This is The Writer's Voice, new fiction from The New Yorker.

I'm Deborah Treasman, fiction editor at The New Yorker.

On this episode of The Writer's Voice, we'll hear Jonathan Letham read his story, The Afterlife, from the May 18th, 2020 issue of the magazine. Leitham is the author of more than 15

books of fiction, including the novel's Motherless Brooklyn, A Gambler's Anatomy, and the Farrell

Detective. A new novel, The Arrest, will be published later this year. Now here's Jonathan Lethem.

The Afterlife

1. R. A sculptor rode a shuttle bus to the afterlife.

He had no baggage.

That the destination was the afterlife was understood, a given.

This fact R. couldn't have explained.

He didn't have to.

None of the others on the bus, it was loosely packed, perhaps a third of the seats full,

challenged R's certainty. They knew as well.

The facility was large. At a glance, all he had time for, R failed to see its limits. Wide-glass doors slid open, and R. and his fellow passengers moved inside as if swept, yet willingly.

Once they were within, the whole matter of the bus seemed irretrievably distant.

Had a movie been playing on an overhead screen?

Had R slept?

What caused him to pay so little notice to the scene outside the windows, the journey

that had led him here to the afterlife? In fact, as R milled about, he soon lost sight of the doors

by which he'd entered. The central room, if it could be called a room, was almost unimaginably

vast. Atrium? That was a word R knew. This wasn't an atrium,

nor was it a hanger. The ceiling, though high, wasn't so high as that, or arched. Instead, it was a flat,

...