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.

Today's story by Vladimir Nabokov is called Symbols and Signs.

He must be always on his guard and devote every minute and module of life

to the decoding of the undulation of things.

Symbols and Signs was published 60 years ago in May of 1948.

It was chosen for the podcast by Mary Gateskill, author of The Novels Veronica,

and two girls fat and thin, and two short story collections.

Her story Don't Cry appears in the summer fiction issue of the magazine.

Hi, Mary. Hi.

You said in an interview a few years ago that your favorite authors have changed over time,

but Nabokov is always on the short list. Why is that?

I don't know if it's possible to say.

I think that he speaks to me in so many different ways,

both the comedy and profound sadness and quickness and delightedness.

If it's a deep affection, it's like falling on over the person.

I mean, you may come up with reasons,

but the reasons are really pretty irrelevant.

Symbols and Signs was published when Nabokov was 49.

In the 30 years after that, he published another 33 stories in the New Yorker.

So what made you choose this one today?

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