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 Robert Coover's story going for a beer, which was published

in The New Yorker in 2011.

He finds himself sitting in the neighborhood bar drinking a beer at about the same time

that it began to think about going there for one.

In fact, he has finished it.

Perhaps he'll have a second one, he thinks, as he downs it and asks for a third.

The story was chosen by Joshua Ferris, who's the author of three novels, including last

years to rise again at a decent hour.

His own stories have been appearing in the magazine since 2008.

Hi, Josh.

Hi, Debra.

So, Robert Coover is sometimes described as a writer's writer.

Why do you think that is?

And are you one of the writers he's a writer's writer for?

I would say I probably am.

Yeah, I've been reading Coover since I was in college.

My guess is that the formal concerns that he has makes him primarily.

The reason that people talk about him as a writer's writer, he's not first and foremost

...