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 Come Into the Drawing Room Darius by Edna O'Brien,

which was published in the New Yorker in October of 1962.

Although she was 17, this was her first party.

The invitation had come only that morning from Mrs. Rogers of the commercial hotel.

The postman brought word that Mrs. Rogers wanted her down that evening without fail.

The story was chosen by Rachel Kushner, who's the author of Three Novels,

and most recently the essay collection, The Hard Crowd, which was published last year.

Hi, Rachel.

Hi, Debra.

Welcome.

Thank you.

You were very keen to read a story by Edna O'Brien on the podcast. Why is that?

Well, I started looking back at her history with the magazine,

and Edna O'Brien has published 39 stories in the New Yorker.

If the index I found online, that is not officially sanctioned by the New Yorker is correct.

And that is just, it's a lot of stories, and there's a lot of range there.

I had first come to them through her collected works, the Love Object,

which was published in 2013.

And I thought, oh, I'll introduce myself, not having read all of Mrs. O'Brien's stories previously,

...