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 a story from 1949 by Peter Taylor, called Port Coucher.

Never once in his life had he punished or restrained them in any way.

He had given them a freedom unknown to children in the land of his childhood.

Port Coucher was chosen by Marissa Silver, the author of three books of Fiction,

including the novel The God of War.

Five of her own stories have been published in the New Yorker.

She joins me from a studio in Los Angeles.

Hi, Marissa.

Hi, Deborah.

So Peter Taylor was one of the first writers who came into your mind when we started talking about

this podcast. Why was that?

Well, I'm a huge Peter Taylor fan.

His novel Assumines to Memphis is one of my all-time favorite books.

And I think he came into mind because something that I adore about his work is that he takes

the smallest, most minute moment and explodes it into an entire world of feeling

and an entire understanding of his social class and a piece of history.

And this story really typifies that for me.

Now, Taylor died in 1994 when he was 77.

He's a writer who was very popular at a certain time.

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