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 the 548 by John Chiever,

which was published in the New Yorker in April of 1954.

He wondered what she had hoped to gain by a glimpse of him coming out of the office building at the end of the day.

Then he wondered if she was following him.

The story was chosen by Mary Gateskill,

who's the author of three story collections and three novels, including The Mayor,

which was published in 2015.

Hi, Mary.

Hi.

Last time you were on the podcast, you read an abokov story.

And this time you knew pretty much right away that you wanted to read a Chiever story.

Why was that?

I think that I had been focused on his stories right around that time.

I've been a lover of his stories for a while, but I think I was particularly appreciative of this one.

I had that moment I had assigned it to a class.

And one of the people in class, I owe her for this, I suppose, because it really did make me think about Chiever in a different way than I had.

She kind of grudgingly admired the story, but said he was a narcissist.

That she had read somewhere, that his therapist somewhere had declared that this was true.

And I don't know why she even thought this was relevant, but it kind of made me think about him in a more intensive way.

...