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 Isaac Bachev's singer's story, The Cafeteria, which

was published in the New Yorker in 1968.

Almost every day on my walk after lunch, I pass the funeral parlor.

The weights for us and all our ambitions and illusions.

Sometimes I imagine that the funeral parlor is also a kind of cafeteria where one gets

a quick eulogy or cottage on the way through eternity.

The story was chosen by Rivka Galchen, who is the author of the novel, Atmospheric Disturbencies

and the Story Collection American Innovations.

She's been publishing fiction in the New Yorker since 2008.

Hi, Rivka.

Hi, Deborah.

You were on the podcast in 2010 and at that point you chose a story by Leonard Michaels.

This time you've picked Isaac Bachev as singer.

I wonder if there is for you any continuity between those two writers?

It's interesting because I myself was reflecting on that because they're both male Jewish

writers and I hadn't really done that on purpose.

But I was thinking on a deeper level what the continuity might be and there is a way in

which they're both kind of comic writers.

...