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

I'm Deborah 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 Reynolds' price's story, his final mother.

Like all sane children with baffling, even murderous parents,

he understood that something he himself had done had brought his fate down on it.

The story was chosen by James Salter, whose novels include The Hunters,

a sport in a pastime, and light years.

Salter has also written screenplays, memoirs, and many short stories.

Hi Jim. Hello.

So Reynolds' price died early last year at 77.

He published this story in the New Yorker in 1990.

Did you first read it back then when it first came out?

No, I didn't. I read other things of Reynolds.

I was actually looking for a story.

And I saw this one by Reynolds and read it.

And I was drawn to it.

Why did you sort of go into this thinking that he was the writer you wanted to read?

Well, I did it out of some sense of loyalty, actually, having known him.

And the fact that he wrote numerous books more than 20,

and yet one single story in The New Yorker.

And that fact appealed to me somehow.

...