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 the State of Grace by Harold Broadke.

Who was it, Edward?

He wasn't as smart as I'd banded his age or his fears.

At his age, I'd already seen the evil in people's eyes.

The story was chosen by Richard Ford, who's latest novel Canada, came out in January.

Ford's stories have been appearing in the New Yorker since 1987.

And back in 2007, he was the first guest on this podcast when he read Reunion by John Chiever.

So welcome back, Richard.

Thank you, Deborah. Nice to get to talk to you.

Well, you mentioned when you picked this particular story by Harold Broadke

that you had first read it when you were in law school in 1967 in St. Louis.

That's right.

How did you come across it then?

I don't even remember it, but I assume it was in an anthology that I had had when I was in college.

And I just brought those anthologies along with because I was so afraid when I was in law school

that I wasn't going to have anything to read with law texts that I brought a fiction anthology with me.

I think it actually is in Robert Gorham Davis's anthology, who is Lydia Davis's father.

I think I had that anthology with me.

And in fact, it turned out to be a really both fortunate and fortuitous thing to do

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