who Saul Bello was before, but it was a bit intimidating to me, I think.

And then, yeah, I moved to Chicago and I kept hearing his name.

I didn't come to his stories until very recently, because one of my students told me,

he has good stories too. He's not just a novelist.

I think I read Humboldt's Gift, and then almost all his novels.

After that, yeah.

So Humboldt's Gift made you want to read the others?

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