This is the New Yorker fiction podcast from The New Yorker magazine.

I'm Deborah Treasman, 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 Elephant by Raymond Carver, which appeared in the New Yorker in June of 1986.

We talked a little more, mostly about our mother and her problems, but to make a long story short, I sent him the money.

I had to. I felt I had to, at any rate, which amounts to the same thing.

The story was chosen by Miriam Taves, who was the author of ten books, including the novels All My Puney Sorrows and Women Talking, and the memoir, A Truce That Is Not Peace.

Hi, Miriam. Hi, Deborah. So can you tell me what made you want to read a story by Raymond Carver today?

What has he meant to you as a reader and a writer?

Well, I haven't read a lot of his stuff recently, but I read so many of his stories when I was young,

you know, a teenager starting at first year university.

And, you know, I was a young parent.

I had kids when I was really young.

I was broke.

I was thinking that I wanted to be a writer. I just felt knowing a little bit about him that we had a lot of similarity.

Yeah, yeah, we kind of had the similar life.

And, yeah, so, you know, having to choose

a story to read, it occurred to me that, yeah, I'd always loved Raymond Carver stories and

that they had meant so much to me, especially, you know, when I was younger and when I was

sort of dreaming of becoming a writer and how I was so struck by his style, I guess.

Even though this story, Elephant, it was written later in his life really shortly before he died.

And it's different than those earlier stories.

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