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 Harold Broadke's story, Dumbness Is Everything, which was published

in the New Yorker in 1996.

In the car stopped when the motor, vibration, and noise stopped and the wheels were still

the drunkenness shufflingly bulged and was dizzying more than before.

It pulsed in my head, stung my eyes and ran.

The story was chosen by Michael Cunningham, who is the author of seven novels, including

The Hours and last year's The Snow Queen.

His own fiction first appeared in the New Yorker in 1988.

Hi, Michael.

Hello, Deborah.

So Dumbness Is Everything is one of the last things that Broadke wrote before he died in 1996.

And it was published posthumously in the magazine a few months later.

Why did you choose this story?

For several reasons.

I knew Harold.

I not only knew Harold, he was a hero of mine when I was in school.

Let's just say, was I the kind of kid who would call you at midnight and read you a long

passage of Harold Broadke, whether you wanted to hear it or not?

...