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 actually going to hear two stories.

One by Veronica Gang, called Love Trouble, is my business.

She chuckled insanely like, Mr. Reagan looped on something you wouldn't want to drink while

you read Proust.

And the second by Ian Frazier, called Coyote V. ACME.

Mr. Coyote states that on occasions too numerous to list in this document, he has suffered

mishaps with explosives purchased of defendant.

The stories were chosen by Jonathan Franzen, a frequent contributor to the magazine, and

the author of the novel The Corrections.

His latest book is a memoir, called The Discomfort Zone, which is out in paperback from Piccadour.

Hi, Jonathan.

Hi, Deborah.

So you chose to read two pieces for this podcast, both of which were published in the magazine

not officially as fiction, but more under the rubric that we used to call casuals and now

call shouts and murmurs, which is to say things that are still fictional, but considered

to be a little lighter and they're more humorous and not necessarily aspiring to be great

literature.

What was it that made you choose these pieces?

I would go back to the early 80s when I was becoming a New Yorker reader.

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