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 Mr. Parker by Laurie Cohen.

He was very thin as if the friction of living had burned every unnecessary particle of him.

But he was calm and cheery in the way you expect plump people to be.

The story was chosen by Miley Maloy, whose stories have been appearing in the magazine for 12 years now.

Her novels include Liars and Saints and a family daughter.

She joins us from a studio in California.

Hi Miley.

Hi.

So I think you were about one year old when Mr. Parker came out in 1973.

So I'm sure you didn't read this story then.

How did you first find it?

I read Laurie Cohen's stories when I was first writing stories, trying to write stories.

And I hadn't realized that this story was as old as I was.

Or that passion and affect the collection it was in was her first collection.

She was my parent's age, but she felt more like a contemporary, maybe because I was reading stories.

She'd written in her 20s.

And it was a world that was recognizable to me, although it wasn't my own.

And I think she made writing stories seem possible.

How did you come across passion and affect the collection?

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