From the Archives: as the annual observance of Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) approaches this evening, we return to a 2011 essay by Erika Dreifus on the literary kinship among fictional works from an emerging cohort of “3G” (third-generation) Jewish writers: Julie Orringer, Alison Pick, and Natasha Solomons.
“My goal is to make fiction that doesn’t read too much like ‘life,’ stories that repress the urges and impulses of characters.” Aaron Hamburger and Avner Landes discuss Landes’s debut novel, Meiselman: The Lean Years, out this week from Tortoise Books.
Linda Kass talks with Eleanor J. Bader about her new book, A Ritchie Boy, the ways fact and fiction merge in the story, and the importance of remembering both our personal and political histories.
“[My favorite] stories, by the way, were submitted to over 100 literary journals before they found homes. I really loved them, which I guess is why I kept plugging away at the revisions until they were accepted”: Julie Zuckerman talks with Jolene McIlwain about persistence, family lore, and the thrill of publishing her first collection of linked stories.
“So in the novel I’m driving at the idea that justice and freedom don’t wait. It’s not, well, you need to suffer just a little more and then things are going to be peachy in fifty years. No. That was the rationale for colonialism and you can see the wreckage that left behind.”
“My final suggestion is to feel free to ignore all of the above advice or any other ‘shoulds'”: Ann S. Epstein with Danielle LaVaque-Manty on self-teaching, researching historical fiction, and her debut novel, On the Shore.
Debra Spark on what’s funny in fiction—and what’s not. “The humor that works in literary fiction, the humor I like, is female. I mean ‘female’ in a pretty stereotypical way here. I don’t mean that the literary work is by women, per se, but that it is relational.”
“One of the challenges of an historical novel is to use a major political event to illuminate character rather than as a ‘deus ex machina'”: Sophie Cook on Jonathan Rabb’s new novel.
“Ozzie’s sacrificial journey is a typical Rothian romp. It’s also meticulously made”: Michael Byers on how Philip Roth pulls off allegory in “The Conversion of the Jews.”
“I think you need some measure of faith to write about people, too”: Ben Nadler chats with Catherine Tung about Judaism, punk rock, and his newest novel, The Sea Beach Line.
