Cynthia Ozick reads Steven Millhauser's "In the Reign of Harad IV."
This is the New Yorker fiction podcast from the New Yorker magazine.
I'm Deborah Treisman, 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 in the reign of Herod IV by Stephen Milhauser.
He yearned for a world so small that he could not yet imagine it.
The story was chosen by Cynthia Ozick, who has been publishing stories, memoirs and critical pieces in the magazine since the 1970s.
She has written many volumes of short fiction, and her novels include air to the Glimmering World and most recently, foreign bodies.
She joins me in the office.
Hi, Cynthia.
Hello.
Hi.
So I think Stephen Milhauser was the first and only writer that you thought of when we talked about doing a podcast.
Yes.
It occurred to me instantly you had given me a variety of stories to think about by him.
And I could not remember, though it was indelible, I could not remember the title.
But the minute I found the story, I knew this was it.
It's one of the great, great stories.
When did you first start reading Milhauser?
I think in whatever was published in the New Yorker, that was my introduction.
Quite often Milhauser's compared to writers like Borges and Calvino because of this somewhat fairy tale, fantastical quality to his work.