I was putting my child to bed tonight when she heard laughter outside her window and got scared, and began to say that I needed to lie down next to her. Selfish me, I told her I’d get my iPod. I had never done this before, but do recommend it to parents who don’t like passing time in the dark, staring at the glowing stars, the Big Bloody Dipper no less, that you’ve stuck to the ceiling to please your child. Anyway, lying there in bed, I listened to Louise Erdrich reading Lorrie Moore. (What is the story’s title? On the magazine website it says, “Dance in America.” On my iPod it said, “This is it.” It is from the collection Birds of America.) The story is full of tenderness and the desperate sense of young life failing, and, of course, Moore’s cutting observational wit. But what was also stunning was Erdrich’s terrifically modulated reading. (We are not worthy, etc. etc.) Also do listen to the fine conversation between Erdrich and the New Yorker literary editor Deborah Treisman, especially the technical bit about the narrative’s acute coherence.

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