This is The Writer's Voice, new fiction from The New Yorker.

I'm Deborah Treesman, fiction editor at The New Yorker.

On this episode of The Writer's Voice, we'll hear Robert Cooper read his story, Treatments,

from the April 30th, 2018 issue of the magazine.

Coover is the author of 11 novels, including The Public Burning, The Brunus Day of Wrath,

and Huckout West, which was published last year.

Now here's Robert Cooper.

Treatments.

Dark Spirit.

They're on a film lot walking through a pre-shoot reading of a script that calls for a brave traveler, that's you kid, the director says, leading her forward with an arm around her shoulders, to be lured to the edge of a deep, mysterious forest, known portentously as the forest of time.

The forest is fake, deep as a painted scrim, but the director has told them that a real forest from Transylvania will be pasted in later, and they have all been asked to bat at the air

around their faces as if to brush

away foliage, bugs, bats, clinging cobwebs.

Out out, out, damn spot, I say!

An actor screams in falsetto, batting wildly and everyone laughs.

The actor who has a bit part in the film as the enchanted prince smirks shyly,

blinking his long lashes. He's a cute boy, but too full of himself. And just a runt.

He'll have to stand on a chair for their happily ever after smooch once she's freed the beast

from his spell and let the prince out.

The industry is obsessed with this hackneyed tale, once inflicted upon young virgins to prepare

them for marriage to feeble old buzzards with money.

She used to raise hell about such things. Now she doesn't really care. The gutsy heroine knows that many

...