I. To Begin, a Note about Pleasure A few years ago, the late James Salter was honored at the annual F. Scott Fitzgerald Festival with a prize in Fitzgerald’s name. During his keynote address at the award ceremony, Salter said something that was stupefying in its simplicity: reading, he said, was among the very greatest pleasures in his life. Perhaps that’s not a surprising sentiment for a writer so notably interested in pleasure, especially the pleasures of food, drink, travel, language, and ... [READ MORE]
NOTEBOOK
Strange New City: An Interview with Lucy Tan
Lucy Tan's debut novel What We Were Promised is a deftly constructed multiple-perspective work that tells the story of the Zhen household. After attaining educations and building careers in the United States, Wei and Lina return to Shanghai with their daughter, Karen, where they find themselves a part of a new generation of urban elites. Quite suddenly, Wei is tasked with dramatically expanding his business while Lina finds herself part of an upper-crust previously unimaginable to her. As a ... [READ MORE]
Tomorrow or Forever: An Interview with Jack Kaulfus
In Jack Kaulfus’s debut story collection, Tomorrow or Forever, the Austin-based author examines life, the afterlife, and the identities we may take on in those spaces and beyond. These nine stories move through a variety of settings, from the cramped inside of a plane to a mystical small town sculpture garden, painting backdrops that are alternately recognizable and otherworldly. In these eclectic stories, tension lies between what’s known and unknown—about the worlds we exist in and about our ... [READ MORE]
Web Exclusive Interview: Hal Walling
Our March Web Exclusive, "You Haven't Won Anything Yet," is a taut, complex, and slightly odd story about a missing child and an adult with a missing childhood. It's a terrific example of using negative space, and nearly every sentence is a surprise. We (finally) spoke with author Hal Walling about his approach, and, yes, indulged ourselves with a couple of Canada questions. Erin McReynolds: In "You Haven't Won Anything Yet," the police are trying to see if the narrator is this still-missing ... [READ MORE]
Things American: On Quitting the (not so) Great American Novel
I want to tell you, because maybe it’s four in the morning and you’re googling “how to know when to give up on a novel.” How you are supposed to know? I’ve wondered this many times myself over twenty-three months, through a hundred and fifty thousand words, dozens of chapters, three false starts, and too many conversations to count. Then—in a moment—I came to the answer and I gave up on the book. I’ve written three books that came easily. The novel I walked away from was not one of those. The ... [READ MORE]
Editorial Outtakes: This Darkness Got to Give
Editorial Outtakes is a series in which we publish excerpts from recent books that you won’t find anywhere else because, prior the publication, these sections were cut. This installment of Editorial Outtakes features a deleted scene from fiction writer Dave Housley's new novel, This Darkness Got to Give. In the vein of character-driven contemporary horrors like Grace Krilanovich's The Orange Eats Creeps and A Questionable Shape by Bennet Sims, Housley engages with and subverts what readers may ... [READ MORE]