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 in the reign of Herod IV by Stephen Millhouser.

He earned for a world so small that he could not yet imagine it.

The story was chosen by Cynthia Ozick, who has been publishing stories, memoirs, and critical pieces in the magazine since the 1970s.

She has written many volumes of short fiction, and her novels include air to the glimmering world and most recently foreign bodies.

She joins me in the office. Hi, Cynthia. Hello.

So I think Stephen Millhouser was the first and only writer that you thought of when we talked about doing a podcast.

Yes, it occurred to me instantly. You had given me a variety of stories to think about by him, and I could not remember though it was indelible. I could not remember the title.

But the minute I found the story, I knew this was it. It's one of the great, great stories.

When did you first start reading Millhouser?

I think in whatever was published in the New Yorker, that was my introduction.

Quite often, Millhousers compared to writers like Borges and Calvino because of this somewhat fairytale, fantastical quality to his work.

Do you think it's useful to think of those writers when thinking about this story?

Yes, absolutely. There's the folktale quality. It's as if he's a maker of myth. He drills down so, so deeply into the elemental part of human consciousness that one is left gasping.

It's a little bit hard to talk about this story without giving too much away, but I'll just say I had said in a King's Palace and it revolves around a craftsman who makes miniatures for the King.

Is there anything that you think listeners should be aware of before they hear the story?

They should be thinking about art, all art. They should be thinking about making things. They should be thinking about craft.

They should be thinking about the first time when they were very small and they held a crayon and drew a house or a child.

They should be thinking about their fingers. That was wonderful. I hope they can keep that all in mind.

We'll talk more after the story. Now here's Cynthia Ozek, reading Stephen Millhouser's story in the reign of Harrod IV.

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