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 two very short stories by Donald Barthelmey,

one called The School and the other called Game.

If certain events take place upon the console,

we are to insert our keys in the appropriate locks and turn our keys.

Shot well as a key, and I have a key.

Trees were chosen by T.C. Boyle, whose own stories have been appearing

in the New Yorker since the early 90s.

His most recent book, The Collected Stories of T. Caragason Boyle, Volume 2,

came out in the fall of 2013.

T.C. Boyle first appeared on this podcast in 2008

when he read Bulletin the Brain by Tobias Wolf.

Welcome back, Tom.

Ah, the pleasure to be here. Thanks, Deborah.

Now, what made you think of reading Donald Barthelmey this time around?

Well, he's one of my heroes, and he was one of the formative writers for me

when I was first beginning to write in the early 70s, to mid-70s.

I love his sense of humor and the oddity of the situations he comes up with.

And do you think that some of that oddity crept into your own work when you were starting out?

...