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 Robert Gorum Davis' story, then we'll set it right,

which was published in the New Yorker in 1943.

From the road where Lawrence was racing to catch up with two members of his company

came the sounds of shooting produced with tireless mechanical precision by the mouths of small boys.

Mr. Purvis put down his spoon and listened.

Anti-aircraft and Thompson's, he said.

The story was chosen by Lydia Davis, who's the author of seven books of short fiction,

including Break It Down, Varieties of Disturbance, and Last Year's Cant and Wompt.

Her story, Thyroid Diary, was published in the New Yorker in 2000.

So welcome Lydia.

Hello.

So I've had people choose stories by friends and former teachers or mentors, even a cousin.

This is the first time someone has chosen a story by a parent.

Robert Gorum Davis was your father.

Can you tell us a little bit about him and his career in fiction writing?

His career in fiction writing was actually quite short, interestingly.

I think he had ambitions to be a fiction writer when he was quite young,

and I know he had lots of pages towards a novel, a very autobiographical novel.

And then he started writing short stories, and I think he didn't have a lot of confidence,

...