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

I'm Deborah Treesman, Fiction Editor at The New Yorker.

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

Today we'll hear the Wood Duck, written by James Thurber, and published in 1936.

I explained the irony. I think I explained the profound symbolism

of a wild duck's becoming attached to a roadside stand.

My wife strove simply to understand the duck's viewpoint. She didn't get anywhere.

The Wood Duck was chosen by Jonathan Leatham, the author of Motherless Brooklyn and the Fortress of Solitude.

He has been contributing stories and essays to The New Yorker for the past five years. Welcome Jonathan.

Thanks for having me.

So the Wood Duck is a relatively early piece in The Thurber Cannon,

and it seems unusual to me, and it's not purposefully comical line by line.

It's quite a simple story, and yet it was the first thing that you thought of when we talked about doing this program.

Why was that?

Well, I've always loved this particular story.

I grew up reading Thurber, and he's just a favorite of mine.

Generally, and I think almost across the board overlooked as an American short story writer.

So I suppose I like the Wood Duck because it helps make a case for him.

The fact that he's suppressing his comic instincts helps represent that argument that I feel that he's really one of the great short story writers.

But I also am just a sucker for animal stories, and there's something about this duck.

Somehow, it's one of the great animal characters, even though you get such a tiny window into its existence.

Well, Thurber was intensely popular from the 1920s until the 50s.

...